treating chronic pain<\/a>. Those medicines will not be available at the local chain pharmacy in downtown Salt Lake City. And in fact, only 15 specialized pharmacies in Utah are licensed to carry the plant-based products.<\/p>\nThose products are used in much the same way as prescription medications. However, prescription medications they are not. The KindlyMD patient may choose to use his medicine in the form of raw plant material. He might also choose to vape his medications, use a tincture placed under the tongue, consume edible products, or even use a topical lotion.<\/p>\n
Why It All Matters<\/h2>\n
The fact that alternative medicine exists is not a coincidence. Moreover, the reason it exists explains why all this matters. Take chronic pain and PTSD. They are the two most common conditions treated under state Med Card programs. Millions of patients around the country rely on alternative medicine through their Med Cards to get relief they haven’t found in pharmacological therapies.<\/p>\n
Chronic pain is a very personal thing. It can be both physically debilitating and stressful enough on the mind to contribute to depression and anxiety. The big problem with chronic pain is that it’s so difficult to treat with a one-size-fits-all therapy. Not everybody reacts to prescription painkillers the same way. Not everybody responds positively to physical therapy.<\/p>\n
Our healthcare system is terribly inflexible when it comes to treating chronic illness. And for a lot of people, the traditional approach to treating pain just doesn’t work. They need alternatives. The same is true for PTSD.<\/p>\n
PTSD can be as difficult to treat as chronic pain. Making matters worse is the fact that there is no black-and-white way for a doctor to measure the severity of a patient’s symptoms. Severity is rooted more in perception than a scientific measurement. And so like chronic pain, there isn’t a single treatment for every PTSD patient.<\/p>\n
Giving Patients Choices<\/h2>\n
State Medical Card programs are all about giving patients more choices for treatment. Med Cards open the door to alternatives rooted in plant-based medicine. Is there tons of clinical evidence proving the efficacy of such therapies? Perhaps not. Yet that doesn’t mean they don’t work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
47 ViewsMore than three-dozen states have implemented Medical Card programs giving patients diagnosed with qualifying medical conditions access to plant-based medicines. The medicines are not<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthdoctorblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthdoctorblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthdoctorblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthdoctorblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthdoctorblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/healthdoctorblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227,"href":"https:\/\/healthdoctorblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions\/227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthdoctorblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthdoctorblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthdoctorblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthdoctorblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}