Re: Does cannabis really help treat PTSD?

 I believe there is only one way to treat PTSD, and that is by nutritional means. Using drugs of any kind legal or illegal (such as cannabis) are only palliative, as they may mask symptoms without addressing the underlying causes.

PTSD and other forms of mood disorders are triggered by excess stress hormones due to an underlying biological imbalance, without any reference to any outside event or stimulus. Phobias and PTSD are mood disorders that use outside stimuli as presumed causes of the illness. When you are bombarded with adrenaline and/or cortisol, because of an internal metabolic disorder, and you enter a lift whilst having an anxiety attack, the lift becomes the source of a "phobia" that will trigger an anxiety attack, whenever you come near a lift. Here we have a phobia.

In PTSD the traumatic event in the past becomes the trigger of anxiety, except here it is in the reverse order seeing an unprovoked anxiety attack being explained as being caused by a trauma occurring in the distant  past.

The reason why people may be bombarded by stress hormones - in cases where no outside stimulus in the here-and-now can explain it - is that stress hormones enables the body to feed the brain with biological energy - called ATP -  energy (from glucose), whenever it experiences an  energy starvation.

Adrenaline converts glycogen (sugar stores) in the body back into glucose in order to feed the brain with glucose. The brain is entirely dependent on glucose as its only source of energy. When there is a brain energy starvation - a serious threat to the survival of the brain - it will send a message to the adrenal gland to release adrenaline - a fight/flight hormone - in order to supply the brain with the necessary energy. Without that energy, the body cannot convert food sources of tryptophan into serotonin (the feel good neurotransmitter) and hence people become depressed or experience anxiety attacks without an external stimulus.

So the question is: why should the brain expedience brain starvation or sudden drops in blood sugar levels? The answer is, most people with mood disorders are found to be hypoglycemic. This is a sugar handling problem caused by pre-diabetic insulin resistance. This causes wildly fluctuations blood sugar levels feeding the brain with unstable sources of its energy.

For a further explanation please read:

What is Hypoglycemia?

Depression: A Nutritional Disorder

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Hypoglycemia

Testing for Hypoglycemia by Dr George Samra 

Nutrition-Bhavior Inventory (NBI)

Hypoglycemic Questionnaire