Comment by tasty_freeze | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tasty_freeze | Hacker News Reader

I have the start of arthritis in my hands. I just spent $50 on a topical salve with hemp-derived CBD oil after reading a lot of reviews about how effective it is.

The next day I checked if there was any research on its efficacy. Due to the volume of pages touting the benefits of CBD, finding the actual research was difficult. Most of the search results were either vendors or medical mj boosters.

The best I found was this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4851925/

Sure enough, CBD did help reduce inflammation and increased joint mobility in arthritic rats ... at a dose of 6.2mg/day. Considering that I'm hundreds of times more massive than a rat, and that my 2oz jar contains 150mg of CBD oil total, I'm probably getting 2mg of CBD oil per application.

That seems to confirm that the self-reported benefits of topical CBD oil is mostly placebo effect.

Get a salve made with cannabis and other plants. Something like: http://www.papaandbarkley.com/product/releaf-balm/

Can you link to some medical evidence of the efficacy of that?

What type would you like? Do you think doctors would recommend such products and patients would continue to buy such products if they didn't work/help?

You replied to someone complaining about medically ineffective doses with an evidenceless recommendation of another low-dose product.

Doctors and patients both benefit from the placebo effect - if it solves the problem, great, doctor and patient are happy and continue to do it.

I have health issues no one knows how to treat, and I have had doctors (qualified medical experts with decades of experience) recommend things there was little to no reliable evidence for currently, just in case they worked (didn't for me).

I (and lawmakers - CBD etc. are illegal where I am) want to know if things actually work.

There are probably higher dose formulations.

The key here, though, is that formulation contains THC (and extracts from other plants) and is derived from marijuana cannabis plants, instead of just hemp-derived CBD.

Your sample size for this claim is a bit small...

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