According to one survey, hundreds of women report the drug helps with hot flashes, sleep, and more.
According to new research, millions of women may be turning to an untested treatment to relieve their menopause symptoms — and many of them say it actually works.
Their drug of choice? Bud. Mary Jane. Reefer.
That’s right: Studies have shown that more and more women are using cannabis to help with hot flashes, mood swings, and other issues associated with “The Change,” even though it’s not an FDA-approved treatment for menopause — and very little is known about its long-term health effects. But new research suggests that these women might be onto something, says Lauren Streicher, MD, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern’s medical school and medical advisor at Midi Health.
In a survey of more than 800 women who reported using cannabis for their menopause symptoms, Dr. Streicher found that a remarkable 98 percent said that it helped them either “a lot or a little” to get a better night’s rest, 97 percent said it helped with hot flashes, 95 percent said it boosted their sex drive, and 88 percent reported that it made sex less painful.
Now before you light up, it’s important to note that this survey hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed or published; Dr. Streicher’s still collecting data. But her preliminary findings are striking, and she says that theoretically, marijuana may help ease menopause’s most irritating symptoms.
Why are so many women using weed for menopause?
The majority of women don’t seek medical help when it comes to menopause. The reasons behind that could fill a book, but to put it simply: For a ludicrously long time, the medical advice when it came to menopause boiled down to “grin and bear it.” And even when an effective treatment was discovered and prescribed at scale, there’s been so much confusion and misinformation around hormone-replacement therapy that plenty of women still don’t consider it safe.
Many of Dr. Streicher’s survey respondents said they feared HRT would give them cancer, she says. The therapeutic still carries this stigma even though the threat it poses is miniscule, characterized as raising the risk of breast cancer “less than a tenth of 1 percent per year.” There’s also a prevailing sense that because cannabis is “natural” it’s harmless relative to HRT, Dr. Streicher says, despite the mounting evidence that habitual use of the drug can lead to cardiovascular and cognitive issues.
This suspicion, both of HRT and of the broader medical community’s ability to effectively treat their symptoms, is what’s driving middle-aged women to marijuana dispensaries, Dr. Streicher says.
“They really do feel like they’ve been left to their own devices,” she tells us. And they’ve turned to social media to share what works and what doesn’t: On the social media app, Reddit, 76,000 women have joined a forum to talk about their menopause experiences and hacks and have spent a considerable amount of time talking weed, its different strains and configurations. The general consensus is, yes, it does help.
One user on the thread aptly titled “Weed!!!” writes: “Cannabis is phenomenal for menopause, I’ve been preaching for a few years. Some folks have a problem getting over the stigma but honestly, once you get desperate enough anything is worth trying.”
Could marijuana help with menopause?
Weed’s effect on menopause symptoms hasn’t been tested in a clinical setting, so it’s hard to say how it’s beneficial. But there must be something to it if hundreds of women from Dr. Streicher’s study — and others like it — are reporting that THC has helped them manage the unbearable sweatiness of a hot flash. So what’s the reason for pot’s positive effect on menopause symptoms?
Some scientists think that the most annoying (and sometimes debilitating) changes that occur during this stage of a woman’s life are caused by a disruption of the body’s endocannabinoid system, which helps regulate appetite, mood, pleasure, and body temperature. Estrogen helps keep this network running smoothly, but when levels of the hormone wane during menopause, that deficit could throw the endocannabinoid system out of whack.
Cannabis is chemically very similar to certain endocannabinoids produced naturally in the body. It’s possible that the drug mimics these compounds and helps bring the endocannabinoid system back into alignment. This may be why so many women say pot helps with their hot flashes, sleep, sex drive, and even orgasms, Dr. Streicher says.
“There’s some science that backs it up,” she says. “But we don’t have good data to say for certain.”
What is clear though, is that if millions of women are using cannabis to cope, more research needs to be done in this space.
“Women, as they always have throughout history, are figuring it out themselves and they’re turning to cannabis,” Dr. Streicher says. “So we need to be paying attention and learning more about the drug — so if they choose to go that route, they can do so safely.”
