Medical Marijuana for Cachexia in Louisiana

What Is Cachexia?

Cachexia is a condition that affects the body's metabolic system resulting in weight loss, muscle wasting, and poor health. It can be related to several different conditions such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and others.

Louisiana has approved medical marijuana for those diagnosed with cachexia.

Cachectic patients often display a variety of symptoms including fatigue, weakness, fever, sleep disturbance and gastrointestinal problems, and cachexia is often considered a severe complication of a more serious disease or illness.

While cachexia causes severe weight and muscle loss, not all people with cachexia will look malnourished. Cachexia is diagnosed when a patient has lost at least 5% of their body weight within the last 12 months and has a known underlying illness.

How is Cachexia Treated?

Treatment for cachexia typically involves treating the patient's underlying illness, whether it be treating the cancer or slowing down the progression of AIDS, for example.

Because cachexia causes severe weight loss, significant attention is put towards regaining weight, rebuilding muscle, and reintroducing good nutrition.

In some cases, certain medications like corticosteroids, dronabinol (synthetic marijuana), and megestrol acetate are used to improve appetite, but these are not always effective in all patients.

Treatments with anabolic steroids have also shown mixed results; however, research with cachexia is still in the early stages so it is unclear how useful or sustainable current anabolic steroid treatments are.

Can Medical Marijuana Help with Cachexia?

Unfortunately, there are currently no treatments for cachexia that are consistently effective for all patients.

However, frequently patients with cachexia are prescribed dronabinol, a synthetic chemical copy of THC, although many patients prefer to use the naturally occurring compounds within the cannabis plant as an alternative to patented pharmaceutical drugs.

Because cachexia is ultimately relative to the condition that is causing it, different treatment options will work for different patients, with some seeing successes and others falling short.

However, the development of new cachectic treatments with medical marijuana is promising, especially when it comes to stimulating appetite and controlling cachectic symptoms such as nausea, pain, anxiety, and depression.

Medical marijuana is undergoing thorough research as a treatment for cachexia, especially cachexia brought on by cancer.

Medical marijuana has been used to stimulate appetite and reduce nausea in patients with cachexia, the primary symptoms of the condition. Medical marijuana can also be used to help control symptoms such as high inflammation, inadequate sleep, and can even help as a mood booster, an important factor for people suffering from the mental complications that can arise from cachexia.

Research studies have strongly suggested that medical marijuana can help with appetite stimulation, the main component of cachexia.

Often patients with HIV/AIDS anecdotally report using medical marijuana to treat various symptoms of the disease, with weight loss being one of the primary objectives that medical marijuana can help tremendously with.

Get a Louisiana Medical Marijuana Card for Cachexia

Because of the complex nature of how cachexia is diagnosed and treated, not every patient will see similar results with traditional pharmaceutical medications.

Because of this, and the links between medical marijuana and appetite stimulation, improved mood and improved quality of life, Louisiana has approved cachexia as a qualifying condition for medical marijuana.

To find out more about using medical marijuana for cachexia, consult with our staff of qualified doctors that can help walk you through the path of getting medical marijuana to help with cachexia.

Our doctors can be reached at (833) 253-2943 to help answer any questions you may have about getting a Louisiana marijuana card for cachexia.