Extroverting

Category: Wellness

  • relief, relaxation & recreation @ home

    It’s close quarters. The kids are home. We’ve got few options or incentives to get out of the house, so opportunities for relief, relaxation, and recreation at home are essential. We’re sharing our finds with family, friends, and neighbors here and however we can with focus on free and low-cost, no-hassle options.

    Cabin Fever is preferable to other things going around, but it has real consequences. Preventative Precautions are 100% in-order. Your family, kids, and pets need you to be your best self. Take care of yourself and everyone around you — especially as we’re not accustomed to having those around us around us so much and so closely.

    For Kids

    Keeping kids entertained and entertaining themselves is key to their well-being. Free shows, games, and even education to sneak in there include Mr. Rogers, Arthur, and a treasure trove from the Los Angeles Public Library

    For Adults

    Finding and creating pockets of sanity in the barrage of New Realities is key to making the best of things. More new music, TV, and movie choices, games to play on your own or with others, and local businesses who are open and delivering in neighborhoods throughout LA are included as your free and low-cost, hassle-free options

    More Music, Movies, Relief, and Relaxation

  • [Response to Dr. Kruger study]

    [Editor’s Note – Dr. K’s findings are worth pursuing, and also need to be contextualized. We want transparency up-front. We’re interested in noting what should be pursued re the medicine and messaging, highlighting what’s interesting while not being an industry cheerleader. ]

    Response Article Outline:

    • Points of clarification about this study
    • Here’s why it’s still interesting
    • Here’s what we’d like to see done next

    Call Notes – Juan and Steve

    1) Headline is wider-reaching than the findings
    2) Biased audience
    3) Better to repeat statewide at point of contact with patients with additional rigors, a wider population / larger n (this one: 392), with less of the selection bias

    [E.N. Great opportunity to speak to specifics as possible: proposing, e.g., a medical facility, specific staff, funding sources, would be a good challenge to the people involved — in medicine and politics — and also a way to promote your availability to participate in the follow-up study you propose.]

    Majority of patient condition-specifics and findings cluster around pain, inflammation — most / stronger evidence in this study than other meds / conditions

    30% didn’t disclose their cannabis usage to their doctor

    [E.N. Great opportunity to speak to why this is not optimal patient behavior]

    Small % of patients used medical cannabis when there are existing FDA-approved options:

    2.5% used for chemo-induced nausea / appetite promotion
    Why not FDA-approved Marinol, Dranabinol
    3.8% used for seizure – Why not FDA-approved Epidiolex

    References:

    Medical Cannabis Users’ Comparisons between Medical Cannabis and Mainstream Medicine

    Related article Adam referenced:
    Medical Cannabis Use Is Associated With Decreased Opiate Medication Use in a Retrospective Cross-Sectional Survey of Patients With Chronic Pain.

    [E.N. Responding to the latter could be a separate article to keep the first article in response to Dr. K tight and straightforward. The hooks include showing UMich pride and changing the conversation about cannabis where there’s fact-based pushback regarding “cannabis as off-ramp vs gateway drug.” It’s completely up to you and your time available — use what you want and how.]

    Next Steps

    • Juan drafts response article under his byline per the above notes
    • SMc assigns copy- and photo-editors to collaborate with Juan
    • SMc pitches this draft to Amy B @ MLive; [others]
    • Will pitch it before we publish to allow Amy the chance at an exclusive for 48 hours
    • Once published on MLive, Extroverting, or another property, we’ll promote it on social, especially to elected officials and medical professionals with whom we had contact in the run-up to GW’s Science Symposium

  • 56 Lbs per Week for 91k MMJ patients in FL

    [tweet https://twitter.com/TB_Times/status/1003048618109079552 width=300]

  • Cannabinoids are also found in echinacea, cacao, and kava

    [instagram url=https://www.instagram.com/p/BjDWFvfBxgv/ width=320]

  • Accessibility

    It’s important work making cannabis accessible. It should be as ubiquitous as a week’s worth of opioids at Walmart.

    [tweet https://twitter.com/FiveThirtyEight/status/993847755045994496 width=300]

    “Walmart’s new opioid rule limits customers’ prescription supply to seven days’ worth at a time.”

  • Could Cannabis Help Cure Lung Cancer?

    Cannabis could be a cure for lung cancer, according to a research laboratory in Cardiff.

    MediPen research facility in Cardiff have been experimenting with cannabinoids and its effectiveness in slowing down the growth of cancer cells, something their managing director says is the first of its kind in the world, according to Metro.

    MediPen’s managing director Jordan Owen said: “The process which we’re currently going through now is looking at the cells. We want to slow down the process of metastasis. If we can slow down that process by doing different experiments with cannabinoids, then we can effectively slow down the growth of cancer.”

    Such a breakthrough would no doubt change the lives of millions, but would also support the claims many pro-cannabis individuals have long believed: that this plant carries significant medicinal qualities.

    Read the full story.

  • Study: Cannabis Drug May Help Alcohol, Cocaine Addictions

    A supplement derived from cannabis may help alcohol and cocaine addicts overcome their cravings, new research suggests.

    Recovering rats given cannabidiol (CBD) are less likely to relapse when exposed to drugs, a study, by the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, found, according to the Daily Mail.

    This is thought to be due to the supplement easing anxiety and stress, as well as reducing impulsive behaviour, according to the researchers. 

    After just three days of receiving CBD, recovering rats are still less likely to relapse five months later, the study found.

    The researchers hope the findings will assist in the development of treatments to prevent human drug relapses.  

    Read the full story.

  • Cannabis for Cancer, Epilepsy?

    Can cannabis cure cancer? That’s a question Prof. David “Dedi” Meiri, head of the Laboratory of Cancer Biology and Cannabanoid Research at the Technion-Israeli Institute of Technology, is trying to figure out. The answer so far is a very guarded “maybe.”

    Meiri was one of some 70 speakers among the 800 participants at the fourth annual CannaTech  conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, according to Israel21c

    CannaTech was founded in 2015 as a platform to enable the identification and incubation of world-class innovative solutions for the cannabis industry. The conference also has taken place in London and is scheduled for Mexico and Australia later this year.

    While there was no product for sale in the vast exhibit hall, there was plenty of buzz from companies developing everything from medical inhalers, which deliver medical cannabis the way similar devices dose asthma powders, to specific treatments (at least two companies are working on cannabis alternatives to sleeping pills).

    Read the full story.

  • LSU Plans to Start Cloning Cannabis for Medical Use

    The Louisiana state Agriculture Commissioner said on Monday that the LSU AgCenter expects to start cloning cannabis from larger “mother” plants in June to create medical marijuana.

    Dr. Mike Strain, who heads the agriculture and forestry department, said his agency had received $80,000 from an LSU vendor to begin harvesting tissue for the state’s medical marijuana operation, according to the Daily Advertiser.

    Medical marijuana is not funded in next year’s state budget, which starts on July 1, so the department will ask for a $1.5 million loan to provide software and facilities related to the operation.

    Strain’s agency is responsible for overseeing the medical marijuana industry within the state, “everything from when the clone tissue of the marijuana goes in the front door till the compound leaves the back door for distribution to the pharmacy,” he said.

    Read the full story.

  • Why Coffee Could Be the Opposite of Cannabis

    What does coffee have to do with cannabis? According to a new study, your morning joe causes a drop in the levels of certain substances that are linked to the body's system for responding to marijuana.

    The levels of these substances — metabolites found in what's known as the endocannabinoid system — decrease in people who drink between four and eight cups of coffee a day, according to Live Science.

    Endocannabinoids are molecules that bind to cannabinoid receptors, which are found all over the nervous system, as well as in immune and endocrine tissue. The body makes its own endocannabinoids, but it also responds to foreign cannabinoids, like the ones found in the leaves of plants of the Cannabis genus.

    Coffee suppresses the endocannabinoid chemicals that smoking marijuana boosts, said Marilyn Cornelis, an assistant professor of preventative medicine at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, who led the new research.

    Read the full story.