Cannabis is mentioned for its medicinal use as early as 1800 BC in Sumer[1]: and its active components, cannabinoids, have been used for their medicinal properties for millennia. Despite this, its use as a therapeutic agent continues to provoke broad scientific and social debate today. Within this context, Medcan provides rigorous and objective information from qualified professionals, as well as a wide range of products and services to people interested in understanding the potential of medicinal cannabis.

intercellular communication system

As Dr. Hazekamp says [2]: “that a plant has had an ancestral medical use does not mean that its therapeutic properties are scientifically proven. It happens that in the case of cannabis not only are they proven, but every day new ones are discovered”. Since the discovery in the 1990s of the endocannabinoid system, it has been known that substances similar to cannabinoids that are found in the cannabis plant, called endocannabinoids, are produced in the body. The endocannabinoids together with the cannabinoid receptors and the enzymes responsible for their synthesis and metabolism, make up the endocannabinoid system.

[1] Schultes RE. Man and marihuana. Nat Hist 1973; 82:59.
[2] Hazekamp, A. Introduction to medicinal cannabis, ICEERS.

The endocannabinoid system is basically a system of intercellular communication responsible for regulating the correct functioning of the organism (that is, it deals with the homeostatic processes of our body) such as the processes of temperature regulation, the pH of our skin or blood sugar level. It also intervenes in numerous physiological processes such as motor coordination, neuroprotection and control of pain or appetite among others. It is therefore not strange that cannabis has great therapeutic potential, since it is capable of acting on those diseases, which are many, in which the endocannabinoid system is involved.
Some of these pathologies where cannabis has a proven therapeutic effect are: severe chronic pain (neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia) and diseases that affect the central nervous system, such as multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, Gilles Tourette syndrome, glaucoma or the adverse effects of chemotherapy such as nausea, vomiting and loss of appetite.
Although they are still in a pre-clinical phase of in vitro experimentation (i.e. experiments in laboratories in a controlled environment outside a living organism) and in vivo only in experimental animals, hopeful results are already available regarding the antitumor potential of some cannabinoids (alone or in synergy with other antitumor drugs). It is also true however that the available pre-clinical evidence cannot affirm that cannabinoids are antitumor agents capable of achieving remission of the disease in living people.
What we do know is that the gap between the pre-clinical evidence of in vitro and in vivo experiments in rodents and clinical trials in vivo with humans is such that to venture to extrapolate the results of the former for the human species would not only be inaccurate, but also irresponsible. At Medcan we intend to report as rigorously, accurately and objectively as possible based on the available scientific evidence.
Although it is true that the results obtained in the in vitro pre-clinical experimentation (and in vivo in rodents) are very promising, it is no less true that, to date, there is no clinical evidence of in vivo experimentation in humans. This lack of evidence is due to the extreme difficulty of conducting clinical trials with cannabis due to the high economic costs involved and the fact that some components of cannabis, such as THC, are controlled substances, making it very difficult to obtain permits to administer it to human beings.