Medical Cannabis Dosing Guide
How To Find The Right Balance For Your Medical Marijuana Treatment
Medical cannabis can treat any number of afflictions, from increasing appetites for those with eating disorders to helping chemo patients hold down meals after treatments. It can aid those with insomnia in finally getting some shuteye, relieve Parkinson’s symptoms, and assist in staving off various mental health symptoms. The list goes on [1].
While medical cannabis is a massive net positive, there’s another side to the coin—the psychedelic effects of THC. As such, moderation is crucial.
Overly strong doses can lead to adverse experiences, scaring away people who could benefit from the wonders of this effective form of THC-infused therapy.
How do you achieve moderation? How can you harness the benefits of medical cannabis while avoiding the pitfalls?
We’ll explore this topic in greater detail below.
(Disclaimer: This is not medical advice. Directly involve healthcare professionals in determining your ideal dosage.)
Medicinal Cannabis: Off-Balanced Doses And Their Negative Effects
People often underestimate the delicate balance it takes to optimize medical cannabis doses.
Initially, starting low and progressively building up your tolerance is best. However, keeping things too low can lead to feeling no effects at all, defeating the purpose.
Yet, in the blink of an eye, you can move from ‘ineffective dosage’ to ‘uh oh, that’s too much.’
Things really can get tricky now and again with your medicinal cannabis doses. That’s why being active in finding the best dosage amounts is critical.
By engaging yourself in the dosage process, you’ll fine-tune your approach to harness all the healing benefits medicinal cannabis offers, which are bountiful and plenty.
Start Low And Keep A Journal
“Low” is a relative term for cannabis doses. It depends on the condition you’re treating—specifically, its severity.
For example, patients in severe chronic pain or dealing with cancer radiation treatments might require a high-dosage edible to manage the intensity of their symptoms.
We keep the above factor in mind when we advise you to keep your dosages low relative to the condition for which your doctor has prescribed your medicinal cannabis.
If your care provider has prescribed you edibles with high THC content, start with a nibble. If your doctor has suggested you smoke high-THC flower, then start with only a few puffs—even one puff. Throwing yourself headfirst into big doses will not yield favorable outcomes, that much we promise.
Proceed with caution and build upon your doses as you gain comfort. Journal your responses as you increase doses to analyze how the effects intensify and compare them to other dose responses.
Be immediate with the journal, too.
Our memories can play tricks on us, especially if we’ve dosed high THC medicinal cannabis. In recording your responses as they happen, you’ll connect better with the experiences and better inform your ensuing doses.
Practicing Caution With Edibles
Where matters can get murky, scary, and sometimes dangerous with cannabis is with edibles [2].
When you smoke cannabis, the response is immediate. There’s a chance you’ll have a somewhat adverse reaction, but—generally speaking—nothing too traumatic. It’s usually over in about 45 minutes, and you can write about it in your journal and calibrate your next dose based on your experience.
Even with a super-potent knock-your-socks-off bud, you can stop after a first pull from a joint seems too strong. You’re receiving immediate feedback to inform a logical decision.
Conversely, you must wait a lot for edibles to kick in. This delay can lead you astray, as you might start thinking the edible isn’t working, causing you to take more, only to realize the edible very much is working. By then, there’s no turning back.
Overconsumption of edibles increases the risk of falls and heart arrhythmia in older patients, and it might interact adversely with other prescriptions.
We don’t mean to dissuade you from trying edibles, specifically if your doctor prescribes them. When taken in the correct dosage, they are a potent, highly effective form of therapy, especially when you journal your responses and incrementally increase moderate dosages.
Finding The Right Medicinal Cannabis Dosage: A Matter Of Big Picture Thinking
Few things in life are 100% as they should be out of the gate. It takes time to fine-tune the routines, skills, and regimens that help us the most, and we can only do that by being active participants instead of passengers in these pursuits.
Medicinal cannabis dosages are no different.
Being too passive in your dosages will not yield the insights to optimize them fully.
Yes, passively taking medicinal cannabis will probably still help to a degree, but not attuning yourself to how each experience makes you feel will increase the chances of more adverse responses.
Furthermore, don’t be deterred by one negative experience.
We should clarify—if you suffer a medical or mental health emergency or some severe allergic reaction, speak with your doctor about whether you should continue with medicinal cannabis.
Alternatively, if you maybe dosed a bit too heavily and it made you feel uneasy, don’t let that be the thing that scares you away. Documenting your dosages will give you the necessary information to cut down for next time. You’ll see what you took to make you feel “off” and can experiment with something lower.
The Key To Getting The Most Out Of Your Medicinal Cannabis? Purchase From Dispensaries You Trust
Kelly’s Green’s team of highly informed budtenders can’t give you medical advice—but we know cannabis like the back of our hand, including how to optimize your dosages.
We’ll happily answer your questions about potency, the quality of our medicinal cannabis products, what they’re typically prescribed for, and so on.
Our passionate team will do everything in our power to ensure you optimize your medical cannabis experiences and help you best manage your symptoms with products you can trust.
The Kelly’s menu consists of medicinal-grade cannabis we’re proud to sell to our patients, meticulously cultivated by top industry growers. We embrace our role as groundbreakers in Mississippi’s medicinal cannabis sector, ensuring relief and peace of mind for patients like you who’ll benefit from the healing powers of our products.
Check out our online menu during your medicinal cannabis journey.
Sources
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK425767/
- https://www.healthline.com/health-news/cannabis-edibles-health-risks/