Scientists have known for years that the brain makes substances almost identical to the active ingredient in marijuana, but the function of these "cannabinoids" remained mysterious. Researchers now say they help to extinguish traumatic memories. "In certain situations, being able to forget is very important for emotional survival," said George Kunos, a neurobiologist at the National Institutes of Health.
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread13601.shtml
Pot Blocks Painful Memories, Study Says
Dr. Lutz's study will only add to the argument in favour of decriminalization. But it is also a landmark in medical terms because it deals with one of the central survival mechanisms of the vertebrate brain: the ability to spot danger and flee from it. Scientists have long understood that the brain can reprogram itself not to flee if the danger goes away. That is called extinction of a memory. But scientists have not understood how it happens. Dr. Lutz's research shows that the answer lies in the body's store of cannabinoids, or cannabis-like natural chemicals, produced whenever the body needs them. The brain has a receptor for these cannabis-like chemicals and can use them to help reprogram the response to a fear. A problem is that the fear reaction can stick around when no longer needed. That can lead to panic attacks or paralyzing irrational fear. Dr. Lutz said his finding could mean that a person in the grip of trauma might be able to summon up the terrible memory, with the help of a psychotherapist, then smoke marijuana to enhance the ability of the brain to extinguish the memory. He said that smoking is by far the most efficient way of getting the substance to the brain, although researchers are looking at an aerosol to administer it straight to the lungs.
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread13600.shtml
Nature
http://www.nature.com/
Pot-Like Chemical Helps Beat Fear
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread13596.shtml
'Natural' Cannabis Manages Memory
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread13598.shtml
Natural High Extinguishes Bad Memories in Brain
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread13593.shtml
Innate Cannabis Chemical Erases Fears
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020729/020729-6.html
Cannabis, the Importance of Forgetting by Michael Pollan
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MASHAction/message/400
He said that smoking is by far the most efficient way of getting the substance to the brain, although researchers are looking at an aerosol to administer it straight to the lungs.
GW Pharmaceuticals
http://www.gwpharm.com
GW Hits High as Bayer Snaps Up Cannabis Drug "Sativex"
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread16348.shtml
Cannabis Medicine 'On Sale This Year '
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15773.shtml
Trials Show Cannabis Spray Helps MS Patients
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread14667.shtml
Cannabis-Hemp / Dr Andrew Weil Links
http://pub40.ezboard.com/fendingcannabispr...%20%20=90.topic
GW Bush Gang: IG Farben 2001
http://www.baltech.org/lederman/bush-farben-1-5-01.html
Seeking Rest From the Terrors, New York Pops Pills
Friday September 28 2001
By Jonathan Landreth (Excerpted)
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New Yorkers are increasingly turning to sedation to help them escape the nightmares created by the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
According to doctors and pharmacists in the city, New York's denizens--many grieving for lost friends and family--are looking to medicine more than ever before to help fall asleep.
``The week of the 11th, there were very few calls because patients assumed we were tied up taking care of the disaster and probably thought their problems seemed small,'' said Charles Bardes, associate professor of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and a New York Hospital doctor.
``Now, in the third week since the attack, the floodgates have opened and I'm getting dozens and dozens of calls for sleeping pills and other drugs,'' Bardes said.
The two most commonly prescribed sleeping pills, those for which Bardes said he has seen a ``huge swell'' of requests, are Ambien from Pharmacia Corp., and Sonata from American Home Products Corp.
Some pharmacists said the spike in demand for these drugs was immediate.
``Right after the incident, sale of Ambien went up about 50%,'' said Rajan Kohli of independent Falk Drug & Surgical Supply near New York Hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
A great number of elderly patients who are prescribed the drugs on an ``as needed'' basis were getting prescriptions filled for the first time, Kohli added. ``With all the added stress, they needed their sleep.''
VICIOUS CIRCLE
Consumption of sleeping pills and antidepressants is common in dealing with stress and anxiety resulting from trauma, but need not be continued after patients restabilize, experts say.
``People take the drugs to make them feel as if this had not happened at all. Many people are reporting sleep disturbance and anxiety, which is normal, but they may want to allow themselves to get to the feelings that the drugs are suppressing,'' said psychotherapist Susan Lukas, a New York Certified Social Worker. continued @ title link...
http://pub3.ezboard.com/fendingcannabispro...opicID=27.topic
Therapeutic Use of Cannabis
Asthma Glaucoma Tumors Nausea/Cancer Chemotherapy Epilepsy, Multiple Sclerosis, Back Pain & Spasms Antibiotics & Antibacterial CBDs Herpes, Cystic Fibrosis, Arthritis & Rheumatism Expectorant Sleep & Relaxation Emphysema Stress, Migraines Appetite Salivation AIDS, Depression, Etc. Acceptable Risks One Man's Determination Compassionate Cannabis & Cruel Cops Merck Manual War on Drugs
http://www.jackherer.com/book/ch07.html
CANNABIS LUNG CLEANER AND EXPECTORANT
Cannabis is the best natural expectorant to clear the human lungs of smog, dust and the phlegm associated with tobacco use. Marijuana smoke effectively dilates the airways of the lungs, the bronchi, opening them to allow more oxygen into the lungs. It is also the best natural dilator of the tiny airways of the lungs, the bronchial tubes - making cannabis the best overall bronchial dilator for 80% of the population (the remaining 20% sometimes show minor negative reactions). (See section on asthma - a disease that closes these passages in spasms - UCLA Tashkin studies, 1969-97; U.S. Costa Rican, 1980-82; Jamaican studies 1969-74, 76.) Statistical evidence - showing up consistently as anomalies in matched populations - indicates that people who smoke tobacco cigarettes are usually better off and will live longer if they smoke cannabis moderately, too. (Jamaicna, Costa Rican studies.)
Millions of Americans have given up or avoided smoking tobacco products in favor of cannabis, which is not good news to the powerful tobacco lobby - Senator Jesse Helms and his cohorts. A turn-of-the-century grandfather clause in U.S. tobacco law allows 400 to 6,000 additional chemicals to be added. Additions since then to the average tobacco cigarette are unknown, and the public in the U.S. has no right to know what they are. Many joggers and marathon runners feel cannabis use cleans their lungs, allowing better endurance. The evidence indicates that cannabis use will probably increase these outlaw American marijuana-users' lives by about one to two years - yet they may lose their rights, property, children, state licenses, etc., just for using that safest of substances: cannabis.
http://www.jackherer.com/book/ch07.html
SLEEP AND RELAXATION
Cannabis lowers blood pressure, dilates the arteries and reduces body temperature an average of one-half degree, thereby relieving stress. Evening cannabis smokers in general report more restful sleep. Using cannabis allows most people a more complete rest with a higher amount of "alpha time" during sleep as compared with prescription or sleep-inducing patent sedatives. Prescription sleeping pills (the so called "legal, safe and effective" drugs) are often just synthesized analogs of truly dangerous plants like mandrake, henbane and belladonna. As late as 1991, doctors, pharmacists and drug companies were fighting off new legislation to restrict these often abused compounds. (L.A. Times, April 2, 1991). Unlike Valium, cannabis does not potentiate the effects of alcohol. It is estimated that cannabis could replace more than 50% of Valium, Librium, Thorazine, Stelazine, other "-zine" drugs and most sleeping pills.
It is unconscionable that, over the past two decades, tens of thousands of parents have committed their own children, aged 11 to 17, to be treated by massive doses of so-called "-zine" drugs in order to get them off pot, at the urging of parent groups, the PDFA, the feds and administrators and doctors from federally approved, private and high-profit drug rehabilitation centers. Often, "-zine" drugs do work to stop these youths from using pot. They also stop a kid from loving his or her dog, too - and children stand a one-in-four chance of suffering from uncontrollable shaking for the rest of their lives. But at least they're not high.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta said that 20-40% of "-zine" drug users have or will develop permanent lifetime pasies (shakes), November 1983. These prescription neurotoxins are chemically related to the pesticide and warfare nerve gas Sarin. Hundreds of private drug-rehabilitation centers and their leaders keep this policy alive and in front of the media, often quoting discredited reports from NIDA or DEA (see Chapter 16, debunking) because they earn fat profits selling their useless or destructive "marijuana treatment" for children. After all, a relapse just means using marijuana against after a number of bouts with an "authority." This is mind control and an attempt to destroy individual free will.
http://www.jackherer.com/book/ch07.html
DEPRESSION & HUNDREDS OF OTHER PRIMARY MEDICAL USES
One well known effect of THC is to life the spirit, or make you "high." Cannabis users in Jamaica praise ganja's benefits for meditation, concentration, consciousness-raising and promoting a state of well being and self assertiveness.5 This kind of attitude adjustment, along with a healthier appetite and better rest, often represents the difference between feeling like you are "dying of" AIDS or cancer and feeling like you are "living with" AIDS or cancer. Cannabis also eases small pains and some big ones and helps senior citizens live with aches and pains like arthritis, insomnia and debilitating infirmities, and enjoy life in greater dignity and comfort. Legend has it, and medical evidence indicates, that cannabis is the best overall treatment for dementia, senility, and maybe Alzheimer's disease, for long-term memory "gain" and hundreds of other benefits. U.S. statistics of the 1970s indicated that you will live eight to 24 years longer if you substitute daily cannabis use for daily tobacco and alcohol use. New research is outlawed, of course.
http://www.jackherer.com/book/ch07.html
ACCEPTABLE RISKS
Every U.S. commission or federal judge who has studied the evidence has agreed that cannabis is one of the safest drugs known. With all its therapeutic uses, it has only one side effect that has been exaggerated as a concern: the "high." The DEA says this is not acceptable, so cannbis continues to be totally illegal in utter disregard for both doctor and patient. Every day we trust physicians to determine whether the risks associated with therapeutic, yet potentially dangerous drugs are acceptable for their patients. Yet, doctors are not allowed to prescribe the herb that Federal Judge Francis Young in 1988 called "one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man." We don't put out doctors in charge of stopping violent crimes. The police, prosecutors and prison guards should not be in charge of which herbal therapies people may use to treat their personal health problems.
http://www.jackherer.com/book/ch07.html
Missing Nixon tapes
excerpts begin with the Nixon doctrine on why marijuana is much worse than alcohol: It is because people drink "to have fun" but they smoke marijuana "to get high." This distinction was evidently enormously significant to Nixon, because he repeats it...
"You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob?
Richard Nixon missing tapes
"Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise."
From Benito Mussolini contributing to the "London Sunday Express," December 8, 1935
"You're enough of a pro," Nixon tells Shafer, "to know that for you to come out with something that would run counter to what the Congress feels and what the country feels, and what we're planning to do, would make your commission just look bad as hell."
The Shafer Commission of 1970
Marijuana does not lead to physical dependency, although some evidence indicates that the heavy, long-term users may develop a psychological dependence on the drug"
Clinical experience suggests that it is helpful for patients with severe nausea and vomiting, arthritis, glaucoma, muscle spasms, premenstrual syndrome, seizure disorders, the AIDS weight loss syndrome, asthma, fibromyalgia, Tourette's syndrome, and depression, to name a few.
Many thousands of patients are using cannabis to treat these and other disorders. Given the legal risks, they would not be doing this if they did not believe it was helpful to them. These patients are in urgent need of a legal accommodation that allow them to use a medicine which they know is important to their well-being.
Testimony of Lester Grinspoon, M.D.
Associate Professor of Psychiatry,
Harvard Medical School
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread12302.shtml
RX Marijuana Uses
http://marijuana-uses.com/
Shared Stories of Medical Cannabis
http://rxmarijuana.com/shared.htm
Shared comments and observations
http://rxmarijuana.com/comments_and_observations.htm
Cannabis New Medical related articles
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/list/medical.shtml
