Cannabis expansion – over the ages by Fred Delisio

Hey folks — it’s good to be back!

Fred DeLisio here, back here at Weed World, with a regular column for you from here on out.

I’ve had an interesting 6 months since we last were together, so I wanted to bring you up-to-speed on why I’ve been gone and recap on where we came from over the past few years, with the Origin of the Species and an Overview of Cannabinoids and how they’re produced. With some cannabinoids defined in detail, I’ll give you a glimpse of where we’re going, and we’ll end with the next installment of “Cannabis, a Primer.”

This time, it’s “THCv — Tetrahydrocannabivarin — The Most Misunderstood Cannabinoid”.

Onward.

First, the unbelievable reason that I’ve been absent for the past 6 months, the one you’d never guess, is, I was in the hospital, waiting for a donor heart. I got the phone call after 76 days, had it “installed”, and am now, for all intents and purposes — HEALED.

Celebrating a brand new LIFE!!

I normally would never do this, but I have to give a BIG shout-out to Cedars Sinai and all the amazing people that work there. They perform more successful heart transplants than anywhere in the world, and it shows. I was able to interface with the smartest humans on the planet on this subject, and they were brilliant, to a one.

It was a long, painful and arduous process, but worth every second, and I’m SO grateful to have had the opportunity, and for the stellar results that it produced — a whole new ME!

The real irony here is, I am the first Medical Cannabis Patient in the US, and possibly the world, to ever receive a heart transplant, as it’s been against the law to receive a donor organ if you are using Cannabis, for any reason, until just this year in California.

As such, and since we are “in the business”, I’m able to follow up with a myriad of Cannabinoid therapies to help myself heal completely, as well as combat any rejection issues that might arise using Cannabis therapies.

There are MANY studies done on Cannabis and organ rejection, both THC and CBD have shown GREAT promise in replacing immunosuppressant drugs currently ravaging transplant recipients everywhere.

I am embracing these therapies, and we are exploring new blends every day — so we will be “pushing the envelope” in this area of research, needless to say.

I’ll keep you folks in the loop with our progress as things develop.

I feel like a walking miracle, and I will never forget it or take it for granted for as long as I live — every day is a gift.

 

We kicked this series of articles off with, “Cannabis — Part 1 of 2 of a 2-part Primer…and Counting…”.

In this article, we were given a bird’s-eye-view of Cannabis, how the plant grows, how the medicine is contained in a myriad of small “Trichomes” — tiny resin-filled spheres covering the female plant’s surface when it is mature.

We learned there is no medicine contained in the leaves and plant material — only in the Trichomes.

This is why most extraction methods, liquid, dry, etc., can be done with wet or dry material, as everything valuable is housed on the outside of the plant.

Because this oil/resin is “hydrophobic” (meaning it repels water), some of the newer methods use water washing to remove trichomes. It can also be removed as “dry sift” by processing the material with the same nylon-mesh bags that are used with water, but through manual agitation, as well.

In “Cannabis — A Primer, Part 2 of 2, and Counting”, we learned that all of the Cannabinoids produced by this plant are NOT psychoactive when on the plant, and taken from the plant, unless heated or exposed to oxygen for long periods of time, which will then convert the acid-form of THCa to THC, the only psychoactive Cannabinoid (out of over 100) on the plant.

This is why the misnomer “medical marijuana” is not only misleading, it’s virtually meaningless.

With over 100 Cannabinoids, and over 350 Terpenes, Terpenoids, Enzymes and compounds all housed in the tiny trichomes on the outside of this plant, it is a veritable treasure-trove of medicinal compounds that in various combinations can treat and manage a wide-range of ailments and illnesses.

We also learned that of the 4 known most-dominant Cannabinoids (THC, CBD, CBG and CBC), CBG (Cannabigerol) is known as the “stem cell” Cannabinoid, as the rest of the named cannabinoids are created through enzymatic reaction from Cannabigerol in the Trichome.

THC, CBD and CBG all feature a myriad of health benefits, and are each being explored for their unique and different ways of supplementing the body’s Endocannabinoid System.

After discovering and synthesizing THC and CBD in the laboratory in 1964, Dr. Raphael Mechoulam and his team of researchers worked tirelessly with this plant to uncover the natural-occurring equivalent to THC produced by the body.

They discovered Anandamide (meaning “Bliss” in Sanskrit), calling it an “Endo” Cannabinoid. In other words, it was an “Endogenously-Produced Cannabinoid”. Cannabinoids produced by plants are called “Phytocannabinoids”.

Then, in “Cannabis: A Primer Part 3 of 3 and counting”, we went back to the roots of Cannabis and learned that the word “Sativa” comes from latin (Sativus), literally meaning “cultivated”, since it was the world’s first cultivated plant, originating in Southeast Asia over 15,000 years ago.

We also learned that “whole-plant” or “full-spectrum” oil from the plant (containing ALL trace Cannabinoids, Terpenes, Terpenoids, etc.), are FAR more effective and efficient than sterile, fractionated “distillate” of any single Cannabinoid.

This brings us just about current. The next Cannabinoid that I want to feature is to-date a most mysterious Cannabinoid that very little is known about, though there is MUCH speculation on its effects. The reason for this is, invariably the effects of individual Cannabinoids when isolated from the rest of the Cannabinoids and Terpenes in the Trichome of the landrace strain that they were extracted from, become far less effective, some as to show no noticeable effect.

We’ve learned that, invariably, these extracts are FAR more effective and efficient taken as a whole, which is why we are working with individual strains to produce specific effects, benefits, etc., as we’ve found that the plant itself is the perfect “factory” to “blend” these Cannabinoids botanically, instead of using a “ham-fisted” brute-force method of extracting the individual components, and then trying to reproduce the beneficial effects of the whole-plant oils.