New Haven, CT: Nearly half of the patients with migraine headaches have tried cannabinoid products, typically CBD, according to survey data published in the journal BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies.
Researchers from Yale University’s School of Medicine and the Stanford University School of
Medicine analyzed survey data provided by 377 respondents recruited from the Move Against
Migraine Facebook group. Investigators included a pair of questions in the survey inquiring about
patients’ use of “cannabidiol oil or other cannabis derivatives to prevent migraine.” Forty-nine percent of respondents reported having experimented with either CBD or other cannabinoid products for anti-migraine purposes. Just under 60 percent of them said that cannabinoid products provided some degree of effectiveness at preventing migraines, with 11 percent of
respondents rating cannabinoid products as either “very” or “extremely” effective.
Several prior studies have assessed the impact of inhaled cannabis on migraine frequency and
severity. Israeli data published last year reported that cannabis inhalation was associated with a
greater than 50 percent reduction in monthly migraine attacks in the majority of patients who tried it.
A separate study of 699 migraine patients, also published last year, reported that 94 percent of
subjects experienced symptom relief within two hours of marijuana inhalation. If an inhalable CBD product was not available potent tinctures were an effective substitute.