Friday, May 26, 2017

Cannabis Oil Questions Answered



What do you think about the recently released study that GW Pharmaceuticals with 11 other epilepsy centers published yesterday about Epidiolex and Dravet Syndrome?


Enough people have highlighted and sent my way the "big" news that cannabis medicine helps children with Dravet syndrome, a particularly devastating type epilepsy. Dravet is what little Charlotte Figi has -- the Charlotte of the eponymous Charlotte's Web oil. You can look it up and find a lot of links, and evidently the story appeared on many television networks last night as well as in Canada.

Here's the link.

Yup.

Good news.

Raised eyebrows.

I'm not going to be doing any jumping up or down or anything, and it's hard not to yawn. It's even harder not to feel irritated, given all the goings on I've been privy to of late regarding The Powers That Be and cannabis medicine. It appears, to my tiny little mother mind™that the pharmaceutical company is looking to ram their drug through the FDA. But, hey, if their CBD drug helps some kid before that kid is subject to multiple drugs and other shit, then hallelujah.   

Hallelujah, too, for the families that can't afford the products out there already and for those who don't have access to cannabis because of the clusterfuck that is our government.

The train left the station years ago with many of us on board, and instead of grabbing our hands, most physicians and researchers chose to get on at a later stop. That's all right, I guess, unless they claim the whole thing for themselves.

My friend Chris said it best:

I know it's a step but it sure feels like an impossibly small step designed to benefit big pharma, which controls our country. It's jamming one piece of the plant into the western medicine paradigm, discounting those for whom massive doses of cbd don't help and actually harm and ignoring the medicinal value of the rest of it. I'm not holding my breath for a system that wants to control the product to allow for the individuation of mmj for each patient, which relies on individual observation and anecdotal evidence. That's not what the medical industrial complex does.

 Dr. Bonni Goldstein and two other doctors have also published a research paper that I find quite interesting, perhaps more interesting than the pharmaceutical company's one, because it references the extraordinarily wide dosage ranges of cannabis, as well as the fact that epilepsy patients might generally do better with access to a wider range of artisanal products rather than the single molecule compounds that pharmaceutical companies are developing.

Here's the link.

8 comments:

  1. I've always thought that one of the surest signs of a high intelligence (after having a sense of humor, of course) is the ability to hold more than one thing in the mind at a time. Yes, this molecule is helpful but wait a minute- there's an entire range of others within the plant, right? And they, uh, work together? Could this be possible? Well, yes. Of course it is. BUT, can a pharmaceutical company make a pill that replicates this delicate balance? Or many pills which could replicate different strains? No. Probably not. Thus...
    Well. You know.

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  2. one only has to look at Chinese medicine to understand that the plant holds the cure and we often do better than the western pill version with herbs, that can be observed and adjusted per the person taking it. the stigma of marijuana has kept many in the medical community away from advocating for it. they've shut their eyes and stamped their little feet in protest, despite what their patients are telling them. Sigh. What's new? I agree with your post, and the mixture of feelings you have surrounding this "new" information regarding cbd. Only time will tell. In the meantime, you have found a powerful tool for helping Sophie live her best life. Your forward-thinking is to be commended.

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  3. It is truly time for the whole practice of medicine to become artisanal, or, put another way, for highly personalized medicine.

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  4. A teeny tiny step. And you, a pioneer.
    I type this just after taking a dose of oil myself.

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  5. A step in the right direction. Well done you!

    Greetings from London.

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  6. Just read God's Hotel by Victoria Sweet. Thought of you as I read.

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  7. I suppose small steps count for something, even if they are motivated partly by pharma greed. (Or, as the capitalists would say, profit.) I think we all may be inching closer to a widely accepted acknowledgement that this is a valuable plant, and maybe Sophie's doctor(s) will eventually be able to at least discuss it with you!

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  8. Yes. Whole plant medicine. But Big Pharma doesn't want that. They want to break it apart and sell each component separately to maximize their profits and so that they can patent each component. Assholes.

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