The Best Cannabis Strains for Pain

Pain comes in many different forms and degrees of severity for different people. Even when disregarding mental anguish or emotional distress, pain that involves a physical sensation can be categorized into disparate types based on both the source of the pain and the particular sensation the human body generates in response to it. The most commonly understood form of pain occurs if, say, someone bangs their hand against a hard surface; in medical terms, this is referred to as nociceptive pain, and it originates from inflammation occurring at the affected area. Medicine that treats inflammation is usually what is relied on at first when a physical injury is incurred from an external source.

If the injury is either sharp or unfortunately positioned enough that damage is incurred by the underlying nerves, it can result in pain that does not subside even when the aforementioned medicine is applied to treat the accompanying inflammation. This would be because of the affected nerves having been “altered”, however temporarily, to register sensations of pain for the brain to process even when there should no longer be anything inflamed at the area. How the body registers pain is a neuropathic process that can be affected by one’s own brain state, and there are other cases where the brain can be prompted by a disorder such as Fibromyalgia to generate painful sensations throughout the body without any physical or nerve-based injury involved whatsoever.

In practice, the brain can be coaxed with specialized medical procedures into toning down or even temporarily negating the amount of tactile sensation or pain it is allowed to register from injuries that have not yet fully healed. This can be accomplished by affecting the brain’s neural pathways in a controlled setting, so marijuana and other psychoactive agents have been widely adopted as stand-ins for traditional medicinal solutions. Administration of medical cannabis is widely established to the degree that consumers are allowed to imbibe it by themselves without the active supervision of a doctor being necessarily required.

Conditions that instill painful “phantom” sensations in an everyday setting usually do not have established medical treatments because they are so easily affected by the patient’s personal psychology. However, many patients that visit Kind Tree Cannabis dispensaries in New Jersey who resort to taking medical marijuana with a high CBD value express that doing so noticeably alleviates the pain. The strain titled “CBD Critical Cure” is often considered multi-purpose because it additionally treats physical pain and reduces stress. Another strain called “Harlequin” is more inclined toward supplanting feelings of anxiety with relief and relaxation while retaining the ability to counteract painful sensations.

Many strains of marijuana are defined by their included proportions of CBD and a second compound, THC. Put broadly, CBD is widely seen as a means to counteract existing negative emotions such as depression and anxiety, whereas THC plays a role in instilling euphoric feelings from scratch. Both are critically important to have in a given cannabis specimen because they complement each other in ways that tone down each other’s relative downsides. Strains with a mixture of both are generally more likely to have a positive effect of some sort on whichever type of pain the patient is facing. Patients with neurologically induced pain often take relaxation-oriented strains in which there are two milligrams of CBD for every one milligram of THC, such as the award-winning “Shurman” strain.

When it comes to using medical marijuana as a treatment for externally inflicted pain that leaves behind inflammation, strains that lean heavily toward either one compound or the other are often recommended over “mellow” blends of the two. Both CBD and THC feature painkilling properties, but they apply them in divergent manners that can each be compromised if too much of the “competing” compound is present. High-THC strains like “White Widow” and high-CBD strains like “ACDC” are regarded as the best varieties because they include just enough of the opposite-facing compound that the most problematic after-effects of each are appropriately held back.