Because there is still a lot of stigma attached to marijuana, some patients who could genuinely benefit from treatment with medical marijuana hesitate to talk to the physicians about it. There is probably no way that the discomfort you may feel when you bring this up can be alleviated. The thing to keep in mind is that, among the scientific community – and your physician is a scientifically trained professional – attitudes about marijuana have changed dramatically in recent decades. More physicians today are recognizing scientific evidence that marijuana is an effective treatment for a range of different conditions.

Talk to Your Physician

You will have to talk to your physician openly and honestly about marijuana. One of the advantages that patients have these days is being able to get information about any medications they are interested in on the Internet and being able to talk to their physician about it from a position of being informed. Marijuana is no different in this regard. Learn about medical marijuana so that you can state specifically why you feel it will benefit you.

If you already are a marijuana user or you have used marijuana in the past to treat your condition, it is advisable to tell your physician about this. This may, of course, make you uncomfortable, but physicians need information to do their jobs properly. For example, if you already have used marijuana to treat chronic pain, that’s something your physician needs to know if you are asking them to seriously consider prescribing it as a treatment for you. Again, do some research, make sure you can eloquently state exactly how you benefited from marijuana or how you believe that you would benefit for marijuana and talk to your physician honestly about it. Medical marijuana is legitimate medicine, there’s no reason to be embarrassed about it.

Learn About Using Marijuana

If you’re not at all experienced with marijuana, you should know that there are many different options out there for using marijuana other than smoking. Some people take marijuana in the form of a capsule. There are quite a few people, however, who feel that this treatment doesn’t give them the desired effect and that it emphasizes some effects that are generally experienced with the use of marijuana while not giving some of the other effects, which may actually be beneficial in and of themselves.

As far as smoking goes, combustion and vaporization are two different options you have for smoking marijuana. Combustion is the smoking with which most people are familiar. This would mean using a common cigarette lighter to light a joint, a pipe or a bong. Vaporization occurs at a much higher temperature and requires specialized equipment. The advantage in vaporization is that the person ingesting marijuana is actually inhaling a missed rather than a smoke. Smoke is what contains the byproducts of combustion that most people are worried about when they are concerned about the health effects of smoking anything.

You’ll also want to speak with a dispensary about your options for ingesting marijuana in food. You can learn recipes to cook your own marijuana foods or, in some cases, you can buy them outright, and some people do prefer eating to smoking.