Cannabis Is Medicine
It's True, It's Biochemistry, It Shrank My Ovarian Cancer
One point in A.L. Bardach’s anti-cannabis satire demands clarification lest people mistake it for a falsehood. Cannabis is medicine, and it does have powerful anti-tumor properties. This is not my belief: This is biochemistry. I don’t blame you if you think this sounds like snake oil. I was also dubious just a year ago. But that was before cannabis stunned me and my oncologist by shrinking my ovarian cancer.
And it was before I meet Professor Raphael
Mechoulam of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who discovered the endocannabinoid system,
the largest neuroreceptor system in the human body. Every person produces
internal cannabinoids, called anandamide and 2-AG (2-arachidonoyl glycerol).
These molecules regulate the endocannabinoid system, acting as a thermostat for
our physiology, modulating bodily functions and keeping homeostasis. The cannabinoid
compounds in medical cannabis act as supplements, working on the same receptors
(CB1, CB2, and two dozen others) as the naturally occurring internal
cannabinoids we produce. The fact that compounds in cannabis can modulate our
primary regulatory system hints at its potential to help a mindbogglingly
diverse list of diseases and conditions.
I
was skeptical before I spent six months intensively reading peer-reviewed
oncology articles in journals like Frontiers in Pharmacology and the International
Journal of Molecular Science, with titles like “Anti-Cancer mechanism
of cannabis” and “Endocannabinoids as guardians of metastasis.”
I encourage everyone to read the science; a collection of a dozen recent
peer-reviewed articles and several medical conferences lectures are on my website,
schedule1movie.com.
