[merinowool]

For a lot of people cannabis works great for their migraines, but I guess it is difficult for pharma to make money off of it so it is still a gray area in the EU. I am only pointing this out because the hype coming from the article makes the situation grotesque.

[pygy_]

Using painkillers (including CBD) chronically puts you at risk of developing medication overuse headache.

Preventive migraine treatments are not painkillers (beta blockers, anti-epileptics, and more, among which the CGRP blocker described in the article).

https://www.ichd-3.org/8-headache-attributed-to-a-substance-...

[Broken_Hippo]

1. It isn't so difficult. "Pharma" makes drugs from plants all the time. It isn't hard to imagine having strains specifically for treatment, packaged in prepackaged dosages with the right strains with different strengths. Or inhalers and things. "Pharma" also makes things like aspirin, after all. Besides, "Pharma" isn't the only one with an interest here - alcohol and tobacco companies would surely jump in to fill the niche. Not to mention that many countries have taxpayer-funded health care and have a vested interest to provide lower-cost treatments that work.

2. It depends on what is causing your migraines. I have a family member that will smoke occasionally if the migraines get bad enough. But they also have allergies, and sometimes smoking irritates them. That means that she has a small chance of the headache changing forms. One type of pain traded for another.

3. The situation is pretty horrible. I don't have them, but they run in my family. I've had to pick a person up because they got an aura while driving. I've known another that goes literally months with headaches. The pain gets bad enough that folks near "If I overdose, at least the pain stops". It can literally disable folks for hours. Cannabis doesn't always work well enough and doesn't prevent them. Most things that help with the pain still disable folks enough that they can't drive nor do their work.

[merinowool]

1. That's the thing - it is cheap, safe and easy. If there is no monopoly established (like in the UK) there is little money to be made. You cannot do aspirin at home easily, but you could make your migraine (or other) medication from cannabis easily.

2. You don't have to smoke it.

3. It doesn't work for all, but that is not an argument to deny it to those that they find it works for them.

[Broken_Hippo]

1. See, but there is money to be made, just not by the folks you are referring to. Monopoly or not. If anything, saving money in the healthcare system is in the government's interest. Taxes and things as well. And "easy" is ... kinda. Depends on what sorts of things you need it for.

2. Of course not. But that takes away from the ease of above: The person in question gets some irritant effects from the smoke, but also tends to get allergic reactions from random stuff... like corn pollen. The same person will try about anything legal.

3. I'm not argueing that at all. I'm actually very pro-legalisation, both for recreational use and for pharma use (not only with pot, but including drugs I wouldn't personally ingest). I generally push there to be separate categories for the uses, in part so we can specialize (I think this will happen). But I also try to push back at cure-all sorts of language, and this was more to demonstrate that even with it legal, migraines are still horrible and it doesn't prevent them. In a best-case scenario with this new medicine, a person would have the prevention available plus a variety of treatments to treat the ones they still get, including cannibus if it happens to be right for them.

[briandear]

Does cannabis actually prevent migraines or help after they started? I would be interested in reading the peer reviewed studies on the effectiveness of cannabis in preventing migraines.

I am skeptical of anecdote because half of my family is Mexican and the grandmothers on that side of the family are convinced that being cold causes colds or that homeopathy actually works. But in reality it’s just quite literally old wives tales not backed by any reputable, reproducible studies.

To be clear, I am not disputing that cannabis could have some beneficial effects, but the science should be there before we start suggesting that government is up to some conspiracy to boost pharma profits.

Am marijuana is still illegal in most EU countries — so don’t blame pharma for not manufacturing and testing cannabis medications, blame the democratically elected EU governments for trying to “protect” people from making their own decisions about what to ingest.

[soperj]

My sister in law lived in the netherlands, and they actually prescribed her mushrooms (the magical kind) for her migraines.

[heyyyouu]

It is known to work for specific types of cluster migraines. But unfortunately only those kinds.