Search Results: iom (36)

CannaKids founder Tracy Ryan with her daughter Sophie.

When Tracy Ryan’s daughter Sophie was just 8 months old, doctors found a tumor in the newborn’s brain.

Doctors told Ryan that the slow-growing optic pathway glioma tumor near her daughter’s left eye would never go away. And if the tumor continued to grow, Sophie could lose vision in that eye.

Faced with the prospect of their daughter’s blindness, Ryan joined an increasing number of parents who are turning to cannabis to treat their children for illnesses ranging from cancer to epilepsy.

After nearly two years of chemotherapy combined with highly concentrated cannabis oil, made mostly of non-psychoactive, can’t-get-you-high cannabidiol (CBD) with traces of psychoactive tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) — Sophie’s tumor has shrunk.

Read more of Sophie’s story via L.A. Weekly.

When combined with radiation therapy, low doses of THC and CBD helped to kill high-grade glioma masses, among the most aggressive brain cancers there is, according to a report from St. George’s University in London.
Researchers say the THC and CBD made the cells more receptive to the radiation and that the tumors shrank up to 90 percent of their original size.

Flickr/perthhdproductions


A new study from the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance shows that people who had THC in their systems at the time that they suffered a traumatic brain injury were significantly more likely to survive the trauma. One of the study’s authors, surgeon Brian Nguyen, says that the results show yet again that the federal government should loosen the rules that restrict scientists and doctors from studying the effects of cannabis.
“There are medical benefits to marijuana that aren’t as robustly studied,” he says. “Further research needs to be done on this controversial compound.”


There’s going to be a slew of reports in the next few months about marijuana-related traffic deaths increasing in the United States as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wraps up a three-year study on marijuana and it’s impact on drivers. And, as usual, they are likely going to claim that stoned drivers are a plague on the roads and that there are masses of red-eyed, resin-fingered pot smokers out killing people on the roadway.

Innovation is inevitable in any industry, and the field of medical marijuana is no different. With laws already in the books in 18 states and more on the way, investors who might not know their Blue Chips from their Blue Dream are flocking to these regions to stake their claim in what they see as the next big commodity.
White-collar Wall Street-types can certainly see the budding upside to sinking money into dispensaries, growing operations, and other cannabis related retail outlets. But those potential gains are often outweighed by the prospects of inventory control, employee management, product naiveté. And of course, the grey area that exists in all current state-level medical marijuana laws that fly in the face of Federal statute. Cue MedBox.

Tonya Davis/Facebook
Tonya Davis is a medical marijuana activist in Ohio

By Tonya Davis
This is an open letter to my Ohio legislators.
 
I have nowhere else to turn. I hope you hear my cries for help and I hope you stand up for me. Representative Bobby Hagan will be  Re introducing the Ohio medical compassion act which I hope you will consider cosponsoring  in January 2013.
 
It would merely allow Ohio’s doctors and patients to decide whether or not medical cannabis could benefit them or not. It would allow the department of health to keep an eye on the program and make sure there were no abuses. Anyone that is in the program would be in a database so that you can keep track of this act of compassion.
 
We also believe that it would save Ohio taxpayers millions of dollars by not arresting, incarcerating  and prosecuting folks for making a choice using cannabis as medicine. we also believe that the Obama administration would not bother our program because there would not be storefronts or dispensaries selling the product.


By Sharon Letts
Knee surgery this past week has me thinking about pain, true tolerance, and why so many Americans are bent on being anesthetized. 
The Institute of Medicine states, 100 million Americans suffer from some kind of pain at a cost of $635 billion a year.
ABC News reported in January of 2012, 80 percent of the world’s pain meds are consumed in the good old U.S. of A.
Experts site our increased life expectancy, cancers, and a soft, sedentary lifestyle as the cause, but what of the rest of the world? Why are Americans suffering so? Or are we?
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