Cannabis. My Life, My Motivation. With Karyemaitre Aliffe, MD

John Malanca 0:06
Welcome back…I’m John Malanca with United Patients Group Be Informed and Be Well and I’m excited about my next guest, Karyemaitre Aliffe, MD how are you?

Karyemaitre Aliffe, MD 0:17
Good, good. How you doing john?

John Malanca 0:18
So first name Carrie like Cody my three How do you pronounce it? Greg spirit

Unknown Speaker 0:23
cardijn Matt kind of like in that cartoon movie Toy Story. The character Tow Mater imagine him tell him the queen. It’s a car you met the other day?

John Malanca 0:35
Korea Maria methylene.

Unknown Speaker 0:38
Yeah, car you met a leaf. A leaf like a cannabis leaf.

John Malanca 0:40
Yep. And where were Where is your family originally from?

Unknown Speaker 0:45
I Jesus all over the place. I have part Cherokee. I have Creole. I have you know, he gyptian and I don’t know all sorts of things. I have to do 23andme one day to nail it down and figure out how much Scandinavian there is or something.

John Malanca 1:06
A little of everything. Heinz Heinz 5050 for cosmopolitan. Yeah, exactly. Well, good to have you on Dr. Leif. And let me read this impressive bio. So your parents must be very proud about this one. Dr. Leif earned his BA from the Harvard from Harvard University in organic and medicinal chemistry. And MD was distinguished honors magna cum laude from Stanford University School of Medicine, MD PhD training program in cancer biology, departments of molecular pharmacology, chemical and systems biology. It postgraduate clinical training, also from Stanford is in anesthesiology with intensive care as well as pain management. So you’re down in Silicon Valley for for quite some time. Now. You’re up there and in the other silicones on the other coast in Silicon Valley. What else? Yeah, right. Yeah. And so, welcome. I appreciate you coming on. Pleasure to meet you.

Unknown Speaker 2:01
Good to meet you.

John Malanca 2:02
Good to have you on. And we have a mutual friend, Dr. Jake Bailey, che who I’ve done a few things with, and he’s he’s been on the show. So if any of you have not seen Jake’s interview that we’ve had, check out our podcast section and you also see why these two guys are friends. I’m assuming so

Unknown Speaker 2:19
Jake’s a great guy.

John Malanca 2:21
Good dude. So well, you have a lot to share. We’ve been on the phone for quite some time. Before we hit record, and so a lot to cover. The topic that you were looking at is a fresh look of hemp and cannabis clarifying misconceptions. One of the greatest medicines and nature’s pharmacy and so you want to talk about what are some of the things that you you’re you’re just clarifying these misconceptions? And how you know, first off, let’s go back and how does the doctor from Harvard get into the cannabis industry and Stanford get into the cannabis industry up and up in Washington, one of the hotspots? Well,

Unknown Speaker 3:00
it’s a really long story, I’ll see if I can distill it down into just kind of some supercritical extract. So I might start in medicine had to do with, as I mentioned, in our call that my mother passed away from metastatic breast cancer when I was a kid when I was 11. And I’d always had an interest in chemistry. When I went to college. I was persuaded by some friends to be pre med, under the premise that in order to do cancer research, you really had to be an MD because I was planning to just do a PhD. Anyway, I became disenchanted with biology because at the time, this was before all of the breakthrough, DNA sequencing and all of that, and there was just, it wasn’t precise enough for me. And so I ended up majoring in organic and medicinal chemistry, but still maintaining an interest in the cancer biology and carcinogenesis as a process in general. So when I was 19, I started doing cancer research. With a professor there, Professor winder and his group, and looking at a family of compounds that are referred to as tumor promoting agents meaning that once you have a malignant cell, what causes it to grow and grow and grow out of control in the model, what’s called stage two carcinogenesis, they’re the initiation which is the mutation step. And then those are promotions phase that causes the tumor to grow out of control, which is really the primary issue when it comes to health for cancer patient. So, around about this same time was when cat Dr. Candace pert had the breakthrough discovery that they were endogenous morphine compounds in the human body. And so the whole concept of endorphins and and capitalism’s and all of that, but more so the concept that a plant that grows in In some remote area actually has, as they used to call the lock and key has a key to a very specific function in the human body and the human nervous system and the brain. And that completely blew me away. I thought that was the most amazing thing that I’d ever heard. Because to me, it’s like, you know, imagine, you go to some small village in northeastern Thailand. And, you know, you

Unknown Speaker 5:24
see somebody walking along, and they, you know, they drop a key out of their pocket, and you try to catch the person, but they’re gone, they get on a bus, you don’t speak the language, you decide to just keep it and you come home. And when you get home, you just think, Okay, well, that’d be funny, but open the door to my house. And it does. How could the key to this person who lives in a hut, open your house in the Bay Area that uses all these metal locks and all these things that should be beyond? That’s beyond coincidence? That’s beyond like statistical hypotheses? How could that such a thing actually happened at the plant kingdom? And the animal kingdom? Has this synergy? That based on our views of the divergence of animals and plants, and how different we are? How could that possibly make sense? So that was fascinating to me. And as it turned out, the cancer research that I was doing was doing the same thing. The tumor promoting agents who are all natural compounds from proton plant from India from blue green algae from strep to my sees mold. So fast forward to the 90s. I, by this point, cancer biology program at Stanford professor when winder went to Stanford the same time I did, so I was able to keep working with him. But what happened in that period interim was that here in the United States and maybe much of the world, there was somehow this sort of cognitive takeover, maybe propaganda, whatever you want to call it, that has led to this complete belief that effective drugs come from pharmaceutical companies and from biotech companies, and not from nature. And that’s just a lack of knowledge of history. That’s like thinking the United States has its origin and pioneers and not the British Empire. It’s like, you know, you need to read chapter one, don’t start a chapter five, in this history, and so, but as a result, a lot of scientists and physicians, especially developed biases against natural product medicines. So by the late 80s, early 90s, when I started working in biotech, I was one of the few people that had the medical background, and the science background, clinical research, clinical pharmacology, that was an anti plant. And so I ended up working with a company, a startup company, it was called shaman pharmaceuticals, in the Bay Area. And so that sent me out to the rainforest to the Amazon, West and East Africa, working with traditional healers and shamans, which is very interesting and very broadening experience to go from being in a little operating room in Silicon Valley to being in the huge, you know, Amazon forest. Yeah. So all of that really prepared me very well to deal with the complexity and the diversity within the cannabis plant, within the medical considerations of it to understand botany a lot more than physicians typically do because they’re not trained. And you know, shamans will tell you anytime, or traditional healers, when they’re out collecting a plant in the forest, they don’t just collect any plant, you know, so say for instance, you’re looking for dandelions, or something or St. John’s wort, which grows wild here. You might walk past a whole bunch of it, and they’re like, Oh, you like, Hey, here’s the Isn’t this the plaque we’re looking for? Oh, yes, yes. But it’s growing beneath a tree. It’s like, so it’s like, growing beneath a tree doesn’t work. And you walk along a little further. Oh, here,

Unknown Speaker 8:55
here, here. It’s

Unknown Speaker 8:56
like, Oh, no, it’s grown beside the river. And it’s like, and you’re like, Ah, you know, as a note, all you know, Western trained persons, like, this guys is leading me around, it’s like getting in a taxi someplace you don’t know, they drive you around for hours. And then way, way over there. It’s like, Ah, yes. You know, hear growing in this on the rocky plane and the upslope of this hill, you know, on the side where the sunrises anything, okay. It’s a bunch of religious mumbo jumbo, but also at that time, the technology isn’t there available to confirm or deny it’s just a bias. But as we see with cannabis, depending on the growing conditions, you get a very different spectrum of phytochemicals. And so there’s a particular element or constituent as they’re called within say, cannabis like cabbage Gero CBG. And maybe this treatment that he needs for this individual that he or she is treating will benefit from that. CBG and I used to have these arguments with the people that shaman pharmaceuticals. Well, how would he know he’s doesn’t have a mass spec to analyze it, it’s like, well, because then the medicine doesn’t work, you don’t actually need to analyze it. The ultimate analysis is always a patient outcome. And so that helped me to understand even things like grow. So is it the same to grow cannabis or even grapes? In California, compared to Oregon, Washington, France is real, you know, chilly, you’re going to get different results. And this tendency we have to generalize and say, Oh, yeah, it’s this strain or it’s those genetics. There’s a lot more to a plant than that. And so I’ve had this rich opportunity to kind of have like a Western version of traditional healer or shamans training, more like AI or VEDA than Mayo Clinic style, even though I you know, did go to Harvard and Stanford. So when cannabis came online as being legal, a and then the endocannabinoid system was discovered, it was like, Hey, here’s this is the Holy Grail. This is what I trained for.

John Malanca 11:03
If you talk about the shamans has been, I grew up overseas, you know, eight, 910 1112 years of my life, you know, and so I’ve seen different cultures. I’ve seen Eastern medicine, Western medicine, alternative, old historic, like a shaman, you know, that’s been around for 1000s of years, passing on from generation to generation generation, like, don’t use this underneath the, underneath the tree. Don’t get on the side of the river bank, but the one on the rocks is one you want to look for. And I always laugh I was like, who was the first person that said, For sparing artichoke? Don’t eat the whole thing? peel? Yeah, this is the heart but if you don’t take the stuff off before the heart, you’re having he mouth. You know?

Unknown Speaker 11:48
Like I was saying about the history book. A lot of times, we start history with chapter four. Yeah, chapter one, two, and three, there could have been 100 people that had that problem. And, you know, fell off the cliff over there and Big Sur, you know, like, Oh, my God, you know, boom. And one guy that survived, came back and said, yeah, this stuff’s really good. But, you know, you’ve got to do this thing. Yeah, a lot of those things. There’s, there’s certain plants you may even rutabagas right? Yeah. And half the plant is poisonous. The leaves are poisonous, and the stock is fine. But yeah, yeah, I guess it’s rude to get rutabaga. Oh, no, no, no, rhubarb. Excuse me, rhubarb. It is

John Malanca 12:30
rude. I was thinking, you know what? I was still thinking pie though. The whole time.

Unknown Speaker 12:34
Yeah. Yeah. So that is interesting. It looks just like red chard. Yeah, except bigger. Red chard, you can eat the whole thing. Okay, so. So how many people thought they just had some really big red chard. And so you know, if you look through history, so one of the things my mother before she passed, talking to because she was a teacher, what used to be called Home Economics, so cooking, and nutrition, and meal planning, and all these things, sewing as well, you know, I used to, you know, so with the sewing machine and all that stuff, she taught me when I was really young. And so one of those things is, is understanding, if you will, the, the complexity of what can can appear to be very simple, you know, on the surface. And so, you know, working, it was very easy for me working with these shamans, to understand the full recipe of what they were doing is that work with recipes for so long. And because, you know, boiling is different than simmering is different than baking, you know, the dried plant is different than the fresh plant those sorts of things.

John Malanca 13:43
Well, you’re talking about boiling, even the stinging nettles, you know,

Unknown Speaker 13:46
don’t do that. But

John Malanca 13:47
if you boil them, you can drink it as a tea, you know, and it helps with, you know, different allergies, stuff like that. So, again, nature’s pharmacy, and there’s so much out there, you know, and as to and even the pharmaceutical companies, I mean, they’ve gone with the nature’s pharmacy, but made him into synthetic and then making millions and billions of dollars. And it’s sad because one of my favorite college professors was from the Amazon. And he wrote a book about what they’re divorcing and taking down I mean, it just sad when you really see what’s what’s happening to our planet and some of these nature’s medicine, nature’s pharmacy, you know, they’re extinct, like some of the animals that are that are in there in the in the forest as well. And so, bringing cannabis into that plant based medicine, what are you seeing? You know, you’re, you’re in at the beginning, when I say your parents will be very proud. I’m certain your mother’s very, very proud. I lost my dad, I can’t imagine losing my father at age 11 you know, as 41 and I look back at friends of mine that lost their a parent when I was in grade school, and I just think, Oh my gosh, I just you know, so I I’m certain she’s very, very proud of me and so I you did tell me at the beginning and so but but plant based medicines you specialize. Is that one of your? Is cancer one of your main things you work with now because of of your mom. And are you what are you seeing? If so what are you seeing in the cannabis industry with with 12 years of CBD and other cannabinoids,

Unknown Speaker 15:21
mostly what I when I work with people that have cancer, my big issue, I never was hoping to find a cure for cancer. And especially once you trade in cancer, you realize it’s a disease category, not a single disease. Yeah, but just a more humane treatment protocol so that people aren’t so devastated because my mother went from being a very healthy woman that took me to church every Sunday. And we did judo classes together and got our green belts and Judo together and all of that to somebody who had to walk with a brace and a walker all their hair and falling out, she lost a lot of weight, she was no longer kind of like athletic or anything. And around about the same time, maybe like a year after she passed away. One of my favorite math teachers from elementary school also died of cancer, she died of lung cancer, she was a big smoker. And so I saw the process that occurs. And often people attribute

Unknown Speaker 16:21
the kexi of the loss, the body wasting is the other term for it. In cancer patients, they often attribute that to the cancer. But that’s not necessarily the case. A lot of times, it’s the toxic therapies, and many cancer treatments themselves are carcinogenic, the roots origin again, going back into the history of cancer chemotherapy is with mustard gas, which was you know, a chemical weapon. Yeah. And I won’t go into the anecdote about it. But there was a spill at the military base. And they saw that it knocked out the white blood cells and the military guys, so they decided what might be good for treating lymphoma or leukemia. And so that’s the beginning of this looking at toxic things to be cancer. And I’ve given lectures about, you know, immune support, immune modulation and cancer therapy. 10 years ago, I used to go all around the world doing his lectures, and looking at natural approaches, not because they’re natural, but because they’re effective. But specifically being that presenting to people that really cancer is is a symptom of a relative immune deficiency, like HIV is a major immune deficiency. And so the body shuts down for people that have you know, if you will full blown aids, but cancer is, if you will, a marginal immune deficiency in the sense that the immune systems job, one of its primary jobs is to eliminate what are called transformed cells. And those cells can either be virally infected cells, like you know, the case of COVID. Or they can be mutated cells that have genetic mutations in the case of cancer, but from the perspective of the immune system, say natural killer cells, and certain lymphocytes, that’s all the same, because what happens is when the cell becomes transformed, basically its face changes. And so, you know, people that have adolescent kids that have been rebellious adolescents themselves, perhaps, can recall, a transformation you can see in a kid that, you know, is say 14 years old, and looks like a quote unquote, normal kid goes home for the summer. And by the time he or she comes back for, you know, school in the fall, has piercings and tattoos and has this wild hair card and the hair is pink or something like, wow, what happened to this kid? Well, that kid went through a transformational experience, whatever it was, whether it was music, or drugs, or a girlfriend or boyfriend or hanging out with their uncle for the summer, whatever it was, you can tell that person is transformed, because they don’t look like they look before. And so the immune system does is it reacts like a lot of parents, you cut your hair, you got to go back to being this clean cut kid that you used to be. So the immune system is constantly on patrol, for the cells that start to defect from the community guidelines for a functional human body. So what I do with cancer patients is help them to navigate the options that they have those quite often physicians rather than telling you, well, this is the best thing I know how to do for you. They’ll say this is the best thing for you. And so you mentioned earlier pancreatic cancer, so I’ve helped some people through pancreatic cancer into remission, through immune support. And also through choosing their primary surgeon or oncologist well, so that they weren’t running into a lot of conflict about The dietary and lifestyle changes that they were making. And also with this one woman in particular, she had a surgeon down in Oregon, who was going to cut off half of her pancreas. And then she would have to be on dialysis and all this, she’s basically going to become a diabetic because of the surgery. And we decided, Well, you know, you can look for another surgeon and see if there’s someone else given your history and given your scans that will do a less radical procedure. And this guy had his videos and his website. No, I’m the best. This is the only way to do it and all that Anyway, she ended up going to somebody’s u dub, who did a small resection, and she’s been in remission for about three years. Yeah. And so, you know, it’s, it’s unfortunate, it may seem but I think it’s just overly overly idealistic to think that physician surgeons are somehow different than other human beings, that they don’t have egos, that they don’t have biases, that they won’t choose their favorite procedure over perhaps a safer procedure. It’s just the nature of our of our species. There are these biases and part of the challenge that we have and what you were, to me what you were referring to, when you were talking about the rain forest experienced the loss of species and, and those sorts of things that’s occurring on a global level. Because the culture that we have that is expanded globally, into multiple nations of various races of people around the planet, the main kind of urban global culture is very sort of, if you will, Zena phobic, it’s very much anti diversity. It’s not just like a black white issue or whatever. Depending on where you are in the world. People are still one religion or another. You know, there’s the British against the Irish or the Japanese versus the Koreans. There’s the Chileans versus the Peruvians. You know, the Brazilians versus the Argentine, there’s this lack of ability, at a level that you can say, morality, consciousness, whatever you might turn you might like to use, where people humans are in denial, that nature really is about diversity. And so it’s on a bunch of different levels. So the foods that we eat have been narrowed down to a few species that the world depends on that if there is some sort of a plague like we have Coronavirus, you know, fun guy or different infections can affect these food crops. And then suddenly, there’s nothing to replace them because we don’t have a diversity of rice or corn or different types of greens. And all these things are very easy to wipe out these industrial farms, because you have a monoculture. And if and if something infects that monoculture, it’s like a big city. industrial agriculture is like a, you know, a metropolitan city like New York or LA for the plants. Once this big plague comes in, there’s no place to hide because everything’s packed in so tiny. It’s not like the diversity of a rain forest. So cannabis has chemical diversity. And with respect to cannabis, I’m, if you will, a champion of the indigenous members of the cannabis community, meaning that people tend to see THC and CBD as the primary active compounds within cannabis. And they often refer to the other cannabinoids as being minor cannabinoids and sometimes even ignore the terpenes all together.

Unknown Speaker 23:39
So that’s what I mean by being anti diversity. So a friend of mine that I worked with a shaman pharmaceuticals. Our name was Dr. Marilyn Barrett, when she did her PhD on cannabis in the 80s excuse me discovered flavonoids, which are classic organic compounds

John Malanca 23:55
that are trying to interrupt is this like, is this a cannabis company?

Unknown Speaker 24:01
No, no, no, no, she did her PhD in in London, got a PhD in pharmacognosy. But her group was the group that discovered what are called can flavonoids, which are flavonoid molecules that are unique to cannabis that have anywhere from 20 to 100 times the potency of anti inflammatory drugs like aspirin. Okay, they’re not cannabinoids and they’re not terpenes. They’re flavonoids. And and nobody ever talks about this. I have this thing on silence. And let me know I don’t know why. I thought I had it on silence. Anyway, the point being that ignoring the diversity of this plant that has upwards of 500 unique chemical constituents molecular constituents that have by activity is a mistake. So looking at the indigenous population, so these can flavorings are indigenous to cannabis. The terpenes are indigenous to cannabis. THC and CBD are not THC and CBD are produced primarily by humans. Harvesting cannabis. And when cannabis is then exposed to heat and air or light when it’s decarboxylated, which is a common term used in the industry, especially in the recreational marijuana industry. The decarboxylation increases the THC content, which of course recreational marijuana is the goal. Yeah, but for him, why are people processing hemp, as though it’s marijuana. So indigenous to the plant, there is no THC, there is no CBD, which means of course, there’s no reason for it to be a schedule one drug. And the plant itself produces what’s called canaves urologia acid or CBG acid. And from that you get CBD acid and THC acid, not acid like LSD, but just it has a little bit of co2, carbon dioxide on the molecule stuck there. And so the acidic forms are the indigenous compounds. And these other ones that we see are from heating and drying and curing the plant it doesn’t mean that they’re not active, but they’re definitely not the natural Phyto cannabinoids

John Malanca 26:19
so CBD Let me hear if I heard you correctly CBD and THC in your description are man made due to heating and what we’re doing to the plant where man is doing

Unknown Speaker 26:30
primarily they can also occur if you just happen to let a bunch of cannabis plants die in the field or grow well past maturity as they start to age just like maple trees you know, change color. So as they start to age, the say the integrity the biological integrity of the plant starts to decline. And so they these molecules will degrade spontaneously into CBD and THC but it’s not a process born of the plant. It comes from the decline of the plant either because it’s aging or it’s been cut down

John Malanca 27:11
so what she bn fall into that of the decline of the plant of THC converting into it converting it to into CBN.

Unknown Speaker 27:19
Yes, so you can arrive at CBN through a number of different pathways. But yes, so CBN typically comes from THC, and when as THC is aged, if you will or degrade it, then it produces CBN which has less of an intoxicating, high effect, and more of a sedating effect.

John Malanca 27:42
Yeah, this plan is so amazing because when you really get down to it, there’s so many different benefits in every one of these cannabinoids and I’ve talked about this on my show, and when I do a presentation I’ll have a slideshow but I have a roll of duct tape up there and people look at me like hey dummy, you let you hit you left the wrong slide up there and I started to know actually I have so many people does it work for this does it work for that does it work for this and I say you know I don’t want to say it’s like duct tape with a million in one use of bone you really get that it has so many benefits just like like you said nature’s pharmacy down in the evening in the rain forest. They all have you know they all you know oh take this to a career hiccup you know, you know this this will stop you from having you know gas you know and then the same thing with with the benefits of this plant and so let’s talk about the benefits of plant especially with with cancer. So are you still in cancer? You know, CBD tea cheese whatever when it what do you say because I get this all the time I don’t want I want the medical portion of that plant not the recreational portion plan I just and I always say you know all portions of plant are beneficial especially right you know, and you don’t have to have more is not always better than anything more water is not better, you know more you know, whatever you’re into is not better, more exercise not better. You know, and I think we’re all different and I we spoke about wine earlier My brother has been in the wine business for 20 something years. Now you can have a sip of wine or you drink three bottles of wine

Unknown Speaker 29:20
got a different sir and

John Malanca 29:21
the same thing with THC, the benefits of THC, you know, even with the entourage effect work with each other. You don’t have to have you know, 1000 milligram you can have success at two to five milligram we’re all we’re all built differently even if you know we’re both six foot one 200 something pounds, you know, same element. What may work for me may not be right. You’re You’re exactly ideal treatment. Exactly. And so can you touch up on that and going after the cancer cells. Do you believe that THC kills cancer cells will CBD stop to spread? Is that your mindset? Or have you even taken it further?

Unknown Speaker 30:07
Okay, so a little quick thing. So as I was saying, the indigenous compounds compounds that are indigenous to the cannabis plant,

John Malanca 30:16
it looks right for this one. So bring it on.

Unknown Speaker 30:20
Okay, reductionism, which is a core principle of this modern culture that we all kind of a part of and affected by is the enemy of diversity. It’s the ability as that interest to further and further so called refine, even the word itself is saying that it’s becoming improved. It’s becoming refined, as you take sugar cane and make it into white sugar, that it’s been refined because you got rid of these other things as though there was anything in the plant itself, that was somehow not useful. You know, kids in the Caribbean and in tropical areas, chew on sugar cane, people drink sugar cane juice, and they don’t get diabetes, and they don’t get cavities. But people that eat refined sugar have a very different experience. You know, cocaine is refined coca, you know, morphine and heroin, a refined opiate, so THC is molecule. You can call it refined cannabis. But it’s following that cultural trend that tends to lead to intoxication. So in this particular space, you mentioned grapes, and wine. So if you start with grapes, which is the actual plant that’s like cannabis itself, and what’s inside of grapes is a lot of sugar, a lot of fruit sugar, natural fruit sugar, that when fermented after the grapes are squeezed, then produce alcohol. And you don’t actually even have to add any yeast to it. Because there’s natural use that grow on grape plants. As they get very, very ripe. They’re attracted to the sugars in the moisture, and that whole sort of thing, which perhaps, is the origin of wine, how anybody ever started fermenting wine in the first place. Because you can actually find berries that are already fermented not just great, but a very berries, because of the action of these molds. But the point being, as you start with grapes, and then you go to grape juice, and then you have wine. And then from wine, depending on what direction you go in, if you leave the wine open to air, it becomes wine vinegar. If you take that wine and you run it through an extraction process, like is used with cannabis, you can make a concentrate, that’s called brandy. And if you take that brandy, another step, then an aged and all those sorts of things, and you have cognac. But if you decide to take that extraction even further to have an isolate, you end up with everclear, you end up with purified ethanol. Now, I would think anybody that drinks can detect a difference between grape juice and everclear. I think that anybody that drinks can detect the difference between wine and everclear. Okay, and so. But because of the cultural belief is part of the opportunity of having multicultural exposure, like you were mentioning, in the way you grew up, and also in the way that I’ve grown up and experiences that I’ve had as an adult, then allows me to stand back and say, Well, what is this culture doing with cannabis with the science and even with cancer, and to see to recognize certain patterns? And so if everclear isn’t the go to drink for the whole world? Why should an Iceland be the go to remedy derived from cannabis for cancer? So part of this reductionism is this sense. So obviously, there are other molecules in grape juice and in wine like resveratrol, and anthocyanins and there are lots of science there are lots of beneficial molecules. And the challenge is, so I look first of all it cannabis like food, you know, so are you going to try and tell me, like people often try to tell you, this is why you should eat kale. It has oxalic acid, it has this it has this like, you know, that’s really not what’s important. And as you start to isolate that, you’re starting to ignore these other things. You know, it’s like meeting a woman and saying, Hey, you know, what’s great about her, she’s got pretty hair, or she’s got great legs or other parts that I won’t mention on your show. And, and so this objectification and of course, cannabis is a bunch of female plants. Hey, look at how big the flowers are in my plan. Whoa, you know, and, and so part of that attitude is a cultural approach, because in the rain forest, you don’t find a bunch of teenagers grabbing their uncle’s iwoca and grabbing chicks and going out into canoe and trying to get stoned. I’m just going to turn this thing off. I don’t know why I won’t stop.

Unknown Speaker 34:50
I turned off the ringer and everything. Steve Jobs is reaching from beyond the grave and controlling my phone. Anyway, another pancreatic cancer patients So, anyway, so I mentioned all of that. So that also that people can accept that I have a broader view of cannabis and also of cancer. So the idea of killing cancer cells for me is not the issue. Because cancer cells to me, are not really the enemy. Any more than, you know, like I said, the, the teenager teenager who’s gone punk is an enemy and his or her own household. Cancer cells are human cells, they come from our own bodies. And cancer is not something that just happens to cancer patients. Theoretically, you could say that every human, especially every adult, has cancer, but it’s subclinical, because theoretically, all cancers begin with a single cell that transforms, just like every bad neighborhood starts with a single they see a crack house, and that one crack house then starts to transform the whole neighborhood and the culture. And so suddenly, you have this toxic environment that intoxicates the neighboring cells and neighboring households, you know, it’s even been shown that cancer cells can actually eat, consume the cells that are next to them. Okay, so they’re like these carnivorous, or cannibalistic cells. But the reason I’m not such a proponent of killing cancer, yeah, is because it’s very difficult to tell the difference between a cancer cell and a human cell, because they’re both human. Like I said, it’s just the difference between that say, you know, you’re like a PE teacher or something in high school, that 14 year old kid you had back in June, and the 15 year old kid who’s come back in September, who looks completely different, you know, he or she still might love to play volleyball. But maybe based on our judgment, it’s like, yeah, we need to get rid of this, you know, we did give him a haircut and get rid of that pink dye. So I’m not saying to not eliminate the cancer cells, but to recognize and honor the fact that we created them, our lifestyle, all those things, the things that we eat are much more complex and individual molecules, perhaps we need more cannabinoids in our diet. But the fundamental issue with cancer is a failure of the immune system to perform it surveillance to continually eliminate on a day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute basis, these transformed cells as they arise in the body, because there are trillions of cells in the body, like 1000s of times more cells in your body or my body than there are humans on the planet. So it’s a community that needs to be able to live and work together. trillions, billions on our planet, we’re at war. Okay. So imagine trying to keep trillions of cells from the brain and the pancreas and the liver, and the toenails and everything, all in harmony with one another, not taking more oxygen, and taking away all the sugar. That’s what the cancer does. That’s why the rest of the body stars, because it wants more than its fair share, again, like the teenager raising the refrigerator, right. And dad can’t have a quart of roast beef sandwich later, because Jr, what happens? Yeah, you know, but so that’s really all that’s going on. And it’s about retraining the body’s immune system to then pick up on these cancers. So the difference is that cancer is a medical diagnosis. And so until the diagnostic abilities of medicine are at the same level where the cancer is, it can’t be detected like a breast cancer until the lump is big enough to palpate the woman doing the breast exam can’t find it, or a mammogram can’t find it below a certain size. Well, when it can’t be detected. It’s still not called cancer. It’s just called carcinogenesis. But it has no clinical definition because the doctor can’t find it. But it’s still going on. Breast Cancer takes 15 to 20 years, okay to become a detectable breast cancer. So what I say is in those 15 and 20 years, why not try some hemp oil, or

Unknown Speaker 39:05
crush them with hemp oil, or hemp or

Unknown Speaker 39:08
hemp product, even fresh juice? Yeah, all along the way. And these immunomodulators that will help the immune system eliminate future cancers. If this 35 year old woman has an older sister, or an aunt or mother who had breast cancer, they should know that they’re already in line for that, you know, just like with Alzheimer’s and people whose parents have Alzheimer’s, there are things that people can do it through just in their lifestyle, and also in their intake of various you know, supplements, cannabis being one of them, that can help to mitigate those issues, so that they don’t even have to cure the cancer. When it comes to killing cancer cells. Yeah, usually that’s done in vitro in a cell dish. That doesn’t tell you how toxic it’s going to be to the human that takes it. So that’s where the error in that whole process or mindset is, you know, can you go into that now. neighborhood kill all the crack dealers without shooting any innocent people. The collateral damage is the toxicity of the chemotherapy

John Malanca 40:08
well with the toxicity, you know therapy and I’m a fan of conventional medicine as well but doesn’t chemotherapy come in and kill all cells good and bad? Were plant based medicines you know I do a lot the integrative oncology world and there’s a lot of times you know, being a health advocate again I’m not a doctor, but redirecting you know, I do research a lot especially now you know, after my wife has passed as I did not miss them it you know, seen higher success rates on different ailments and the one that really stood out and criminally did not do chemo radiation. And and you one study that we we came across from this, these integrative oncologist was it was a 2.1 success rate in Australia with chemo radiation in 2.3, or 2.4. success rate here in the States why they use Australia as a as a marker, I don’t know. Probably because they’re so strict on you even you’re even seen it with COVID. You know, I think that Australia, even with HIV, I mean, they shut that country down, you’re not coming in and you’re not coming in. Same thing with COVID. So maybe that’s why they use that as a marker. You know, we didn’t go that route we believed in in we didn’t have a plan B, we really thought we were going to beat this bloody thing. And so do you feel? People because, like you said, we all have cancer in us, depending on what state where it is in our body before it even gets to a stage. Do you think humans should take a type of cannabinoid on a daily basis as plant based medicine as an nutrient in our bodies,

Unknown Speaker 41:53
I think of it as a nutrient I think of it as feeding the endocannabinoid system like Dr. Ethan Rousseau talks about, it makes sense to me, you know, remember that, roughly 100 years ago, nobody had heard of vitamins. And and so they were later found, the reason they’re called vital vitamins is because they’re considered to be vital means the means or the type of molecular structure that they have. And so there are these vital components in the foods that people are eating, that if they don’t eat the right combination of foods, they start to have these diseases and the structure of our medicine, we have a tendency to recognize pain and suffering. And so when somebody has scurvy, or berry berry or palabora, these other vitamin deficiencies, their hair falls out and bleeding gums, whatever, then suddenly, people recognize this and then they recognize it, oh, well, if they have this citrus juice, or if they eat, you know, regular grass, like from the lawn grass that like marijuana grass, but it probably would work with that, too, then somehow the scurvy goes away. So it’s hard. I think for people, especially with smartphones, and super commute computers and AI, to acknowledge that we still don’t necessarily know how to feed ourselves, well, we’re still kind of like toddlers that are gonna just stick anything in our mouth. And it may not be good for us. Or it may be and so that level of accuracy of saying oh, you should take this because it has this molecule. The science really isn’t at that at that level yet, even though people act as though it is. But the benefits that can be derived. This induction have enjoyed system functions, as they call it as a harm reduction system to maintain homeostasis. And a lot of people have different interpretations of that. But part of the function of that is to modulate the nervous system, reproductive system, appetite, immune system, lots of different digestive system in the body. In order to have a if you will helpful balance or homeostasis within the body. The process of killing cancer cells occurs not because there’s some general toxicity that goes flowing through the body, so THC and CBD, or thca and cbda as well, or not flowing through the body having toxic effects on cells that the cancer cells just happen to be more sensitive to, because they’re more aggressive and growing faster. That’s the way that chemo therapies work. They work as toxins. And if you hope just like in a very medieval like with the witches and witch hunts, that the poison will kill the bad before it kills the good. So the whole approach to chemotherapy is really very medieval, to give people poisons that would make a healthy person sick. But because this person is already sick, we’ve already given them up for dead because they have cancer, and we can poison them and hopefully the poison will kill the poison inside of them. So it’s really like these, like an exorcism. It’s really to me a very primitive approach to a systemic disease, but the cannabinoids, the fighter can Have annoys the indigenous ones, the CBD and the THC as well function to redirect the energies, if you will, or the actions of the immune system, such that you recognize, for instance, a popular effect that people talk about April autosys, which is that the cancer cells self destruct, that they receive instructions from the greater body, that their time is coming, it’s time for them to end that’s a common set of instructions that occurs in the human body. And you know, and that’s how, you know, we end up with fingers, five fingers instead of webbing in between, that in the embryonic state, these cells that used to connect all these things were told, okay, your time is done, time to disappear. So it’s is it really death? Are they really being killed? That’s kind of like this barbaric approach, as opposed to saying that this community is modifying itself. And just because we’re so focused on this tumor mass, it really is to create an environment in which carcinogenesis is not favored. And the attitude of the human being has shifted away from death back towards life. Because just one additional small thing, I think it’s a small thing. What is it that makes cancer such a big problem? It’s the same thing that occurs, really with COVID. And that people also don’t pay attention to and there’s lots of studies coming out now, the utility of THC and CBD and other cannabinoids in preventing COVID preventing the infection and also stopping the spread. But what makes infectious diseases and cancer such a big problem is they don’t just hit one person, right? So if a person has arthritis, okay, if a person has a migraine, they’ll be the only person with that they can walk and hang out with people swim in the pool, sleep with whoever they want, and nobody’s ever going to get their migraine or their arthritis. an infectious disease is communicable. So one person who has it can give it to several other people. Cancer is a systemic disease. So you won’t transfer it from person to person in general. But it can transfer from the breast to the bone to the brain to the heart to the liver to these different, it keeps ceding itself through a process called metastasis. These are little individual cells that are kind of like seeds. Like that bad neighbor who doesn’t, you know, cut his or her grass, and the dandelions grow, then the little white, puffy things go flying around, and then they land in other people’s lawns. And then what do people usually do they spray Roundup, which is toxic and cancer causing to kill those dandelions. But if you stop this spread of these seeds, if you have a way to catch them, backing them up, clip the tops off of those dandelions before they go to seed or even better yet, use them for salad, then you don’t have this with your rhubarb pie,

Unknown Speaker 48:05
right?

Unknown Speaker 48:06
There it is, then you don’t have this spreading issue. So cancer surgery, for instance, there are studies that show that cancer surgery spreads cancer, as they’re grabbing these weeds out of the garden, little pieces break off, little seeds break off, and as you’re dragging this big bag full of cancer seeds out of the body from see the abdomen, these little fluffy seeds start to go in through the bloodstream and end up in other parts of the body. So for instance, at that stage, as I used to try and teach the surgeons, there should be immune modulating therapy because surgery and anesthesia depress the immune system. So depress the body’s ability to fight off these the spread of this cancer. That’s the time when you would want to take an immune modulator, whether it was a mushroom based compound, whether it was based from cannabis, it could be you know, hemp oil, the ratio between THC and CBD, a lot of that would have to do not only with the type of cancer, but also the pain and pain tolerance of the individual. And also the level of cognitive function, you know, to me is a very individual thing. Cancer is personal for me, it’s not population. But so that aspect of it of the utility of cannabinoids, there is ample scientific research. There is ample justification from a mechanistic standpoint of why it should work, and why it works in many people. It’s not necessarily reason to abandon surgery and chemotherapy altogether. But the smartest approach would be to look at all of these benefits at once and not always wait until someone is in stage.

John Malanca 49:52
So So that was my next thing because we hear a lot of people say, you know, let me try this and if this doesn’t work, then I’ll try cannabis or there or I’ll try some other plant based Non FDA approved procedures? Are you a fit? So it sounds like you’re a fan of combining them if they want to do the conventional, that you’re you are a fan of combining canine cannabinoid therapeutics to something is, is

Unknown Speaker 50:23
I believe in using whatever works. Yeah, I don’t I don’t believe in integrative medicine or alternative medicine, because I don’t believe that anything that works is an alternative. Yeah, it’s its main, its primary. And so to me to call an alternative medicine that works is like calling women in the workforce, alternative employees, know, their employees, and they’re contributing, and maybe sometimes their numbers are higher, they may be more effective than the guys. And so that’s what I mean about this reduction is isolationist approach. Yeah, that tends to marginalize the useful components. So the the approaches that that you’re mentioning, the lifestyle changes, and including dietary changes, and looking at multiple markers, and not waiting until the end, because the real end, you know, who is it that gets the very last opportunity to help the patient is the priest, right?

Unknown Speaker 51:26
We know,

Unknown Speaker 51:27
patients, patients never die from surgery, or seldom die from surgery or from medicine. It’s that priest, if they could just keep the priest out of the room. I just always thought when I was there at Stanford, I said, you know, why can’t the priests come in two weeks ago? I mean, it’s definitely one of the side effects of prayer. And so why is there such a hard wall? If this person has a relationship with the church? Why not let the priests come in and do a few prayers? And yeah, I was no studies that show that it works. It’s like, Well, you know, do you want to wait until there’s a steady five years from now then say, oh, gosh, maybe I should have been doing that for my patients all along. You know, first do no harm is Hippocrates. It didn’t say first prove it with the FDA. It said first, do no harm,

John Malanca 52:14
no talk about frailty to stories about prayer. So this integrative oncology organization that Chris and I have been involved with for the past eight years plus, but the very first conference we went to, they did a roundtable discussion, and they had doctors up on stage and the, you know, the audience started asking question, they said, What are the things you do look at? They said, First off, we look at one, we asked them, religious background, are they open to you know, do you have you have a God that you pray to? We asked them what their home life is like, are they married, get along with their with their spouse? Do you know our three kids? And they ask, do they have the will to live. And then the doctor said, we’ll even pray with the with with the patient. Just to comment, and I said, I’ll be damned. Finally a doctor is thinking outside the box. And I just I love that approach. And I just fell in love with that group in that community. Because of that. When Chris was in the house, her birthday was October 15. And she passed a few days afterwards. But I had a priest I asked her priests to come in. And he came in and started. She bless her for her birthday. And I met the look of my I mean, I, I knew every eight for my wife. I mean, we were just that connect on every every every level. He came in, my mom was there and my mom go to church six days a week. It wasn’t for my dad, she would have been done. I do. And so, but this priest comes in and he starts reading it and crenn who’s had been sitting there, her I opened up and she looks to me like, Ah, I’m not going anywhere. And I went Father, Father, I didn’t ask you to read I’d ask you to bless her for her birthday. And I said, No disrespect father. This woman is pure. And she’s she’s not a sinner, you know, for you know, if you want to cleanser and sit and then he asked my mom, she goes to church six days a week, and she looks back. And he looked at me like, God, and I was like, No, I don’t need no any last rites, but it was, I mean, we were connected to the very, very, very, very end. But, you know, I am a fan of that. You know, my dad was been a hospital, our priests came and we had a family from next the bed over said, Father, you know, we’re not religious, but would you come over and pray pray with my father and, you know, when you’re in those things, you know, in the situations, you know, it says eat this mouse you leave the mouse. Right, right. Why Why couldn’t hope Why take Yeah, you know,

Unknown Speaker 54:57
exactly. And so the thing is that then The narrowing of of considerations, yeah, down to a narrower set of possibilities, eliminate certain possibilities, and actually increases the incidence of side effects. But the point being, though, that that’s why I said that everything that could be useful and is not harmful to me should be on the table, the outside of the box. I’ve never really related to boxes at all, except, you know, occasionally from Amazon. Yeah, I think it’s silly for somebody who’s making global decisions for another human being to approach them with a box because my box is not your box. But the point is, there has been there have been studies that show for instance, Dr. Spiegel down at Stanford in the psychiatry department, one of my roommates it worked on this trial with him back in the 80s, I guess it was showed increased survival originally at least showed increased survival among women breast cancer patients, when they had a group that they met with like once a week. And also some of them underwent hypnosis and that sort of thing. So. But for me, proof is not really that sort of proof, statistically significant proof doesn’t concern me so much. I start with a very basic definition of healing, which is about making people feel better. And I used to teach people to be healers. And the first lesson was, I grew up back in the days of the chalkboard and I would draw a circle on the chalkboard and make a smiley face, and then everybody would kind of laugh at it. So this is step number one, if you can get somebody to smile, you have already healed them, you’ve made them feel better. It doesn’t, it’s not always about making their cancer go away. It’s not always about getting rid of their high blood pressure, they’re high blood sugar is is this human being leaving my presence, feeling better than they did before. And in this culture, there’s a lot of

Unknown Speaker 56:57
animosity towards how a person feels this very utilitarian approach, if somebody can feel better because of THC or psilocybin, or microdosing. You know, it’s like, well, but that’s not real. It’s like, actually it is it is it’s very real, the rest of it is, is secondary. So there are a lot of these cultural issues. But given those different aspects, and what the actual goals are for people, which is to live well to live better, those sorts of things, I look at what helps to promote health and people. So you mentioned looking at the home life and the family life and religion. Yeah, it’s shown there’s multiple studies, like I told you, I used to do this immunomodulation in cancer, one of the studies that I used to present to people was that show that as people become depressed, their immune function becomes depressed, that when people travel and are jet lagged, which I often was because I was giving talks in Thailand and Japan and Croatia in places like that. So I would say it is my city. You know, I anticipate that because I’ve traveled so far out of my time zone. And this is a biological anomaly. Humans weren’t designed to be able to go halfway around the planet in that short period of time. This is really time travel to be able to move from one timezone to another jetlag is a symptom of time travel, it’s just slow. You know, the planes aren’t going, you know, Mach five, and they’re not going work five, but they’re going 500 miles an hour, that’s still faster than a horse and buggy, or walking. And so it’s a new experience for us in this modern age. So if the studies show me that my immune system is depressed, and I wrote over here on an airplane, and there are people coughing on the airplane, even pre COVID, then why wouldn’t I boost my immunity, in fact, in advance of taking those trips, and it turned out the company I was working for back then diode pharmaceuticals, a natural pharmaceutical company from Japan, had this product called BRM, for that, that had lots of studies in the cancer space. But as general immune modulation, which also, as I said, includes resistance from viral infections. So I said, You know, I just, I focus on boosting my immunity, before I expose myself to this new community of pathogens on the airplane, in the airport, in a foreign country, all those things. So, to me, these are just little common sense things that people could do with respect to depression. So depression is linked to inflammation, to immune dysfunction. And when there is inflammation in the gut, like when there’s a poor microbiome people aren’t eating well, people that have IBD and IBS. There are signals that go from the butt butt butt, to from the gut to the brain. Isn’t that funny? From the gut to the brain, to tell the person to be depressed? Now just seems like wow, that’s weird. People try and figure it out. And some people say well, depression makes people To sleep more and stay at home, so they’re less likely to spread a disease and they’re more likely to heal. And those things may be true. But the point is depression doesn’t just come because somebody in the family dies or somebody loses their job. It can come from purely, if you will, a physiologic basis, this inflammation that runs out of control in the body is also pro carcinogenic. So yes, managing the moods of people in the relationships of people, like I said, at that quantum carcinogenesis level at the level of the individual carcinogen and the individual transformed cell, before it becomes as big monster, you know, that is overwhelming to the body. It’s like, Look, there are these things going on. It’s really is unhealthy to work at a job that you hate, and go home, or feeling that anger, and do things that are available for a person to do whether it’s drinking too much, abusing the spouse, or the kids or being angry, you know, watching porn, whatever it is that a person is engaging in that state of mind. The problem isn’t the porn, you know, the problem isn’t even yelling. It’s the emotional attitude behind that. And the signal that then goes from the brain back out to the rest of the body. So this endocannabinoid system is definitively the mind body connection at the systemic, physiologic and molecular level, as far down as we can look, that’s where those connections are. Okay. And so a change in mood changes, the amount of serotonin changes, addictive behavior changes the amount of screen time on a cell phone, it changes relationships, people may if they put down their phones, that may change the relationship between mom and dad or whatever, you know. So all of these things that people like to try and pretend they’re not really significant is not as important as likes, or blood sugar and blood pressure. No, those are markers. But the core of human life and well being is the reason for being alive. And the things that a person can do. So my, my work, my focus, I don’t focus on cancer, I don’t really even just focus on cannabis I focus on how can people live better, regardless of their politics, regardless of their gender preference, or racial preference? I really don’t care. I don’t wish cancer on anybody. I think that people make people make better decisions, life decisions and community decisions, when they’re in good health, not when they’re angry, and unemployed and PTSD. And feeling disenfranchised, doesn’t matter the color of your skin, you’re likely to go and screw up somebody else’s life when you’re in that situation. And it’s very easy to drink a bunch of things that motivate people to go out on mass and to do those things. And so it’s really about extending that embrace of nature, and the well being of life, to as many humans as possible, so that, you know, this thing can kind of become more of a community, like a healthy human body than these warring factions that run around. And interestingly, one little thing, and we’re probably going to have to tie up pretty soon. Yeah, I’ll go off and talk about the whole universe, if you let me. The plant kingdom and the human Kingdom have this other connection, which is, to me super interesting. In the human body, there are also what are called endocannabinoids. And that’s part of what fascinates me about this space, that it’s not just a plant that affects the body, but the body has a system that the plant is feeding and stimulating that the system within the body may be depleted or sub optimal in order to deal with different circumstances. Whether it’s cancer, depression, insomnia, arthritis getting hit in the head and a contact sport or a pugilist sport, all those things, how to modulate that body. So this human can get through life and experience life in the way that they want to. These endocannabinoids primarily arise from an endogenous compound within the body called arachidonic acid. And so inanda mide and to Ag and all that, at the core of their molecular structure is this compound called arachidonic acid, okay? And it is associated with stress. And so depending on in the body with if a person is kind of stressed, the adrenal glands and other systems in the body can push that person’s physiology in the direction of inflammation and chronic inflammation, which leads to lots of problems like I mentioned, cardiovascular disease or cerebrovascular disease, depression, cancer, lots of problems, or in the direction of the production of more endocannabinoids That then change this person from within to perhaps being more relaxed, less stressed, getting over their PTSD, insomnia, having better relationships, that sort of thing. So I look at the ability of the system to steer people more towards their optimum away from addiction to drugs like cocaine and benzodiazepines and opioids. So a lot of this, like I said, homeostasis, bringing this person into balance, not as balanced as dictated by a guru or the FDA or, you know, but what is optimal for you are for me in our own individual life to live, you know, our choices. And so, the plant kingdom has this same system with arachidonic acid. And much of what you find in these plants like cannabis and other plants like white willow bark that produces the precursor to aspirin. That aspirin inhibits this activity of arachidonic acid that causes inflammation. They’re all working in the same space because remember, plants get stressed to wildfires are a big stress with plants, okay? insect infestations and fungus and too much rain or not enough rain. And the way those plants respond to that stress produces compounds that help them cope with the stress. And often those compounds like the cannabinoids in cannabis, hemp and marijuana help the human being that takes in those stress, response, stress, mitigating compounds, help the human submitted get their own stress. To me, that’s like the coolest thing. In the whole.

John Malanca 1:06:38
It’s amazing. There’s plenty I wasn’t asking you and I know I want to be courteous of your time as well. Did you learn about the endocannabinoid system in medical school at Stanford at Harvard didn’t exist didn’t exist exist yet.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:51
And it can happen like system is just a little bit over? What 20 over 20 years old, as but it takes about 10 years before the findings in laboratories make it into textbooks. that sort of a thing. So I heard about the findings. But the endocannabinoid system really is still not really known. Not only is it not being taught in medical schools, but the expanse of it still really isn’t known just like the expanse of you know, what is the internet? Because the endocannabinoid system is basically like the operating system within the smart device. It is the human body. And you know, what is really going on in your smart device, what is really going on in the internet, it would take decades to explore it just to find out what’s going on today. And by that time, it would have changed. And so the inter cannabinoid system was discovered because of the pursuit of THC, what’s the active site for THC in the body. But again, that pursuit is because of the Association of cannabis, as marijuana as the hashish that Dr. machine was researching as a drug of abuse, intended for intoxication. Never for the treatment of arthritis or cancer, PTSD, depression, that sort of thing or anxiety, unfortunately. So all of the science of cannabis is skewed in the direction of THC and intoxication, just like the production of hemp and cannabis products are skewed in the direction of maximizing THC, as though that’s the greatest thing that can be done with the plant. And it’s not just like, do you grow coffee to maximize the caffeine? No. Okay. And and so, this sort of an approach this short of skewing, you know, cannabis in this young direction and away from the Yin direction. Again, it’s ignoring that other half that female half feminine half, it’s again, the box, the limiting the diversity, the reductionism, the whole plant all together with its endogenous compounds or indigenous compounds, either way, you could say it, that is where the source and the key is and to continue research in that direction. The two mains cannabinoid receptors, cb one and CB two are associated with THC. Why? Because it was discovered first No, because it gets people high. Because you can get in a canoe with chicks and give them THC and do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. That’s what humans want. They like to control other people. Okay, CBD doesn’t really control anybody. So it got put on the shelf. Okay, so we need to look into not just intoxicating one another, but being able to share a healthy space with one another. And that begins with these endogenous compounds and looking at CBD and THC and the global benefits in addition to the anti cancer and anti anxiety benefits, but not just looking at disease, but also looking at health,

John Malanca 1:10:04
health, health, and well, and unfortunately, that’s the one thing that frustrates me is that many of these states, they all have their different qualified conditions. And health and wellness is not on their

Unknown Speaker 1:10:16
health and wellness. And that’s bizarre. Look, they talk about a healthy economy, and how do you have healthy economy without having healthy people, you have this long history of slavery across all the cultural groups, whether it’s people in chains or people in coal mines, and their well being has never been considered, you know, and is the willingness to send somebody off to, you know, some foreign country, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and have their head blown off and not really care about that person’s well being just their ability to kill another person. So yeah, I’m not particularly pro war. Because it’s like, you know, there’s a lot of things we could do together. Yeah, that, you know, before we go off, doing these other things, are these kids getting good schooling? Are they physically fit? Are they being bullied in school, a friend of mine, who’s also in the cannabis industry lives in Colorado, you know, lives in a suburb and all that kind of stuff. We both grew up in Detroit, but now he lives in Colorado, he was telling me that between his three kids that are still like high school age, all of them are high school age, they already know 14 kids that have committed suicide, and not just in the technical sense of tried suicide, but died. Okay, so effectively committed suicide. And where is that on the map? Yeah, you know, suicide is going up, while COVID is going up and going around. But there are these kids. And these are suburban kids. These aren’t ghetto kids or immigrant kids. These are kids that the country should really be caring about. I think they should care about everybody. But if the people that are hating other people aren’t caring about their own kids, we’re in a lot of trouble. That means that to me, it’s like, Look, let me become a billionaire win the lottery tomorrow. And, you know, read one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX jets, I’m going to take some vape juice and just fly over the whole country in low altitude is just people really need to kind of chill out and reconnect with their Endocannabinoid systems. Because, you know, we’re not as much enemies as we are like, and we harm ourselves. And we ruined the whole planet with this whole sort of antagonistic kind of violent conquest approach. You know, leave the rainforest alone, get the plastic bottles out of the ocean, you know, shake hands with your neighbor, you know, have a neighborhood dance or something. Yeah.

John Malanca 1:12:43
I have a friend that that he’s almost like Johnny Appleseed. And he throws cannabis seeds around. He goes, Yeah, you know, some may take some meat may not. Man, I have so many other questions I want to talk to you about but I know it’s time. One, we can always do another show. I would love to do another another show with you. One you being anesthesiologists. This comes up all the time. I was told by my anesthesiologist john that I need to stop cannabis 10 to two weeks in advance, and especially if they’re if they’re if they’re battling something as severe in cancer, and cannabis has been part of their med medical regime. What are your thoughts on that take on that.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:22
So being an anesthesiologist, anesthesiologist tend to be deathly afraid of unknown factors. And so because cannabis and anesthesia haven’t been researched, yeah, and the anesthesiologist is responsible for keeping the patient alive, while the surgeon is basically cutting them open in the body thinks it’s dying. So yes, it’s understandable that there’s this apprehension. But are they going to tell that same person to stop taking their antidepressants? Are they going to tell that same person to for two weeks stop having three beers a night and exactly so all those things, so cannabis is not more difficult across the board. When you have people that drink a lot, you know, drink more than say three or four drinks a day, their anesthetic requirement tends to go up. But the basic skills required to manage a patient in anesthesia don’t really change. The dosages may change. But the parameters that you have to watch don’t change so much. If it’s very, very sensitive surgery, like neurosurgery for a brain tumor or something. There may be some critical balances that people are very concerned about, but again, they’re dealing with an unknown, okay, so say if a diabetic comes in, we try to normalize out their blood sugar before they even go into the O r, because there are lots of problems that diabetics can have and their mortality rate goes up, but those are known things. So anesthesia basically usually uses multiple drugs to achieve what’s called a balanced anesthetic effect. So that people don’t have pain. They also don’t have recall, they don’t move around on the bed all those things. Well, cannabis is basically like a balanced anesthetic all in one plant. Because it’s anti anxiety. And it’s anti stress. It has analgesic components, it actually supports the immune system. I wouldn’t suggest anybody had their gallbladder taken out just on, you know, dabs or something, but to recognize that it’s a valid medicine, that merits research to understand how can it interface with mainstream medicine most effectively, and to get rid of some of the barriers in the boxes to this knowledge, because there’s a lot of us as scientists that are very interested in doing the research and, and seeing it all be become unified to a greater understanding of human health and wellness and even recovery from illness and injury.

John Malanca 1:15:51
Where do you see I’m gonna throw one more in here at you? Okay, where do you see a cannabis going as a medicine in mainstream?

Unknown Speaker 1:16:02
That’s tricky. It depends on what people do I, I have a tendency to be overly optimistic. And I can see it becoming very mainstream, like, you know, dark chocolate and, and kale and a lot of these other health things that people that are interested in their own health will continue to consume. And eventually, over time, just like vitamins, you got vitamin D milk and vitamin enriched drinks and all these sorts of things. And so I think there’s a tendency of the consumer demand to kind of go along and often follow celebrities and that sort of thing. But cannabis is a great benefit. I think cannabis has the potential to, to remedy a lot of the ill that exists between humans and within humans in the world. Like I said, flying over with vague juice, you know, it’s like, Kim trails. Yeah. But with CBD.

Unknown Speaker 1:17:01
Anyway,

John Malanca 1:17:03
you’re on you’re onto something.

Unknown Speaker 1:17:05
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it just it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, and I know there’s a lot of history there. There’s a lot of controversy. And I’m not saying 100% in Siri seriousness, but really that people have free access to nourishing the endocannabinoid system because, as I mentioned, Dr. Russo has identified several conditions that I won’t go into here, several conditions that he associates with a relative Endocannabinoid deficiency. And these acidic cannabinoids like THC and CBD, not only help increase the bioavailability excuse me, CBD and THC, a guy not only helped to increase the bioavailability of CBD and THC, but also enhance their bio activity. So for instance, with THC a and cbda that CBD has been shown to be 1000 times more potent as a binding to serotonin receptors, which is associated with relief from the nausea and vomiting the chemotherapy patients have, and also relief from anxiety. And as a final little things, since you’re throwing things out here you’re mixing arachidonic acid. Yep. And the cannabinoids, Tylenol, acetaminophen is a cannabinoid. Okay, that little cherry syrup that people give to their kids binds to the same receptor that THC does. When the molecule of Tylenol is brought into the body and say the molecule looks like this, okay? It goes through the liver, and the liver breaks it in half. And all you have left is this, and then it sticks arachidonic acid onto it. And when you look at it, it looks just like an amide. And to AG, the endocannabinoids, the general molecular structure that lock and key, it has the same key part that those endogenous molecules have, and has been shown that the analgesic effects the pain relief effects of Tylenol or acetaminophen are related to his interaction with the in the cabinet system. And it goes further, if you look, it was maybe it’s been like, three, four or five years now. maybe longer, but several studies showed that Tylenol acetaminophen not only has this pain relief effect, it’s actually using anesthesia. Okay, it’s an anesthetic drug, but it also can affect the levels of empathy and a person. It can therefore affect performance anxiety, you can think of the negative effects of empathy, like you know, it’s the, the, you know, you’re on there at the foul line. And, you know, there’s five seconds left on the clock and you’re down by one point. And if you can hit these two, you know, you win the NBA championship or whatever, and you’re in the opposing teams arena. They’re gonna boom, yeah, you know, and they’re waiting all that stuff right in front of your lineups. As you’re shooting these foul shots, empathy will make you take sides with your opponent’s fans, right? Because they’re humans, just because you know, they’re from Denver and not from LA or whatever. They’re still human beings and that affects people, right? So Tylenol, perhaps could help people improve their athletic performance by not being swayed by the crowd. It also helps to blunt what’s called social anxiety and the pain of rejection. So we can help people with interviews, anxiety interviews, or a blind date or talking to their boss about a raise or whatever. All of those things because of that interaction with the canap endocannabinoid system. So

Unknown Speaker 1:20:39
Tylenol is psychotropic just like THC. Oh, my God. So it’s available?

John Malanca 1:20:50
Yeah, I don’t want all these young kids under 18 running down to pick up some talent. And let me ask is that is that part of the reason why you have so like, cough medicine and talent cold medicines are taken off the shelf is that no,

Unknown Speaker 1:21:02
but see, it doesn’t get you high. So part of the misunderstanding because CB one receptor was found with THC. There’s this association then that the CB one receptor gets you high. Okay. But it’s not cause and effect, it’s by association. So an addenda might, and to a G bind to those same receptors and they don’t get you high. You can’t get high on your own endocannabinoids you may have euphoria. You may be happy, you may start to laugh for no reason. But like I mentioned to you before, as an anesthesiologist putting in an epidural and a woman who has intense labor pains, especially with the first baby and you put in that epidural and the pain goes away, they go into a state of euphoria, because you’ve just relieved their pain and anxiety and a whole bunch of things all at once. And there’s this flood of neuro chemistry. Okay, sometimes they want to name the baby after you. It’s happened. It’s like, What’s your name? Oh,

Unknown Speaker 1:22:00
my God. Thank

Unknown Speaker 1:22:01
you so much. They’re angry at the husband because that’s why they’re pregnant. And they’re in love with me because I just took away their pain taken away the pain of another human being.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:10
First Name, then they go back to the resume right. That’s

Unknown Speaker 1:22:13
why my name used to be Rumpelstiltskin. So yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:19
So but it’s that thing. So euphoria is not intoxication. Yeah, not impairment. It doesn’t mean that a person can’t drive a car. Okay, so THC doesn’t necessarily cause impairment. And that’s for another conversation, or but it’s quite possibly that the THC would it gets transformed and liver, just like acetaminophen gets transformed and liver, it becomes this more potent molecule that leads to like when people eat a brownie, and then they get way too high afterwards. It’s not necessarily the THC that’s causing that it’s this thing called 11 hydroxy THC. So that’s the future but just to realize, what we think we know about we often don’t know, you know, Columbus Day, Columbus thought he had found Indians, right? He thought he was in India when he got here. So, you know, it’s quite possible that we need to go up 30,000 feet, take a new view of the endocannabinoid system and realize, yeah, we’ve discovered a new world. And it’s not really what we thought, and, and that’s what I like, I love discovery, I love you know, breaking old paradigms and, and championing the cause of the endogenous indigenous compounds, so that all of the contributors, everybody that’s contributing to this well being, to this bounty of life and nature, that they’re all being recognized, because when we appreciate all of it, and we have less of a tendency to kill off, you know, wolves, because they scare us and less of a tendency to throw things in the ocean because it’s so big, it’s like a big toilet. You know, and, and so it just, it allows us to take better care of the environment that we rely on to take care of us. So, health to me is a very, very big pictures as big as the whole planet.

John Malanca 1:24:05
Well, man, I enjoyed this. I really enjoyed this show. Thank you. Cool. Great for your time on I enjoyed it, too. And Dr. Leif, Dr. Leif, I love it. And and we’ll get you back on here and we’ll take part two part three on some of these topics. But I thank you so much, and excited to get this out to our to our followers as well. I know they’re gonna enjoy this and so Dr. Leif, thank you very much. This is John Malanca. With UPG  Be informed and be well and we will see you all soon. Have a great day. Happy New Year.