We have the pleasure of welcoming back cannabis industry pioneer Todd McCormick @todd.mccormick to give his insight on “Homeostasis Through the Endocannabinoid System”
For those of you who don’t know about Todd, please allow me to share some of his story: Todd is a ten time cancer survivor who attributes his beating cancer to cannabis. As such, Todd has been a lifelong advocate for cannabis legalization. In the mid-1990’s, Todd worked tirelessly alongside other cannabis icons Denis Peron and Dr. Tod Mikuriya to draft the very first medical cannabis legislation ever passed in America: California’s Prop. 215. Were it not for the efforts of mavericks such as these, we may not have a cannabis industry. Both Dr. Mikuriya and Denis Peron have since died, so we are lucky to be able to have an opportunity like this. These trailblazers paved the way for all of us!
In 2000, Todd was sentenced to 5 years in prison after he was convicted for intent to distribute after police confiscated over 4,000 plants in his Bel Air mansion. For those of you familiar with the treating cancer patients with cannabis, once we start the treatment, it becomes a lifelong maintenance medication. Essentially a five year prison sentence with no cannabis represents what can amount to a death sentence to a cancer patient. Still, Todd beat the odds.
Todd is the author of How To Grow Medical Marijuana and Co-Produced the movie_The Union: The Business Behind Getting High_. Todd wrote the forward for Jack Herer’s classic book The Emperor Wears No Clothes . In 2012, Todd was awarded a Cannabis Culture Award. Todd is working on a new book alongside several notable names from the cannabis industry. This new work will serve as the definitive guide to understanding your endocannabinoid system. We are looking forward to having Todd join us and explain his work.
Good morning everybody, this should be a lot of fun. Today’s AMA should be a slight turn from our focus on growing cannabis to our focus on growing cannabinoids and terpenes. My new book is really a focus on how cannabinoids work and how we can all use them to achieve homeostasis in our everyday life.
In the book, we will be releasing a new term by Dr. Lester Grinspoon into the cannabis community: “Cannabinopathic Medicine”. As many of you know, Doctor Grinspoon has been an expert on cannabis medicine for decades, his first book upon the subject, Marihuana Reconsidered, was the first book on the subject for many of us, and I am truly honored to be publishing his work now.
One of my other contributors to the book is Robert C Clarke, best known for his seminal book Marijuana Botany, and HASHISH!, and lately, Cannabis: Evolution and Ethnobotany. Rob’s contributions of the book is called Fragrant Medicine and is an in-depth look at terpenes and the roles they play in modulating the effects of cannabinoids.
Good morning, @todd.mccormick! It’s an honor to have you here with us for another AMA. Let me kick this off by offering you a big congratulations on the new book!
This subject is groundbreaking and very exciting. To the best of your knowledge, has anybody yet written anything as substantive as this book on the ECS? What inspired you to write this book?
Thank you very much Nick, I have never been more excited about project. I really think this book can help a lot of people better understand themselves and how cannabis works for them.
Unfortunately, what inspired me to write this book was being asked the same questions time and time again by people, namely, how does cannabis work and how do I use it. so many of my friends have gone cancer or have loved ones who are dealing with a disease that can be alleviated through the use of cannabis. So sadly, I have written this book probably over 100 times in emails over the last 20 years.
You’ve worked on a lot so that’s certainly saying something!
You managed to pull together some of the greatest minds in cannabis to collaborate on this work. How did you manage to that achieve collaborative effort between Dr. Grinspoon and Robert C Clarke?
Makes sense that you are tired of all the email reiteration!
In a lot of ways, this will be the first opportunity for a broad audience to have a better understanding of the ECS that resides within all of our body systems. What was the most exciting aspect of the ECS that you discovered during your research for this book?
With the discovery of the ECS in the early nineties, I have not seen any books that are really written for the end-user, in order to help them better understand how cannabis can help and what the ECS even is. To most of the people I speak to, even some of the old-timers in the industry, a lot of this conversation about our ECS is very new to them. Compounds such as THCA are totally misunderstood to many.
The most exciting element of researching the ECS was to learn that by modulating our ECS may have therapeutic potential in almost all diseases affecting humans.
The endocannabinoid system can be kind of a difficult concept to wrap your mind around. Can you give us your best definition of the ECS and it’s functions so we all have a better understanding?
Absolutely. In the early nineties, researchers discovered a series of receptors throughout our body that they labeled CB1 & CB2, these receptors are responsible for modulating the effects of cannabinoids. Cannabinoids themselves come from the plant and are called Phytocannabinoids, and we also create them internally, and those are called Endocannabinoids. Our endocannabinoid system of CB1 and CB2 receptors work with both plant cannabinoids and our internally-made endocannabinoids to modulate many of the feelings, emotions and physical attributes we associate with cannabis.
Slightly personal. How would you suggest is the best way to introduce anti-cannabis people to the medicinal options? What is the best way to ease them into it?
A direct effect on an illness would be the way that it helps somebody going through chemotherapy -induced nausea to not feel nauseous, that was technically my first medical use of cannabis. Currently I use cannabis as an analgesic, as I believe that it helps reduce inflammation, and in turn alleviates the discomfort caused by soreness and swelling.
I have had multiple major back surgeries and still have to have more, so I am in constant pain. But I agree, I found cannabis as a wonderful solution to pain, swelling, and inflammation of the muscles around my nerves. It has been a game changer for my overall productivity and ability to enjoy my day.
