CBD and Pain Relief (Exploring the Hemp Option)

Note: article originally published on HempforFitness.com; written by Damien Darby.

Okay, what’s the deal with hemp-based CBD and pain relief?

How effective and safe is it?

Ugh, good questions. Here we are in late 2016, so should you find yourself thoroughly confused and don’t know what to think or who to believe then let me officially welcome you to Cannabinoid Revolution v2!

Whether the powers that be want to admit it or not (many already are though, Canada for example), western civilization is transitioning from an opiate-drenched “medicine” system to a more natural cannabinoid-based approach that interacts with the human Endocannabinoid System (ECS).

Is it being televised? No, not really.

There have been several mainstream documentaries, but they almost entirely exclude hemp-based CBD and focus on the Medical Marijuana industry because that’s where the zillions are being made.

You must dig a bit deeper.

You have to discover sites, well, just like HempforFitness.com which represents a small American company not some Big Pharma or Wall Street-funded organization.

The owner, Marjan, is on the phone/online daily, responding to more and more comments/questions as time goes by from everyday people looking for answers from someone they can trust.

Questions like,

“ What dosage, or how much CBD is most effective for treating chronic joint pain?”

Or,

“ What product do you recommend for a child of 9 with muscle spasms?”

Or,

“ My husband and I don't feel comfortable with medicating our child, but don’t know what CBD product is safe to give to him. What do you recommend?”

I could go on and on. It’s been truly profound, both as a Washingtonian (Marijuana is fully legal right now, but no industrial hemp fields yet) and as a cannabis-friendly writer to watch this all unfold.

And it’s rough because unlike the current medical system which has endless amounts of opioid-based pills in all kinds of quantities figured out for everything from a sore thumb to migraines, the cannabinoid world is just now returning after being swept under the rug for close to a century.

We’re picking up where our ancestors left off after using hemp back to the beginnings of written history. And this is while the pharmaceutical world and the established order (along with Big Marijuana to a certain degree) have declared proverbial war on industrial hemp-derived CBD despite the recent studies and the MASSIVE, and I mean GARGANTUAN amount of “on the street” anecdotal evidence from people’s moms, brothers, cousins, and friends.

Pain Relief and CBD

Here’s a personal example.

While on a hike I did a stupid thing (jumped off a huge redwood tree stump in CA for a photo) and hurt my left ankle pretty badly. Then, of course I didn’t stop hiking but went through with the whole trek. Wow, come that evening I could barely walk…so inflamed and sore!

Thankfully I had some of the Trompetol Extra Skin Lotion Marjan sells in my bag. I put a glob on my ankle, rubbed it in, and no kidding within 30-60 seconds the pain was almost entirely gone and I could walk on it fine. Whoa!

Why?

No one can fully answer that question yet because we don’t fully understand the ECS yet. And no one can say why it works like that for me, but maybe not for you.

So can CBD help you or someone you care about with their pain? There’s no guarantees, but here’s what we know:

• It’s a well-known and very effective anti-inflammatory agent like its cousin THC but without the psychoactive-ness.
• When ingested through Medical Marijuana (edibles, vape, flowers, etc.) patients with such serious conditions as Cancer, Fibromyalgia and Arthritis are seeing substantial relief.
• CBD suppresses seizure activity, from the serious kind to minor muscle spasms as demonstrated through the “Charlotte’s Web” strain of Cannabis (bred specifically for high CBD).
• The human ECS utilizes CBD, and cannabinoids in general, to regain/maintain a state of homeostasis.
• Medical Marijuana patients have shown/reported up to a 64% reduction in their use of conventional pain killers because of the way THC & CBD work synergistically in natural “whole plant” form.

Where Hemp Comes In

There are three primary reasons folks don’t want to get their CBD from Marijuana: they’re uninformed about the plants, THC is illegal where they live/work, or they don’t enjoy the “high” from THC.

Hemp naturally has almost zero THC. It’s a fiber plant. You would have to smoke a field of this stuff just to get a headache. However, it can be grown to have higher CBD levels in the same way as Marijuana can be grown with higher levels of THC and smell like blueberries. Or, you can grow fields of the plants like they are in Colorado, Oregon and Kentucky now, and transform a bundle into a thick dark resit-looking substance which can then be diluted and made into an essential oil, tincture, etc.

Make sense? In fact, all cannabis plants or strains can be bred to have higher levels of any major cannabinoid as far as I can tell.

So you get all the CBD from the plant, with microscopic amounts of THC and it’s not coming from what’s legally called “Marijuana” but industrial hemp which is legal (although, outside hemp-friendly states it still must be imported thanks to Uncle Fed).

Trust me, I’ve experimented with this stuff myself and am intimately familiar with the effects of THC. For example, I gulped down a whole Hemp Honey Stick before showing hemp products to the Veterans Administration in California and felt no high whatsoever. I mean none. Zero. No intoxication I could detect.

But how much CBD will you need?

What is the best form of delivery? – pills, lozenges, paste, cream, honey, essential oil, etc.

Here’s what I suggest people do if they decide they'd like to experiment with a hemp-based CBD product:

1. Talk to your doctor about it first. If you don’t have a doctor (or you do and they’re clueless), find and talk to someone in the industry like Marjan who has vast experience working directly with people using full-spectrum hemp products for a large variety of pain-related reasons. She can't give you medical advice, but she can tell you what she's seen through her customers. Outside this you can contact organizations like the Society of Cannabis Clinicians.
2. Set aside time to dive into CBD Research and learn the basics of the human ECS to see what medical science has to say.
3. Come to terms with the best dosage and delivery method to start with relative to the pain or condition in question.
4. Experiment until you find what works. The difference is that unlike other conventional medications CBD isn’t toxic, habit forming, or harmful even when taken in huge quantities. Doctors in CA have prescribed over 1000mg dosages for Cancer patients and witnessed no negative side effects.

Why Full-Spectrum Hemp Products Can Be Expensive

Overhead and no government subsidies.

• The cost and all the many fees and regulations involved in the import of hemp plants, tinctures, extracts, and oils.
• The cost of continuous lab testing for every batch to ensure not only the right CBD levels but legal amounts of THC as well. When Marjan is hit with a batch that has too low of CBD, boom, more testing, more import costs…
• The cost of even more testing to look for toxins, pesticides, and other impurities.
• The cost of marketing, which for small genuine businesses like HempforFitness is hard and expensive. For every 1 item she manages to sell, big corporations (often with questionable practices) sell 1000 because they have monolithic budgets.

When “we the people” are educated enough, and have had enough of these insane federal laws and regulations then industrial hemp will be grown from coast to coast once again and the prices you see today will go down by at least half, if not more.

It will return to the way it was long before opioids, like petrol, took over our societies.

But “they” want it hard to find. They want it expensive. They want you confused and uninformed so they can continue their scourge. Everyone understands this. We all recognize the War on Drugs was actually a War FOR Drugs, the kind they can control and that makes the aristocrats even richer – opiates, pharmaceuticals and heroin.

Just look at these 2016 facts from the American Society of Addiction Medicine:

“ Drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in the US with 47,055 lethal drug overdoses in 2014. Opioid addiction is driving this epidemic, with 18,893 overdose deaths related to prescription pain relievers, and 10,574 overdose deaths related to heroic [an opioid] in 2014”

That was two years ago. It’s worse now…meanwhile no one that I’ve ever heard of has died or even overdosed on any genuine hemp or cannabis-based product. Again, CBD has been proven by medical science to be non-psychoactive, non-habit forming, and non-addictive.

“ From 1999 to 2008, overdose death rates, sales and substance use disorder treatment admissions related to prescription pain relievers increased in parallel.”

Meanwhile wherever Marijuana or Hemp is being used/consumed there’s a dramatic decrease in conventional pain killer usage and less visits to the doctor and that's not the half of it.

Wrapping Up

I'd say it’s worth a shot. If you don’t have access to Medical Marijuana strains high in CBD, or you don’t enjoy the intoxicating effects/high of THC, then full-spectrum hemp is your best option. You may need to experiment a little but the upsides of cannabinoids vs opioids are numerous.

Don’t hesitate to reach out and contact Marjan or the HempforFitness team because they care. They’re real. Marjan has been through hell the last four years trying to bring hemp to the people despite the armies of opposition from all sides.