From endometriosis pain to orgasmic difficulty, emerging research is pushing women’s health conditions into the medical cannabis conversation.
Growing scientific evidence and patient experience with cannabis are helping bring women’s pain, pleasure, and reproductive health conditions to the forefront of cannabis medicine and policy.
Endometriosis, female orgasmic difficulty/disorder (FOD), ovarian cysts, and uterine fibroids are women’s health conditions that affect millions of women and can impact pain, pleasure, mental health, fertility, relationships, and bodily autonomy. They are gendered health conditions with emerging evidence supporting their consideration as qualifying conditions for medical cannabis.
Endometriosis and FOD illustrate why this matters.
Endometriosis alone affects roughly one in ten reproductive-age women and girls worldwide, about 190 million people globally. The World Health Organization describes its impact as medical, social, and economic, with severe pain, fatigue, depression, anxiety, infertility, poor sexual health, and reduced quality of life.
While there is no cure yet for endometriosis, cannabis may help reduce chronic pelvic pain and related symptoms. A 2022 systematic review of medical cannabis for gynecologic pain from Johns Hopkins University found that 61% to 95.5% of women reported pain relief. The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada also notes that cannabis may be recommended for endometriosis-related pain and symptom management.
FOD has been similarly overlooked despite decades of research documenting its persistence. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition Text Revision (DSM-5-TR) reports that estimates of orgasm difficulty among premenopausal women range widely, from 8% to 72%, depending on factors including age, culture, symptom duration, and severity. In 2021, Marchand evaluated FOD treatments and concluded that treatment options remain limited in scope and effectiveness and that there has been little innovation in treatment since the 1980s. Finnish researchers Kontula and Miettinen published a longitudinal report in 2016 and similarly found no substantial decrease in …
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Author: Dr. Suzanne Mulvehill / High Times
