Easing Chronic Illness w/CBD, thoughts from Dr. Genevieve Moore

A shocking number of Americans suffer from chronic illness, something that may not be obvious at first but something that they struggle with daily, with little treatment available and no cures. Almost one-third of Americans have one or more of these chronic illnesses, and they can be completely debilitating. Some of the chronic illnesses included in this group are Lupus, Fibromyalgia, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), Crohn’s Disease, and Endometriosis.

The difficult part about all of these illnesses, is that from the surface, the person suffering from it looks perfectly fine. To see them out and about, you wouldn’t think that they were battling anything in particular; when in reality, just the mere exertion required for them to be out and about could be almost more than they can manage. Many of these sufferers battle chronic pain on a regular basis, in addition to extreme fatigue and other symptoms. Lupus sufferer Christine Miserandino became well-known for her ‘spoon theory’ as a way of explaining how someone with chronic illness faces their days. 

Living with chronic illness is like beginning your day with a handful of spoons. Every single little thing you have to accomplish, from having a shower to making your breakfast to getting dressed, all costs you a spoon. The spoons represent the energy or strength your body has for the day, and once it’s gone, it’s gone. By the end of the day, as Christine recounts, the spoons are all depleted, and you may or may not have achieved all you wanted to that day. You could borrow from the next day’s allotment of spoons, but you run the risk of being short-changed for energy or strength the following day. Living with chronic illness means always being aware of how many spoons you have, planning for the day and anticipating how many spoons each task will take, and having to say no to social events if you’re already out of spoons. It is an incredibly difficult thing to have to live with, and because there is very little treatment for these illnesses, many people suffer in silence just trying to get through their days.

In recent years, some sufferers of chronic illness have had success with incorporating CBD oil into their regime, as a way to combat pain, nausea, lack of appetite, and other symptoms associated with their illness. Some of the more common symptoms associated with both Lupus and Fibromyalgia include chronic pain, extreme fatigue, a brain ‘fog’, and digestive issues like IBS or nausea. CBD can help to combat all of those symptoms, as it can relieve the pain symptoms, lift people’s moods and energy, and stave off nausea, allowing the person to eat more regularly. It also helps to prevent and/or treat the depression and anxiety that is often very closely linked to these illnesses, as people battle horrendous symptoms day in and day out.

Women who suffer from endometriosis are another group of silent sufferers, as from the surface, they look perfectly healthy. What you might not realize, is that they battle chronic back, abdominal, and/or pelvic pain, constipation or diarrhea, nausea, painful intercourse, and infertility. Endometriosis is when the endometrial tissue, that normally builds within a woman’s uterus, grows outside of the uterus, covering organs and creating a painful build-up of tissue that gets trapped inside the body. According to Dr. Genevieve R. Moore, a Yale-educated biologist, CBD can help to combat many of these symptoms by inhibiting lesion vascularization, inhibiting lesion nerves, and desensitizing nerves that transmit pain. (Source)

While many of these illnesses are still largely misunderstood, and there is very little treatment for them, health practitioners have been learning more and more and discovering various ways to combat the symptoms associated with each illness. They have yet to find a cure, but finding things like CBD and using them to treat the various symptoms has been very helpful. It is giving sufferers an increase in their quality of life, and perhaps providing a few more spoons for their day. That counts for a lot, and as Christine Miserandion said, “[t]he realities of life are handled better if we understand the possibilities and have a plan on ways in which to deal with such times.”