Cannabidiol has become more well known for it’s ability to help treat auotimune disease.By regulating the immune system, many people have found success in using CBD hemp oil to reduce their symptoms. CBD oil may be able to help with myasthenia gravis for this reason as well.
What Is Myasthenia Gravis
Myasthenia Gravis is Latin and Greek in origin meaning “grave, or serious, muscle weakness.” It is an autoimmune neuromuscular disease that makes your skeletal muscles weak. These skeletal muscles are responsible for moving parts of the body like your arms and legs as well as your breathing. What this disease does is cause muscle weakness that gets worse after doing physical activity but then gets better after resting. Myasthenia Gravis can make the following difficult:
- Eye movement
- Eyelid movement
- Facial expressions
- Chewing
- Talking
- Swallowing
- Breathing
- Limb movement
Myasthenia Gravis is a disease that doesn’t have a cure yet, but there are available treatments that can help make the symptoms less severe. Fortunately, most people with Myasthenia Gravis have a normal life expectancy.
Causes of Myasthenia Gravis
You have chemicals in your brain called neurotransmitters which are used by neurons for communication. When electrical signals travel down a motor nerve, the nerve ending releases the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. The neurotransmitter travels from the nerve ending and then binds to its respective receptor on the muscle. This binding is what activates the muscle, and it is how you are able to use them.
Myasthenia gravis is caused by a lack of transmission from nerve impulses to muscle at the neuromuscular junction, which is where the nerve cells connect to the muscle that they control. Immune proteins, also known as antibodies, block, alter or destroy the receptors that the acetylcholine needs to bind to at the neuromuscular junction. This alteration prevents the muscle from contracting.
Because antibodies are what causes myasthenia gravis, it is classified as an autoimmune disease. The immune system is supposed to protect our body, but with an autoimmune disease, the immune system attacks the body.
The gland that controls the immune functions of your body is called the thymus, and it may be associated with myasthenia gravis. This glad is largest in children and gets smaller as people age and is replaced by fat. It is important for children to have a healthy and large thymus because it is helps to develop their immune system. In adults with myasthenia gravis, they have found that the thymus gland is still large which could contribute to the immune system’s overactivity. People with myasthenia gravis usually have clusters of immune cells in their thymus gland and can even develop tumors. These tumors are typically harmless, but they do have the ability to become cancerous.
Symptoms of Myasthenia Gravis
Most cases of myasthenia gravis start with the weakness of the eye muscles. Sometimes it can be difficulty swallowing or having issues with speech at the beginning. The onset of this disease can be sudden, and the symptoms may be confused with other illnesses at the beginning of the diagnosis.
The Most Common Symptoms of Myasthenia Gravis
- Drooping eyelid(s)
- Blurred or double vision
- Facial expression changes
- Difficulty swallowing
- Difficulty breathing
- Difficulty speaking
- Weak arms, hands, legs, fingers, and neck
Risk Factors
The most commonly affected group of people who get myasthenia are adult women under the age of 40 and older adult men over the age of 60. This disease can happen at any age, however, and even in childhood. There is no connection with genetics or transferring myasthenia gravis between individuals.
CBD Hemp Oil for Myasthenia Gravis
There are many treatment options for myasthenia gravis to help with your symptoms, one of them being drugs that help reduce the activity of your immune system. Since your immune system is the source of all of your troubles, it would make sense to tell it to calm down.
Studies have shown that CBD oil helps reduce the activity of the immune system promoting regulation and it may even be able to slow down the progression of myasthenia gravis.
What Is CBD Hemp Oil?
Cannabidiol (CBD) is a chemical found in the cannabis or hemp plant. Federal regulation calls for hemp plants to contain less than .3% of THC in the plant, which is what makes the difference between hemp and cannabis. At CBD instead, all of our products come from a hemp plant making them federally legal in all 50 states.
Cannabis has been used for centuries along with other ancient remedies like honey and coconut, and modern science is finally catching up to what our ancestors discovered long ago. We now know that cannabis is so effective with so many different ailments because it interacts with our endocannabinoid system, the system that is in charge of our body’s regulation also known as homeostasis. The endocannabinoid system has two major parts that help make cannabis so effective called cannabinoid receptors and endocannabinoids.
Cannabinoid Receptors and Endocannabinoids
While many medications have chemicals that directly interact with your brain and body, CBD oil doesn’t work in that fashion. CBD elevates and enhances chemical production in your body, helping to raise or lower chemical levels to make your body reach the peak of health. The chemicals in your body that are most affected by CBD are called endocannabinoids. The main two being anandamide and 2-AG. When these chemicals are in your system, they bind to cannabinoid receptors and help mediate the functions in your body.
Both endocannabinoids bind to both receptors, but they also bind more to one receptor than the other. The endocannabinoid anandamide mainly binds with the cannabinoid receptor called CB1 which is in charge of your nervous system. The endocannabinoid 2-AG mainly binds to the cannabinoid receptor CB2 which helps to mediate your immune functions. When CBD oil helps to manipulate your immune system, this is how it may be able to help reduce symptoms of myasthenia gravis.
How do Endocannabinoids Work?
Neurotransmitters usually travel through the synapse, which is the space between neurons, from a sending cell (presynaptic cell) to the receiving cell (postsynaptic cell). They have a message from the presynaptic cell and bind to a receptor on the outside of the postsynaptic cell to make things happen like breathing, thinking, or walking. Endocannabinoids are interesting because they don’t behave like neurotransmitters. Endocannabinoids travel from the postsynaptic cell to the presynaptic cell with its own message.
If you get angry because someone cut you off on the highway, your presynaptic cells are sending messages of rage across the synapse to the postsynaptic cell. If it weren’t for your endocannabinoid system, you would be angry for the rest of your life! The endocannabinoid system sends endocannabinoids from the postsynaptic cell to the presynaptic cell telling it to stop sending those rage messages. This is also how endocannabinoids help with things like anxiety, autoimmune diseases, and pain.
How can CBD Help with Myasthenia Gravis
CBD And Inflammation
The first thing that CBD does is reduce inflammation. By regulating your CB2 receptors, the body won’t be sending out so many attack cells. While inflammation is good for the body, too much inflammation can cause harm to the body which is what brings us to our next point. Cell damage.
Studies have shown that by manipulating your immune system, cannabinoids may be able to:
- Reduce autoimmune attacks
- Spasticity relief
- Promoting nerve growth
- Prevents cognitive impairments
CBD And Cell Life
CBD oil has also shown in studies to promote a healthy cell life, by protecting cells, preventing damage, and helping damaged cells recover. CBD oil does this inadvertently by reducing inflammation but also elevates chemicals that promote cell growth in your brain as well.
How do you use CBD for Myasthenia Gravis
When starting out with CBD, the best route to take after talking with your doctor is starting at a low dose. A low does looks different depending on how you take it. If you use a tincture or vape, a low dose would look like 4 MG. If you are taking a pill or eating a CBD edible, 10 MG would be a low dose. The reason you want to start low is because…
- You don’t know if you allergic to cannabis or any other ingredients
- CBD is dose dependent which means too much or too little isn’t as effective.
If you jump to taking 200MG a day, your body might react fine to it but it also might not be effective, making you give up immediately on this route of treatment. The generally suggested guideline is starting at your low dose and then doubling it after five days and continue to do so. If you notice your symptoms are getting better, you’re on the right track! If your symptoms start getting worse, you know you need to turn down the MG. The safest way to monitor how you react to medication is to have your doctor in on the journey every step of the way.
