How to find Cannabis sativa info via PubMed

Want to learn about Cannabis sativa without having to read newspaper articles that are written by biased, unqualified journalists? Then use PubMed. PubMed is used to find essentially all health-related scientific articles. Terms are searched for in the PubMed search field, and abstracts are returned for your query. Many abstracts are linked to the full-text article. Some of these articles are free to view and download, while the majority must be purchased or viewed from a computer that is part of an institution, such as a University, that has paid a subscription fee. There are many Cannabis-related articles on PubMed.

To access Pubmed, go to PubMed Home or type in pubmed.com

Use the search field at the top of the page. Search PubMed for your desired term(s). There are some sophisticated ways to enter information to search for, and the PubMed tutorial located in the left margin can help you with your search technique. However, to start with, the individual keywords "cannabis", "bhang", and "marijuana" are effective.

Once you find an article to view from the initial search results, click on the link, which happens to be the list of authors for that article. You will be led to the abstract for that article, although occasionally there is no abstract.

If you find the abstract interesting, and want to read the full text article, you will need to click on one of two links. The easiest link is a button that is located near the upper right-hand side of the abstract, and will appear as a logo of some kind, and possibly say "full-text article". If no such button exists, look for the link that is just above the article title for the abstract, it will be the abbreviated name of the journal, and will be highlighted in blue. Click on that and a box will appear, then click on Journals. Then look for a blue link that is called Electronic Links, it should be a link to the journal that published the article. Click on that then search for the article in the journal, if possible.

If you are not an experienced scientific article reader, it is usually handy to read the introduction and the conclusion, and not bother too much with the methods, which will usually bore you to tears. Review articles are great because they are easier reading, and have already carefully evaluated scientific studies/articles for their worthiness.

Always be aware of who sponsored or paid for the study, and who conducted the study. Many entities will be biased, and will try to look for aspects of a research interest or form conclusions that support thier biased, predetermined notions. No scientific study is perfect, and all are flawed in some way or another. That is why review articles, which examine a multitude of different studies, are generally better for judging a particular subject of interest.

Also keep in mind that many results from scientific studies are merely associations, and are not actually demonstrating causality. For example, the studies that imply that smoking one joint during your teen years can induce psychosis later in life are merely demonstrating an association, and in no way shape or form are demonstrating causality. Using statistics, the study tries to eliminate every possible confounding variable, and then say that the joint was the variable that is most associated with the psychosis. But the study was looking at other known causes of psychoses, and eliminating them, so if they did not eliminate that one sickening roller coaster ride or that bout of food poisoning or that car accident or some unknown traumatic experience or perhaps even the overuse of a cell phone that that person experienced, then how can they say that cannabis actually caused the psychosis that developed years later? And how in the world could someone actually, 100% eliminate those possibly confounding variables? They probably can't.