After coming down with a one / two punch of the cold + flu over the past week, it has given me much thought about how to prepare for medical emergencies in austere conditions. Particularly with the flu, I lost an immense amount of fluid via vomiting & diarrhea. As the “3/3/3” saying goes, water is in the second place of importance: you can only survive 3 days without it. While everyone should carry OTC anti-diarrhea pills in their medical kit, what do you do about vomiting? There are a couple of anti-nausea medications on the market, but they are all oral doses. Anyone knows that if you have chronic vomiting, you can barely hold ice chips let alone a pill or thick liquid medication. Modern medicine’s solution is to receive a prescription enema/suppository such as Promethagan. Problem with this medication is is that they need a prescription, need refrigeration, and have a short shelf life. What is a prepper to do?
There is in fact a solution! However, it is only legal in certain states at the moment. The answer is medical marijuana.
When most people think of medical marijuana, they think of cancer patients. Marijuana does help with pain relief, but most notably, it helps cancer victims overcome nausea and vomiting caused by the chemotherapy. Being it is smoked rather than ingested orally, you receive the full does of medication without risk of vomiting it back up.
Medical use of cannabis has a long history that dates back over thousands of years. Early applications of medical marijuana spanned a number of conditions, including nausea and vomiting.
Nausea was also one of the earliest focuses of modern-day cannabis research, beginning with animal studies in the 1970s. Positive evidence of its cancer applications led oncologists to investigate its effect on chemotherapy-induced nausea through the development and testing of synthetic THC pills. Likewise, early studies compared the effectiveness of oral THC to other anti-nausea drugs, finding that THC was at least as effective as leading anti-nausea drugs of the time, including dopamine antagonists prochlorperazine and metoclopramide.”
That’s right, it is an effective medication against nausea and vomiting. So much so that pharmaceutical companies invested lots of time, money and research into making drugs off the active ingredient THC.
If legal in your area (and I stress that I do not condone acquiring or growing this illegally), why is it a great medication to put in your bug out bag or medical kit?
- It’s dehydrated and can store for a long time
- Seeds can be regrown into plants
- It can be used for barter
- There is no risk of vomiting up the medication
The flu and uncontrolled vomiting is a very common medical emergency to have. Without access to medical care due to inability to acquire or excessive cost, this option may prove to be beneficial.
