Advice on Cannabis in Myeloma

Today we're diving into a topic many patients are curious about cannabis and its role in multiple myeloma care, from managing pain and nausea to potentially supporting overall quality of life, cannabis has generated a lot of interest, but also a lot of questions. In this video, we'll explore what the research says, discuss potential benefits and risks, and give practical guidance for patients considering cannabis as part of their myeloma journey. What advice would you give patients on cannabis in myeloma care? Cannabis has gotten a lot of attention of late. It has active ingredients in cannabis, in marijuana. Basically, the active ingredients could be cannabinoids or THC, and these have been shown to have, for some people, relieve symptoms like nausea or reduce the need for pain medications and reduce the dose that they need. So improve pain. Some use it for anxiety and sleep. So I think, you know to to it's important to if you're getting marijuana to get it from a proper source. And that would be good to have a licensed provider who can give you a medical marijuana and then also be able to dose it and titrate it and adjust it to the needs of what you need. And then when you get that dose of marijuana and see if it benefits you because it doesn't for everybody, and if it doesn't, then maybe you can stop at that time. In terms of side effects, some people do feel that they have increased fatigue or sleepiness, and then others may feel that there's increased. There's a rare syndrome with excessive vomiting with very frequently smoking marijuana as well. So I think you have to just make sure that these are things that aren't causing your side effects or symptoms. Would you share some details about the cannabis study you conducted in combination with Health Tree and University of Illinois Chicago doctor Karen Weiss? We did a patient survey about cannabis use, so we surveyed approximately 500 patients from 2023 to 2024 and found that in general, the use of cannabis was pretty, pretty significant. Over half of patients were using cannabis when surveyed. Again, this is a select population of patients who are online. And then most of them were taking edibles, about 75% of them. And a lot of them were taking cannabis for pain, for anxiety. And actually, very few patients were trying to take cannabis to increase their appetite. And I guess one of the take homes for me in that survey is that they there was the majority of patients were taking cannabis for pain, but they weren't able to use the cannabis really to decrease the amount of opioids they were also using. So in some ways, I wonder whether the cannabis was most effective, not at treating the pain, but at treating the anxiety about the pain, which can be oddly different things overall. You know, at our institution, we try to have patients have an opportunity to head towards our palliative care clinic if they have symptoms that are not well managed. And so many myeloma patients have any number of symptoms that everyone kind of should take a crack at and try to improve. And so our palliative care folks do have the ability to get patients THC is needed. Would cannabis use disqualify you from a clinical trial? I have not seen cannabis use as an exclusion criteria for clinical trial yet, and I am. I can't see that being something that's coming up. I think that would be crazy to exclude patients for a clinical trial because of cannabis use, unless, of course, there was some sort of known interaction in how the drug is metabolized. But, you know, honestly, we exclude patients from clinical trials who eat grapefruits and civil oranges. And so, you know, and we don't do it because we don't approve of grapefruits. It's just the drug interaction. And I'm not aware of significant drug interactions with cannabis. Cannabis may offer benefits for some myeloma patients, but it's important to weigh the risks and talk with your health care team. Stay informed, stay safe, and explore our other health tree videos to keep learning about managing myeloma.