Study Shows Cannabis May Slow Traumatic Brain Injury Damage

Randy Rozek • August 5, 2016

Traumatic Brain Injury(TBI) is a serious condition usually caused by an external blow to the head that can cause severe and often chronic symptoms. These symptoms can be cognitive, behavioral, movement related, speech and visual impairing, mood altering, involve painful headaches, and even cause gastrointestinal issues.

According to an article on Leafly, each year in the U.S., nearly 52,000 people die from TBI and 80,000 sustain severe disabilities. Moreover, 5.3 million people in the U.S. live with TBI-related disabilities.

“While effective therapies to treat ongoing TBI symptoms have been difficult to come by, thanks to researchers like Prof. Yosef Sarne of Tel Aviv University, we’ve discovered that cannabis may prevent long-term brain damage by administering THC before or shortly after the injury. In fact, Israel Defense Force (IDF) practitioners administer CBD or low-dose THC as a first-line treatment to IDF soldiers – and even enemy combatants – who suffer brain trauma.”

Sarne and his team published their results in 2013, where they demonstrated that administering just a fraction of the amount of THC that would be found in a typical cannabis joint anywhere from one to seven days prior to, or one to three days after an injury, induces the biochemical processes necessary to protect critical brain cells while preserving long-term cognitive function.

Anecdotally, many patients and their families report success when it comes to helping TBI patients with persistent symptoms.

“Thus far, there aren’t any notable clinical trials demonstrating the efficacy of cannabis to treat ongoing symptoms in TBI patients,” the article reads. “Unfortunately, even outside of cannabis research, phase II/III clinical trials of potential treatments haven’t demonstrated any consistent improvements in outcomes.”

According to the article, there is some evidence that at least lends support to speculation that cannabis-derived treatments may be beneficial:

“ In a three-year retrospective review of 446 separate cases of similarly injured patients, researchers found traumatic brain injury(TBI) patients who had a history of cannabis consumption possessed increased survival rates compared to non-consumers (97.6 percent survived surgery, versus 88.5% of those who didn’t consume cannabis),” a UCLA study reports. “

[O]ur data suggest an important link between the presence of a positive THC screen and improved survival after TBI,” the researchers concluded. “With continued research, more information will be uncovered regarding the therapeutic potential of THC, and further therapeutic interventions may be established.”

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