Pharmaceutical painkillers are now responsible for more deaths in the United States than heroin and cocaine combined.
These pharmaceuticals are responsible for more than 15,000 deaths conservatively in 2008 alone. With no sign of slowing down, the painkiller industry is becoming wildly popular among Americans — as a result, so is the high rate of painkiller abuse.
Classified as dangerous by the U.S. government, cannabis (even in THC-free form, or free of psychoactive effects) has been identified as a powerful pain reliever in more than 80 peer-reviewed studies.
You may be aware of the fact that marijuana is usually quite high in THC (delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol), which is the compound responsible for the psychoactive effect of cannabis.
In contrast, it is also low in CBD (cannabidiol) content. Both THC and CBD are known as cannabinoids, however, which interacts with your body in a very unique way.
In fact, cannabinoids are key when it comes to pain relief. While this information alone is enough to shatter the traditional beliefs on government marijuana regulation, the relationship between CBD and THC is even more revealing.
What you may not be familiar with is how CBD has been shown to block the effect of THC in the nervous system. This allows for marijuana to be used with little or no psychoactive effects. Hemp, on the other hand, is high in CBD and low in THC. This is due to the fact that it is bred to maximize its fiber, seeds, and oil. Of course these key properties are what it is most commonly used for.
Trials Indicate Cannabis as an Effective Treatment for Chronic Pain
In a 2011 study published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, researchers examined the effects of cannabinoids on chronic pain and proper sleep. What they found in their trials challenges federal government claims that cannabis has ‘no accepted medical use’. The researchers conducted 18 trials using cannabinoids in the treatment of chronic pain, and found that cannabinoids demonstrated a significant painkilling effect as well as noticeable improvements in sleep in 15 of trials. Compared, to placebo, the cannabinoids were extremely effective.
Most importantly, there were no adverse effects.
Another study, performed in 2002, reached similar conclusions. Finding cannabis to aid in pain relief as well as quality of sleep, researchers from the McGill University Health Centre stated in summary that cannabis can be used as an effective way of improving pain, mood, and sleep in some patients with chronic pain.
There are many forms of the cannabis plant, many without mind-altering properties, many of which can be utilized without adverse reactions, as detailed in the peer-reviewed research. It is also quite clear that the painkiller industry simply cannot continue to wreak havoc on the lives of many, and a natural alternative must soon emerge to prevent another 15,000 plus deaths this year.
Why is the federal government refusing to admit the medicinal properties of cannabis and the unique ability of this substance to curb pain, insomnia, and impaired mood? This is only one example of how the government decides what is and what is not good for your health.
www.activistpost.com/2012/01/cannabis-treatment-threatens-deadly.html
(NaturalNews) There have been a few articles written about the multitude of environmentally sustainable industrial applications of hemp. There have been perhaps many more written about the medical applications of cannabis. Now there is a formerly skeptical California doctor who has found the optimal method of using marijuana for health.
Unfortunately, the DEA, an arm of the U.S. Justice Department, has made sure marijuana remains as a Class I drug under federal law. This classification means that a drug can be easily abused without acceptable safety even under medical supervision and basically has no medicinal merit.
The DEA declared this despite the fact that 926 medical research studies on non-psychoactive cannabidiol (CBD) and other cannabinoids recorded in PubMed on September 22, 2011 were mostly positive with their pharmacological findings. And another government agency, The Department of Health and Human Services has a U.S. research patent on CBD from 2003.
This is an excellent governmental example of government bureaucracy double think: It's a dangerous drug that's useless as medicine and we're researching it as a medicine. The question is for whom? The Health and Human Services research is conducted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is currently researching CBD's potential for curing cancer.
They are getting positive results also. In addition to eliminating pain and anxiety, CBD seems to make cancer cells die. Many already know this. But it appears that an arrangement is underway to synthesize and patent a CBD formula for big profits. Dr. Alan Frankel, MD explains the slight difference between the THC and CBD molecules in this three minute video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQc4iJedmfc).
The current methods of taking in medical marijuana include: Smoking, vaporizing, ingesting edibles, and reducing THC hemp into a vial of concentrated hemp oil. They all have healing qualities, but the concentrated hemp oil that Rick Simpson discovered seems to have been the most efficacious form of medical marijuana, at least up to now (
http://www.naturalnews.com/027756_cancer_cure_Big_Pharma.html).
Now it appears that Dr. William Courtney, MD, has discovered the best way to take in CBDs and other beneficial cannabinoids without the THC becoming psychoactive even though it's still in the plant: Eating or juicing the whole raw marijuana plant.
Dr. Courtney explains that heating marijuana destroys enzymes and excites the THC's psychoactive effects. But if ingested raw the CBD takes over, and dramatic healing activity occurs without the high.
Dr. Courtney met a very ill young lady who had moved into California to take advantage of that state's medical marijuana freedom. After getting limited results from smoking or vaporizing pot and eating marijuana cooked edibles, she got involved with Dr. Courtney and was cured completely in a few weeks.
The method of cannabis ingestion she used mostly was juicing the whole plant. The leaves can be eaten as salad also. The branches are too fibrous for direct consumption or juicing. The young lady's testimony and Dr. Courtney's explanations can be viewed here (
http://healthmaven.blogspot.com/2012/01/power-of-raw-cannabis.html).
The only obstacle is legality. The federal government is booting out state rights and harassing medical marijuana outlets and plant nurseries. Growing marijuana in sufficient quantity for juicing is impractical under current law (
http://www.naturalnews.com/034502_medical_marijuana_states_Obama.html).
So Dr. Courtney is on a mission to obtain a United Nations consensus for cannabis as a vegetable. The raw plants eaten or juiced don't get anyone high as CBDs overwhelm THCs.
Dr. Courtney considers the marijuana plant's cannabinoid content so healthy eaten or juiced raw, that it would be the most disease preventing and curative food on the planet.