The Cannabis Boomer Podcast is for baby boomers and all adults who are interested in the science of cannabis. Key words for the podcast, in general, are baby boomers, cannabis, boomers, marijuana, THC, CBD, health, wellness, science, and aging. ​

For this particular episode, key words are: cannabis, older adults, seniors, baby boomers, sleep, THC, CBD, sleep, pain, and ecological momentary assessment.

A study on 100 older adults (55+) found that medical cannabis use provided immediate relief from pain, depression, and anxiety. However, it did not directly improve sleep quality. Instead, improved sleep was associated with reduced anxiety, suggesting an indirect effect of cannabis on sleep through anxiety reduction.

Madison, a PhD student, is researching the effects of medical cannabis use on older adults. Her research, funded by the Consortium for Medical Marijuana Clinical Outcomes Research, explores how different medical cannabis use motives and neurocognitive profiles impact symptoms and mental health. Madison is also investigating ways to promote safe cannabis use among older adults.

Cannabis Boomer podcast aims to educate users about cannabis and its effects, emphasizing the importance of informed consumption. The information shared is based on current scientific opinion and should not be considered medical advice.

The Cannabis Boomer Podcast is for baby boomers and all adults who are interested in the science of cannabis. Key words for the podcast, in general, are baby boomers, cannabis, boomers, marijuana, THC, CBD, health, wellness, science, and aging. ​

For this particular episode, key words are: cannabis, older adults, seniors, baby boomers, sleep, pain, THC, CBD, and ecological momentary assessment.

Surveys on their phones every few hours throughout the day, right? And so we ask them every few hours, have you used any medical cannabis? And then we ask 'em about their symptoms. How is that affecting your pain, sleep, anxiety, not even directly how's medical cannabis affecting that, but just we asked them for their pain, sleep, and anxiety and depression ratings.

And what we found is that in the moment, on the days when people are using more medical cannabis, they're getting immediate relief of pain, depression, and anxiety after they've used. But medical cannabis didn't seem to be improving their. Instead, we found something interesting, which was that to the extent that the medical cannabis was improving anxiety, people then had improved sleep.

So anxiety was sort of this mechanism that was helping to improve sleep rather than medical cannabis directly.

So our study kind of answers this question or starts to disentangle this question of how does cannabis affect our symptoms in the moment? And then it leaves unanswered these future questions of does that momentary improvement align with the longer term effects that we're seeing? So for example, in the mental health world, we think about development of anxiety disorders, depressive disorders, which are more of these global conditions that are present for a longer period of time.

So our study answers. The question that people are getting this immediate relief, but leaves unanswered the questions of what might happen in the longer term. Are you gonna get lasting relief for your mental health symptoms or your pain symptoms? Is there any potential that you can become dependent on cannabis we've also learned through this study that medical cannabis. May not be as effective for sleep as we thought it was, or maybe it is effective for sleep just to the extent that it is affecting anxiety. So the big question that I think we are trying to answer here with this line of research is, for whom is cannabis effective and under what circumstances?

That's one of the biggest challenges when it comes to this kind of research, is actually being able to model what types of cannabis, what types of cannabis usage, what routes of administration are effective for what problems. You can do, a randomized control trial where everybody's taking the exact same product at the exact same time and the same amount. And then you can test the effects of that product, or you can do what we do, which is let people use what they would actually use in the real world in real time and evaluate the effects that they get that way.

So I don't know that either Method is. More or less perfect. Or that there's one right way to study it. As far as psychological symptoms and real world implications, I like the real time measurement a little bit better, letting people use what they would normally use and tracking how that's affecting them in their daily lives.

There are really no perfect studies in psychology because all of the constructs we're measuring anxiety, depression can vary and the best that we have are, questionnaires, but I think one of the biggest starting points would be to use a large enough sample. So if you're talking unlimited resources, we'd wanna include a lot of participants.

We'd wanna get really good representation of people from different backgrounds different cultures, different age groups, kind of be able to see if there are differences in those groups or just make sure that we're representing everybody who's actually using,

I was taking a class and one of the professors played this video of an older adult who had Parkinson's disease, the video showed his symptoms of tremor and then talked about how medical cannabis was. Gonna improve that tremor. And showed kind of a before and after of this older adult with Parkinson's disease having a lot of tremor symptoms, pre-medical cannabis, and then the tremors being completely reduced after taking THC.

And I thought, maybe this is something that could really be useful for older populations. I've always had an interest in neuropsychology. That's kind of been my career goal. And then come to find out, I start doing a little more research and medical cannabis actually doesn't have a lot of evidence for being effective for Parkinson's disease at all.

So. I was kind of confronted with this idea that maybe it could be useful for some people, but also it seemed like there's a lot of misinformation out there. I'm even getting misinformation in my like college level course I'm taking. So I spoke with my advisors and one of them studies, aging populations and the other one studies substance use.

And we came up with this plan together of hey, there's this emerging phenomenon happening where older adults are using medical cannabis at much higher rates than we've ever seen before. Let's start looking into this. And that's sort of how I got into it. And that's where we are now.

Looking at how do different. Medical cannabis use motives affect people's resultant symptoms. So for example, if you are using to treat your anxiety versus if you're using to treat your pain or nausea or something like that, what are the long-term implications of that? And it seems that there are some differences.

And then another line of study we've got on the horizon, involves. How different neurocognitive profiles might impact one's medical cannabis use or their resultant mental health after using medical cannabis. And then we've got one more area of research looking at how we can promote safe use among individuals using medical cannabis.

So using something called protective behavioral strategies, which is for example, like. Not using too much in certain situations, making sure that you're safe while you're using a long list of strategies, but how can we promote safe use among these populations.

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