Transcript - members.thesacredplant.com · Transcript 25 E pi s od e 2 : S t oppi n g Pai n , I n s omn i a, An x i et y , ...

Transcript

Episode 2: Stopping Pain, Insomnia, Anxiety, and Autoimmune Conditions

John Malanca: 00:00:05 Hello, and welcome to Episode 2: Stopping Pain, Insomnia, Anxiety, and Autoimmune Conditions. I'm your host, John Malanca, and I'd like to extend a special thank you to those who've shared our series. By sharing the series, you've taken the first step to improve the health and well being of your loved ones and people all around the world. In episode 1, you saw the proof that deception, greed, and fear have been tools employed to leave the people confused and afraid about the sacred plant, rather than being empowered.

John Malanca: 00:00:25 Today, coming up in episode 2, you will learn how the sacred plant treats autoimmune disease, pain, as well as addiction. You will meet patients who are using the sacred plant to reduce their intake of prescription drugs, and some of them are using cannabis to get off pharmaceuticals completely. In this episode, we'll explain how cannabis can help patients with Crohn's, MS, fibromyalgia, Myasthenia Gravis, chronic pain, insomnia, anxiety, depression, opioid addiction, as well as Lyme disease. You'll be amazed to see how the sacred plant can address so many of these conditions simultaneously, in one patient. And many experts believe that cannabis could actually be the solution to the opioid epidemic that is taking thousands of lives.

Elizabeth Crutchley: 00:01:09 I'm Elizabeth Crutchley, I'm 48. I'm a mother, wife, daughter, and a cannabis patient. I have Crohn's, PTSD, chronic pain, and depression and insomnia. Mostly the Crohn's. I was having flare ups where it was putting me on the floor. My daughter brought home some for me and said, "Mom, try it. I'm tired of seeing you in pain." I tried it. It was amazing. My whole body relaxed. I didn't have that always tensed up feeling and being in pain. And it just relaxed everything. From then on I was using, even though it was still illegal at the time, I still used it because it helped. I was on so much pain medicine. 23 years of narcotic pain medicine, to where it shut my liver down. I spent a month in the hospital with a biliary bag because narcotics shut my liver down.

Elizabeth Crutchley: 00:02:24 Johns Hopkins, the best hospital in the world, had a trial going on where they slowly detox you off of the medicine. I was at the point where the narcotics was making me hazy. And when I went through the detox at Hopkins, this reminded me-

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John Malanca: 00:02:43 So that's part of your history of-

Elizabeth Crutchley: 00:02:45 That's part of my history. January 20, 2015, I went inpatient to Johns Hopkins. And these are the peoples' initials that I made close friendships there. We all were going through it. I'm the only one who has not gone back to it. One has gone back to using narcotics, and two of them have died because they went back to narcotics and overdosed. But with me, the cannabis, it's like this light, and the sun came out. Sounds-

John Malanca: 00:03:19 Fake.

Elizabeth Crutchley: 00:03:20 But it gave me my life back. And now that it's legal here in my state, instead of going to a pharmacy and getting all the poisons . . . I mean, I was on 15 pills, twice a day.

John Malanca: 00:03:32 So are you completely off pharmaceuticals all together?

Elizabeth Crutchley: 00:03:34 Except for one pill. And that's for Lomotil to control, to control the Crohn's. Other than that, from 15 pills to one.

John Malanca: 00:03:43 And are you still having Crohn's breakouts, or are you . . . flare -ups, I should say?

Elizabeth Crutchley: 00:03:48 Very, very rare, yes.

John Malanca: 00:03:50 You mentioned Johns Hopkins, which I too believe it's a great institution. Do they know you're using cannabis?

Elizabeth Crutchley: 00:03:57 Yes.

John Malanca: 00:03:58 That's wonderful. What are their thoughts?

Elizabeth Crutchley: 00:04:00 They can't technically recommend it, but the head of psychiatry . . . he's an old biker dude . . . he says, "I see a total difference in you." He goes, "You're smiling. You're walking." I used to walk with a cane and a walker. He's like, "You're walking. You're moving. You're talking. You're not having manic episodes. You're not in the bathroom all the time."

John Malanca: 00:04:26 And-

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Elizabeth Crutchley: 00:04:27 It works.

John Malanca: 00:04:27 You're off all the medication except one-

Elizabeth Crutchley: 00:04:29 Oh I'm off everything-

John Malanca: 00:04:30 So they must see that success.

Elizabeth Crutchley: 00:04:31 Oh yeah, oh yeah. It's just . . . I had no life. And there's so much I wanna do. And my kids were little and wanted to do so much with them. They were used to, "Oh, mom's whacked out on pain pills. Mom's in bed . . . you know."

John Malanca: 00:04:47 So with your Crohn's, are you finding more success ingesting, via smoking or vaporization, or-

Elizabeth Crutchley: 00:04:52 Ingesting.

Elizabeth Crutchley: 00:04:52 Ingesting, yes.

John Malanca: 00:04:53 Ingesting. A lot of the Crohn's patients we work with do find more success with that as well.

Elizabeth Crutchley: 00:04:58 Yeah because it's given me a life. And with the PTSD, if someone would close the door, you'd have to peel me off the ceiling. Or . . . I couldn't have anybody touch my neck because I was strangled. Even doctors, I'd tell them, "You can now touch my," I don't have that feeling. And it's nice. It's very nice.

Dr. Dustin Sulak: 00:05:24 There's a lot of evidence that's looked at what happens in patients that have serious medical conditions to the rest of their quality of life. And some of these studies have, for example, looked at people with multiple sclerosis or cancer, and then measured for secondary outcomes, like anxiety, depression, quality of sleep, overall function, cognitive function. And what we see when we look at that data, which was reviewed last year in a paper by Zach Walsh out of British Columbia, that these domains are improving in people that are treated with cannabis. So, less anxiety, less depression, better neurocognitive function, and better overall function. And a lot of people think, "Well, how can people be using cannabis to treat a condition? Aren't they high all the

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time or stoned? And isn't their function becoming impaired?" And that's obviously not the case.

Dr. Dustin Sulak: 00:06:17 When cannabis is dosed appropriately, and people are getting relief from their more severe symptoms, then these other outcomes are improving.

Jonathan Otto: 00:06:25 Here's how to understand it, right? The problem really, if you were to look at organs and understand organs, that it's happening in the gut. The autoimmune, leaky gut-intestinal permeability . . . this is where all autoimmune diseases are starting. This is really clear information, and it's ancient wisdom, and it's why ancient philosophers like Hippocrates said that all disease begins in the gut. And that's true, let alone the fact that all autoimmune disease certainly begins in the gut. This is where it starts.

Jonathan Otto: 00:06:54 The amazing power of cannabis is in that it helps to heal inflammation.

Holly Webb: 00:06:59 When I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease, that was, in my opinion, what was totally wrong with me, 100%. But, I quickly realized that this was considered a chronic, incurable disease and that the progression was generally . . . you would start to need to have intestines removed, and then eventually, you would have a colostomy bag. And, I stayed away from support groups because, having grown-up in Hong Kong, I had some Eastern Medicine understanding and I wanted to explore that as well. It was 20 years . . . or 18 years of taking steroids but not wanting to take steroids, so fighting that. Fighting the western medicine regimen. At one point, they had me on 18 pills a day. And this was all Crohn's related. I wasn't diagnosed with the fibromyalgia until later.

Holly Webb: 00:08:00 Two months before I was scheduled for the colonoscopy, which was exploratory to see what they were gonna cut out of me, I decided I better get my act together and why not try what I had been espousing all this time? And so, I took quite a hefty dose, and this was before they could actually separate the CBDs from the THC. And so, for two months, I was quite altered. And after the colonoscopy, the doctor in the recovery room told me I wouldn't have know you had Crohn's if I didn't have your chart. Actually, when I came to, they were rushing

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around, seeing if they had the right chart because he just couldn't believe that this was the same person.

Holly Webb: 00:08:50 I had a completely normal colon with normal organ tissue that can uptake nutrients and do what the organ is meant to do. In my opinion, the oil completely cured me. western medicine does not accept that you can be cured from Crohn's. They believe you can be in remission but, there's no cure. And so, under their ideology, I'm in remission. But I know in my heart, I just know that it's cured.

Holly Webb: 00:09:37 Just . . . guess what emphasis . . . I owe my life to this plant. I owe my life to it. I certainly owe my quality of life to it, if I don't owe my actual life to it because this my only option.

Holly Webb: 00:09:40 There's a lot of people have dual diagnoses and are getting sicker off the medication that they're taking than the disease itself. I was taking 18 pills a day, and half of those were to deal with the side effects of the pills that I was taking. So, I went from 18 pills a day to 0 pills a day. I don't take any pharmaceutical drugs, and people who have the kind of problems I have . . . the psoriasis and the Crohn's and the sub 10 . . . to all have it under active endocannabinoid system. And so it's logical, and right, to be feeding the system that has been throughout probably just generations has been neglected, and there wouldn't be receptors if you're not supposed to use them you know.

Holly Webb: 00:10:26 There's so much wonderful help you get from it without all the terrible side effects that are in almost everything else.

Nicholas Polizzi: 00:10:37 There are people that a lot to lose through the legalization of cannabis, and the legalization of a lot of different plants that could have an impact on illness in ways that modern medicine has failed. There's a lot of money here. There's a lot of stakeholders. So, it's not just about the protection of our kids, the protection of the general public. It's about money. Don't ever make a mistake and think that it's not.

Jonathan Otto: 00:11:06 If you were to look at different conspiracies that are happening today that are very prevalent, you'd look at chronic pain, that there's 113 million people in America suffering from chronic pain, and that is costing this country over $600 billion, just for chronic pain alone. And so then, you have to then look

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at that relationship there and realize how big the . . . how much money is being channeled into this source. So now, follow this money. So, what do you understand about humanity? I mean, you're exposed to films and conversations and stories and history. What do you understand when that much money is being dealt with when it comes to somebody then coming in saying, "Hey, you don't actually have to take any of those drugs. You can actually do something else."

Jonathan Otto: 00:11:51 What's then gonna happen to those people that are saying you don't have to take those drugs? Well, then all of a sudden the conversation becomes not about the thing that we're talking about, it becomes about your personal character and how I can attack you for saying something that was attacking my pocket, right? And this huge multi-billion dollar corporations.

Dr. Pedram Shojai: 00:12:12 When you're prescribed a medication by your doctor, you have to understand that there's an enormous system of marketing that has deployed to get that medication in front of your doctor. And look, I used to be on this end. They would send in these pharmaceutical reps, just like, "Let's take you to dinner. Let's buy you drinks." It was this whole system of just boozing and schmoozing the doctors to convince them that they should push your product. So, there's a huge market driven component to how medications get deployed through doctor's offices. And I'm not saying all of it is ugly and all of it is corrupt. But man, it is so entangled at this point that you always, always have to question any medication that you have been given, look at the side effects, and look at the complications, and see if there's a generic or natural alternative before committing yourself to a drug.

Dr. Pedram Shojai: 00:13:06 It's not easy to get off of some of these drugs.

Dr. Chintu Sharma: 00:13:08 If I told you that just by prescribing that Percocet, I'm shutting off someone's respiratory center. I'm just putting a little bit of flavor in there to treat pain but, accidentally if you get too much, you're gonna stop breathing in the middle of the night. But, I'm gonna use, instead of that, some cannabis, and you know, we're treating it as this alien plant. But, I'm gonna give you a medicinal amount of cannabis. It's gonna treat your pain equally as well but you're not gonna die in the middle of the night. Which one are you gonna choose? Why should we

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have so many hoops to jump through to give you something that's gonna help? Why should we struggle, giving you a medication? I just don't understand that, and yes I do think everyone should have access. I think it should be easy to prescribe. I think that doctors should be educated, nurses, everyone in the field should be educated.

Dr. Chintu Sharma: 00:14:00 I think that there are a bunch of really beautiful studies to share. I will say this though: I will not claim it cures anything but it's an option, it's a treatment. And if this treatment prevents another complication, then we've served our purpose. Do no harm was what I was taught.

David Patton: 00:14:17 In 2008, actually June 1, I won't forget it, I woke up and couldn't use half of my body. It was like it wasn't even there. It was invisible. Went to the hospital, and they'd said I'd had a stroke. A month and three days later, I had another one and ended up in a wheelchair. Told from the doctors, "That's it. You're . . . this is your new life." So, I had to give up my truck driving license, and I ended up being like . . . just basically sitting around the house, just taking pills. And my health kept going downhill. And they kept testing with spinal taps and this and that, and then one doctor came up and says, "Does MS run in your family?" I'm like, "Yes it does." And that's when they tested me for it, and there it is.

David Patton: 00:15:18 And, you know, they also said I had fibromyalgia at about the same time they noticed that. And, I've gone from having injections in my spine to, like I said, the pills and anybody who's going through pain, their biggest thing is they . . . it may sound sexist but, a lot of guys wanna take care of their families. And women do the same thing. But for a guy that has always took care of his family, you know, I was the breadwinner. My wife stayed home. I did it. Now, I'm the breadwinner again. It feels invigorating, alive. And that's where I feel now is I came from being dead and a zombie to I'm alive again. And I'm functioning, and I'm doing what I wanna do.

Keenan Blum: 00:16:24 One of the most common conditions that we're able to treat well using cannabis is multiple sclerosis. It is very, very common throughout the United States and in New Hampshire, and it is a very, very challenging condition to deal with. It has a large number of symptoms, you know, some of

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the worst include things like spasticity or muscle tension. And that is something that we make great headway into. Cannabis does a great job of relaxing the muscles, and allowing our patients to receive . . . to get proper use of their muscles so they can exercise, keep their flexibility up, and really just maintain their lifestyle and be able to function. It makes a huge difference.

Dr. Greg Gerdeman: 00:17:08 Scientifically, I learned something from clinical trials of multiple sclerosis and side effects. And you look at some of this data that one-to-one spray of cannabis THC and CBD, there was about a third . . . in some of these studies, about a third of patients really drove the data, that really responded well. Some others didn't get that great of an effect but, about a third of those MS patients responded really well. They had tremendous relief of their symptoms. Much better quality of life. And that third of people tended to be those that were really resistant to other treatments. They hadn't found as much relief in other things. And cannabis really worked for them.

Dr. Greg Gerdeman: 00:18:03 There are people that would be very great responders therapeutically and get their quality of life back, or the best they can, by using this natural medicine. And to not allow them the opportunity to try it is criminal, and it has been for a long time. And to allow them to try it early on before they try more expensive, more toxic, more controversial treatments should be something that's right in the front conversation with physicians. Before you start going down the routes of medicines that are gonna cost thousands of dollars a week and might cause really serious side effects, have the conversation about have you tried cannabis yet to see if you're somebody who really benefits from it. I think that's important.

David Patton: 00:18:39 I get to have a life with my kids again. I chase my kids around the house and play with them like a father should. Where before, I sat on the couch and that was my life. And half the conversations I probably couldn't even tell you the truth to remember. Now, we have conversations, I remember them, and I give them a hard time later about it. You know, it's a joy. And that's because of the medical program. And it works. And I'm back to work. I'm doing 40 plus hours a week. And I get upset if I don't get my 40 hours a week because I love

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working now. So, it's just . . . from going from a zombie to life. There's not really any other way you can explain it better than that.

Dr. Dustin Sulak: 00:19:35 What I see all the time in my patients who have been here for two or five or eight years using cannabis under my supervision, they're using less and less over time typically. They're making healthier choices in their life. They're getting in touch more with what they need to do from a lifestyle perspective, and from a way of relating to their inner self and relating to their family and their community. They're making those shifts. I think some of that is certainly augmented by the cannabis state of consciousness, which helps people disengage and see things from a new perspective. And they're getting healthier. You know, there's too many factors involved to attribute all of their improvement to the cannabis, but I'm sure in so many cases that the cannabis is the tipping point that enables them to no longer be buried by their symptoms and by their suffering and their disability, and to actually get out of bed, to get back into the community. To be able to focus enough to learn some new things that could help them to engage with their families and the people around them.

Dr. Dustin Sulak: 00:20:40 And especially get back to meaningful work. Now, this is something that I didn't see when I was in my training in family medicine, very many people that were on disability actually going back to work after starting some type of a medical treatment. Very unusual on medicine. We see this a lot. People actually . . . they're sick of being disabled. They wanna get back on their feet and get back to work for financial incentives and for other incentives. And what I've observed is that there is almost no more powerful of a medicine than meaningful work in someone's life. We think the sacred plant is great? It is great. Love is also a good medicine. Connection with people, that's great. But meaningful work can take someone and make everything about their life better. And so, it's such a critical milestone when people get better enough to go do something, even if it's just volunteering for a few hours a week, or helping out their neighbor, or maybe it's going back to a full-time job. But this is huge for people. I see that cannabis supports this. They can continue using cannabis while they're working. It doesn't have to be impairing. It can actually enhance their

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performance, enhance their focus when they use it in the right way.

David Patton: 00:22:12 They need this in every state, not just selective ones. Everybody needs this program. Everybody needs to know what it's like to get up and not suffer, and get up and have a life, and enjoy everything around them. I mean, I had to take so many pills a day I had to have a machine tell me each time a day to take my meds. An alarm would go off each time of the day. And when you've got 12 alarms going off to take pills, what's the point? With the medical marijuana program, if I start hurting, I can go to the bathroom, anywhere, put two drops of that tincture that they make under my tongue, and guess what? I'm right back out there with my family; nobody ever knew nothing. It ain't about smoking to get high. It's taking this to live.

John Malanca: 00:23:12 David Patton is a patient of Dr. Dustin Sulak in the state of Maine. In episode 5, we'll be looking at different medical cannabis programs state to state. We've just heard about Crohn's, MS, and fibromyalgia. What I find so amazing about this plant is how it can treat so many symptoms at once. Let's go to Greenbridge Medical in Los Angeles to see Dr. Allan Frankel, who appeared in season one of our first series. Dr. Frankel consults with Kathleen, who has an autoimmune disease called Myasthenia Gravis. Like many patients with autoimmune diseases, Kathleen also suffers from anxiety, depression, insomnia, and fibromyalgia.

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:23:21 Myasthenia gravis is a complex neurological disorder that also falls into the mito diseases, the mitochondrial diseases. These are patients that can present, usually young adults to older, with . . . it usually starts with double vision and weakness of a number of eye muscle groups. It's a disease related to the energy production of muscles by the mitochondria. We think that's why THCA helps.

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:23:54 Tell me your results.

Kathleen Bogan: 00:23:56 Yeah . . . Mine were incredible. What was most interesting to me about how quickly I felt better. I just think that I started to feel a little bit better after a week, and then maybe by the second week I was driving again and able to see. I hadn't driven for two years. Living in Los Angeles and working,

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commuting from the Valley was quite a challenge. It was a miracle for me. It really changed my life . . . back.

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:24:26 This is partly my ego talking, but tell me what people in your family and friends are saying.

Kathleen Bogan: 00:24:33 Yeah . . . Everyone is you know . . . it's amazing. There's still a little bit of resistance, and people don't know what CBD is, and they think that you're gonna get high by taking it. I didn't experience any of that. It really felt like all it did was make my eyes like they were before.

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:24:51 Do they feel 100% normal to you?

Kathleen Bogan: 00:24:54 Occasionally I'll have little dips if I'm -

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:25:00 Very tired or a little fever, infection . . .

Kathleen Bogan: 00:25:04 . . . tired, yes, if I have a sore throat, or occasionally. Occasionally there are times where I'll have to even step, I'll just adjust my dosage and take an extra dosage, and I feel better.

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:25:23 Generally as a general rule, if somebody has an infection or stress fever, they tell them until that's over double their CBD.

Kathleen Bogan: 00:25:24 With my job there's a lot of stress, so I should just double dose every day.

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:25:30 Double dose. What are you taking every day?

Kathleen Bogan: 00:25:32 Three times a day I'm taking the CBD that's a 2:1 ratio.

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:25:39 Number four.

Kathleen Bogan: 00:25:40 Yes, and the THC acid. Both of those I take three times a day usually. Occasionally if I'm feeling a little under the weather, I might take an extra dose, or if I had a particularly long day because I can, you know, begin to feel a little weakness in my eyes, and even before it goes double. It never gets to that point.

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:29:50 So you had the diplopia, double vision, and the droopy eyelids.

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Kathleen Bogan: 00:29:52 I did. I had one droopy eyelid. I think maybe if you have two droopy eyelids they might think I had bad skincare or something. One, it was very obvious. A lot of people would notice it. It was like the first thing. Three weeks later people were walking up to me and saying, "Your eyes look great."

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:30:12 They probably think you had plastic surgery.

Kathleen Bogan: 00:30:14 No, no, they knew, they knew. When you're arriving in an Uber every day at every meeting, you know you've gotta be very open about -

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:30:23 I know it.

Kathleen Bogan: 00:30:23 . . . your ailments.

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:30:24 It's so easy for us, me even, to forget how even some double vision, let alone, changes your whole life.

Kathleen Bogan: 00:30:31 It does. It does. I'm in the beauty industry. The bar is high.

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:30:38 Expectations.

Kathleen Bogan: 00:30:40 I'm aging.

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:30:42 No, you're not. You're not. CBD, you're reversing. I'm 127 years old.

Kathleen Bogan: 00:30:48 Really? Wow. You look great.

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:30:50 I look great.

Kathleen Bogan: 00:30:50 Well I want to have what you're having.

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:30:52 You are.

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:30:54 Fibromyalgia is very, very common, not as exciting as somebody from myasthenia gravis. Fibromyalgia I always felt is a disease of disordered sleep. If you look back and talk to them about what was going wrong first, it was some sleep disorder. So I usually treat them with CBD during the day and add a little THC at night, just get them to sleep better.

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Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:31:21 Sleep disorders, I break them down into two types just very briefly, the people who have troubles falling asleep and the people who have troubles staying asleep. The people who have trouble staying asleep have elevated cortisol levels during the day and the night, almost always from anxiety, and then their cortisol levels that are the early morning elevations of cortisol wake them up. Instead of waking up at 6:00 or 7:00, they wake up at you know 1:00, 3:00, 4:00 in the morning, very agitated, difficult to go back to sleep.

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:31:53 If you give them a sleeping concoction of cannabis, sleeping pills, don't work. They still wake up in the early morning. Then they're groggy. If you give them the CBD during the day, you treat their anxiety, and you can pretty much then not give them very much at nighttime, just deal with it during the day.

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:32:12 But the MG patient, to me this is still one of my most exciting, because the cancer patients are very rewarding, and we're pretty sure we're having substantial impact. Now there are clinical trials, thank God, backing that up. Patients like yourself, you put them on something, in a week they're better.

Kathleen Bogan: 00:32:33 I was on Imuran and Prednisone and all those things that were wreaking havoc and-

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:32:38 Will eventually kill you.

Kathleen Bogan: 00:32:38 . . . causing other problems.

Dr. Allan Frankel: 00:32:40 It'll eventually kill you.

John Malanca: 00:32:41 Dr. Frankel will join us again in episode 3 when we show how The Sacred Plant works for autism and epilepsy. As we all know, millions of Americans are prescribed narcotics every day, including young children. These opioid medications quickly become drugs of abuse, and many victims end up turning to street heroin when they're unable to fill their prescriptions. How could it be that these drugs which are killing hundreds of people every single day are 100% legal when the sacred plant's not? I sat down with Dr. Patricia Frye in Maryland to talk about this epidemic and how she is helping her pain patients avoid dangerous opioid addictions.

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Dr. Patricia Frye: 00:33:19 Cannabis will potentiate the pain-relieving effect of oxycodone, or any opiate or opioid, for that matter. I have found that if you start with very small amounts, and they can take the opioid at the same time they're using the cannabis, but what they're going to find is that they're not gonna need as high a dose of the opioid, because the cannabis will decrease that dose, the need of that dose, for 60, 75%, almost every single chronic pain patient I've seen. That's what I see. 40% of this practice is chronic pain. They will automatically find that they can get the same pain relief, if not better pain relief, with 60 to 75% reduction in that opioid dose. Then that translates into feeling better and avoiding a lot of the adverse effects from the opioids. The biggest one for most people, the most miserable one, is the constipation.

John Malanca: 00:34:24 Now you have a pill for that, opioid-induced constipation.

Dr. Patricia Frye: 00:34:27 I know. They just need to back off the opioid and use a little cannabis. The cannabis will potentiate the pain-relieving effect of the opioid by interacting with those opioid receptors. The other reason why it helps with pain relief from the opiate is because after not too long you get into what we call opioid-induced hyperalgesia, which is a long medical term for meaning that opioid is actually increasing your pain.

Dr. David Bearman: 00:35:04 The reason that cannabis is helpful in terms of dealing with pain I think is at least twofold. One is that it slows down or decreases the frequency of pain stimuli that are being transmitted to your brain because it slowed the speed of neurotransmission.

Dr. David Bearman: 00:35:25 The other thing is that there are at least two pain interpretation centers in the brain. One, it's mediated by your endorphins, your opiate-like molecule that your body makes, and the other one that's mediated by the endocannabinoids. So by increasing the amount of cannabinoids through an exogenic source, that is outside your body, you're slowing down the speed of neurotransmission, and you're also influencing the pain interpretation center in the brain.

Dr. David Bearman: 00:35:56 We know that from research that's been done and from other specialists in cannabinoid medicine, that most patients who

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have pain that try cannabis are able to decrease their dose of opiates by 30 to 50%, and in some cases not use it at all.

Katherine Hubert: 00:36:16 It was really important to me to be able to decrease the opioids. I decreased them by 75%. I went from taking a really high dose to a much lower dose and still working on that, but it's getting there. I have more of a chance to be healthy because of it. It wasn't an option before. It wasn't legal in this state until recently.

Katherine Hubert: 00:36:47 It was great to know when I had decreased it so low. Then the Oxycontin, I was on 80 milligrams, and I went down to 10. It really helps with pain. I think people should have access to it and they should be aware of it, aware of all the good that it can do.

Elizabeth Dost: 00:37:14 I just want to talk a little bit about the opioid epidemic because I have some thoughts on it. They may not be exactly what everybody else thinks. First of all, when I talk about the opioid epidemic, I always like to say that to anybody that's lost a loved one to opioid overdose, my heart goes out to you. It's affected my family, friends. I've had friends in my family that I cared very deeply about that have experienced it. I've seen it firsthand that people overdose and die of opioids.

Elizabeth Dost: 00:37:54 Two things. Number one, you cannot have a war on opioids and not safe access to cannabis, because what happens to people that are in chronic, life-limiting pain, when they have nothing to take for it anymore? What happens to them? Who makes that decision? Is it the people that are in horrible pain that make that decision or is it the people that are observing the trends and make that decision?

Elizabeth Dost: 00:38:31 Clearly, there's a reason why we now have an opioid epidemic, and I don't have any answer to that. I do know that the path of physiology of pain is that pain is a response to an injury, from the injury it travels up your spinal cord, and you receive it in your brain. What opioids do very well is they nix that reception of pain in your brain. Yes, people can say pain is good, but not pain that goes on and on and on and on.

Elizabeth Dost: 00:39:07 What happens is if you have pain that lasts more than three months and then lasts more than six months, the body starts putting down more neurons to receive the pain. I learned this

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at a pain seminar because I went to pain seminars in hospice. What happens is not only did you receive the initial pain, but you're receiving more pain signals. That's when the use of opioids was very effective.

Elizabeth Dost: 00:39:38 Chronic pain is a problem because they try and use anti-seizure drugs to mitigate chronic pain. They use antidepressants to mitigate chronic pain. There's really nothing helpful for chronic pain. There are people that live in terrible, terrible chronic pain. The problem I have is that if they wipe off all opioids, but they don't have legal, easy access to cannabis, what's gonna happen to all those people? What's gonna happen to everybody that's in pain?

John Easterling: 00:40:17 One of the great benefits of cannabis is its ability to reduce and/or eliminate pain. That's one of the biggest issues that people have. All my career, we're working with formulas, and things, one out of four people are experiencing pain at some point or another. It's a huge unmet issue in our society.

John Easterling: 00:40:46 The way it's being met now is with opiates and opioids, prescription opioids, and so much, so it's considered a national emergency, and I think rightfully so, because when people are doing the opioids, they go to the doctor, they're in pain, "What can I get?" and they're trained to . . . not saying these people have an evil intent. They're trying to help the people, and this thing actually will help alleviate pain, but when they get the opioids, and they start doing it, it alleviates the pain, it's very easy to become addicted to that. When they stop doing it, the pain comes back, so they keep doing it. Then after a while, they're addicted, and it affects the physiology and the emotions. It affects everything.

John Easterling: 00:41:36 Everything we put, ingest into our body expresses itself and affects this in our whole physiology. What happens is when they get addicted, then they're not the same person they used to be. They don't have the same interests they used to have. It affects maybe their job performance. They may end up losing their job. They may end up losing their family. It's a tragedy. The beauty of cannabis is it can relieve that pain, but you're still conscious and aware and functioning. In every state where there's been adult use, the prescription opioids have dropped by 20% or more. The admissions to hospital for opioid-related issues have also dropped.

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David Eagle: 00:42:23 What marijuana allows me to do is it allows me to moderate my pain in a way that I otherwise wouldn't be able to. What I mean by that is pain for me how I experience it, it's very immediate. It's very overwhelming. Marijuana helps me to create a kind of a psychological buffer where I can get a handle on it and manage it from within as opposed to just being victimized by my own body. That's what I like about it. That's the clarity I never had with the opiates because by nature they're there to subdue everything. For me, the answer to really living with pain long-term is cooperative, collaborative. It's really coming to an agreement with your body and how you and your body move forward. Marijuana is nice in the sense that it allows collaborativeness. It does not impose.

Jonathan Otto: 00:43:34 That's why cannabis is such a God-given plant in my opinion, because it is also looking at not only relieving the symptom, but it's looking at the core of the problem, which is an incredible thing, and a lot of people aren't quite aware of all the medicinal qualities of how it's healing the body. This is why we're getting into the understandings of the endocannabinoid system because we can see how it's going into areas of the body, the brain, inflammation in the body, and helping to repair that damage. The side effect is actually the pain relief, which is incredible. That's the side effect, you getting the pain relieved.

Jonathan Otto: 00:44:08 The cool thing that's actually happening, even if it wasn't your reason why you decided to take cannabis, it's helping to heal the core of that problem. That's what's beautiful about it. Drugs never, ever, ever heal the core of the problem, not pharmaceutical, synthetic drugs. They never heal the core of the problem. They're only ever treating disease and relieving symptoms at best, and they're typically coming with other diseases attached to them, which is an excellent upsell program from Big Pharma.

Richard Cole: 00:44:40 Recently medical marijuana became legal here, and my primary care suggested I try using cannabis to get off of the Oxys. While I was writing for the paperwork, I did some research on some blogs, reading up on different people who had taken Oxys for various other reasons but were able to get

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off of it with pretty much ease compared to just going cold turkey.

Richard Cole: 00:45:22 I've only been doing it for about a month and a half now. I would normally have two weeks of just being miserable with sweats and chills and agitation and discomfort. I'd stay in the house for two weeks. The first time doing it, I was out doing various things and shopping and a little bit of stuff in the garage, and without any real side effects, maybe 20% of the issues that I would normally have.

Dr. Chintu Sharma: 00:46:55 Several key facts, America is the capital of opioid use, legal opioid use. We probably suck up 70 to 80% of all the opioids produced in the world. If you speak out against it, you find that those people often get silenced real quick. Here is Colorado and California where just the sales, just the pharmaceutical sales of opioids dipped 80%. Just that alone should be breathtaking.

Dr. Chintu Sharma: 00:47:35 Here I am on the administrative side, trying to design programs to help with addiction and trying to help people with infections, trying to get people to do better. Here in California and Colorado, the whole time that I'm working on these programs, and we're not making any headway, they did it with just legalizing cannabis. My friends out there who don't understand, they just don't understand what this means.

Dr. Chintu Sharma: 00:48:00 There are people who don't understand. They just don't understand what this means. This means the act of giving a person an alternative to what they're normally using, just basic opioids and benzodiazepines. Things that to this day kind of take my breath away. Here we are prescribing something we were told was safe. We were told time and time again it will help with pain and anxiety, yet in return has cost the U.S., it’s cost our nation lives. It's cost our nation lives, families, people. You can't put a price on all that.

Dr. Greg Gerdeman: 00:48:39 I would say it does influence addiction in a whole variety of ways, and it tends to be a way to exit out of addiction and mitigate addictive habits with other drugs.

Dr. David Bearman: 00:48:52 What is the dependency risk from cannabis, and does cannabis have side effects? Yes. What is the dependency risk of cannabis? Well, if we take a look at the work of two

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well known addictionologists, Henningfield and Benowitz, they took a look at five or six recreational drugs: alcohol, heroin, tobacco, cocaine, coffee, and cannabis. The one that had the least dependency risk was cannabis. Less than coffee.

Dr. David Bearman: 00:49:23 Can people die from marijuana? No. Can people die from coffee? Yes. If you go on the internet, you'll see that there were probably a couple of deaths in the United States last year from an overdose of caffeine. I know when I was in New Zealand that there was a report of an overdose death from caffeine. Caffeine is more dangerous than cannabis. So, as soon as somebody starts talking about cannabis is dangerous, say, "Well, are you going to talk about caffeine and the dangers that are inherent with caffeine?"

Scott Ouellette: 00:49:54 I was never really aware of the fact that I was addicted to pharmaceuticals, and it really took me to the point where I had moved to Florida, and I was doctor shopping to get Adderall. You know, some days using upwards of 300mg of Oxycontin a day. It was like a rollercoaster ride. I didn't really understand what I was doing to myself. I really had no clue. I just thought it was okay because the pills were prescribed from the doctor.

Scott Ouellette: 00:50:26 Doing substance abuse program while incarcerated was really, I think, what changed or flipped the switch inside my head and said I can't live like this anymore. But when I moved home, I was able to use cannabis to replace all of it, which is basically where I'm at now. It's only cannabis.

Scott Ouellette: 00:50:49 Getting my medical card has kept me away from all the people that use pharmaceutical drugs, so when it comes down to it, there's no longer a gateway to street drugs. When I came back, I met Dr. Sulak approximately about a month after I arrived home, and the sheer fact of the matter is I was in pain. I didn't want to break the law. My parents had told me, basically, you’re just going to go back on all the drugs and dah dah dah dah dah. The whole gateway theory was in my parents' head, and I told them I was going to prove them wrong, and to this day I still am completely sober off pharmaceuticals and street drugs. I don't think a lot of people understand what severe depression is and what it does to your body, but it makes you feel very weighted and not able

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to do things that a normal person can do. As soon as everyday cannabis use was administered, my life completely did a 180. It's quite incredible to look back at it. It was a point in time when I thought I was going to be a drug addict my whole life.

Scott Ouellette: 00:52:13 Now, using cannabis, if I go a day without my medicine I'm in some pain, but I don't have any withdrawal symptoms or anything like that. I never feel the need where I'm going to die if I don't use, you know? I think that's the big difference, you know, is the physical addictions that other drugs create, cannabis just doesn't have. And the side effects become worse than the original reason why you're using that medicine; then it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to continue using that medicine. It just took me a long time to realize that, but most of it was because I had a prescription from the doctor and I justified it in my head.

Scott Ouellette: 00:52:58 Everybody needs to know about the Sacred Plant because it's the most healing plant on earth. Unfortunately, through unjust laws, it was made illegal. This should be a first treatment rather than a last treatment. For me, this plant being the sacred plant, it gave me my life back, and that's medicine.

Dr. Dustin Sulak: 00:53:22 So a lot of patients come in with a specific intention of getting off of some medication or some list of medications. Typically, that's driven by side effects, feeling addicted or dependent on the medication, and also just plain a lack of efficacy. These meds aren't working, but people keep taking them because some of them when they stop, they get withdrawal symptoms or rebound symptoms. And some, they just don't have any other solution, so they feel like they have to keep taking these medications. So, this is very common in my medical practice, and I'm sure that there is some selection bias here, meaning that the types of patients that come to me are the types that are really determined to reduce their medication list. This is something I help them do.

Dr. Dustin Sulak: 00:54:09 It's very safe to add cannabis to most medications. There's a small handful of contraindications, for example, Warfarin or Coumadin, the blood thinning agent. That has to be watched with someone who takes cannabis. But for most of the medications that cannabis can replace, like pain drugs,

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antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs, different types of drugs that affect the nervous system for seizures or spasticity, these classes of drugs typically don't interact with cannabis so that you can add the cannabis in before removing the other drugs. You can do so slowly and methodically in a sequence that makes sense for the patient. Then when they're finally off of them, they're free of those rebound or withdrawal symptoms because they've got cannabis on board that's helping soften that transition. This is something we do a lot of.

Glenn Lewis: 00:55:00 My wife and I had a severe car accident in 1990 that left me on a large amount of pharmaceuticals, and it didn't leave me with any direction. There wasn't any place to go, any further to go, except for pain pump on that type of pain management, which I really didn't want to do. So that led me on a quest for more natural medicines, and one of them happened to be cannabis. Like I said, I didn't buy that for a second. It really took about a year of research before I would even consider trying it. Being clean and sober for six years, I didn't want to risk my wife, my family, my friends, or anything to save my health over a plant that was illegal or considered illegal. It was legalized in 1999 here, and this was in 2002.

Glenn Lewis: 00:55:53 I started using it in 2002, but not with a lot of direction. Some tinctures, some edibles, and things like that for pain management. But if wasn't until I met Dr. Dustin Sulak and his guidance on how to use the plant to get off from the actual medications I'd been on for so many years, that it changed my life. That's what brings me here today. My commitment and belief behind what this plant does for people.

Catherine Lewis: 00:56:26 We came to meet with Dr. Sulak, and he worked with Glenn on acupuncture and osteopathic manipulations, and then he happened to mention, "Have you thought about cannabis?" Well, I being a DARE mom and Glenn being a recovering alcoholic, that immediately set me off. I'm like, "What are you talking about? Did you not read his file? This is not a good thing for him, his addictive personality." Dr. Sulak said, "You know, he's been using pharmaceuticals all these years. He's physically dependent on those. It's not different, and cannabis can replace that, naturally, without injuring his liver. So it might be worth giving it a try." He tried to explain that to me. I wasn't really open to hearing it. We had two teenage kids,

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and all I could think of was, "Oh my God, this is going to make him drink again."

Catherine Lewis: 00:57:17 So, he started getting access to tinctures and non-smokable forms which I hadn't seen in the past. I figured that you had to just smoke it to get high. The tinctures weren't necessarily making him high. Now he did end up smoking and vaporizing and using many different methods. His friend had told him that it took more than just one way to really be therapeutic.

Catherine Lewis: 00:57:46 I love to cook, and I'm in the kitchen a lot, and we kind of do everything together, so he'd bring over different plant materials and teach me how to make a tincture and how to make butter, and how to cook with it and make lozenges. I started seeing improvement. He had really severe spasms from the car accident that we were in, and those started to diminish. His pain levels started to come down, and Dr. Sulak, it took about a year, but Dr. Sulak was able to wean him down off from all of his medications.

Catherine Lewis: 00:58:23 He was on anti-seizure drugs, muscle relaxants, pain relievers. He was on over nine different prescriptions at one time, and it had changed him. He really was a prisoner to these pharmaceuticals. Everywhere we went, he had this little duffel bag that he carried that had all his prescriptions because he couldn't go without them or he'd risk having a seizure or having extreme pain and not being able to get around.

Catherine Lewis: 00:58:51 After a year, we saw such improvement he was off all his pharmaceuticals. We started looking into this just as a lifestyle change, and instead of it being the last resort, we're reaching for that first. Instead of going for Tylenol and Ibuprofen, or the pharmaceuticals they give after surgeries, go for cannabis. It needs to be a first go-to instead of a last resort with our addiction recovery patients. They come to us after they've tried suboxone or methadone or whatever. Instead of doing this first, they go to another addictive substance. There's no exit strategy.

Glenn Lewis: 00:59:39 We just -

Catherine Lewis: 00:59:39 And that's what we can provide them with the cannabis. We want this to be a mainstream -

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Glenn Lewis: 00:59:43 And we have one patient that was fourteen years at the methadone clinic. Fourteen years with no exit strategy, maximum dose. He's not on methadone anymore. He's totally clean. He doesn't take anything.

Catherine Lewis: 00:59:57 Six months is all it took, and he's working and doing well and back.

Glenn Lewis: 01:00:03 Never felt better in his life.

John Malanca: 01:00:05 One of the best things of the sacred plant is that it gives people with addiction issues a holistic way to manage pain and chronic illness without risking relapse. Sarah, a patient of Dr. Sulak and his wife Danielle Saad, is facing this challenge.

Sarah Siegel: 01:00:19 My name is Sarah Siegel, and I'm a person who's in long-term recovery. I have an over a decade clean from heroin addiction, although I used to call myself a garbage can addict because it was pretty much whatever I could get, however much of it. But, heroin in particular, was my drug of choice.

Sarah Siegel: 01:00:40 I'm an ordained interfaith minister. I was ordained through the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine in 2013. I have three kids; Twelve, nine, and three are their ages. I also have Lyme and Babezia, and I've been a medical cannabis patient for the past two years now.

Sarah Siegel: 01:01:02 When I was 21, that was my first time being exposed to recovery. So that was the first clean time that I had, however after that, for three or four years, I was on methadone. A lot of methadone. I had my first child on methadone. He was born dependent on methadone. It was through working the 12 steps and AA, actually, that I finally kind of began really plugging into the possibility that my life could be different.

Sarah Siegel: 01:01:36 I found myself struggling, and this is many years after first recovering from heroin and making my way into active recovery, I found myself struggling with some nebulous condition that western medicine really wasn't able to identify. It was a really scary time in my life, because as somebody in long-term recovery, I was having a lot of pain and the only options that were being given to me at the time were either

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just suffering through it or going back on opioids of some kind, which was just something I was really unwilling to do.

Sarah Siegel: 01:02:21 The condition ultimately has turned out to be, still there is a question mark to some degree on it. It's highly likely that what I have is Chronic Lyme and Babeziosis. My primary care doctor just told me it was stress and insisted I needed to go on anti-depressants and get a prescription for Ativan. Psychiatrists I saw also thought that it was stress. None of them supported any sort of alternative therapies like cannabis.

Sarah Siegel: 01:02:59 It wasn't really until I connected with Dr. Sulak that I really even entertained the possibility that there was another reason for my suffering, although kind of deep down what they were saying to me just didn't feel right. My symptoms of Lyme and Babezia really have manifested in the form of a lot of chronic pain, as well as anxiety and a lot of other really confusing symptoms. Heavy fatigue, feels like I'm just kind of dragging my body around and stress. My ability to kind of metabolize stress just went out the window, it seemed when I got sick with Lyme and Babezia.

Sarah Siegel: 01:03:46 My insomnia was the very first symptom that I really noticed was relieved with cannabis. Once I found the right strain, and the dispensary helped me with that, it wasn't very hard. I think it was the second one that I tried. I was able to sleep without any of the medication that I had been taking.

Sarah Siegel: 01:04:05 Cannabis also has really helped with just the widespread body pain that I feel, muscle pain and joint pain. Without it, there have been many days where I have not been able to take care of my children when I was really sick with Lyme and Babezia. We had to hire people to watch our kids, and my husband had to miss time at work, and I was really bedridden in the worst of it. But once I really got on the right regimen with cannabis, I was, you know, able to have my life back.

Sarah Siegel: 01:06:35 I'm definitely some smoking and taking tinctures every few hours. But then I could do that for a week, I could do that for two weeks, I could do that for three weeks, and then I can just walk away. If I wake up one morning and I'm feeling good, I don't need cannabis, and I have zero side effects. To me, that's such a gift. I don't know why in this country, I don't

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understand why it's classified in the same category as heroin. That makes no sense to me because it has none of the same effects that heroin has. You do not have the physical dependency, so it's really wrong.

Sarah Siegel: 01:07:12 I mean, people are dying left and right. I just buried my nephew three days ago because of heroin, and we've got to start using all of the tools that we have. If my story can help people, then I really want to be sharing it, because people need to know that you can recover. You can heal. There's no right way or wrong way to be in recovery. For too long, the conversation has been dictated. It's really polarized into these black and white options. You're either doing 12 steps, or you're doing medically assisted. Something like suboxone or methadone. If you're doing cannabis then you're not in recovery at all. You know, that's kind of been the way that the story has been up until now. It's really time for it to change. We're at the point with this crisis where we just can't afford to shove people into boxes anymore because of our own discomfort, or because of the things that we don't understand because of our own fear.

John Malanca: 01:08:16 I want to thank you for watching episode 2 of the Sacred Plant: Healing Secrets Examined. I hope you come away with a better understanding of how the sacred plant works to treat autoimmune diseases, pain, addiction, and much, much more. Our mission is to educate you on the secrets of the sacred plant and to alleviate suffering for you and your loved ones. Please share this series widely with your family and friends so that they can become empowered to take control of their health.

John Malanca: 01:08:42 Be sure to tune into Episode 3: Ending Suffering for Our Children. Autism, Seizures, and More. This next episode is truly one of the most powerful in our series. These are stories about children who could not be helped by western medicine but found true healing with the sacred plant. We will share the stories of Joey, Bryce, Gavin, and Sawyer, all severely autistic children who were not able to speak or learn until they tried this miracle plant. These children are now able to function at a level that their parents and doctors never imagined was possible.

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John Malanca: 01:09:14 You'll meet the Maddox family, who contacted me at United Patients Group. Their son Sawyer was having hundreds of seizures a day. Since I suggested that they come to California to meet with Dr. Frankel, Sawyer has been seizure-free for over three years. Susan will share her story of her daughter, Cindy-Mae, whose epilepsy was so severe that she was wheelchair bound. Susan moved to Maine to work with Dr. Dustin Sulak, and finally found some relief for her daughter.

John Malanca: 01:09:39 The stories in episode 3 will truly astonish you, so definitely don't miss it. Until then, be well, and God bless.

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