Using Medical Marijuana Leads To ‘Significant Improvement’ For Sleep Apnea Patients, Study Conducted By Minnesota Officials Shows

Minnesota officials have released the results a state-funded study showing that medical marijuana provides significant benefits for people struggling with sleep apnea.

Unlike many states that have enacted legalization, Minnesota’s Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) routinely collects data on patients’ experiences and produces research on its findings. This latest report focuses on sleep apnea, a condition that causes people to stop breathing temporarily throughout their sleep.

OCM’s report found that about 40 percent of those who were certified to participate in the medical marijuana program due to sleep apnea reported an average 30 percent reduction in symptoms and were able to maintain that improvement for at least four months.

State officials said the study is “the largest on record involving obstructive sleep apnea and medical cannabis patients.”

The research—which looked at data from 3,102 patients enrolled in the medical cannabis program with sleep apnea from August 1, 2018 to July 31, 2023—found that 39.4 percent of all patients who participated experienced significant improvement in their sleep within four months of beginning treatment and were able to maintain the sleep improvement for an additional four months.

Among patients who initially reported moderate to severe fatigue at enrollment, 55.3 percent saw significant improvement within four months, and 33.5 percent were able to achieve and maintain improved scores.

“Disturbed sleep and fatigue were the most common symptoms reported among patients, with 93.0 percent and 86.8 percent of patients reporting moderate to severe scores at baseline, respectively. Among patients with moderate to severe disturbed sleep, 60.8 percent saw a ≥30 percent reduction in disturbed sleep symptoms within four months. Of those patients with data after initial improvement, 73.6 percent maintained ≥30 percent improvement in their disturbed sleep for at least four months after initial improvement.”

Grace Christensen, an OCM senior research analyst, said in a press release that the results of the study “show meaningful changes in disturbed sleep and fatigue for patients after starting medical cannabis.”

“Obstructive sleep apnea can affect a patient’s mental and physical health, so helping patients treat their symptoms can have a holistic outcome on their wellbeing,” she said.

“Patients with [sleep apnea] who also reported they had symptoms of depression and/or anxiety also showed signs of relief from those symptoms,” OCM said. “More than one-third (39.8 percent) of those experiencing depressive symptoms, and more than one-third (36.7 percent) of those experiencing symptoms of anxiety were able to achieve relief.”

Back in Minnesota, in March a lawmaker filed legislation that would create a system to allow legal access to psilocybin for medical purposes, just days after introducing a separate bill that would legalize personal psilocybin use and possession among adults.

Also that month, a legislative committee in the state gave approval to a plan that would expand eligibility for expungement of marijuana-related criminal records and resentencing.

New Hampshire Senators Approve Psilocybin Decriminalization Bill

Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.

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