Video Transcript – Cannabis And Depression
In this video I’m going to talk about cannabis and depression so cannabis and depression is a really hot topic it’s a controversial topic for many people and before I started adding cannabis medicines to my own practice I have a lot of misconceptions myself about cannabis and depression over a decade ago when I was in medical school we didn’t really learn anything about the endocannabinoids system about cannabis in general but the things I did learn were really negative I was told you know people who smoke cannabis will be a bigger risk of depression it will make their depression and mood disorders worse universally it didn’t really matter what was in the cannabis whether it was really high CBD low THC there was no even distinction in what we were talking about so there was a lot of fear in the medical community around cannabis of all forms even CBD around mood disorders and depression in particular what I found when I started using cannabis medicines in my practice was that I was getting a lot of referrals with patients who suffer with depression and as most people who have suffered with depression will know or know someone who has suffered with depression it’s not that depression is just in isolation and everything in there about from there life is amazing usually my patients who are suffering with depression also have an element of anxiety with their depression they sometimes have sleep dysfunction they oftentimes have chronic pain they have other things that are going on so oftentimes depression is part of this bigger picture and sometimes depression is the final common endpoint for things that have gone wrong in the brain in the body and it really the brain is in this withdraw and protect mode not going out into the world and kind of you know approach behavior mode which we all kind of want to be in to really thrive and I do a lot of brain stuff as well and when we look at eg studies of the brain when we actually look at the electrical things that are going on in the brain with depression we have an underactive left frontal lobe with depression so basically in depression want to wake the brain back up and help people interact with the world in a better way so this is where cannabis medicines can come in handy – my initial surprise so initially when someone comes to me and depression is a main feature of why they’re coming to see me they’ve usually already tried a gazillion different things for their depression they’ve usually already tried things like therapy and CB CBT cognitive behavioral therapy they’ve tried exercise a lot of times they’ve tried lots of drugs a lot of times they tried other herbal medicines and none of them really worked that well so these are the times of patients who come to see me for cannabis medicine and usually what I do to start them off someone with depression is I start out with a CBD oil as a base of their therapy and I started out with taking the CBD oil in the morning in the mid afternoon or around lunchtime with food always and then really around like 5:00 p.m. in the evening and if that you know I usually do that for four weeks or so see how people respond and if they have sleep dysfunction which can be a major driver of depression because sleep dysfunction the next day makes the brain more irritable then sometimes I add in a little bit of THC before they go to bed to help with their sleep and very very very small those along with more CBD and then if they’re still having trouble with motivation and getting going in the morning that’s when I find that actually a little bit of vaporized cannabis which contains some THC as well as some CBD can be very very helpful and it has to be the right strain so with a lot of my patients who suffer with depression and anxious depression or anxiety and especially my patients who have chronic pain on top of this it can take them three hours to get their day going in the morning so that really leaves them quite crippled as far as not being able to work not being able to just do housework or to see their friends or to see family members or take care of their children and the way that they want to and what we see with when I add cannabis in a vaporize form is it can help wake the nervous system up if it’s the right strain and help them get going so instead of taking 3 hours to get their day going they can take them 20 minutes like most of us without depression just kind of wake up and you know get going so usually what I you there is I would start with a strain that’s high in things like D limonene these citrusy uplifting terpenes and a more sativa dominant strain again the genetics get tricky here because everything’s kind of a hybrid now but to keep things simple really what you can think about it as is using a sativa dominant delimiting rich strain of cannabis in a vaporizer and usually I like to combine it with a strain that’s high in CBD so they’re not getting that straight-up THC in general with patients with depression I try to avoid THC only I really really think that adding CBD is very important to keeping the mood stable and the reason that I do it this way is because there’s been lots of studies with the CBD in particular as an antipsychotic agent as a mood balancing agent and people who have mood balance issues so people with bipolar disorder for example people with schizophrenia and psychosis so that’s different than depression but I still find in my patients that when we use more CBD a lot of CBD and then add a little bit of THC in if they need it is the best way to go with depression another really interesting thing I found working with my patients with depression using cannabis medicines is that often times part of the the reason that they’re having trouble is because they really want to engage with the world they want to do things like cognitive behavioral therapy they want to do things like exercise socially engaging their friends and their family because we know all those things help with depression but they have really low brain motivation because their left frontal lobe is under active and they just can’t engage so basically we can use cannabis medicines as a catalyst it kind of like is it is a catalyst to get everything going so what I do sometimes with patients is I get them to vaporize a little bit of cannabis before they want to go work out or before they want to go for a run and sometimes even before they want to go out socially and engage with the world and that can be really helpful to get them going and the really cool part is that once they get going and they start doing all the other behaviors that are anti-depressive naturally like exercise getting social doing CBT doing therapy if that’s part of their treatment plan they just get better and better and better and it’s a snowball effect and then they need West cannabis to help them because as other things start to kind of take hold in the brain so if you liked this video please like it share it with someone who might benefit from it and leave me a comment let me know what your experience has been with mood in cannabis or CBD and if you want more on cannabis CBD evidence-based natural medicine and brain wellness please come over to dr. 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