The Scale of the Problem

Chronic pain touches more of the population than most people realize. According to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, 24.3% of U.S. adults, about 60 million people, lived with chronic pain lasting three months or longer as of 2023, the most recent year with published data. September is National Pain Awareness Month, a designation meant to bring exactly this kind of number into view.

What Our Research Adds

Tikun Olam has spent nearly two decades studying medical cannabis across a range of pain conditions. One of our most cited studies, published in the European Journal of Internal Medicine in 2018 and cited more than 260 times since, followed a large, unselected population of cancer patients using medical cannabis in real-world clinical practice. Patients reported improvements in pain, nausea, and overall quality of life over the course of treatment.

What This Means, and What It Doesn’t

This is supportive care evidence: real-world data on how patients responded when cannabis was part of their care. It’s not a claim that cannabis treats the underlying cause of chronic pain, or that it works for everyone. Paired with the rest of our published research, including studies on fibromyalgia and chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, it’s part of a broader, growing picture of how cannabis performs across different kinds of pain.

Why This Month Matters

With a symptom this widespread, real, peer-reviewed evidence deserves more attention than it gets. If you’re a healthcare professional fielding pain questions from patients, or navigating pain yourself, the full study and the rest of our published research are available at tikunolam.com/resources/research. Our team is always happy to walk through what’s relevant to a specific patient population directly.

Warm regards,
The Tikun Olam Team