Introduction to author
Dr Allan Frankel is one of the few physicians in the US who truly believe that Cannabis can act as a medicine. Every patient treated by Dr. Frankel was provided with a Personal Treatment plan with the patient specific issues. Patients can contact him through message portal, video calls, or follow up in person if needed. In this article, we will summarize an email from a patient with myasthenia gravis to tell about his treatment journey before and after taking Cannabis oil.
Patient background
The patient was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis from 2001 with the symptoms of drooping eyelids, double vision, slow speech, weak facial muscle movement, and swallowing problems. Since 2007, he has needed a maintenance dose of prednisolone of at least 10 mg per day to manage the symptoms of MG. When the physician tried other steroid-sparing agents, he wasn’t tolerable due to side effects related to liver and blood cells.
Over the 5 years later, the disease was continuously progressive to sever MG and he had to be admitted to intensive care unit (ICU) in hospital. At that time, he took a very high dose of prednisolone to manage an acute episode of MG, however he suffered from weight gain and severe side effects of prednisolone.
Since then, the patients can reduce the dose of prednisolone below 10 mg per day despite many efforts. He even tried many different natural health products (e.g. fish oil), diet modifications, exercise, and antioxidant supplements. Among these remedies, nothing was effective to manage the disease progression.
Treatment with cannabis oil
Through online search about cannabis helping many auto-immune diseases, the patient moved to California from Toronto to meet Dr. Frankel in 2014. After discussion with Dr. Frankel, he decided to try Cannabis oil as the last resort to help MG.
The cannabis dosage forms were spray and pills. Dr. Frankel worked with the patient to choose the right dose of Cannabis therapy. The patient started taking 1:1 THC and CBD ratio and THC acid to find that his body responded best. Just 2 days after taking Cannabis therapy, the patient saw the improvement of MG symptoms, such as pain, eye issues. Following this, he was successful to taper the prednisolone dose from 10 to 5 mg with no withdrawal symptoms over 3 weeks. After 2 months, he was completely dependent on steroid therapy. In addition, the patient felt good and no side effects were recorded. The patient was so grateful that the meeting with Dr. Frankel and taking cannabis oil changed his life.
In summary, treatment with cannabis oil helps patients manage the MG symptoms effectively, avoid side effects of steroid medications, and improve quality of life (e.g. patient said that he got stronger every day).
Reference
https://www.greenbridgemed.com/blog/patient-with-myasthenia-gravis-markedly-improved-with-cbd-thc-and-thc-acid