Many people with IBS already use it to relieve their symptoms, and message boards all over the Internet are replete with testimonies that it works.
Two researchers from Italy’s University of Naples published a literature review in the Journal Pharmacology & Therapeutics, finding abundant evidence of receptors in the human intestinal tract that are chemically responsive to this illegal substance.
It’s not illegal everywhere, so mounting evidence may lead the way to getting it legalized in more places than ever before.
The researchers in Naples uncovered a mountain of evidence showing our digestive tracts are crammed with cannabinoid type 1 (CB1) and cannabinoid type 2 (CB2) receptors, the mechanisms through which cannabis exercises its biological effects via your nervous and your immune system respectively.
You’re thinking it already: cannabis = marijuana.
The studies also concluded that this endocannabinoid system in the gut was involved in the regulation of food intake, nausea, vomiting, secretion of stomach acids, protection of your stomach and intestinal linings, movement of the muscles and nerves in your digestive tract, movement of food through your digestive tract, sensation inside your abdomen, and so forth.
They found studies that suggested that genetic mutations in the endocannabinoid system are potentially responsible for many digestive tract diseases, and this made them wonder whether cannabis could potentially be an effective treatment for them.
Armed with all this information, companies have been developing CBD-based products for intestinal problems. One of these, AXIM® Biotech, have even managed to get its CanChew CBD Chewing Gum legalized in all 50 American states because they could prove that it was not habit-forming and lacked psychotropic effects.
This CanChew gum is now entering its first scientific trial at Wageningen University in the Netherlands to see whether it genuinely works for people with IBS.
They want to know whether it can control abdominal pain, bloating, and discomfort, and will also record whether they experience a change in the number of times they have to empty their bowels.