It is critical for brain function for people to get enough sleep. Sleep deprivation can even induce unwanted psychological symptoms like anxiety and depression, and is worse for the body’s health overall. Here I will use information from Canada Health, a federal department of the Canadian government responsible for Canada’s health. They tests cannabis and diseases to find correlations between the treatment of cannabis and cannabis-like drugs and symptoms from diseases, and so far their studies look good for the advocacy of cannabis as mainstream medicine. Currently, the Canadian law’s Marijuana Medical Access Regulations (MMAR) allow the use of dried cannabis for nausea and vomiting that is associated with HIV/AIDS and chemotherapy for patients who would not benefit from conventional treatments.
Pre-clinical data
So far, there is some evidence that suggests the role for the endocannabinoid system and sleep already. Regular users may find this claim relatable or reasonable. In general, THC appears to aid in decreasing sleep latency, or slowness of falling asleep, and are generally associated with greater ease at going to sleep. THC seems to consistency reduce total rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep and REM density. Due to the long half-life of THC, sedative effects of the drug are usually noticed to continue for about a day after the administration of cannabis.
Clinical data
There are numerous clinical studies which point towards a beneficial role for both cannabis and prescribed cannabis (dronabinol, naboline, nabiximols) in the treatment of sleep difficulties and many other illnesses, diseases, and ailments. In numerous other clinical studies for, say, HIV, depression, and cancer, the patients felt a side effect of sleepiness. Brief summaries of these studies are presented below.
The drug dronabinol was used in a four-week, double-blind, crossover pilot study for just under 20 patients suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Taking 2.5-10 mg per day of the drug led the patients to report an improvement in sleep. There were two studies administered again that donabinol and smoked cannabis for patients with HIV-related anorexia-cachexia almost definitely caused an improvement in sleep. A study of HIV positive cannabis smokers treated with dronabinol for 14 days reported improvements in both objective and subjective measures of sleep, but only the first 8 days of the treatment regimen. Another study that was a two-center, phase II, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled 22-day pilot study for adult patients who were suffering from chemosensory alterations and poor appetite associated with an advanced cancer ailment of various types self-reported statistically significant improvements in quality of sleep and relaxation with the dronabinol treatment, compared to the placebo.
Now, for the drug Naboline. One off-label, retrospective, descriptive study of 20 adult patients suffering from chronic non-cancer pain in many different ways, for example post-operative or traumatic pain, Crohn’s disease, and chronic headaches, also reported beneficial effects of naboline on sleep, a cannabis drug legal in Canada. Another study for naboline was with an enriched environment, randomized-withdrawal, flexible-dose, double-blind, placebo-controlled, and was a parallel assignment efficacy study. It was a study originally for the treatment of diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain, and the patients reported statistically significant improvements in sleep and overall patient status. Another open-label, non-placebo controlled trial of naboline for PTSD also reported that the naboline treatment they were receiving also improved overall sleep quality and hours. Also, they associated naboline with cessations of nightmare severity, and cessation of night sweats. The dosages they took of naboline were .5mg, 1 hour prior to bedtime, with an effective dose range of .2mg-4mg nightly with all doses kept below 6mg nightly. A two-week, double-blind, active-control, crossover study of 29 patients suffering from fibromyalgia also reported improvement in sleep from the patient population.
