By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

Cannabis can be consumed in many different forms for pain relief. You can smoke or vape cannabis flowers, rub cannabis-infused lotions and ointments on your skin, or ingest edibles and beverages containing cannabidiol (CBD) and/or tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredients in cannabis.

But it’s cannabis oil that is increasingly cited in research as providing the most benefit for pain sufferers.

The latest study was conducted in Israel, involving about 200 middle-aged adults with chronic pain who were treated by a specialist for at least one year without satisfactory pain relief before trying cannabis. Participants suffered from a variety of pain conditions, including nerve pain, joint pain and headaches. Their average pain level at the start of the study was 7.9 on a zero-to-10 pain scale.

For 6 months, participants ingested cannabis oil extracts daily in a variety of different THC and CBD concentrations, all prescribed by a physician, which were consumed sublingually under the tongue. The doses were considerably lower than what you’d get from smoking or vaping.

By the end of the study, the average pain level among participants had dropped from 7.9 to 6.6, equivalent to a 14% reduction in pain, with similar improvements in sleep, anxiety, depression, disability, and quality of life.

“All these effects are modest in size but are rather consistent and congruent with those found in additional cohorts. Hence, cannabis seems to have an impact on the ‘disease burden’ of chronic pain rather than being a potent analgesic per se,” lead author Dorit Pud, PhD, a Nursing Professor at the University of Haifa, reported in the journal Pain Reports.

‘Taken together, these observational cohorts suggest that in practice, much lower doses of oil extracts of cannabis are used compared with inflorescence (smoking or vaping). It therefore seems that oil extracts may be advantageous over inflorescence as they allow more precise dosing, lower THC dose consumption, and comparable analgesia.”

The number of patients consuming opioids decreased over the course of the study, but because the doses were low and only a minority were taking them, researchers were reluctant to draw conclusions about the opioid-sparing effects of cannabis.

The research team noted that about a quarter of the patients had a 30% or more reduction in pain, but they were unable to determine why these “responders” had better results than others. About half the participants had an adverse side effect from cannabis oil, such as dizziness or confusion, but those symptoms usually declined after the first month.

Previous studies have also found cannabis oil effective in treating pain. Researchers in Columbia say 92% of patients reported less pain after consuming a proprietary formulation of oil containing CBD and THC. Similar findings were reported in a recent study in Australia. Other studies have found cannabis oil effective in treating fibromyalgia and migraine.