Being a caregiver to a medical marijuana patient is a big responsibility. That’s why it’s crucial to ensure that you’re doing it to the best of your ability, which involves educating yourself on the proper dosage and ways to administer MMJ in order to treat various ailments. It may sound complicated, but MMJRecs is here to help! Here is a primary caregiver’s guide to medical marijuana to help you feel confident and knowledgeable in your MMJ duties.
How Much Medical Marijuana Should I Give My Patient?
One of the most important things to remember about being an MMJ caregiver is that it’s best to start slow and go low. While medical marijuana offers a large array of benefits to those who suffer from certain medical conditions, the effects of marijuana may not be immediately felt. Plus, everyone responds just a bit differently to MMJ strengths, which is why it’s essential to start slow with a low dose to see how it impacts the patient and helps to manage their symptoms.
Medical marijuana has a wide safety margin. There’s a low risk of overdose, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use caution until you know how the MMJ will impact the patient. Measuring medical cannabis doses for patients accurately is very important – remember, the dosage can vary widely between people, even if they have the same condition. Responses to dosages can vary due to a patient’s other medical conditions, how they consumed the MMJ, and the THC and CBD concentrations of the product they consumed.
The answer to the question “How do I know how much MMJ to give my patient?” depends entirely on the patient. Talk to their doctor to see if they can recommend a starting dosage. As stated above, start with a low dose and go from there. Keep a log that tracks how much was given and the effects felt by the patient. This can help you determine if you need to up the dose.
How to Dose a Patient with Medical Marijuana
There are a variety of ways to dose a medical marijuana patient. Make sure the method you’re using is legal in your state by checking with the MMJ regulating body. Once you have that sorted out, the most popular ways to dose include:
Oral
This is when medical marijuana is administered through the mouth, where it will absorb through the mucous membranes into the body’s circulation. Relevant products include spays and oils that are placed under the tongue for absorption. With oral dosing, it can take about 15 to 40 minutes for the impact to be felt and the effects can be experienced for up to two hours.
Inhalation
This is a very popular method of consumption but may not be the best choice for everyone, depending on their medical condition. That’s because it involves marijuana being vaporized and then inhaled directly into the lungs. Handheld vaporizers or disposable vaporizers are widely available. With inhalation, the effects of medical marijuana are felt almost immediately or within a few minutes. The effects peak after about 30 minutes, but the patient may still feel effects for up to 12 hours.
Ingestion
Ingestion is another popular method of dosing a patient with medical marijuana. This is where you eat the MMJ and it enters the bloodstream after being broken down in the digestive system. Patients start to feel the effects of the MMJ within 30 to 120 minutes and can expect it to last up to eight hours.
Topical
Ointments, lotions, patches, and balms are available for dosing MMJ, too. They are placed directly on the skin in the place where it is needed to help a patient deal with symptoms. The onset of the effects of MMJ when topically applied can be felt right away or take up to one hour. Patients can expect the effects to last up to two hours with most products, through transdermal patches can last up to 12 hours.
How Medical Marijuana Can Help
There are a variety of conditions that medical marijuana can assist in managing. In many states, medical marijuana is given to treat everything from muscle spasms to epilepsy to chronic pain. MMJ is useful in the treatment of many conditions because of the cannabinoids present. These chemicals are very similar to chemicals produced by the body that are involved in regulating pain, movement, memory, and appetite.
One of the primary uses of MMJ is to help cancer patients, especially those going through rounds of chemotherapy and suffering nausea and vomiting as a result. Studies have found that inhaling MMJ helps cancer patients to better manage pain and keep their appetites up.
Chronic pain is another issue that medical marijuana helps many patients with. MMJ that is inhaled, applied topically, or consumed orally has been shown in studies to help relieve pain from nerve damage and arthritis.
Stay Current
Being an MMJ caregiver is something many people excel at. If you’re one of them, don’t forget to keep your medical marijuana card current. MMJRecs can help you to always ensure that your MMJ card is legal, renewing your card each year quickly and easily so you can devote your time where it’s needed most: to your patients.
Featured image by Kimzy Nanney on Unsplash