For years, scientists have uncovered the medical benefits of cannabis for treating everything from anxiety and insomnia to more debilitating disorders like Crohn’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and cancer—to name a few. Now, Israeli researchers at Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University have found yet another medical use of cannabis: treating broken bones.
For years, scientists have uncovered the medical benefits of cannabis for treating everything from anxiety and insomnia to more debilitating disorders like Crohn’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and cancer—to name a few. Now, Israeli researchers at Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University have found yet another medical use of cannabis: treating broken bones.
The new study, published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, examined the effects of non-psychoactive CBD on broken bones. Cannabinoid cannabidiol (CBD) is a compound found in cannabis that is particularly favorable for treatment because unlike tetrayhydrocannibinol (THC)—the best-known cannabinoid—CBD offers medical advantages without inflicting the “high” traditionally associated with marijuana (because of this, it is widely used to stop seizures in epileptic children).
While the same research team previously discovered that CBD was effective in stimulating the formation of bone and inhibiting bone loss, the new study analyzed broken bones, specifically. According to the researchers,
“The study, conducted on rats with mid-femoral fractures, found that CBD—even when isolated from tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the major psychoactive component of cannabis—markedly enhanced the healing process of the femora after just eight weeks.”
The scientists also studied the effects of CBD in conjunction with THC and found that CBD alone was sufficient to facilitate healing. As one of the lead researchers, Dr. Yankel Gabet of the Bone Research Laboratory at the Department of Anatomy and Anthropology, said,
“We found that CBD alone makes bones stronger during healing, enhancing the maturation of the collagenous matrix, which provides the basis for new mineralization of bone tissue…After being treated with CBD, the healed bone will be harder to break in the future.”
By Carey Wedler, The AntiMedia
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