James Sol Radina is the Co-Founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Evolved Ayurvedic Discoveries, Inc. As Chief Visionary Officer, James is the driving force behind the company’s socially responsible model of donating CBD products to those who cannot afford them, and he is the inspirational force behind the company’s beliefs and marketing strategy. James is also a co-founder of “The Science of Weed,” a documentary releasing in late 2016 that features over 40 of the top doctors and scientists on the subject.
Dr. Robert Melamede has a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the City University of New York. Dr. Melamede retired as Chairman of the Biology Department at University of Colorado, Colorado Springs in 2005, where he continues to teach and research cannabinoids, cancer, and DNA repair. Dr. Melamede is recognized as a leading authority on the therapeutic uses of cannabis, and has authored or co-authored dozens of papers on a wide variety of scientific subjects. Dr. Melamede also serves on the Editorial Board of The Journal of the International Association for Cannabis as Medicine, the Scientific Advisory Board of Americans for Safe Access, Sensible Colorado, Scientific Advisor for Cannabis Therapeutics as well as a variety other of state dispensaries and marijuana patient advocacy groups.
- CBD’s effects on Cancer, HIV, Seizures, Digestion, Pain and More
- What CB1 and CB2 Receptors in Your Body Do
- What is an effective dose of CBD?
- The Legality of Cannabis and Hemp
- Methods of taking THC and CBD without getting high
- Does CBD have any side effects?
- How the Entourage Effect is Holistic and Different from the Pharmaceutical Approach
- How Water Solubility Affects CBD
- And Much More
Click the link below to access the complete transcript.
[spoiler]Logan: Welcome to The Vital Way podcast. I’m Logan Christopher and we have another great call for you today. We’re talking about the controversial subject of cannabis, CBD, THC. Joining me today, I have two guests and I’m actually doing this intro a little bit ahead of time. We’ll see how this works out. We had some timing issues with the call so you’ll be hearing from two guests. One of them is joining for only part of the call. Joining me today is James Sol Radina who is the co-founder and Chief Visionary Officer of the Evolved Ayurvedic Discoveries, Inc. As Chief Visionary Officer, James is the driving force behind the company’s socially responsible model of donating CBD products to those who cannot afford them and he’s the inspirational force behind the company’s beliefs and marketing strategy. James is also a co-founder of The Science of Weed, a documentary releasing in late 2016, later this year, that features over 40 of the top doctors and scientists on this subject.
Also on the call is Dr. Robert Melamede who has a PhD in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the City University of New York. Dr. Melamede retired as the Chairman of the Biology Department at the University of Colorado in 2005, where he continues to teach and research cannabinoids, cancer and DNA repair. Dr. Melamede is recognized as the leading authority on the therapeutic uses of cannabis and has authored and co-authored dozens of papers on a wide variety of scientific subjects. So we’re going to be covering a lot of this stuff in this call about CBD, THC, how these are used, what they do, sort of the legalities around them and also a lot of the benefits that they can bring. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Use it to educate yourself, to hopefully get some of your questions answered regarding CBD and as always, I’d love to hear any feedback you here on this. That’s it for the intro. Let’s dive right in.
Welcome to the call, James. Thanks for joining me.
James: Thank you, brother. Good to be on the call.
Logan: In a little bit later, we have a little bit of a time crunch but Dr. Bob will be joining us as well in answering some questions with a little bit more of the science and data behind it as well. First question, we’re really going to be focusing on CBD today as well as cannabis, THC and how these are related and what they do but for those not familiar with it, what is CBD?
James: CBD is one of the many different parts of the cannabis plant. When I speak about cannabis, I want it to just have it very, very clear that there are really two sides to the cannabis plant. There’s the marijuana side which is more known for its flowers, the female side, also known for its THC and its psychoactivity. Then there is the hemp side of the cannabis family and the hemp side of things, as we all know from hemp oil or hemp seeds, has very, very, very little THC, trace amounts of THC but it’s also recently been found to have high amounts of CBD, which is called cannabidiol.
Cannabidiol is one of the over 80 different cannabinoids that are found in the cannabis plant. You have most of the world who are up until just recently have been only truly interested, at least seemingly unless you really go back to Ayurvedic times and Chinese medicine when thousands of years ago they were talking about the benefits of hemp and most likely that was the CBD, but most of the United States at least and most of the last few hundred years, everybody has been interested in the psychoactivity side. Pretty much everybody knows THC. THC is the part of the plant—
Logan: It’s what gets you high.
James: Yeah, it gets you high and it’s very abundant in the marijuana side of things but not in the hemp side of things. Now recently, all these studies and all this research is coming out and saying hey look, wait a minute, there are over 80 different other cannabinoids, THC being just one. Let’s look at some of the other ones. Well, the second most abundant one in the plant is cannabidiol and cannabidiol, sort of CBD has all these medicinal benefits without the psychoactivity, without that high. So thanks to Sanjay Gupta and CNN and their three documentaries on CBD and following around this little girl Charlotte with her seizures, all of a sudden CBD has really hit the marketplace. Not only that, now the world is opening up to the research actually already existing. That’s what Dr. Bob a little bit later will talk about. Dr. Raphael Mechoulam over in Israel, over in Europe, they’ve been studying cannabis far longer than we have in the United States because they can. Here in the United States, the doctors unfortunately have not been given the ability to study this plant because it’s a scheduled drug without medicinal benefits so the system says.
Logan: Right. This makes it a little bit of a sort of a tricky area, lots of sort of unknowns with it. We definitely want to clear that up. So if someone were to take a CBD product, this is a question that some of our listeners asked, are they going to pass with flying colors drug tests or is that going to somehow get them caught?
James: This is something I really can’t speak to with 100% assurance on this. There have been a number of different articles and reports out saying that people are not. You’ll see that the NFL is all of a sudden really interested in CBD. A lot of high performance athletes are now taking CBD and for the highest level like the Olympics and some of these areas where drug tests are there, I think that people are still finding the risk is too high in order to do that. But in the case of hemp-derived CBD which we can talk about a little bit right now, the THC is so small that even if you actually look up hemp oil and hemp seeds, there is a tiny trace amount of THC in them. Poppy seeds—you probably know this, Logan—are the poppies prohibited also? Yeah.
Logan: Well, poppies seeds, for what—opium or heroin because they have it in them, some might think.
James: Right. You want to make sure you’re not tested on the day that you had that poppy seed bun but anyways, I can’t really give a clear answer on that, Logan, other than when we’re looking at hemp-derived CBD the THC is so small. It is in there to give the whole plant synergistic effect versus an isolate of CBD yet at the same time, there are trace amounts in there so I’m not in a position to let somebody know that they’ll pass a drug test. But there are a number of reports out there saying that they will and they have.
Logan: Okay. That’s good to know. You’re talking about hemp-derived. That’s probably going to be a bit different than CBD that is derived from other ways. It’s probably going to have a higher THC profile in those.
James: Yes. This is a common question and I want to just address it and get clear here. You look at the United States. We have all these different states that have now gone green. They have made marijuana legal in some form, whether you have to get to a dispensary or in Colorado it’s even recreation, for recreation. You pay a little higher tax and you can go walk into Colorado in a smoke shop and walk out with some cannabis. But every state, if you look at it, every state has a little bit different laws and different regulations. Well, not in the marijuana side of things. Federally, marijuana is still illegal. State by state, we see all these states turning green. Well, I wanted it to be really clear, Logan, that we’re talking about marijuana when we’re talking about the state by state and that’s illegal versus illegal.
When you’re dealing with hemp oil, as we all know we can walk into any grocery story and get hemp tee shirts, hemp seeds, hemp oil, hemp milk. When you’re dealing with hemp, it is federally legal to import hemp oil in the United States. That is the place where we’re getting our CBD that can be shipped to all 50 states. I want the audience to understand. When you’re looking at marijuana, well you’d better be in a state that it’s legal for marijuana. Marijuana does produce THC, CBD and 80 other cannabinoids. Then when you’re dealing with hemp, as long as it’s coming in from Europe or a country that it’s legal to grow hemp, then they extract the hemp oil and then they legally import it in through FDA, now you’re importing in hemp oil and this hemp oil just happens to be high in CBD and the legal limit of THC which is under 0.3%–it has be under 0.3%–now it’s legal to import it in the United States and ship to all 50 states. Now we’re seeing high CBD hemp oil come in. We can put those into topical products. We could put those into capsules and a number of different ways to not only get the benefit mainly of the hemp oil but also the powerful benefits of CBD.
Logan: Excellent. With that, I think it’s just interesting the laws when George Washington, yeah, he had a hemp farm. He used hemp weeds and yet here we are today, right?
James: Right. The history of this actually pulls back the veil quite a bit. It was really around the paper industry coming and was just The Truth about Cancer, a DVD series is out right now and they were just talking about cannabis, cannabis comes from cannabis, cannabis that was on the horse carriages when they were basically plodding along the Oregon Trail and coming across America. There were almost 50,000 uses. You can make cars from hemps and everything and then all of a sudden it just became illegal. We can see now through the study of history that it was because other industries were going to be hurt very badly, paper, cotton by this amazing plant that had so many different uses.
Logan: You mentioned that products are, it’s a full extract so it has all these different cannabinoids, although largely CBD. Is that correct?
James: Yes. Well, it just depends on where you’re getting. If we’re talking about the hemp oil then yes, it’s a full plant extract. We call this, the importance of this, the entourage effect. This is on one side of the spectrum. On the other side of the spectrum, you have what the pharmaceutical industry does and they try and isolate, pull out just the CBD and in the case of most pharmaceutical companies like Dr. Bob will explain a little bit later is they will turn that CBD and they will alter it just a little bit so that they can put a patent on it. There’s a lot of money in the pharmaceutical, there’s a lot of profit to be made in the pharmaceutical industry by altering slightly a molecule and/or isolating a molecule and then patenting it. Then they can go out and make a drug. That’s one end of the spectrum.
On the other side of the spectrum, there’s the whole plant entourage effect and this is where they’re now studies out that show that by having the all the cannabinoids, all of the other terpenes that are involved in this plant because there are over a hundred different parts of this plant, over 80 different cannabinoids and then with all the terpenes and everything, I think an excess of 150 different parts of this plant, each one of those, no matter how small, has a synergistic effect on the entire process and how it affects the body. That’s what we call the entourage effect. So instead of just taking CBDs in isolate, which you can get out there—there are people that are now selling CBDs in isolate, it’s in a little bit more on the pharmaceutical side of things, you’re not getting that entourage effect. As a whole plant extract, now you’re borrowing all those terpenes and those cannabinoids, CBGs, CBN, all these other cannabinoids and we have yet to really understand the full benefits of them. So I personally strongly encourage people to have the whole plant experience.
Logan: Yeah, I agree with that in so many things. Even like a standardized up there so there’s probably—I don’t know if they use the same technology but it could be standardized for a certain percentage of CBD. I remember hearing about one study that was looking at St. John’s wort or something but the standardized extract didn’t perform as well as just like full spectrum extract because it needs to actually get into ratio as it kind of comes from nature. I find that interesting and I’m glad to hear that this is being used in that sort of full spectrum, the entourage effect. I like that term.
James: Yeah. I know you, Logan, and your team, your brothers over there. You guys are always saying getting back to nature, right? So I agree. We shouldn’t be playing god. We should be addressing or messing with nature. I think that is where a lot of issues on this planet have come from. You look at the oils. You look at half the ingredients in the supermarket from traditional foods and you can’t pronounce them. They’re not natural and now what’s in there just becomes synthetic. I don’t know. That’s what seems to be a root cause of so many different diseases. So getting back to nature, getting as close to nature, as pure as possible is the name of the game in order to change this healthcare system that seems to be fundamentally broken. Not a lot of science, right?
Logan: Yeah. So why would someone choose to use like a CBD-based product rather than just say smoking marijuana?
James: Well, a number of different—
Logan: Besides legality.
James: Yeah, legality is one. We’ve got to make sure that people are staying on the legal side of things. Then a big one we see with see with children. There are so much unfortunately—it’s very unfortunate if we look at how many children right now are coming out with autism, how many of them showing with epilepsy, cancer, all these major ailments are affecting people at all stages of life right now. It’s really sad. What we’re seeing in the number of people using CBD for is to build it up, getting their Trojan high. As Dr. Bob will explain a little bit later, there are benefits to THC. I’m not here to say that there aren’t benefits to THC. There are massive benefits to THC but for children, a lot of parents don’t want to see them comatose or couch-locked on some kind of psychoactive state.
If number one is legal, number two is the children, number three, we see a lot of people that really just don’t want to be high. They specifically, even adults, whether those are people that are just kind of anti-marijuana for the stigma of the psychoactivity or what we’re seeing a lot of people doing is using the CBD during the day when they’re at work or at school and so because it doesn’t produce that stoned feeling, you can take CBD. For example, I take a couple of capsules two or three times a day and I will put some gel underneath my tongue and for me, the healthy state of I just feel a little bit of a zip like the first time you ever get a wheatgrass shot or an acai berry shot, you can feel your body just kind of come alive from inside out. There’s absolutely no high. I don’t slur my words. You wouldn’t even know that I’m on it. So that’s a really big reason that we’re seeing a lot more people—
And again CBD is pretty new as far as the world is waking up to its benefits. You didn’t really hear this conversation over four years ago and just now recently, there’s all this massive movement and press around CBD. So we have yet to really look at CBD for just preventive maintenance every day, sports recovery for example. Right now, the world is waking up to CBD for the massive health benefits of all these different ailments but I think that more and more we’re going to see CBD as being just used for everyday wellbeing and preventive maintenance.
Logan: Excellent. It’s interesting. We’ve just put out a little survey just asking if people were familiar with this and the benefits it could bring. Around half the people haven’t even heard of CBD so it certainly is a new kid on the block and trending. It’ll be worth going in the future.
James: Absolutely. Just real quick on that, I’ve been heavily involved now for the last three years full time, dedicated my entire life to it because of some experiences of family members, I saw the CBD specifically has helped with and I’ve watched this, what feels like a tidal wave for me of new interest and people looking up the benefits of CBD. Yet at the same time when I take a macro view of it, you’re right. It is so small still. It’s just this early, early stages where it’s going to be exciting to see how this part of the plant really starts to change I believe quite a few different industries, medical industry and then education, health.
Logan: Absolutely. I’m curious. What’s the difference between water-soluble and fat-soluble CBD? Which one is better in how the CBD is delivered?
James: Great. I’m going to keep this in just the layman’s terms and we can get technical on it at a later time with Dr. Mewa or Dr. Bob. If you start at one end of the spectrum which is the pharmaceutical industry and look at what they’re doing, the number one thing you can find pharmaceutical companies trying to do is making their drugs more bioavailable, more water-soluble because our body is mostly made of water as we all know. The more available it is to disseminate through our body and actually touch into all aspects of our bodies and more bioavailable it is, the more effective it will be.
But there are two other massive benefits of being bioavailable. It’s safer because if you can take less in order to reach the desired effect, well then you have a less chance of side effects. So safety is a huge piece of having somebody more bioavailable. Number three I guess is the affordability. Again, some of these compounds are pretty expensive. CBD again is still pretty high-priced. If we can give people less then it makes them more affordable yet they’re still reaching that desired effect. So when you look at something being water-soluble, it’s really a bioavailability game, Logan, and this should be a pretty common understanding of it.
You want to get into your body, which is made of mostly water. You want to get in something that will actually absorb and disseminate throughout your body as fast as possible. So when you look at CBD in particular or THC and this cannabis oil, clinically proven through studies that it’s anywhere between 4% and 12%, they say on average about 6% bioavailable. That means about 94% of it is passing through the system and as Dr. Mewa would say, well, it will either be stored toxically or he says toxic and not in the way to mean that it’s going to be harmful necessarily but anything that’s stored in the body can be toxic. I can be formed. It can be foreign. Any foreign thing stored in the body can be toxic or just pass through the system as waste. The importance of water-solubility is all about how much we can allow the body to absorb in order to make it more effective, safer and more affordable for people.
Logan: How do cannabinoids interact with the endocannabinoid system found in the human body, these receptors that we have that are actually sort of built for cannabis?
Bob: Well, it’s actually a much more complicated story than that and once you understand the big picture, the big picture itself is fairly simple. Ultimately what we’re looking at is how flowing energy organizes life and how as life evolved to greater and greater complexity, it reached the point where it couldn’t get any more complex without a fundamental change in the plan, the body plan, so to speak. That’s when the vertebrates first appeared. One of the characteristics of the vertebrates is that’s when you first saw the CB-1 receptor. So what I’m suggesting is that it’s really because of how the CB-1 receptor was able to control energy production and the differentiated state of a neuron in particular that could allow for the complexity of the nervous to evolve. Otherwise, it would have been restricted by producing too many free radicals.
The interesting, amazing thing is that as that allowed for the increased complexity of the nervous system, and it’s obvious when you think about it—your head is always warm; why is it always warm?—it’s actually 5% of your bodyweight but it uses 20% of your energy. What’s it doing? It’s maintaining organization and because of that, it has to maintain it in a very efficiently produced fashion. The energy has to be produced efficiently. The problem with that is when energy is produced efficiently, it’s also produced dangerously and it makes free radicals. Free radicals are the heart of not only all age-related illnesses, it also is the heart of neural cell death. So you’ve got that fundamental problem that you need the brain to be in that dangerous mode in order to operate efficiently in us. Otherwise, it would overheat and you could never generate that level of complexity.
So that was a guiding force that allowed for increased biological complexity as the brain evolved in vertebrates. We as humans are the high point of that and what has always happened is the endocannabinoid system, which by the way regulates everything in our bodies from conception until death, hence it has a rather significant role in our lives on all levels because it regulates our immune system, digestive system, cardiovascular system, skin and bones, everything and every time we get hungry, it’s because our body makes some pot and we give ourselves the munchies—it’s in mother’s milk, the value that is provided for at evolving complexity. So mammals are characterized by their milk, mammaries, mammals and what’s in it? Cannabinoids! Psychoactives that give to the newborn baby! Well, if nature has selected for that, think of the actual absurdity and stupidity that the leaders, the so-called leaders of the world have outlawed that. It’s really what I call govern-mental illness. Should we arrest nursing mothers? Or maybe we should just arrest all women for walking around with paraphernalia.
So the cannabinoid system has a very special role in promoting our health and its involvement in our brain has continuously increased. But as the increase in complexity occurs overall in the biology of vertebrates, and again their biggest characteristic which nature selects for is adaptability so here we adapted ourselves by having a cannabinoid receptor, that allows for the brain to develop but again, we ran into a roadblock because too much energy flowing in that efficient fashion actually will wind up producing too many free radicals and problems. So we evolved the CB-2 receptor, which turns on fat-burning and when cells are generating their energy via these fat-burning pathways, they produce lower levels of free radicals and in different places and different ways that are not as harmful.
So basically, we have our cannabinoid system protecting us from both ends of the streets so to speak in that it protects us when we’re making energy efficiently via the electron transport system through the CB-1 receptor and then it protects us when we have to shift to the fat-burning mode because we couldn’t protect ourselves enough when we were in the sugar-burning mode. Under those conditions, that’s when the CB-2 receptor comes to play. Normally, the CB-1 receptor is pretty much everywhere in your body. Typically, they talk of the CB-2 receptor as being the peripheral receptor and the immune receptor but it’s actually much more than that because whenever there is pathology, the CB-2 receptor appears because it’s trying to protect the cells.
The way cannabinoids in general work in killing cancers, for example, is most cancers start out with all of their flow pathways in that sugar-burning mode, much like our brain is doing and as a consequence of that, just like our brain is susceptible to damage pretty easily. They’ve developed ways of being able to bypass the normal sensors that would kill cells then they’re making too many free radicals and that’s the problem. But they don’t have a lot of extra leeway so when you force them via the CB-2 receptor into burning fat, they basically can’t make that adjustment and then they die.
However, not all cells can make the adjustments and that’s when you start to develop cannabinoid-resistant cancers. Under those circumstances, what we found is that they’re turning pro-oxidative behavior, things that are going to make free radicals that can further enhance the killing capacity and extend it to those cancers that were not killed by forcing them into the fat-burning mode. So it’s really an incredibly interesting story there but things like intravenous vitamin C therapy on top of nutrition modification and the consumption of high-dose cannabis can kill cancer. Then there are other newer technologies that I myself are not aware of enough where people are able to control cancers with very small amounts of cannabinoids, even legal quantities.
So there’s a whole world awaiting us here and the CBD, even though it doesn’t directly attach to the CB-2 receptor and actually has some inhibitory action on the CB-1, just that inhibitory action on CB-1 will help promote CB-2. And it is known that CBD does help promote fat-burning so it will have that ant-cancer activity. I don’t think that it’s a strong as when you combine it with THC. We don’t have enough anecdotal data from the people. The ones who’ve been successfully treating their cancers for the most part have used THC and THC with CBD. So we’re still in phase here and one of the things I’m very interested in determining and I’d like to work on, a subject at some point, is whether or not the CBD alone can help control HIV because we can completely control both HIV and the AIDS-associated malignancies that come from the herpes virus, Kaposi’s sarcoma. We do that with high doses of cannabis but via the fat-burning mode. So my brain is now empty.
Logan: Well, you brought up a good question. Looking it up, cannabis has over 170 different cannabinoids so CBD is one of them where there’s a group of them and then there’s THC. So how much is really known about all these different components and why it is that often CBD is being isolated and used?
Bob: Well, both CBD and THC are the ones that are found in most abundance.
Logan: Okay.
Bob: So they were actually the ones to be studied and looked at. Now with various breeding techniques and engineering techniques, it’s possible to create strains as well as by natural selection as long as you have something to select for, that will have these other qualities and where they might—think of this—if you want to shift a person’s biochemistry from a state of non-health to a state of health, unlike the pharmaceutical industry which is trying to basically take one little pinpoint in this complex, multi-dimensional, flowing psychedelic web, cannabis impacts in a multi-dimensional fashion and different people with different genetics and different environmental histories require things to be pushed in different ways in order to reestablish a healthier flow, a more healthy homeostasis.
So what I tend to believe is that the optimum for an individual is found by trying different strains and different ratios and seeing what feels best for them, although when you’re going to go after serious things like cancer and HIV, to my knowledge that’s where I have to use the high dose methods. It would be convenient for many people if they could use more CBD. But on the other hand, what we’ve now found is that the use of suppositories with THC gives you really a full leeway to treat people without worrying about the psychological effects. So I think we pretty much have available whatever spectrum of strains of cannabinoids people create and then to best optimize an individual to find the one that matches best with their biochemical needs. And how to do that will be I think a lot of where future diagnostics will go. But on the other hand, I don’t even think we need to go that far because I think just with THC and CBD and the variety of strains coupled with appropriate nutrition, we’re going to be able to take care of most things, especially with that vitamin C therapy intravenous.
James: Dr. Bob—if I make real quick, Logan–Dr. Bob, I’m James and I just wanted to kind of direct us a little back more towards CBD and the fact that hemp-derived CBD that we’re also currently shipping to you as an example, can be shipped off to the States and then the medicinal benefits that are there because it is whole plant extract and it is CBD and specifically it seems to be the most amount of people on this in the United States at least, probably in the planet area dealing with some form of chronic pain. Can you speak to how CBD has been helping people currently suffering from pain?
Bob: Yeah, it does on the source of pain. A lot of that, we have to really look at the overall biochemical imbalance. That’s the magic of cannabis once again. It does intrinsically have pain-killing properties. CBD alone does. It modulates your biochemistry in so many beneficial ways so I think all of these things provide us with these incredible opportunities. And regardless, it’s just really another strain of marijuana that happens to have low THC and depending on the strain whatever other variables, not just cannabinoids but the terpenes.
I’ve used some organic cannabis grown in Austria produced by my friend, Alfredo, and that had wonderful therapeutics properties. It had to be diluted enough to make it legal because it has high CBD but it also had THC to be illegal unless we diluted it but that was very, very therapeutic. I myself have experienced this and one of the things that I owe a lot to you people for is I’ve been using your water-soluble CBD product with curcumin. Specifically what I like about it, one, I like the taste of it because the regular hemp CBDs are pretty damn bitter. Whoa!
But this stuff has wonderful—what I believe and I have not verified it 100% at this point but what I strongly believe, I pay a lot of attention to my body and I’ve had a heart arrhythmia for a number of years—I always thought how ironic it was that of all people I have the one illness that cannabis doesn’t help and I went into heart failure so I retired from the university and kind of the science, etc. and I’ve been rebuilding myself but I would still periodically go out and start fibrillating again but I could bring myself back in with appropriate exercise. What I’ve noticed is since I’ve been on that CBD oil, I’ve had major changes occur. Now whether they’re only because of that, I couldn’t say but it coincides time-wise with that. I do many nutraceuticals. I take a lot of cannabis every day with THC but that seems to be what made the change. I can feel it in terms of watching my heart beat when I exercise. I’ve also been able to travel now across time zones. As a matter of fact, I just got back two days ago from Dubai where I was on business and presenting at a cancer conference. So I strongly at this point believe that the CBD, water-soluble, that you guys have has aided my heart and I’d love it if we got feedback from others regarding that.
By the way. There is one scientific paper that shows CBD initiating proper rhythm I think it was in tissue culture. I have to look that up again. I don’t remember the exact experiment but that was the only thing that really linked cannabis with arrhythmia and then for me to have that experience, now it all comes together and makes sense. Because calcium channels are what determines so much of everything, the influx and regulation of calcium and that’s what the cannabinoid system does. CBD has been shown to alter the oscillation of calcium flows within the cells. So I think that’s why it’s doing what it’s doing with epilepsy and that’s what it’s doing with heart arrhythmias, . It’s resynchronizing rhythms that are out of phase.
Logan: That brings us to the question I was going to ask. This may be too general but what is the state of the research around CBD and the use of cannabis? Have any human trials been done or is it mostly done in vitro?
Bob: Yeah, they’re mostly in vitro or animals. was obviously doing clinical trials with high CBD extracts with Dravet syndrome and seizure disorders but we already know those answers. They’re just trying to do because they’re going through the absurdity of the FDA nonsense when at this point, I think a lot of people in the world are ready to just leave that entire model because it’s all based on stupidity. That’s a whole other podcast story that I don’t have time for now but the whole pharmaceutical model, the whole FDA approach and the way our doctors are so indoctrinated with limited vision and understanding is killing way too many people. So people who will learn will then benefit from the new kind of philosophies and technologies that are going to be available and are available.
Logan: Another thing that I saw was some people talking about that CBD derived from hemp doesn’t work, that you’d have to get it from flowers. A lot of people saying this. Is that the case?
Bob: Well, look. Look at the cannabis plant in general. There’s value the whole plant, . How much value? It depends on what you’re trying to accomplish and what’s needed for that. You can make an anti-inflammatory poultice out of the roots. So the spectrum of activities is very broad. They’ve recently isolated a new anti-inflammatory property out of the stalk. So the plant is, as Raphael Mechoulam says, a treasure trove of pharmacologically agents and that’s the absolute truth. So whatever spectrum you’re pulling out of whatever strain, as long as it matches whoever has that need, it’s perfect. Again, the future will tell us all of that.
Logan: So we’ve talked about pain, cancer, HIV, some other areas. What are some of the other benefits that we maybe haven’t covered yet that CBD and cannabis bring?
Bob: Well, cannabis in general and CBD being a part of that profile, an essential part for many things, they have anti-aging properties. Aging and all age-related illnesses are the result of excess free radical production. We need free radicals because otherwise we couldn’t have homeostasis but when you have excess, what you’re doing is you’re kind of bringing down the system and discharging the battery of life, so to speak, with confused flow as the healthy flow. Your cannabinoids and CBD are rich in helping to stabilize healthy biochemical flow. Hence, I believe that all of these cannabinoids with and without THC but certainly CBD from any are essential nutrients for modern man. People are learning that. I’m 68 years old and I would not be in my state of health if it were not for my use of cannabis and my application of scientific knowledge to try and survive and enjoy life.
Logan: A lot of our listeners are especially interested in hormone optimization. A lot of our men want peak testosterone, not too much estrogen. How does CBD or the other components interact with the hormones? As you were saying before, it interacts with just about everything. I’m curious if there are any interactions going on there.
Bob: Well, it does. Think of it as a man, what I’ve observed in my 52 years of using cannabis is that you reach a certain point after you’ve consumed it and it definitely is a life stimulation and part of life’s stimulation is sexual stimulation. So I find it has always been an enhancement to life and sex being part of that is absolutely true. We’re working with Phoenix Tears, Janet Sweeney and others that I’m aware of that have developed a variety of vaginal lubricants that are very, very stimulatory for women of all ages.
So like with everything else, your cannabinoid system is fundamental to these things. And from a biological point of view the cannabinoids are involved in sperm maturation and. They’re involved in the ability of the sperm to swim. They’re involved in the ability of the sperm and the egg to penetrate and to form the diploid cell and then they’re involved in how that implants in the wall. Everywhere you look they’re involved in everything. It’s insane.
Logan: Wow. I’m curious. Because some people don’t like the feeling when they get high but with CBD specifically, are there any known side effects or contraindications with other drugs that certain people should be avoiding this?
Bob: Well, all of these cannabinoids affect the breakdown of other things in that they regulate kind of like the garbage disposal system, the P450 system. So they can enhance your sensitivity to other drugs. Again though there are ways to optimize the use even with THC. If you take it rectally, you will not get high. There are other compounds like CBD, for example, CBD will definitely knock out the high. If you take a high dose of THC but with a higher dose of CBD, it definitely significantly downregulates the psychological activity. But you can do that as well with things that amplify the level of acetylcholine. Citicoline, for example, does that and if you consume citicoline with your THC, you can knock out the high as well.
So there probably are advantages and times CBD would be the best way alone. I always believe you should have some THC there because THC definitely has magical properties. But for kids, the CBD is definitely beneficial for the seizures but we also know that stimulating the CB-1 receptor promotes neurogenesis and neuroplasticity. CBD doesn’t do that. So again, we have to learn and see when the different things that are optimized and that’s going to again vary from person to person. That’s part of the absurdity of the FDA approach. Take a magic pill three times a day. I don’t care if you’re black or white or Chinese or man, woman, tall. It’s a little stupid.
Logan: That’s what I’m not all about. Going back to nature because nature provides lots of things and after all that’s where most drug from. They just isolate it and amplify it up in very large ways.
Bob: Well, they tweak them because otherwise they can’t get patents on them and that’s the name of the game in the pharmaceutical industry. Dealing with the limited mentality and understanding of the medical industry is ludicrous. Cancer, oncology is a $120 billion a year that mostly fails. It’s insanity.
Logan: What other herbs and nutrients can be combined with CBD for synergistic effects?
James: Loaded question. I love it, Logan. I just kind of want to share that if you look at the oldest study of medicine, the oldest documented study of medicine which is Ayurveda, it dated back 5,000 years, the Indian form of medicine and you look at everything that they did, it was all natural, all things like willow bark and eucalyptus and peppermint oil, right? Now what’s great, Logan, is you see this western world can wake you back up to the power of nature, whether it’s the massive movement that’s happening with essential oils and people understanding wow, all these, lemon and eucalyptus and all these different essential oils have different remedies, whether you’re putting them underneath your nose and inhaling them or whether you’re putting them on your earlobes. That’s what an Ayurvedic doctor will tell me that’s like representing the sign. You’re putting them on topically on sore muscles and acupuncture points. So the world is waking up to the powerful benefits of Ayurvedic medicine.
To answer your question specifically, when we can look at Ayurvedic medicine and look at this ancient study of which herbs work good with other ones, that’s where Dr. Mewa Singh, my business partner and his 11-person team are experts in. So whenever they look for a formulation, what they’re trying to do is create an experience because we believe that CBD is not a cure-all and you can’t just give CBD to everybody and expect every ailment and every experience to happen.
A lot of people take CBD for sleep yet CBD mixed with other Ayurvedic herbs like ashwagandha for calming, lemon balm again for calming, you can also even mix in a little natural melatonin in there so all of a sudden you have a sleep formulation. Yet, if you’re dealing with digestive issues then it’s a whole different formulation. For example, we can mix CBD with a little bit of licorice which is good for the gut, Boswellia which is basically frankincense which is good for the gut, and then different formulations for pain, CBD with white willow bark, which you know in a sense is where aspirin has kind of originated from. Ancient Native Americans have used white willow bark for hundreds and hundreds of years. So we’re just kind of getting back to nature, understanding these natural forms that God has made that have all these amazing benefits. CBD is one of those, Logan, and then there are thousands of other synergistic herbs that can be mixed in there.
Logan: Right. So the CBD in cannabis from which it comes from seems to be one of those plants where it really does have a wide range of different benefits. With formulations, you can then sort of direct that benefit more towards one area or another, of which there are some other plants like that which just do a wide range of things and then there are some other plants which do one thing and they do that will. But then you see that diversity in the herbal world.
James: Yes. Adaptogens, right, you sell some adaptogens on your site? So it’s a beautiful concept. Put it inside your body and then they do what’s best for your body. Sometimes, people ask me it supposedly made me tired or I took some CBD and I took a nap and they’re scared to take it again. The beautiful thing about adaptogens, is it does. It makes you tired when you need to. It actually gives you energy when you are fully awake and you have plenty of sleep. So I always tell people that CBD if taken internally at least, it will give your body what it’s asking for. Your body is a very intelligent being, right, process? All these processes go on in the body. The CBD as that adaptogen will really support this system and give you what your body is actually telling you it needs. When I ask people, “Do you actually need some sleep right now? Are you overworked? Are you stressed out or not getting very much sleep?” and they say yes. They’re taking CBD to address whatever they think it is but CBD is actually helping address the root cause.
Logan: What is the active dose or a therapeutic dose? It depends on what you’re trying to achieve with it but are there certain numbers that people are looking for with CBD?
James: Yes, and the data is still to come out. It’s a really great question. Here’s how I’ll try to address it in the best way. Every single person’s body is different. Different people who have different metabolisms and different sizes and also ethnical backgrounds will have different experiences with CBD. What we only like to say, our take is let’s start small and titrate up. For example, when you’re dealing with water-soluble CBD, you can take as little as 10 milligrams and a lot of people feel and experience there. So if you’re getting the results there then don’t go up to 20 or 30. In the case of CBD oil, we see a lot of these CBD oil companies take half a gram to a gram a day. Well, that’s the equivalent of about 150 to 300 milligrams of CBD so that’s quite a lot on the other side of the spectrum and yet we see that working, that high of an amount of CBD found in CBD oil in these syringes yet at the same time, as I mentioned before, because it possibly isn’t as bioavailable, they have to take a lot more.
So it’s a tough question to answer because with the introduction of water-soluble and 100% bioavailable products like bio-CBD and the companies are coming out with the more bioavailable product then we can see it as the dosing becoming a lot less to get the desired effects. With anything, what we say is start small and titrate up. See where you get that experience and stop there, ride that experience and then eventually see if you can actually come back down. Titrate down and see if you can start taking less and less and let your body now produce everything it needs to heal itself. This is kind of one of our themes, that if you’re dealing with some kind of ailment and you’re wondering how much I should take, well just start with a little and titrate up until you reach that experience that you’re looking to experience or the benefit you’re looking for. Then eventually after a few months, you can start to actually taper down and take less and less and make it even more affordable for you.
Logan: That’s probably good advice for CBD as well as pretty much everything else.
James: Right. At the end of the day, we’re not trying to make anything complicated. All of this is kind of common sense. It’s just the way that our healthcare system is currently makes it tough sometimes because it’s confusing. You go to a doctor and you have a one-hour nutrition talk taught to them in medical school. Yet common sense tells us that nutrition is everything. So it doesn’t have to be complicated. We can just get back to simple things. Let’s get back to as close to nature as possible. Start small and go to where you need to go and try to wean off because our bodies are the best doctors and healers on the planet.
Logan: One other question regarding legality – the hemp-derived CBD oil is legal in all 50 states as are other hemp products. What about in other countries?
James: Over 40 countries that it is legal to ship hemp CBD products to. There’s a list of them that I can send you. Yeah, most of the world is open to hemp oil. Most of the world is open to importing to hemp oil. So as long as it’s hemp-derived, comes from hemp oil and not the high CBD hemp oil, all 50 states in the United States and over 40 different countries.
Logan: Okay, great to know. Can you speak a little bit about the difference between the topical application, topical oil versus something that you ingest?
James: Yes, it’s really again like we were talking about, Logan, I believe with what people are looking to support themselves with. A little bit later Dr. Bob will talk about the different ways like suppository you can take in CBD. Then there is sublingual, taking some gel underneath the tongue or taking a. Then there is capsule form. It gets into your mouth and gets into the gut system. The topical oil is very exciting because our skin is such a great—well, I shouldn’t say that. A lot of people are dealing with some skin problems or most of what we see with our topical oil formulation is that there’s a lot of pain, chronic pain that’s happening in this planet right now. Whether people have had a surgery go wrong or they’re active and they’re constantly in pain through surfing or massaging clients or whatever it is, they’ve been at the computer all day, with the topical oils with CBD and again other Ayurvedic herbs like white willow bark and eucalyptus can really absorb deep into muscles and tissues and joints and they not only relieve that pain but because of these powerful all-natural ingredients actually supporting with the blood flow, inflammation in ways that actually allow that area to heal, which is an exciting part. So it’s not just like an aspirin where we’re putting the Band-Aid on it but actually putting on some of the most powerful herbs on the planet into your skin, deep into the muscles and tissues and the joints and allowing those areas to heal themselves up, allowing those cells to actually do their own healing.
Logan: Excellent. One kind of fun question: what do you see as far as the future of CBD? Where is this tidal wave going?
James: Well, my personal opinion is that this is the disruptor we’ve all been looking for to allow the world to really wake up to the powerful processes that exist in nature. Logan, we’ve talked a couple of different times about this. Getting back to nature, I’ve never seen a plant be as disruptive as the cannabis plant. If you look at how it became the fastest growing industry in the United States right now, you see state by state even though it’s federally still illegal, state by state making it legal, you see billions of dollars in each one of these states going into this plant and then you see all of that money coming back out and going into improving public school systems and roads. You see crime rates going down. So you see all of these benefits that are happening from a plant that the world has known about since the beginning of time and now kind of like veil is being lifted out and we’re looking underneath and saying oh wow, look what’s behind this thing.
So for me I believe, Logan, that it’s such a massive answer but I really see it. We’re the third largest industry in the world is the medical system, healthcare and I believe personally that this system is broken, that from the way the FDA and the pharmaceutical companies have to do things in order to bring a drug, an isolate to the market, that system is broken. We all see it’s no longer working. So getting back to nature, getting back to ancient wisdom is the future where we’re finally waking back up to that in the western world, I believe, and we will start to see things like cannabis—
I’ll give you one example that will encompass everything I’m trying to say. There’s a little boy named Max. I’ve known him for eight years. I was running half marathons for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation. He was the poster child. He’d come in and speak before our races. His pictures are all over the wall and he was in the hospital almost every month for his Crohn’s. So we gave him CBD. We followed him around with a camera for a documentary and I’m so happy to say that he’s now 15 months, for the first time in his life of being hospital-free.
But here’s the interesting piece about that. CBD, his mother wrote a hundred letters to all of her family, to the church, to the principal, to all the teachers at school and told everybody we’re going to put Max on CBD. She got 100% response of yes, in favor of it. Then after they saw the results of this, the doctors all of a sudden were like what are you doing, what’s different because they’ve been trying. The kid is 13 years old and they’ve been trying for 12 years to help him with his Crohn’s, all the pharmaceuticals, chemotherapy, all the stuff started to other parts of his body so they knew that nothing could be helping. So all of a sudden, CBD helps him and this is the message I get from his message just a couple of months ago. She’s like, “James, I just turned the kid vegan.”
So here’s the power of what I’m saying. While CBD is a powerful kind of tip of the spear that helps support people with a lot of different major ailments—I’m not going to name them here and I don’t want to make any claims; that’s for the doctors—what I keep seeing, Logan, is that when they take CBD, they see the power of an all-natural plant and then they start to open themselves up to what else am I eating that might not be supporting me and what else is out there that can support me. I believe that’s how we’ve turn around this healthcare industry. We take it back to nature and we take it back to people being their own best doctor. Being your own medicine is a phrase I love to say. Why don’t we be our own medicine?
Logan: I’m in full agreement with you. Where can people go to find out more information about you or maybe if they have questions and want some more info, where would you send them?
James: We have a website up at EADLabs.com. EAD starts for Evolved Ayurvedic Discoveries. On that website, you can always email me, [email protected] if you’d like to ask me any more questions or get a little bit more information. I’m always available. I love this subject and I just want to support people.
Logan: All right. Well, thank you so much for your time, James. I found this enlightening. I’ve been hearing about CBD but haven’t really delved into it too much so I definitely learned a lot in this call and I’m sure our listeners will as well.
James: All right. I’ll talk to you soon.
Logan: All right, thanks everyone for listening.[/spoiler]
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Winged Wolf says
Thank you for covering this. Thc and cbd are recovery and performance “enhancing” for me.