Cannabis risk, death from fungal infection, demanding peer reviewed science. Not even billions can buy CBD if it is classed as Schedule I

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“IMPROVING MICROBIAL DETECTION STANDARDS FOR CANNABIS”

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The full article in O’Shaunessy’s is recommended. I’ve extracted a few parts.

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“If the government is going to tax us, in return they’ve got to provide us with needed services. And that means well-equipped analytic test labs run by disinterested technicians.” [emphasis mine]

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“Let’s make measured changes before another patient is harmed while demanding peer reviewed science is used to guide the regulatory process. In an era of fake news, science by press release with “beliefs” derived from companies that have a vested interest in seeing more cannabis safety testing should be hyper scrutinized.”

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“I think the cannabis-testing labs should be operated by the Department of Public Health, overseen by Commissioner Raber (and equally proficient chemists in every city and state) and staffed by well trained and well paid technicians whose pensions are secure.”

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The importance is that many patients who are immunosuppressed use medical marijuana, and need to use it safely because nothing else helps as well, including those who are immunosuppressed and don’t know it. For example, many do not know that diabetics are immunosuppressed. Those with autoimmune diseases, chronic renal disease, may be using medical cannabis and should demand testing be done with their taxed dollars as should we all. This has been one of the most useful herbs in history, for thousands of years, and can give balm and relief even to shattered nerves, especially now that healthcare insurers are denying to pay for pharma’s gobsmacking overnight billious costs.

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gobsmacking billious costs

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getting up to speed on legal cannabis &

 research on endocannabinoid systems

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This is a timely issue. Discuss with your doctor, get your representatives to help to legalize it nationwide. It may be the only thing that can help, or the only one that doesn’t constipate or cause erectile dysfunction or interact with other drugs. We don’t want our medication infected, even if we want to use cannabis for relaxation and pleasure. The Xanax’s and Ativan’s could be improved upon if only the right science is funded.

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“On February 7, the Daily Mail reported a cancer patient in northern California died from a fungal infection that authorities suspect was caused by the inhalation of contaminated medical cannabis.”

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snip

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“Furthermore, molecular techniques can be used to assess whether this cancer patient’s infection was actually cannabis derived. This is possible by using PCR and sequencing as performed by Remington et al. on the cannabis material and on the patient to confirm such an event.”

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“Rather than jumping to conclusions from a news story about cannabis contamination (which may in fact be the case), officials should confirm, via molecular methods, that a fatal infection occurred from the consumption of contaminated Cannabis or from another source, such as a hospital acquired infection. Once confirmed, the scientific data can help drive the appropriate regulations forward to ensure patient safety.  Unfortunately, most regulations passed to date for microbial detection do not appropriately address patient safety and often suggest the use of antiquated, inaccurate technologies.  For instance, we have peer-reviewed evidence that the currently accepted 48-hour Petrifilm-based method currently in use fails to detect some of the most harmful microbes found on cannabis. The State of Colorado has recently come to similar conclusions and has moved their Petrifilm detection times from 48 hours to 60-72 hours while referencing a paper suggesting 120 hours may be required.  And even with these adjustments to the regulations, Petrifilms will never give as accurate results as PCR.” [emphasis mine]

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“All technologies used to ensure product quality and patient safety should be peer reviewed. DNA-based methods are imperative to patient safety, as they are accepted, peer reviewed, and have been used for decades in other industries for similar purposes.”

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“Kits to perform qPCR-based microbial testing on cannabis are commercially available at medicinalgenomics.com. We hold the largest sequence database of microbes found on cannabis and have kits that perform these tests in hours as opposed to days.”
[emphasis mine]

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“The technology exists to ensure safer cannabis for patients. Let’s make measured changes before another patient is harmed while demanding peer reviewed science is used to guide the regulatory process. In an era of fake news, science by press release with “beliefs” derived from companies that have a vested interest in seeing more cannabis safety testing should be hyper scrutinized. This extends to our own work at Medicinal Genomics and underscores our publication history in this space.”

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snip

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O’Shaughnessy’s retro message:

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“Medicinal Genomics’s qPCR technology is undoubtedly superior and would have picked up the aspergillus that may have been fatal to the California  patient. But how widespread is the danger, really? In San Francisco in the ’90s, many thousands of AIDS patients whose immune systems were beyond “compromised” smoked untested crude herb, and I only heard of one rumored instance in which aspergillus may have been involved in a death. Donald Abrams, MD, might be able to confirm or correct my reassuring recollection.”

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“That said, of course the labs testing cannabis should employ the best available technology. The question, is who should pick up the tab?” [emphasis mine]

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“When I was working for the San Francisco District Attorney in ’01 or ’02 I called on Josh Bamberger at the city health department on Grove Street and asked if their lab would take on the testing of cannabis being sold at dispensaries. He said he didn’t have the budget or the personnel.  In the years ahead I was surprised that nobody from the movement/industry ever made the demand —not even the request— that a government agency take responsibility for testing medical cannabis. No patient advocate declared, “If the government is going to tax us, in return they’ve got to provide us with needed services. And that means well-equipped analytic test labs run by disinterested technicians.” [emphasis mine]

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“All around the world, PRIVATIZATION is the overwhelming socioeconomic trend of our time.  The Power Elite have done such a thorough job of selling off the commons and undermining the public sector that everybody now simply assumes that for-profit labs can and should take on the responsibility of protecting public health. “

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“I think the cannabis-testing labs should be operated by the Department of Public Health, overseen by Commissioner Raber (and equally proficient chemists in every city and state) and staffed by well trained and well paid technicians whose pensions are secure. And while we’re at it, how about free public education and single-payer medical care?”

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I keep getting the suspicion billions are being funneled rapidly down new rabbit holes using fear to prevent science. We must be able to do more than just prescribe  opioids for severe pain. Opioids cause inflammation which causes more pain. Cannabis is anti-inflammatory, analgesic, etc etc etc, and not allowed in hospitals, SNFs, or in facilities that seniors can only dream of retiring to when they can no longer manage at home. We need medical better choices.

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Medicinal cannabis is a healing plant with cannabinoids like ones that your body makes that helps you feel healthy and somehow influences the immune system more than any other system, while also lifting mood. Wouldn’t it be nice to know? It has 400 chemicals, not just two synthetic ones pharma makes. An exciting new cosmos in the body’s realm of more than just neuroscience. We have more cannabinoid receptors than any other kind in our body. We need to learn.
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Stop this Schedule I nonsense. Legalize cannabis. Privatize and regulate it like big alcohol, but keep it apart from big pharma, and endow strong university ties. For pete’s sake, fund the research immediately. We need it. The immune system needs it. The pain matrix needs it. Why should we allow euthanasia when we can treat pain and symptoms. Grandmothers used to know how. We are living in the dark ages with cannabinoid systems science. It is in starving infancy, Israel’s Mechoulam lab pioneering this blossoming for decades.
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Don’t forget to tell your representatives that you hear you may benefit from medical marijuana. Cannabis, marijuana, just may help, as it helped so many little children having hundreds of seizures each day, helped by just one of the cannabinoids in the plant: CBD.  It has been reported to almost completely stop the hundreds of daily seizures in possibly 50% —wouldn’t it be important to do research on it?

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CBD  has no psychoactive power. There is no high, no hallucinations. It actually blocks the psychoactive power of THC. It should be legal. The plant should be legal. It helps many medical conditions. I have posted an astonishing case months ago 100% relief with CBD. Instead it, just the other day, CBD got clearly classified as Schedule I. This must go to the courts. This insanity about a healing plant can be sanely managed, just like alcohol is managed. Without privatized prison systems that waste taxpayer dollars.

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We see new funnels of big money going down the rabbit hole. The urgency to privatize. We have a lot of people who cannot afford the American medical system, cannot afford doctors, who may get some relief even as a muscle relaxant or for sleep or anxiety.

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How can anyone respect a legal system that does not even allow research on a healing plant so important to the immune system?

 

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No amount of billions can buy CBD if it is classed as Schedule I.

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The material on this site is for informational purposes only.
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It is not legal for me to provide medical advice without an examination.
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It is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment provided by a qualified health care provider.
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This site is not for email and not for appointments.
If you wish an appointment, please telephone the office to schedule.
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For My Home Page, click here:  Welcome to my Weblog on Pain Management!

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Please IGNORE THE ADS BELOW. They are not from me.
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CRPS – Skeletal Cannabinoid System – Immune System

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What I’m really interested in is the Skeletal Cannabinoid System.

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We know cannabinoid receptors outnumber every receptor type in the human body.

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Cannabindoids are located primarily in immune tissue. 

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Perhaps one reason we have not found more insight into neuropathic pain, complex regional pain syndrome, is because we have not seriously looked at the cannabinoid system. It is the largest receptor system in the body and it is located in immune tissue. Our brain makes endocannabinoids like Anandamide, that relieve pain, that are made by glial tissue, which is immune tissue. And they relieve many other symptoms and life threatening seizures as well. Pain and depression are my key interests.

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Quoting from Nephi Stella:

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“Cannabinoids, the bioactive components produced by the marijuana plant Cannabis Sativa, have immunomodulatory properties that are quite distinct from currently available immunomodulatory drugs.”

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So, back to the Skeletal Endocannabinoid Sytem, please let me know of any references to the Skeletal Endocannabinoid system, especially key articles or a review of that system, or has access to funding and to Professor Mechoulam’s lab, so we could see some research funded in order to learn about this. I welcome comments with publications and references, below.

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Even if we could get more funding for regenerative research in bone, it may lead to discovery of a mechanism involved in the osteoporosis with CRPS or senility.

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Cannabinoids

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First, let me say I am not endorsing use of cannabinoids unless you have a full understanding of contraindications, and yes it can be dangerous if you have those conditions. That’s why I built a cannabis website in 2009. I cannot remember the scientific details I studied, but there were over 17,000 publications when I put that up. I had to build the website to educate myself, and be able to “put it together, to grasp it and learn it and be able to link back. It was a huge data base to reference after doing my analysis. Alas, I had to scrub most of it because it is illegal even to write about certain things or link to a video. It’s sad that doctors get persecuted for prescribing cannabis for desperate conditions. It’s sad it cannot be made legal for the poor and middle class to use responsibly and recreationally.

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Dr. Nephi Stella at University of Washington studies deep cannabinoid brain science:

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He was an invited speaker at an RSDSA sponsored conference in 2010  on glia. They convened what may be the largest number of most distinguished glial scientists in the world working on translational issues, translating science to the clinic as it relates to pain. Glial cells are important for inflammation and pain, depression, almost every known condition. As for glia, one of the endocannabinoids that your brain makes, is made by a glial cell, and reabsorbed by the cell.

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Dr. Stella’s faculty page reads:

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How can the medicinal properties of marijuana be improved to treat neurodegenerative diseases?

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The brain, being isolated from the rest of the body by the blood brain barrier, has its own specialized immune system consisting of the interplay between glial cells and small numbers of patrolling immune cells. This “brain specific immune system” is similar to the peripheral immune system in its ability to both destroy foreign agents and repair injured tissue, though it does so with much less efficacy. Indeed, while the brain’s immune system can probably cope with minor insults and infections, its unable to mount effective responses against more devastating neuropathological processes….

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Remarkably, these neuropathological processes are often associated with dysfunctional glial cells, limiting their ability to repair injured neurons and actually rendering them more hostile against healthy neurons. Thus, a promising therapeutic approach for the aforementioned neurodegenerative diseases is to develop pharmacological agents that target glial cells to reinstate their reparative function while tempering their hostility.
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My laboratory is interested in identifying the molecular machinery controlling changes in glial cell phenotype, with the aim of developing pharmacological tools that will minimize their harmful phenotype and reinstate – or even boost – their reparative function. Our current most promising target is the endocannabinoid signaling system.
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Cannabinoids, the bioactive components produced by the marijuana plant Cannabis Sativa, have immunomodulatory properties that are quite distinct from currently available immunomodulatory drugs. These compounds act through specific receptors named CB1 and CB2. CB1 receptors are expressed by neurons and mediate the drug of abuse properties of marijuana, while CB2 receptors are expressed by immune and glial cells and mediate its immunomodulatory properties. This dichotomy has tremendous therapeutic potential since it allows for the development of agents that specifically target CB2 receptors and thus regulate immune functions without inducing the drug of abuse adverse effects mediated through CB1 receptors. Cannabinoid receptors are normally activated by endogenous ligands, the endocannabinoids.
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We are currently testing the hypothesis that agents acting through CB2 receptors or blocking the degradation of endocannabinoids can temper the detrimental inflammatory responses occurring in Huntington’s disease, AIDS dementia and multiple sclerosis. We chose to study these pathologies because they remain without cure and thus demand regimented scientific efforts to relieve these patients. We are also using genetic and proteomics approaches to identify novel cannabinoid receptors and enzymes degrading endocannabinoids, with the hope that such proteins constitute promising targets for therapy. Our goal is to identify cannabinoid-based targets and agents devoid of drug of abuse properties that provide treatment of diverse neuropathologies.

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This field has been largely ignored for almost the entire 20th century. Even when it was discovered it is a major player in the immune system and so many systems it is yet to be discovered where and why.

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Nephi, if you are reading this, thank you for working with glia and the cannabinoid system!

Congratulations on your work!

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I know some of you ignore this, but I have to repeat:

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The material on this site is for informational purposes only.
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It is not legal for me to provide medical advice without an examination.

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This material is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment provided

by a qualified health care provider.

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This site is not for email and not for appointments.

If you wish an appointment, please telephone the office to schedule.

~~~~~

For My Home Page, click here:  Welcome to my Weblog on Pain Management!

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