CBD v THC: The difference between THC and CBD

THC v CND: today we’re gonna be talking about the difference between CBD and THC let’s get to the bottom of it get the big words out of the way and just tell you in plain English what it actually means for you okay so let’s just get the big words out of the way THC stands for it tetrahydrocannabinol and CBD to use stands for cannabidiol so it doesn’t really matter that you know these terms just think about it as CBD v THC it’s just a short form so most people know about THC because it gets them high it’s the part of the plant that can make people feel intoxicated from cannabis but it does so much more than just that but one of the main things in my practice when people come to see me for cannabis medicine to treat an illness or to help with their health they’re really worried a lot of times though getting high they don’t want to feel out of control because a lot of times when they have a chronic illness they’re already feeling out of control in their life so they’re really really scared that they’re gonna feel high all day when they take CBD even or cannabis medicine sometimes they don’t even know the difference so what I usually do is I start with explaining about what CBD does what THC does and how they can actually even work together in some cases okay so we’ve already established CBD doesn’t get you high let’s talk about THC first for a second so THC it works on your brain receptors called the cb1 cannabinoid receptors and it works in places in the brain like the hippocampus learning and memory which is why it can cause short-term memory impairment temporarily when you have really high amounts of THC for example smoking it recreationally which again is not what we do with cannabis medicine it can also affect balance centers in the brain which is in the cerebellum so with high high doses of THC recreationally we can get a lot of these symptoms however in really small doses and when it’s used medically and I turned it up over a period of time for some people who might need it like in severe chronic pain for example THC also has a lot of medicinal qualities that we can use one of these qualities is this called an antispasmodic which means that helps this muscle spasm it may also have anti-seizure mechanism control in addition to what CBD can do we can also use it to help stimulate appetite and people who are going through cancer treatments and have lost their appetite for example and THC can also be used to help with treatment-resistant insomnia or really bad sleeping problems again usually in combination with CBD sometimes we try CBD first and if it doesn’t work we add a little bit of THC so there’s lots of different effects of THC in the brain.

CBD, Cannabis And Psychosis Video Transcript

In this episode I’m gonna be tackling CBD, cannabis and psychosis I’m gonna be kind of untangling a lot of the confusion around cannabis and psychosis telling you what we actually know for sure and how I’ve used it in patients who may be at risk with sub psychosis and what to actually avoid so the relationship between cannabis in general usually high THC cannabis in psychosis is a really complex one and the research we have coming out so far has been done in actually recreational smoked cannabis that is very high THC so the stuff that gets you really high and very low CBD so the stuff that’s potentially mood balancing so this is the first problem with the research we have is it’s not an accurate picture of how we use medical cannabis how I would use it as a medicine and it doesn’t tell us anything about CBD so the first thing that I usually tell patients who may be a risk of psychosis or of mania or bipolar is that they should really avoid THC because THC in some vulnerable people and again this is just a very small proportion of people who would use THC even high doses of THC may make them more likely to tip over into a psychotic episode or into a bipolar manic episode again it’s still a very low risk but it’s a potential risk if they’re genetically predisposed and if they have other risk factors like a family history for example or they’ve had an episode of mania in the past or they’ve had an episode of psychosis in the past so in general I just tell those people really to avoid THC on the other hand we have CBD CBD has actually been shown in multiple studies to have an T psychosis properties so that means it might help imbalance mood in people who may be treated disposed to psychosis and people who actually already have schizophrenia and psychosis and manic episodes it may actually help them be used as a treatment for their episodes and potentially as a longer-term treatment in schizophrenia there was one side of that paired one of the main drugs used in schizophrenia one of the anti-psychotic drugs to CBD and actually both were shown to have an antipsychotic effect on the brain areas involved in schizophrenia psychosis but CBD actually had a much better scientific profile than some of those other medications so right now we don’t know enough to say that CBD alone can be used as a treatment for schizophrenia but certainly has a lot of promise in that area so if someone has a history of psychosis or bipolar Armenia I usually still tell them it’s probably pretty safe for them to use CBD and it may actually even help their condition so the safest form of CBD for someone who has a genetic predisposition to use would be CBD from hemp in a combination that has less than 0.2 or 0.3 percent THC so a really really good quality CBD oil made to from suitable grade standards made it’s a medicine but really really low in THC even oils CBD oils that are produced for the medical market in Canada for example sometimes that I have up to one percent of of THC and really really high CBD are probably still pretty safe but again the lower this the THC content probably the better in the safer to make matters more complicated there was actually a really interesting study that looked at people who are already diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder so bipolar one with manic episodes and then they look to see who smoked cannabis so this is against smoking recreational high THC cannabis and who didn’t and what they actually found was really interesting when they put these people into a brain scanner and functional MRI machine they found that the people who smoked cannabis even the high THC cannabis and again these are people with already have schizophrenia and bipolar they actually had less grey matter less brain gray matter loss than the people who didn’t smoke cannabis so that’s a really interesting finding and we don’t know what this means does that mean that THC sometimes as someone who already had schizophrenia isn’t as bad as we thought the question is remains and we just don’t have the answer yet so in general I still think because it’s a big question mark generally avoiding definitely all smoked cannabis which we never use medically and avoiding hc’ in general is the safest option for now okay so getting off to CBD what’s the evidence there well there was actually a really interesting study in an RCT or randomized controlled trial which means that’s a really high-quality study with respect to like conventional evidence base and it actually looked at the effect of CBD of cannabidiol on people’s brains that already had been diagnosed with schizophrenia or psychosis and they actually showed that after giving them a single dose of CBD the brain areas involved in psychosis were normalized these involve some of the midbrain straddle areas of the brain and it’s really interesting to see that a single dose a single large dose of CBD had that reversal of some of those that some of those effects in the brain that we see with psychosis so again this is pretty strong evidence that it has an antipsychotic effect in the brain and there’s many other research studies that are starting to support the same thing so getting back to what is the actual evidence we have for CBD and psychosis well there was a really interesting study done in 2018 done in people at high high risk clinical risk of psychosis so these are patients that normally you wouldn’t want to give any THC to so they gave them a single high dose of CBD and then they scan their brains and saw what happened and what they found was the brain areas that are involved in psychosis and are lit up in people who have schizophrenia they dampened down and normalized after the single dose of CBD so this is pretty strong evidence for an anti-psychotic affective CBD in the brains of people who are at really high risk of developing those problems so again we don’t have the full picture yet but this is pretty promising another really interesting study is where they took healthy people so people who didn’t have any psychosis in their history and they gave them a dose of CBD and then they gave them a high dose of THC to see if the CBD given beforehand which basically dampened down and prevent the pro psychotic chi high high THC effects in the brain and what they found as it actually worked so again it appears that see is protective in the brain and it may even help with THC induced psychosis so we think that a lot of the earlier research about cannabis predisposing people who are predisposed anyways to psychosis it’s probably largely because of the fact that they were smoking high high high THC and very very low CBD street cannabis so in summary CBD is anti-psychotic it seems and THC may be problematic in people at high risk for psychosis so best to avoid it so if you liked this video please like it leave a comment or share it with someone who may be interested in CBD and medical cannabis and if you want more on CBD medical cannabis and evidence-based natural medicine in brain wellness please come over to dr. Danny Gordon comm and sign up for my free resources.

Cannabis And Epilepsy Video Transcript

Today we’re gonna be talking about cannabis and epilepsy. Cannabis has been used as a medicine for treatment of seizures for millennia and many different cultures and most recently in the modern world and in modern medicine it’s been used to treat children with specific forms of childhood epilepsy who failed many many drugs to control their seizures so I’m gonna tell you a little bit about how we think cannabis and epilepsy work and the most common ways that it’s used so CBD oil and cannabis medicines are really gaining traction as a potential anti epileptic treatment for children with epileptic disorders in childhood seizure disorders especially who’ve not responded to conventional drugs and there’s been quite a few high-profile cases in the media of children who are trying to get access to cannabis because it’s helped them reduce their seizures quite considerably or in some cases even really have no seizures for periods of time after really trying every drug on the market and one of the mainstays of therapy when it comes to cannabis and seizure control or epilepsy is CBD or cannabidiol that’s because CBD has been quite well studied as far as the cannabis plant molecules for its anti seizure activity so it has the ability to reduce seizure activity increases your threshold in a number of animal models in preclinical trials and in many many cases with children who have these epilepsy disorders that are very difficult to treat especially one called your vet syndrome and another one called Lennox gastro syndrome so what are we actually talking about like what products are people actually using when it comes to treating epilepsy with cannabis well both hemp derived CBD oils and medical cannabis with a slightly higher amount of THC have been used to treat different types of epilepsy generally what you do especially with it flipsie is you start with a very very low THC very very high CBD oil so generally speaking that’s a CBD oil sometimes even from hemp that has less than 0.2 or 0.3 percent THC sometimes if you’re starting with a medical product you might start with something that’s slightly higher in THC potentially a 1% THC with 18 to 20 percent CBD so again we’re talking about very very high CBD low THC forms of oil how it potentially works in the brain to help decrease seizures by a number of mechanisms one of them seems to be by a g-protein coupled receptor one of them seems to be by a serotonin receptor mechanism one of them we think is about by it something called Avenel Lloyd receptor and many many more so we’re still really learning about why CBD can actually work for seizure control when other drugs fail on average children who resort to medical cannabis and CBD have tried an average of 10 different antiepileptic drugs before they try CBD so we’re talking about really this is a last resort treatment but it actually works very very well for a number of patients there’s another form of CBD that’s actually been made by some pharmaceutical companies and only contains CBD it’s what’s called it CBD islip medication versus a full-spectrum CBD oil that contains other parts of the plant and even in those studies many patients have responded positively but in some cases especially in some of the case reports some that patients still do better on the full-spectrum CBD oil than they do on the the pharma base to CBD products so we’re still really learning what is best one of the things that patients always ask me about is well what about should I add any THC well generally with seizures we start out with high CBD very very low THC and then sometimes for very specific cases in some instances where people stop responding to the CBD we add a little bit of THC in an oil as well to the CBD and sometimes we get better seizure control again the reason for this again it’s very complex we have an idea of maybe that the CBD and the TFC are interacting at these different receptors in different pathways and they’re working what it’s called what in when it’s called synergy with each other in addition to THC another molecule that is quite useful that I’ve used in my medical practice with adults with epilepsy is something called THC a THC a is a non psychoactive so it doesn’t make you feel high form of a precursor to THC so it’s really useful in cases where you tried CBD by itself you’ve got maybe a partial response or really not met much response at all and you want to try something that’s not going to make someone feel intoxicated or high so that’s where THC a can be really handy in seizure control as well so we’re really just at the beginning of the research when it comes to full-spectrum CBD oil cannabis oil for seizure control and there’s so many compounds in the plant many of which may have anti seizure activity so we’re really just at the beginning of our understanding but we already know it can be very helpful in cases where other things have failed something that you have to keep in mind when you’re you know using CBD and cannabis for seizures is interactions with other drugs so one of the most well known ones is with a drug called Club Azam you can still use them together under close medical supervision but you have to check the drug levels well because sometimes the CBD can push out the drug levels and it can affect things like side effects for example in my own practice I don’t focus specifically on epilepsy but I definitely have treated a few standout cases in my patients who had epilepsy and seizure disorders who tried every drug Under the Sun were very disabled by their condition they couldn’t drive anymore many of them had really really low quality of life and we really house found and their brain function was severely affected by their seizures and after we added medical cannabis in they were able to decrease their other seizure medications improve their quality life vastly eradicate a lot of the side effects that they were getting like feeling sleepy and groggy and inability to communicate and medical cannabis for them really changed their life so I’m a really big believer that I can do great things in specific types of epilepsy especially that have been difficult to treat with other medications and what I’ve found when I treat patients with epilepsy and I add the medical cannabis to their treatment plan it’s not just the patient who benefits their whole family see the difference because it’s just the whole disease affects the whole family as a unit and these medications have made so much difference for the whole family so that’s why I’m really a believer in really trying this option for many patients with epilepsy and of course if you’re using medical cannabis or thinking about using it or thinking about using CBD even from hemp to treat a medical condition especially a serious one like seizures or epilepsy it’s really important to do it under the close supervision of your doctor who understands how to work with cannabis and your other drugs so if you enjoyed this video please like it and comment and share it with someone who is interested in cannabis or CBD – and if you want more on cannabis medicine CBD evidence-based natural medicine and brain wellness so you can thrive in modern life please come over and join me on dr. Danny Gordon comm and sign up for my free resources.

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. Danny Gordon comm and sign up for my free resources

Cannabis And Cancer Video Transcript

In this video I’m going to talk about one of the most common questions I get asked and what the heck to do with cannabis and cancer. So I get asked this question all the time by my patients by email on social media and usually it comes in the form of you know.

I have cancer or one of my loved ones have cancer can I use cannabis to help them is it the treatment for cancer can they use it as for side effects management what the heck can they do with it and how to actually use it and what products to actually use so before I get into how I’ve used it with my patients who do have cancer.

Just something to be really clear on is I don’t use cannabis as a primary treatment for cancer. I used to help them with their side effects of their primary cancer treatments to get them through the treatments and make their life easier, made their quality of life better and to help a fatigue and nausea, and all those other side effects. In fact I often get asked you know, can I just quit all of my cancer therapy and just use cannabis instead?

The answer right now is no, because we just don’t have the evidence to say that cannabis can cure cancer. And in fact I’ve actually had patients who before they got to see me had tried to treat their cancer on their own and for going all medical help except for just using cannabis themselves to treat their cancer. And they’d actually missed a really important treatment window to treat their cancer when it was curative.

So I’m really really clear when I talk to patients and when I talk to my family members and my friends, who are going through cancer that they should definitely not use cannabis as their primary method of treating their cancer. And they should always go with Western medicine best approaches first.

So how do I actually use it when I have a patient sitting in front of me in my medical practice, who’s come to me for help with their cancer symptoms. So a lot of my patients going through chemotherapy radiation all the kinds of cancer therapies often have a really hard time getting through those therapies without lots of help, because they’re really really hard therapies they’re really hard badi, they’re hard on your brain and I have found cannabis to be quite useful in helping people get through these treatments.

So normally what I would do is I start with what’s called a CBD oil. And I often use to help with cancer related anxiety and treatment related anxiety, because going through cancer treatments is really anxiety provoking. It’s just a normal response so that can be really useful it can also be really useful in helping with the calming down of the nervous system and potentially even with the neuropathy, or the nerve pain side-effects from some of the chemotherapy drugs.

I also sometimes recommend vaporizing cannabis to help with the chemotherapy nausea and vomiting, because it works really quickly. We need a prize it and also to help with appetite and to help with the other fatigue associated side-effects from the chemotherapy, or from the cancer itself. I found when people vaporize cannabis and usually I use a combination of CBD and THC. We start with just a little bit of a string the THC and high CBD and then we add more THC. If we need to and we have the vaporizer in a vaporizer it really can be helpful.

And it’s kind of an immediate onset action to help with some of these side-effects that other drugs sometimes, just don’t really work that well for with my patients who I’m treating, Hugh have cancer they have found it to be such an incredible tool to help them get through the treatment. But also to just improve their quality of life, help them really spend time with their loved ones, help them actually have some quality of life as they go through their treatments. And also as they recover from their cancer once they finish their treatments and also in my patients who were considered, you know palliative care where their cancer is probably not going to be curative but they really want to have a quality of life with the time that they have and they want to really enjoy their friends and family. and they want to have good pain control without relying on huge doses of morphine, that they need to manage that pain.

I’ve found with my patients who are palliative and they have a terminal cancer diagnosis, it can still really really help them with pain management. With things like being able to be awake and alert and able to interact with their loved ones, in a way that morphine and those other pain medications that we often use are just not really that helpful with. Because they make people feel really slow and they have lots and lots of side effects. Sometimes when people come to see me for a cancer and they’re asking me, okay how is the cannabis gonna interact with my chemotherapy? that’s really where I have to tell them that we don’t really know the answer to that question for sure.

The research is just at the beginning, when it comes to the drug in the herb interactions between cannabis even CBD and cancer drugs. So really it’s a big question mark and people really have to understand this if they’re gonna use cannabis as they go through their chemotherapy. And I’ve had a few patients who have for example cancers that are curative especially ones related to a melanoma type of skin cancer, and certain types of lung cancer. where there’s been in one small study showing that cannabis combined with the chemotherapy drug which works on the immune system for that kind of cancer it may actually decrease the response to that drug.

So in some cases with those patients, they’ve actually decided to wait and hold off on using cannabis until they’re finished their treatments. There’s also been a lot of research done in animal models aid with cannabis and cancer, but the tricky thing is when we apply an animal model so like research done in rats or in the test tube or in a petri dish. To humans it doesn’t always pan out and we’ve tried to do this before with other drugs and got all excited about animal models. And then when you put it into real humans it doesn’t work the same way, because we’re not actually the same as an animal model or a future dish model.

So we know that a lot of the cannabinoids like THC and CBD have anti-tumor effects in a petri dish and it’s a promising area of research for cancer, but we don’t know yet how exactly to use it to actually treat cancer yet in humans. The most the furthest we’ve got with this research is with a type of brain tumor called glioblastoma. Where they’ve combined certain types of cannabinoids with conventional medications conventional chemotherapy agents to try to reduce the tumor size. And so far those studies are promising but they’re still early stages. Then there’s this whole thing about tumor receptor types so every tumor has little proteins on it and there’s different receptors for every tumor type and some tumors actually have cannabinoid receptors.

So again how does that work when we add cannabis into the mix does it help the tumor grow does it shrink the tumor the answer is probably maybe a combination of both depending on the dose, depending on the type of cannabis use whether it’s CBD or THC. And again even within that we’re not really sure what dose is best for each type of cancer and there’s probably some cancers where cannabis is just not good in general. And there’s probably some cancers where cannabis may help shrink tumors potentially especially in combination with some other therapies. So there’s a lot that we still don’t know, so really right now the bottom line is cannabis can be helpful with treatment side-effect management as long as people are aware of the relative potential risks of using it.

That way another really exciting and promising area that I’ve used where I’ve used cannabis with my cancer patients is helping them with the cancer recovery process. So the crushing post-cancer fatigue that kind of can turn into this kind of chronic fatigue type syndrome that can go on for years after people have finished their primary cancer treatments, is something that not a lot of people talk about. Doctors don’t really warn patients about it and patients are always left on their own a lot of the time to deal with this crushing fatigue, and they can often get anxiety and they have you know emotional trauma from going through their cancer, you look a bit of PTSD type symptoms.

And this is where I find medical cannabis really helpful, so in my patients who have stopped their treatments there they’ve been sent they’ve been discharged, so they’ve been kind of given that you know you’re free card from their cancer team. And they’ve been sent back into the world to live their normal life post cancer. I use CBD usually in an oil form and also sometimes vaporized cannabis with a little bit of THC to help with things, like daytime fatigue to help with things like sleep. And to help with this really this whole recovery process of cancer that not a lot of people really talk about.

I find when I use it this way even helping with people recover the nerve pain damage that sometimes the chemotherapy drugs can cause, it’s been really helpful for a lot of my patients. So the taxane based chemotherapy agents for example can cause a lot of numbness and tingling and burning hands and feet. And I’ve used CBD oil in some of my patients who are recovering from cancer to help with their their pain and they found it very useful over a period of months. So these are just some of the ways that I have found cannabis and useful CBD oil useful and helping my patients who are going through cancer to help get through their treatments recover.

And as far as an actual treatment for cancer we hope that we will have more information on this in the near future as more research emerges. So if you liked this video please give it a like please leave me a comment and share it with someone, who may benefit to someone in your life who may be suffering with cancer and wants to know about cannabis. and if you want more on CBD cannabis wellness evidence-based natural medicine and brain wellness come join me on drdanigordon.com and sign up for my free resources.

CBD Oil For Pain – Video Transcript

In this episode today we’re going to be talking about CBD Oil for pain. So how can CBD oil help chronic pain conditions, what kind of chronic pain conditions it helps with and which ones it may not be so helpful with and then we’re going to talk about how to actually use CBD and the experiences I’ve had using high CBD types of hemp in medical cannabis with my patients with chronic pain. So this is a question I get asked all of the time in facebook groups by email and of course with my patients is they really want to try to use CBD and usually in an oil forms of CBD oil for their chronic pain now there’s some CBD oils that you can get over-the-counter in some countries that are from hemp and they don’t have any THC in it or less than 0.2 percent THC so basically none and then there’s the medical cannabis that really has high high high CBD low THC but does it a little bit of detectable THC in it let’s say 1% THC so in my medical practice in Canada where medical cannabis is legal I use a lot of very high CBD very low THC oils to help patients with chronic pain now chronic pain it’s a just a huge broad area of medicine because there’s so many areas where pain can come from pain can come from the nervous system being injured and come from the nerves called neuropathic pain or nerve pain it can come from inflammation so if someone who has an autoimmune disease or they have arthritis from just wear and tear they can all get different types of pain and you have pain in the nerve endings and you have pain in the body and then you have pain that starts in the brain that’s again something called central pain so with all of these different types of pain actually one of the most important systems in our body to manage pain is our own cannabis system in our body our endocannabinoids system so what this means is that when we are facing pain whether it’s chronic pain or acute pain there’s molecules in our body there’s chemicals our body makes to help fight that pain and our body makes cannabis like compounds cannabis like molecules called endocannabinoids it helps to really regulate our pain perception how we kind of perceive pain and also how pain really changes the brain over time so a really common question I get is you know what should I do when I’ve already tried CBD from somewhere over the counter from a hemp store for example for my chronic pain and it didn’t do anything does that mean that cannabis medicine in general and CBD in general it just can’t help me the answer is usually no usually the answer is that it probably can be helpful somewhat but it really depends on the type of CBD the concentration of CBD it’s different for every person in every pain condition and a lot of other factors like was it a full spectrum cannabis medicine product with lots of different chemicals in it besides the CBD or was a just CBD without anything else like a CBD islip what I find with a lot of chronic pain conditions is because CBD actually interacts with our own cannabis system in our own bodies called the endocannabinoid system it doesn’t actually turn pain off directly like a painkiller for example what it does instead is it down regulates our perception of pain and the kind of tones our our nervous system so to speak so it can help with chronic pain over a period of time but often times it might take weeks or months to see in effect and it doesn’t cure chronic pain so you have to keep taking it so what can happen with a lot of people is they start taking a very small amount of CS CBD oil and they don’t really see much difference if anything oftentimes they have to use a different dose a different product or sometimes adding a tiny bit of THC so using in Canada for example where this is legal a strain of cannabis oil that has a tiny bit of THC and still very very high amount of CBD actually works better for chronic pain in many cases because it actually binds directly to some of the the pain receptors using the THC and then the CBD makes the THC work even better even at these tiny little doses so normally even at those tiny doses of THC people don’t normally feel impaired or high so a lot of times people think that CBD oil is going to work directly for their chronic pain but again because CBD actually doesn’t bind to either one of the cannabis like receptors in our body the cb1 or the CBT receptor like THC does it works in a more kind of overall toning capacity like a lot of herbal medicines it’s all about really toning the nervous system and this is where CBD can be helpful over time there’s also still so much we don’t know about CBD and about the cannabis plant in general we’re really only at the beginning of our scientific understanding and this is really I mean I mean when I say the beginning I mean I read the most up-to-date cutting-edge research every week on this topic and I’m still feeling like you know we’re really at the beginning so that being said how can you actually use CBD if you have chronic pain well one way that you can use it is you can help use it to help decrease the anxiety that comes with chronic pain because what happens when you have chronic pain is in the back of your mind even though your brain gets used to having chronic pain it takes up so much bandwidth in your brain so much mental and brain energy to basically dampen the pain signals so you can just go about your life and not feel like you’re in constant trauma that over time it can cause a lot of brain anxiety and it can cause a lot of fatigue so what I find seem to be helpful with when someone has chronic pain one of the ways there’s many but one of the ways is helping to decrease the brain anxiety levels so basically it helps kind of calm their brain down which dampens the fight-or-flight response or you know the danger response system in the brain and that also dampens pain signals and it also dampens our pain perception because when you have chronic your nervous system is on edge all of the time it’s like you’re caught in this fight or flight running away from a saber-toothed tiger cycle all of the time and everything is heightened so your awareness of everything of sounds of smells of bright lights and of pain everything gets amplified so basically it just helps kind of calm everything down a notch and even in itself that’s really helpful with chronic pain sufferers another way that can actually help chronic pain is if the chronic pain has an inflammation component so that’s actually most types of chronic pain even indirectly if you have nerve pain sometimes there’s an inflammation component as well so what CBD does in animal models we know and we think in humans although we need really bigger research studies to say exactly how this works but it’s probably very similar to what we’re seeing in animal models is that CBD actually works on inflammation through a number of different pathways in the body so it can shut down inflammation in some pathways so if pain is coming from inflammation CBD used daily over time may help reduce inflammation and that kind of pain as well another factor in many forms of chronic pain even if you didn’t start out this way is the longer the pain goes on the nervous system tries to adapt to the pain and basically your own endocannabinoid system in your other pain control systems they get out of whack they just don’t work as well and they kind of reach this new baseline this new kind of dysregulated baseline of I’m okay but actually the nervous system is really just regulated so this is where CBD may be able to help again because it may be able to help rebalance the endocannabinoids system when it’s gotten out of whack so the last thing that I’m just gonna mention is okay what types of chronic pain do I see enjoy treat with medical cannabis and high CBD strains especially so I see quite a variety of chronic pain conditions one of the really interesting things that I’ve noticed in my clinical work with patients and this is not something that’s really in the published literature yet is after someone’s received chemotherapy for cancer in many cases they use different drugs that really affect numbness and tingling and burning sensations of burning pain the hands and the feet and this is kind of a neuropathic or nerve type of pain that specifically people get after a lot of chemo therapies especially the breast cancer chemotherapy regimens and what I’ve found is when patients use CBD oil after they finish their chemo and they keep using it their pain their burning pain in their hands and their tingling pain in their hands and their feet tend to tend to go away a lot quicker then I would say on average so it may be really a place specifically receiveed II show some promise there’s some animal studies on that type of pain specifically using CBD and we need more research to say exactly how it works in humans but it’s really promising another type of pain that I treat is fibromyalgia I also treat arthritis pain and pain that’s associated with a lot of other chronic diseases so I’m gonna talk about each of those in another video specifically but in general I think for chronic pain CBD holds a lot of promise especially when it’s combined with other chemicals in the cannabis plant and potentially with other herbals and other medications so if you like this video please subscribe to our Channel and also please share this video with your friends and family who might benefit from it too and if you want more great free resources from me on CBD cannabis medicine and evidence-based natural medicine come over and join me on dr. Danny Gordon comm and sign up for our emails where you’re going to get updates for me personally and exclusive content

Everyone knows they should have better ‘work life balance’.

With increasing pressure to do more in less time, it is important to take time to lower your stress levels and refocus your mind in order to reach your goals. But where do you start?

With the overload of information online purporting ‘must do’ morning routines that are often time intensive, it can be hard to fit all these ‘essential’ hacks into a busy schedule without our ‘destress’ plan adding on even more stress.

With stress related illness and burnout leading more and more patients to my medical practice, it’s more important than ever to take control over stress. These simple life hacks take minimal time and effort but can lead to huge rewards in beating stress, boosting productivity and feeling happier.

 

1. Start the workday with 60 seconds of mindfulness and ‘inner smile’.

This is a core part of my morning routine, and I always do this before I start working. Even 60 seconds helps to boost my energy and positivity, maintain presence with clients and patients, and have more patience with my coworkers and staff.

An easy way to do this is to sit in your chair with both feet firmly planted on the floor, and focus on your breathing for five breaths. Becoming aware of your breath helps focus your mind away from worries and distraction. Next, imagine sending feelings of love and kindness to yourself, then sending those feelings towards others, starting with the people you interact with closely each day at work, and then moving onto people you may talk to that day.  

When we get cynical or lost in our worries it creates a cycle of stress which increases the risk of

burnout, this daily practice can help to break that cycle.

 

2. Keep a paper daily and weekly planner.  

Whilst it is common in this digital age to organise all your projects, daily scheduling and brainstorming online, it can lead to overwhelm and anxiety. Finishing tasks becomes a problem when they get buried in a myriad of digital folders in your organizational system.

I have found changing to a paper journal planner to be the single most profound way to improve my focus and stick to my goals. This is backed up by science, as some studies are discovering that the brain may actually learn and remember tasks better when they are handwritten compared to digital planners. [Study Evidence Here].

 

3. Write in a journal about ‘emotionally charged events’ once a week.

This could be anything that has particularly bothered you this week. Multiple studies [Reported here] have now proven that you impact immune system cells, immune function, lower blood pressure and shift mood by writing about emotionally charged events in a journal.  It is the brain’s way of ‘unpacking’ mental boxes and cleaning out the ‘basement’ of the brain from negative stories we otherwise subconsciously hold onto on a deep limbic brain level, causing a drain on mental energy.

 

4. Set an ‘off screens’ time limit each night.  

This includes your smartphone, computer and TV. The blue light from screens hits the retina at the back of the eye and shuts down the brain sleep hormone production, called melatonin [Study: impact of LED-backlit computer screens].  In my house we have a 7pm rule of ‘no screens’ and after that only non-screen activities like using non back-lit kindles, books and audio podcasts are allowed.

 

5. Swap coffee for green tea.  

Green tea has about ⅓ the caffeine of coffee, and contains L-theanine, a calming amino acid which levels out the caffeine effect, preventing energy and mood crashes a few hours later. It also contains EGCG which has positive effects on your metabolism to help reduce food cravings, as well as heart protective and anti-aging properties.

 

6. Avoid checking your email for the first 30 minutes of the day.  

This is a big one, as most of us roll out of bed and immediately check our email on our phones. This creates a ‘reactionary’ pattern of starting the day focused on other people’s requests rather than your own goals. As Brendon Burchard is famous for saying “the inbox is nothing but a convenient organizing system for other people’s agendas”’  This is one I have personally put into habit and it has led to amazing shifts in focus when starting my day.

 

7. Take Adaptogens.  

Adaptogens are herbal compounds from plants that help humans buffer cortisol and stress hormones that can lead to burnout and adrenal fatigue.  For an all-round winner, I like the Indian herbal Ashwagandha, and I take it in powder form mixed into my morning superfood smoothie.   It is generally considered a very safe herb.

 

8. Schedule in gym time like it’s your most important meeting of the week.

This is something that I have found crucial to ensuring I fit exercise in despite a very busy work schedule. I write my gym or dance class times into my personal daily and weekly planner and share it with my husband so he knows those are ‘blocked’ times for me.

When I exercise regularly, I feel calmer, more creative and I sleep better, and the research supports these effects – exercise beats any drug a thousand times over for mood boosting, stress reducing, sleep and metabolic boosting effects – and it’s free!

 

9. Spend time in nature.  

Multiple studies have proven the benefits of walking or sitting in nature for boosting mood and lowering stress hormones like cortisol.  Nature is important for our brains, because researchers have also found that human brains don’t yet recognize urban concrete landscapes [Study Report ‘Human brain hard-wired for rural tranquility’] – we need nature to calm down the nervous system and ‘reset.’

Make it a part of your daily routine to visit a park near your house, the beach, or any natural environment you can get to within a reasonable distance from home. I get to the beach for a walk at least 3 times a week for my dose of nature and if I am travelling I will find the nearest city park to unwind.

 

These simple productivity hacks have worked wonders for both me and hundreds of my patients and clients; they are time and cost effective ways to transform your productivity.

 

 

It’s the end of January, a time when many well-intentioned New Year’s Resolutions seem to slip further and further away as the work load piles up. We all want to be more productive, whether at work or in our personal lives and hobbies, but often our efforts to bring more focus into our routines and optimize success are sidetracked by the frustrations of daily life and the seemingly endless to do lists.

Despite our best intentions, many of us are low on productivity and high on caffeine at this time of year, and it can seem impossible to break the cycle.

The result? Our brains become overwhelmed by the pressures, demands and goals we face, and if we don’t call it out, this state of chronic brain overwhelm can sabotage our productivity in a big way.

 

The Brain Thinking Error

The brain thinking error that is causing this is actually surprisingly simple. It is trying to ‘keep it all in your head’ instead of unloading your cluttered thoughts by writing them down.

Ruminating on all your daily worries, to-dos and should-dos makes you mentally fatigued and clogs up your thinking, even though you may feel like you are being ‘productive’ by trying to keep all these top priority tasks at the forefront of your mind. The more we think about something in this way, the less it is getting done, and we inevitably start to associate it with stress, pressure and worry.

Keeping all your worries, tasks and ideas inside is bad for you because it creates hypervigilance in the older ‘reptilian’ part of the brain that manages threat alerts — the limbic system and amygdala.  This creates a background of ‘brain anxiety’ that can cloud thinking and prevent the higher functioning brain areas in the frontal lobe and the PFC from making good decisions.

Although it can sound like common sense, most people rarely take the time to ‘unload’ their brain and channel their thoughts. This is one of the biggest errors that I see in my clients, many of whom work in high-pressure corporate environments. By failing to confront this simple error they have ended up stressed and overwhelmed, and risk becoming burnt out.

 

The good news?

This simple brain thinking error is surprisingly easy to resolve no matter how busy you are, and it can be the start of a radical change in your productivity every single day.

Many of my clients have seen huge increases in their productivity from adopting surprisingly simple hacks, such as using paper-based journals to unload their thoughts and organise their goals into a condensed and manageable format.

Here’s how you can do it to.

 

Unclogging your brain: A How To Guide

Start by writing down all the ‘stuff’ that is constantly at the forefront of your mind or that you have been worrying about for some time. This could include important tasks, goals that you haven’t got round to starting, or even areas of your personal life that are causing you stress. By doing this, you are unclogging your ‘mental inbox’.

You can use either a digitalised notepad or organizing app, or a paper-based journal for this. I personally prefer a paper-based journal, and have found changing to a paper journal planner to be the single most profound way to improve my own focus and stick to my goals. This is backed up by science, as some studies are discovering that the brain may actually learn and remember tasks better when they are handwritten compared to digital planners. This process can also be surprisingly cathartic.

Once you have all of this written down in one place, you can start to order it and set action steps to deal with each task or ‘thing’ you need to do, attend, write or achieve. This can help to decrease the constant ‘mental chatter’ and thinking overload that zaps your mental and emotional resources.

Being able to visualise all of this information and have it documented in an orderly fashion and in one physical place can do wonders for decluttering your thinking process.

No paper journal? If you need to unload on the go my favourite app is ‘Google Keep’, a note-taking service which allows you to neatly organise your thoughts with keys, labels and colour coding.

In order to optimize the positive impacts on your thinking and ultimately your productivity, it is important to do this every day. If you do this, your ‘mental inbox’ will be clear, leading to more positive and ordered thinking, more free space in your mind, more creative solutions to problems and less reactionary stress-based decisions.

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