The new year awaits us, and new studies are underway for medical marijuana. We couldn’t be more excited about the information that will soon grace our screens. Spreading awareness and knowledge are one of the most critical actions to take as a cannabis user right now, and scientists are making it too easy. But before we even get into the research, what is this CBD stuff everyone is so excited about?

What Is CBD

Marijuana is more than just the THC that gives you the munchies and makes you giggle uncontrollably. It has over 80 cannabinoids that work together, one of the most popular being cannabidiol, or CBD. This cannabinoid doesn’t get you high, and it doesn’t make you put the cereal in the fridge and the milk in the cabinet, but it comes from the same plant with some incredible healing potential.

Endocannabinoid System

The reason cannabinoids are so effective is because they have their very own system to interact with called the endocannabinoid system (ECS). The ECS is in charge of the body’s homeostasis, making sure that your body functions properly. The three parts that make up the ECS are cannabinoid receptors, endocannabinoids, and metabolic enzymes.

Cannabinoid Receptors

Cannabinoid receptors are located on the outside of your cells located all over the body. The receptors that you find more prevalent in the brain are CB1 receptors. They help mediate the neurological functions of the brain. CB2 receptors are spread more throughout the body and regulate the immune functions of the body. The way they are activated is through binding to endocannabinoids.

Endocannabinoids

Your body creates endocannabinoids in your brain to mediate the traffic that is going on between neurons. You have your sending neuron, the presynaptic cell, and your receiving neuron, the postsynaptic cell. The presynaptic cell sends messages to the postsynaptic cell to create brain function. However, the sending neuron can get a little too excited, and that’s when endocannabinoids come in.

Unlike most chemicals, endocannabinoids travel from the postsynaptic cell to the presynaptic cell through a process called retrograde signaling. By sending information to the presynaptic cell, endocannabinoids regulate the activity during transmissions. Another interesting thing about endocannabinoids is that they are made when they are needed instead of being preserved in a vesicle like most neurotransmitters. The part of the endocannabinoid system that makes these chemicals are the metabolic enzymes.

Metabolic Enzymes

Metabolic enzymes are proteins that synthesize endocannabinoids as well as run upkeep around the brain. When chemicals are no longer in use, these proteins come in and deteriorate them. Metabolic enzymes also go around and repair damaged cells while promoting a healthy lifecycle.

How CBD Interacts With The Endocannabinoid System

Unlike THC, CBD doesn’t bind directly to cannabinoid receptors. Instead, this cannabis chemical opens neural pathways, stimulates other receptors in the brain, and elevates and inhibits chemical production. We have found fundamental healing properties in cannabis such as pain relief, mood regulation, and anti-inflammatory. But what we don’t know yet is if medical marijuana can stop the progression of diseases or disorders while making them more manageable.

Scientists have been doing some digging, and they are coming up with some great information. Though we haven’t moved on to human studies for the many of the trials, the direction they are going and the progress they are making is promising.

The beginning stages of research start in the Petri dishes, then make their way to live models, and then humans are next on the list. To know what type of research we can expect to see on humans, we need to look at successful research done on rodent models. It is important to note that not every trial makes it to the next stage. However, it still is an indication of what studies are finding out. Here are some studies that have published in 2017 that give us a look into our future.

1.    Dravet Syndrome

Dravet syndrome is a rare genetic dysfunction that causes seizures in babies within their first year of life. Most of the infants with this disease have a gene mutation that made this disorder occur. It can be a challenging experience having a child who erupts in seizures when they are sick or excited, but there may be a more efficient and safe treatment in the future.

Last year a study was published on rodent models with dravet syndrome who they treated with CBD. The results showed significant improvement. We all love our rodent model research, but it gets inspiring when live human bodies are involved. Another study published last year that’s focus was on Dravet Syndrome, but this time they used real human models.

Researchers took 214 children from 2 to 18 who had dravet syndrome and were resistant to epileptic medication. Some children were given placeboes while the others were given CBD oil while slowly raising the dose. They found that the patients who were receiving CBD treatments were having fewer convulsive seizures than their placebo counterparts. 5% of the patients had stopped having seizures altogether.

2.    Helping The Damaged Liver

One of the worst parts of having an addiction is when you finally get over it your body might never recover. Heroin, cigarettes, cocaine, and alcohol all damage organs in your body. Researchers have been looking towards cannabidiol to see if it can help treat an alcoholic’s damaged liver.

Researchers had mice and fed them ethanol to create the alcohol-induced damage to their liver, while also giving them isolated CBD. They found that the CBD reduced oxidative stress, inflammation, and metabolic dysregulation.

3.    Public Speaking Dose

Have you ever heard of Goldilocks and The Three Bears? Our girl Goldilocks goes into someone's house and eats their food. The first bowl is too cold, the second bowl is too hot, and the third is just right. She goes around using their other amenities without their permission, but she is finding satisfaction in at least one medium option. When it comes to medication, there is often a pocket of goodness in a precise dosage that feels just right that is often called the Goldilocks Zone.

While studying the effects of CBD and public speaking, this year they published research explaining that more CBD doesn’t always mean better. They took sixty health adult subjects from ages 18-35 and separated them into five groups either dosing them with CBD, Colanxopam, and a placebo.When the CBD participants received 100MG or 900MG of CBD, their anxiety from public speaking wasn’t reduced. However, when their dose was 300MG, the subjects found that their anxiety was reduced.

4.    Preventing Brain Damage

There are many ways you can cut the oxygen off from your brain. Sometimes it happens with fetuses in the womb, it can happen when you fill your lungs with water at the beach, or it can happen when you have a stroke. Having oxygen cut off or reduced can cause severe brain damage, and researchers are trying to use medical marijuana to stop the damage.

Hypoxic-ischemic brain damage can cause future brain trauma and complicated life. Researchers have found success in newborn piglets that suffer from hypoxic-ischemic brain damage. CBD reduced lung damage from HI-brain damage, though they aren’t sure if it is thanks to anti-inflammatory properties in the brain or the direct effect on the lungs that caused the prevention. 

5.    Osteoarthritis

Over time, your body wears down. Sometimes it is the tissue in between your joints. This can make everything you do painful, and your life revolves around finding ways to function without wincing. Imagine a jail cell you can’t escape surrounded by pain; that is life in a body with osteoarthritis.

When researchers were studying rat models with OA, they knew that CBD could have pain relief properties, but would this help prevent damage or just make it easier to live through? After all, masking the pain is great but stopping the problem from getting worse is even better. They found that through CBD’s ability to produce anti-inflammatory effects, it halted the progression of the disease in the rat models.

6.    BONUS! The Stigma Exists

An interesting study published in 2017 that was unlike many others. Instead of focusing on what marijuana could do for our people, it instead focused on the perception of cannabis users. In the first phase, they had a group of images with cannabis users and non-cannabis users. The group was supposed to pick out who they thought used cannabis and who didn’t. The cannabis users were almost always identified correctly, showing that cannabis users tend to follow similar social norms.

The next phase had an entirely different group of people rate the same pictures. This time, none of them knew that any of the people in the images used cannabis. They asked which people they thought would perform poorly in a learning or memory test, and the results showed that everyone assumed that people who looked like cannabis users wouldn’t perform as well as the others.

This stigma isn’t just harmful in schools where teachers might not treat stoner students with respect, but also in the workplace and the real world. Everyone has their own opinion of what the typical cannabis user is, and some of them still are under the impression that they are lazy, stupid, or even violent.

There were some wonderful findings last year in 2017, and 2018 is going to be just as bountiful. If you want to stay up to date with the new and exciting things we are finding out about medical marijuana, follow us on our social media so you can stay up to date! And don’t forget to stop by the shop to check out some of our fantastic products that can help you get your quality of life up to the level that you deserve.