Your Brain On Bliss

Manitoba Harvest Hemp Hearts

Congratulations to Canadian hemp food producer Manitoba Harvest for its new Hemp Hearts. Long a supplier of hemp foods, the Winnipeg company has come up with a new product mix for hemp seeds.

I am happy to be able to purchase this highly nutritious food, filled with brain friendly Omega 3s, essential oils, fiber and protein, even at $16/pound.  As an Oregonian, though, I am sorry that hemp seeds cannot be grown in my state (and country). Farming is an important state industry and Oregon farmers could doubtless produce a bountiful crop of this food Americans so desperately need. How about an Oregon Harvest, instead of having to import what Oregonians could grow. In 2009, Oregon even passed state legislation, signed by the governor and now state law, allowing Oregonians to grow hemp. But no Oregon farmers are growing hemp because the DEA would crush them and take their land in forfeiture if they did, just one of many ways this bloated agency’s regulatory morass stifles American (and Oregon) capitalism. Silly regulations bluntly enforced by the DEA prevent fellow citizens from growing these powerhouse foodstuffs on American soil.

If the DEA had its way, Americans would have no access to hemp seed foods at all. That’s right, perhaps the most nutritious food on earth would not be a choice available to American consumers. Americans being fattened into diabesity by their obesity-inducing diets could not, by DEA mandate, purchase omega-3 rich hemp seed oils nor seeds until quite recently. Until overturned by court order, this federal bureaucracy restricted the rights of Americans to buy and consume hemp seeds, quite possibly the planet’s most nutritious food. Similarly, the rights are stolen from American farmers and entrepreneurs to grow and monetize one of humankind’s oldest crops.

In addition to supplying sublimely nutritious food, hemp is (or would be) one of American industry’s most useful basic resources. Virtually every part of the plant is usable. Fiber and fuel are two key areas.

Superb hemp-based building materials, comparable and even superior to wood provide vast opportunities in construction and manufacturing. In terms of working and building materials, hemp, of course, amplified the productivity of early Americans by providing them rope, canvass and a host of other materials. Deemed such an important contributor to colonial productivity and prosperity, some colonies required the growing of hemp. Its use declined with the availability of seemingly endless forests for wood building materials and with the introduction of oil-base synthetic fibers. With end of exploitative forestry and the passing of cheap oil, hemp fiber again has a great future as a source of construction material, building material and fiber for fabrication. Many building materials incorporating organic material from cannabis sativa are gaining favor.

• Hemp can be incorporated into fiber board, insulation, and hempcrete, a more natural form of concrete.

• Productivity with these materials is multiplied. First, they are carbon negative, a crucial consideration in a warming world. Cannabis plant material comprising hempcrete and similar products sequesters carbon away, out of the atmosphere. Such materials may be locally sourced, as hemp can grow nearly anywhere, saving transportation and carbon costs.

Clothing is a basic human need. Hemp fabric is already a preferred material for providing comfortable, hypoallergenic, UV protective cloth.

Using hemp for fuel offers huge American opportunities. Pure hemp seed oil can be used directly by any diesel engine. For now, hemp oil makes for an expensive fuel, but of course, it is against the law to produce it here in the USA. Maybe that has something to do with the high cost.

Of course, it is probable that medical care is the field where cannabis sativa, if freed of DEA strangulation, could make it grandest contribution to American well being and productivity. With the discovery of the endocannabinoid regulatory system in the 1990s, and subsequent exploration of its many functions in human physiology, and entire new area of medical research was opened. Or at least it would have been, had the entire cannabis plant not suffered DEA Schedule 1 status. Nearly all medical research is stymied by this most restrictive classification.

Recent congressional legislation has enhanced DEA scheduling capabilities. In effect, this bloated federal agency is allowed to write it own laws, on its own, by scheduling any substance it chooses. Bizarrely, legislators running on small government, anti-regulation platforms are quick to burden American capitalists with new regulations that benefit only DEA bureaucrats.

So American capitalists, entrepreneurs, farmers and dozens of other productive professions are being denied a hugely important raw material of food, fiber, fuel, medications, literally thousands of products to serve the real needs of Americans. The prosperity and well being of millions of Americans are sacrificed at the bureaucratic alter of the DEA. This is big government at its very worst.

A major new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association JAMA finds no reduction of lung function in cannabis smokers. The research followed a huge sample (5000) over 20 years, including data on consumption of marijuana and tobacco cigarettes. Cigarette smokers were found to lose lung function over the two decades. Smokers of marijuana lost no lung function; intriguingly, they had slightly greater lung capacity than subjects who smoked nothing! This effect was attributed to the smoking technique of the cannabis users.

This research is in line with other findings on the relative innocuous (even healthful!) effects of marijuana smoke. Dr. Donald Taskin of UCLA is one of the planet’s most respected researchers on the effects of marijuana smoking on the lungs. After decades of studying possible cancer causing effects on the lungs, Dr. Tashkin published his results in 2005. Surprisingly, he found no increase cancer risk, even in heavy, long term marijuana smokers.  His data even indicated a protective effect of THC against cancer.

The article reports that Tashkin’s “own study of heavy, habitual marijuana smokers — people who smoked the equivalent of a joint a day for 50 years —  found no harmful effect on lung function.” Still, Dr. Tashkin cautions,  “The smoke in marijuana contains thousands of ingredients, many of which are toxic and noxious and have the potential, at least, to cause airway injury,” Tashkin says. “In an ideal world, it would be preferable to take it in another form.”

The inhalation of any smoke, from Marlboro cigarettes to the fumes of wood stove, is less healthy than breathing fresh air. Although cannabis smoke may be safe from raising cancer risks and not reducing lung function, using a vaporizer may still be a safer alternative. Virtually nothing is burned in releasing medical cannabinoids from cannabis by vaporization.

Seemingly, 2011 would have good year for the federal government to be engaged in increasing employment and securing the financial system from further meltdown. Unfortunately, the government did neither of these. Astoundingly, federal bureaucrats instead re-energized the idiotic and failed war on drugs, especially medical marijuana.

DEA jackboots raid a house.

The year began dismally with a unanimous senate confirmation of Bush/Obama appointee Michele Leonhart to head the DEA.  Any hope for cannabis rescheduling, or even research, are dashed by her choke hold on medical marijuana as administrator of this bloated agency. During confirmation hearing her anti-medical cannabis ravings were praised by powerful senators, such as Senate Judiciary Leader Jeff (”I love the DEA”) Sessions, R-Alabama. The bureaucrat Leonhart is now empowered to essentially single-handedly determine US doctrine on medical marijuana, predictably hard-line. Schedule I classification of marijuana has been very, very good to the agency and to the bloated pensions of thousands of needless, useless federal employees. This erroneous Schedule I classification for cannabis is the cause of life-crushing harshness of twenty million arrests during this senseless and on-going war on marijuana.

One possible bright ray of hope came with legislation offered by the retiring Barney Frank and presidential hopeful Ron Paul. H.R. 2306 would have repealed federal penalties for production, distribution, and possession of cannabis for medical use. This one piece of freedom-promoting legislation was quick quashed by a single powerful representative, Lamar Smith R-Texas. He simply refused to give the legislation a hearing and the desperately needed legislation died on the spot, tyranny in action.

Encouraged by this drug war zealotry, freedom-harming initiatives sprouted from seemingly every branch of the federal government.

• The ATF, perhaps trying divert attention from their appalling gun running to Mexican cartels fiasco, sought to deny second amendment gun rights to patients afforded relief by state legal medical marijuana.
• The IRS gutted the financial viability of cannabis dispensaries by denying ability to expense costs, as every other business is allowed.
• Congress, supposed infused by “small government” representatives voted in 2010, instead proposed new, big-government-at-its-worst intrusive legislation. Notable was the legislation, proposed again by the lamentable Lamar Smith R-TX that would criminalize American’s activities overseas, if they violated the Controlled Substances Act.
  
• Federal prosecutors across the country banded together to attack voter-approved state medical cannabis protections in the fifteen states with such legislation. By playing the federal Schedule I trump card, federal prosecutors have all they need to persecute, jail, fine, and seize assets from those working for medical cannabis freedom and building this new health care industry.

As George W. Bush would say, “they attack us because they hate our freedoms.” But the attackers in 2011 are our own taxpayer-supported federal bureaucrats. They attack fellow citizens benefiting medically from cannabis and the health care industry that was quickly growing, to protect and expand the rosy drug-warrior careers and pensions this failed war on Americans has provided these lordly bureaucrats.

Rescheduling cannabis and drastically downsizing the counterproductive war on drugs were easy steps that Barack Obama could have taken.  He could have chosen a leader, such as Norm Stamper, rather than a drug war crazed self-server to head the DEA. Instead, as in so many ways, he has chosen to play out George W. Bush’ third term. Far more Americans support ending cannabis prohibition than support Obama’s reelection.

Sigh, 2012 does not look much better. Unless maybe Ron Paul were elected president.

When given the choice, Americans suffering from a wide variety of medical afflictions substitute safer cannabis instead of increasingly lethal prescription drugs.

Supposedly, freedom of choice is a key American value, especially with regards to personal decisions such as one’s own health care. Yet the federal government and most states deny their citizens the right to include the medical herb cannabis as part of their personal health care options. When “given” this choice in states with voter-mandated medical exemptions patients substitute medical marijuana for prescription drugs.

Increasingly, prescription drugs are costly, debilitating and dangerous. Far more Americans now die from effects of prescription drugs than from the DEA scheduled drugs, such as heroin, meth and cocaine. Prescription opioids, sedatives and tranquilizers are the biggest killers, usually ending lives by suppressing breathing. When considering drug policy and medical options, it must be noted that zero persons, none, die from medical cannabis. As stated by DEA law judge Francis Young, “Nearly all medicines have toxic, potentially lethal effects. But marijuana is not such a substance. There is no record in the extensive medical literature describing a proven, documented cannabis-induced fatality.”

Evidence pointing to this harm reducing substitution has again been validated by survey of patients using medical cannabis. Two-thirds of the responses showed the patients choosing to substitute cannabis for powerful, disorienting and sometimes addictive and lethal prescription drugs. In particular, patients in pain are able to use less narcotic, opioid pain reliever when medical cannabis was used in adjunct.

Cannabis is one of the least toxic of all drugs. Meanwhile, it offers clear medical benefits to those suffering from a variety of diseases and maladies, including glaucoma, pain and MS. One of its most medically beneficial properties may be in allowing users to use less of dangerous medications and pain relievers.

End moronic Schedule I persecution of medical cannabis!

Click to see the Republican Debate on Medical Cannabis you will see nowhere else.

Rarely does this site quote from Forbes, as in Steve Forbes, but Doug Bandow has performed a great service with his current piece at Forbes.com, It’s Time To Declare Peace In The War Against Drugs.

The former special assistant to Ronald Reagan elegantly catalogs the malignacies of current drug policy. Concerning cannabis policy he writes,

• “The Drug War also interferes with treatment of the sick and dying. Cannabis and other drugs can aid people suffering from a variety of maladies. Additional research would help determine how, in what form, and for what marijuana could be best used. Yet government effectively punishes vulnerable people in great pain, even agony.”

Author Bandow notes some of the ruinous wrongs ending the war on drugs would correct:

• “Banning drugs raises their price, creates enormous profits for criminal entrepreneurs, thrusts even casual users into an illegal marketplace, encourages heavy users to commit property crimes to acquire higher-priced drugs, leaves violence the only means for dealers to resolve disputes, forces government to spend lavishly on enforcement, corrupts public officials and institutions, and undermines a free society. All of these effects are evident today and are reminiscent of Prohibition (of alcohol) in the early 20th Century.”

Bandow must have not been responsible for Ronald Reagan’s drug policies. This ’small-government’ president’s worst hypocrisy and mistake was to “run up the battle flag on the war on drugs.” See Why 1984 WAS like 1984.

During this “Just Say No” era, bloated bureaucracies such as the DEA had money thrown at them, the Bill of Rights was disemboweled with the drug war exception, mandatory minimums were enacted. A quintupling of the US prison population began, now burdening the USA with the world’s highest number (and percentage) of caged citizens. Many of them are totally non-violent and no risk to society, ordinary Americans entrapped by draconian laws.

In late 2011, incredibly, the USA is again on the path of ramping up the drug war yet again, especially against cannabis, a medically beneficent natural substance that should never have been illegal, much less Schedule I. As long as it is Schedule I, self-serving Feds have everything they need to promote and expand their jobs and pensions with a renewed war on marijuana. Evidence of this new heavy hand of prohibition is everywhere.

• Obama’s pathetic renomination of Bush-appointee and arch-medical cannabis nemesis Michele Leonhart to head DEA. The president’s ill thought appointment, and her gag-inducing Senate confirmation, allows this national police force to reinvigorate its war against Americans benefiting from medical marijuana.

• The California dispensary system, conforming with state law, is about to be broken. One of the few positive aspects of the California economy just now, the dispensary system efficiently provides Californians their medicine, while generating employment, innovation and local and state tax revenue. Now the IRS and threats of ruinous property forfeitures are being used to close down these employers and tax payers.

• Another crushing blow to any drug peace, was the Senate’s idiotic rejection of Jim Webb’s National Criminal Justice Commission Act (S. 306).  Crucial issues, such as grotesquely counterproductive laws, prosecutions, mandatory minimums and incarcerations could have been questioned in the light of day. Not going to happen.

It is preposterous that the USA, at this challenging point in its history can reinvigorate one of its most clearly failed policies, the federal war on marijuana. The country desperately needs to not be wasting its resources and attacking the rights, medical freedoms and lives of its citizens, but it is doing just that.

Incredibly, as America fights its way through an economic and political morass, one of the country’s most counterproductive and idiotic failures, the War on Drugs, is ramping up.

New congressional legislation would extend globally its icy grip by inflicting felonies on Americans any place on earth, if their behavior involves the spiritual, medical or recreational use of any drug illegal in the the USA. Or even if that behavior merely involved talking about the possibility of using drugs such as cannabis or psychoactive mushrooms. As reported by Radley Balko in The Huffington Post, “allows prosecutors to bring conspiracy charges against anyone who discusses, plans or advises someone else to engage in any activity that violates the Controlled Substance Act, the massive federal law that prohibits drugs like marijuana and strictly regulates prescription medication.”

The thought police in this case is Texas Representative Lamar Smith. Tragically, this big government conservative is head of the Judiciary Committee, perfectly placed for power to guide American drug policy further down into the dungeon. Had similar legislators been in place during the alcohol prohibition, it would have been a felony for Americans to drink wine in France. Or to have discussed drinking wine in France. The legislation will doubtless pass the “small government” House of Representative and quite possibly the Senate. Drug-war criminal Lamar Smith recently single-handedly crushed legislation by Ron Paul and Barney Frank that would have excepted medical cannabis from federal prosecution.

The founding fathers must be writhing in their graves, as the all powerful federal government lays total claim to the lives, minds and behaviors of Americans anywhere on the planet.

Soldiers on patrol

Even more evidence now points to cannabis as an effective treatment for PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder. Confirming research showing PTSD may be particularly responsive to cannabinoids, this new Israeli rat study refines the timeline of effective cannabinoid treatment for the debilitating condition. Long before this important research, though, the effectiveness of cannabis and cannabinoids in treating PTSD was becoming well known. Again, much of the research is Israeli. American researchers are denied permission by the DEA to study medical cannabis.

Although events and conditions that can cause PTSD are diverse, including auto accident. Post-traumatic stress disorder is common following significant orthopedic trauma. But war experiences are key triggers for PTSD and now nearly two million Americans have served America’s in its two longest wars, Iraq and Afghanistan. A search of Science Daily finds:

• Post Traumatic Stress Has Tripled Among Combat-Exposed Military Personnel

• Mental Illnesses Appear Common Among Veterans Returning From Iraq And Afghanistan

• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Primary Suicide Risk Factor For Veterans

• PTSD Causes Early Death From Heart Disease, Study Suggests

How ironic, and troubling, that those who have served their country, and now suffer from combat exposure-caused PTSD do not have the freedom to use this effective medication back home, at least in most US states. Even states with medical marijuana laws do not all include PTSD as a qualifying condition. Instead, those who theoretically fought for freedom, ours and their own, now have their own freedom of medical choice denied. Some will suffer the antithesis of freedom, incarceration, for choosing a natural and safe (zero deaths) medication for their PTSD symptoms. Federally, all are criminals, felons. Sadly, with its war on cannabis, America violates it basic tenets of personal choice and the core right of American citizens to be left alone by their government.

Instead of enjoying to freedom of medical choice, Iraq and Afghanistan PTSD-wounded are commonly prescribed powerful pharmaceutical anti-depressant and even anti-psychotic drugs. One of the many possible negative results of anti-depressant use is thickening of the arteries. In this latest study showing the effectiveness of cannabinoids in treating PTSD, CB1 receptor antagonists were shown to block this protective effect. This demonstrates the key role of CB1 receptors, also activated by cannabis, in treating PTSD.

Related to PTSD is TBI, or traumatic brain injury. Often coming from IED blasts in Iraq and Afghanistan, TBI afflicts thousands of veterans. Israeli research shows that TBI also is responsive to cannabinoid treatment. But that is topic of another post.

People who use cannabis are less likely to be obese than those that do not. This intriguing finding was just revealed in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Two large epidemiological studies found far lower rates of obesity and BMI in cannabis consumers versus abstainers.

Such finding are particularly important when obesity threatens human well-being across the planet. Especially in the USA, but also now world wide, this plague of pounds drives degenerative diseases and health care costs. Obesity is a chronic low grade inflammation. Fat cells displace organs and produce cellular toxins. Obesity kills at least one out of eight Americans.

Should cannabis use worsen this obesity problem, it might be an important contraindication for medical cannabis use. Cannabis consumption is, after all, commonly associated with “the munchies.” Medically it is useful in helping those with wasting syndrome gain weight. The cardiometabolic aspects of enhancing the endocannabinoid response be activating CB1 and CB2 receptors do not seem very beneficial. If anything, they seem negative from several cardiometabolic parameters, such as adiponectin levels.

Remember, it was the cannabinoid receptor antagonist, Rimonabant, that was just a few years ago thought to have a major future as an anti-obesity drug.  This “anti-marijuana” was supposed to give you the “anti-munchies.” But human trials showed it also caused an “anti-high”, exhibited by anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts. It was never approved by the FDA.

The new study, however, shows higher consumption of cannabis with reduced rates of obesity. The authors conclude, “that the prevalence of obesity is lower in cannabis users than in nonusers.” The study was controlled for cigarette smoking. The authors did not speculate by what mechanism cannabis consumers were more free from obesity than people not consuming cannabis.

Generally, the best method to freedom from obesity it to be physically active, walk at least 10,000 steps per day, and maintain a nutritious, calorie-lean diet.

Say YES to NO with exercise!

Regular robust exercise protects (and extends) your health in dozens of ways.  Recent research at Emory University focused on how exercise protects your heart by stimulating your heart into generating and storing the gas, nitric oxide. To be clear, this gas is not nitrous oxide (N2O), the anesthetic “laughing gas.”

The chemical formula for the important cellular signaling gas nitric oxide is NO. One of the main signalling functions of NO is the relaxation of smooth muscles surrounding blood vessels. The resulting vasodilation allows blood to flow easier and in greater volume. Blood pressure is reduced. Dr. Oz includes a graphic of NO molecules widening blood vessels in YOU: Staying Young. He advocates nose breathing to promote NO. NO plays an important role in erections through this blood flow mechanism and is a mechanism employed by Viagra.

In addition to vasodilation, NO protects the heart and arteries, specifically the endothelial lining of blood vessels, in other ways. NO, which is produced primarily in this endothelium, also helps the heart and arteries by preventing fatty deposits. Plaque build up is reduced. Oxidation in artery walls is lessened. Stickiness of platelets and monocytes is limited. All these factor help keep arteries clear and healthy.

In the heart, the Emory research showed that this nitric oxide creation and storage in the heart of NO metabolites, nitrite and nitrosothiols proved cardio-protective. They also point to the role of endothelial nitric oxide synthase a (eNOS) and β₃-adrenergic receptors (β₃-ARs). They conclude, “Our findings clearly demonstrate that exercise protects the heart against myocardial ischemia–reperfusion injury by stimulation of β₃-ARs and increased cardiac storage of nitric oxide metabolites (ie, nitrite and nitrosothiols).”

This cardio-protective effect lasted about a week after ceasing exercise, presumably through the release of stored NO from its metabolites remaining in the heart. So say “yes” to NO by not letting a week go by without a good session of cardiovascular exercise. Ideally, it is a very good and healthy practice to exercise hard and long enough to produce quickened breathing and sweating on a daily basis.

Much of what is known about physiology is being redefined by the recent discovery and research into the endocannabinoid regulatory system. Few physiological processes seem untouched by this system and NO production is no different.