New Research Shows Pain-Relieving Effects of CBD

Researchers at Syracuse University recently conducted a study to determine the mechanisms behind CBD’s ability to reduce pain, as well as the impact the placebo effect may have on pain outcomes.

“For science, and the public at large, the question remains: Is the pain relief that CBD users claim to experience due to pharmacological effects or placebo effects,” says study co-author Martin De Vita, a researcher in the psychology department in the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University.

“That’s a fair question,” De Vita continues, “because we know that simply telling someone that a substance has the ability to relieve their pain can actually cause robust changes in their pain sensitivity. These are called expectancy effects.”

Using sophisticated equipment that safely induces experimental heat pain, De Vita and the other researchers were able to measure how the recipient’s nervous system reacts and responds to pain. Afterward, “We administer a drug, like pure CBD or a placebo, and then reassess their pain responses [to] see how they change based on which substance was administered,” De Vita says.

Some participants were told they received CBD when they actually received a placebo, while some were told they would be getting a placebo when they actually got CBD.

According to De Vita, “We hypothesized that we would primarily detect expectancy-induced placebo analgesia (pain relief). What we found, though, after measuring several different pain outcomes, is that it’s actually a little bit of both. That is, we found improvements in pain measures caused by the pharmacological effects of CBD and the psychological effects of just expecting that they had gotten CBD. It was pretty remarkable and surprising.”

Read more at https://news.syr.edu/blog/2021/04/25/new-research-shows-pain-relieving-effects-of-cbd. And to learn more about CBD and massage therapy, listen to The ABMP Podcast, Episode 106 – Cannabis Massage with Jordan Person at abmp.com/podcasts/ep-106-cannabis-massage-cbd-101-jordan-person.

Local Vibratory Stimulation May Help Reduce Low-Back Pain

A recent study evaluated the immediate effects of a local vibratory stimulation device on subjects with poor proprioception in certain areas of their bodies. In their rationale for conducting the study, the researchers write, “Postural instability owing to poor proprioception is considered a main cause of low-back pain and falls. However, the effect of local vibratory stimulation on a poor proprioceptor on proprioceptive control strategy has yet to be evaluated.”

The study was conducted by applying local vibratory stimulation to poor proprioceptors on six elderly patients with non-specific low-back pain (NSLBP). The researchers compared the proprioceptive control strategy before and after applying the intervention.

The authors write: “As our main finding in this study, patients with NSLBP showed improvements in the proprioceptive control strategy based on proprioceptive inputs from the muscle spindles that respond to a higher frequency. This improvement resulted from the activation of the poor proprioceptor after applying the local vibratory stimulation for one minute.”

Future studies are planned that will address the limitations of this study, including increasing the sample size and evaluating whether improved proprioceptive control strategies can be maintained long term.

Read the full article online at https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10030341.

Massage Improves Mood and Well-Being in Caregivers of Patients with Dementia

In a pilot study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, researchers sought to assess the impact of different forms of therapy “in reducing the perceived burden and improving the emotional status of caregivers of people with dementia and to determine which form of physical intervention is most effective.”

For the study, 45 subjects were divided into three subgroups: the massage group, the relaxation group, and the control group. The researchers found that massage led to both a reduction in perceived burden and an improvement in mood and well-being in the caregivers.

The relaxation group experienced significant improvement in mood but no reduction in perceived burden. Massage and relaxation, however, were found to be equally effective in improving the well-being of caregivers.

The study concludes that while the results point to massage and relaxation as low-cost, effective interventions, further studies are necessary.

Read the abstract on PubMed.gov at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33302355.