Epilepsy – Alternative Treatments Marijuana

Transcript

Alternative treatments for epilepsy haven’t been particularly effective from my experience. One of the things that comes up most frequently, and I would tell you every day, is the question about marijuana and epilepsy. And there have been some anecdotal reports, particularly stuff you’ve seen on CNN where there’ve been some pretty amazing responses that have occurred when kids have had marijuana or some marijuana extract that has helped control their seizures. And I would point out from my end, it’s very difficult to sort of give any good advice. And the reason is we don’t have any trials really conducted in the fashion or with the rigor that we’ve expected from every other anticonvulsant medication. And so I can tell you, you know, numbers as far as, side effects and interactions with any anticonvulsant, I have no idea with marijuana as to, you know, how much to give, what drug interactions, what other side effects that happen. And I think that one of the traps that people fall into is they don’t think of it as a chemical. They think of pills as chemicals, but marijuana somehow is a leaf. It’s a green leafy vegetable. It’s not a chemical. And that’s not right. It is. It’s a chemical that has potentially some good effects, but the equally potentially bad effects. And I couldn’t tell you anything about, you know, what epilepsy it works for, which ones it doesn’t work for. Could it make some worse? Make some better? And the answer is yes to everything and I just don’t know. So it’s an exciting thing for the future. Is there some really exciting possibilities there? The answer is yes. Would I, you know, can I recommend it to my patients? I can’t, cause I don’t have any data on it at all.