This episode is to honour and celebrate the legacy of previous guest Michelle Kendall who died last year from ovarian cancer. In her words: "I think the universe gave me lemons. And I didn't just make lemonade. I feel like I've made lemon meringue pie." Michelle is referring to her unwavering determination to use a scientific approach to finding a cure for her cancer using cannabis. As well as making her Schedule 1 documentary highlighting the blockade on research into cannabinoids caus...
Many of us have heard about how the anti-tumoral effects of cannabis and anecdotal accounts abound of patients who've successfully treated their cancer with cannabis oil. But combining cannabis and psilocybin is a potentially exciting combination using a two pronged approach: targeting the cancer cells with cannabis while healing the emotional trauma and discord with psilocybin (although psilocybin may have its own anticancer effects). This is the courageous route Nicole DiMonda took when s...
Today sees the return of Rebekah Shaman and in what might feel like a rather off topic episode for a Cannabis podcast, we will be talking about the benefits of cacao to our mind, body and spirit. I've been enjoying ceremonial grade cacao every morning as a hot chocolate drink for the last three months, and have experienced some unexpected health benefits: namely improved mood and some pretty impressive metrics for my heart health. There's some very interesting research looking...
Jane Hinchliffe has a complex collection of illnesses which include complex regional pain syndrome, anxiety, ASD and functional neurological disorder which has meant since being a teen she has been prescribed a host of prescribed medications including strong opiates. For many years Jane sourced cannabis from the legacy market to control her pain and also grew her own, which led her to spending a short spell in prison. So eventually, she decided to go the legal route and is now a medical cann...
In 2018 Rebecca was diagnosed with a rare neuroendocrine cancer which resulted in a sudden removal of her left lung. At that time, she was Director of Business Development with a prominent laboratory equipment supplier serving the cannabis industry in North America. From chronic fatigue or menstrual cramps to cancer-related pain and anxiety she was able to find relief from cannabis. This led to a passionate quest to understand the science and production process more deeply behind cannabis p...
There's no romantic origin story of how Alvaro Torres, CEO and Co-founder of Khiron Life Sciences, a Colombian medical cannabis company, got into the sector. And for this reason, it would be tempting to assume the company was started to make the most of the worldwide cannabis green rush with little concern for patients. It would seem though that at Khiron, Torres and his team strive towards making patients the centre of the business model, whether it's their established clinics...
Nikki Lawley is a patient advocate, speaker, and founder of Nikki and the Plant. She personally discovered cannabis as medicine after suffering a life-changing injury while working as a pediatric nurse. In October of 2016, Nikki was a 46-year-old woman whose life changed in literally a second. Going from being a medical professional to becoming a patient was a major adjustment and almost cost this vibrant mother, wife, and career professional to contemplating taking her own life ...
Dr. Bonni Goldstein is one of the most well-respected and long-established cannabis doctors in the United States. Prior to cannabis, she worked for fourteen years in pediatric emergency medicine, developed a passion for cannabis when she witnessed how helpful it had been in treating a friend’s illness. This inspired her to eventually open Canna-Centers Wellness and Education in California where she specializes in treating children with intractable epilepsy, autism, cancer and other con...
Eloise Theisen is a board certified Adult Geriatric Nurse Practitioner and nurse for over twenty years, who since 2014 has been specialising in treating patients with medical cannabis. Eloise is current President of the American Cannabis Nurses Association, CEO of Radicle Health, which offers patient care focussing on cannabinoids, as well as cannabis education for clinicians and industry training and is also Chief Nursing Officer and Board President for Leaf 411, a nonprofit operating ...
Dr. Gordon is double board certified in family medicine and integrative medicine and author of 'The CBD Bible'. Having started her medical career practising in Canada, she is now located in the United Kingdom. As an integrative medicine practitioner in Canada, cannabis was just one treatment option amongst many she called upon to return patients to optimal health. Alongside Professor Mike Barnes, Dani helped set up the Medical Cannabis Clinicians Society, of which she is Vice Chai...
Filmmaker Steve Barron has directed some of the most iconic music videos of the 1980s including Michael Jackson's Billie Jean (which we discuss in the podcast), Aha's Take on Me, Human League Don't You Want Me Baby, and The Jam's Going Underground (to name but a few). Steve's also been a pretty successful film and TV director as well, and yet, it's his latest project - constructing a house from the hemp he's grown on his own farm - that he views as his greatest achievement. Steve has been c...
In November 2019, months before the pandemic struck, Irish chronic pain patient Alicia Maher decided she'd had enough of getting cannabis off the street in order to treat the chronic pain she'd endured for many years. She decided to move to Alicante in Spain, where she could access cannabis semi-legally from the cannabis clubs there. However, now Alicia wants to come home to her friends and family. Only if she does, if she brings her medicine back into the country she risks getting ar...
In one of the most inspiring interviews of the series so far, I speak to Alisia Ratliff, CEO of Victus Capital Ventures and until very recently Chief Scientific Officer at Jersey Hemp in the UK. We cover many topics including: her lonely journey as a woman of colour into a career in sciencehow the challenges she has faced have only made her more determined to succeedher views on the UK CBD industry from her time at Jersey Hemp why it's so important to redress the wrongs that...
Today we speak to Sam Cannon, who didn't take no for an answer when his hemp-focussed applications to the upcoming Cop26 UN Climate Summit were turned down. Instead he decided to put his passion for hemp and background in music and events to good use, organising an exciting new fringe festival called 'Beyond The Green' at St Lukes in Glasgow on the 5th, 6th and 7th of November. In this episode, we hear how Sam's passion for campaigning for changing the stigma about hemp and cannabis reall...
Today's episode features Phil Monk, founder of We The Undersigned, a community group a "united in the shared belief in the most ancient, traditional and fundamental human right to be free to sow the seeds of the highly nutritious herb of the cannabis family, to care for and nurture, then harvest, prepare, medicate, enjoy and share, free from the fear of persecution, prosecution or prison for this fundamental health choice to manage our health, well-being and happiness with natural herba...
After more than 20 years as a director of UK and Australian Stock Exchange quoted companies, mainly focused on the acquisition, structuring and financing of natural resources deals across Africa, in 2018 Melissa Sturgess turned her attention to medical cannabis. Following a deep dive into the cannabinoid science gained in Israel, she founded UK based, AQSE quoted Ananda Developments Plc to invest in the sector and is its largest shareholder. Melissa is also the founder of...
Healing leg ulcers and wounds is one of those unsexy areas that rarely get spoken about possibly because most people that have them are elderly and immobile. But as Dr Vincent Maida, a Canadian palliative care physician explains, right now current protocols do for treating these painful and debilitating wounds overall do not have successful outcomes. Dr Maida's work in palliative care over the years exposed him to the therapeutic use of cannabis based medicines, piquing his interest into wo...
This week's episode is dedicated to Project Twenty21, the UK medical cannabis registry collecting data on safety and efficacy, while offering the participants subsidised medical cannabis prescriptions. I speak to Anne Katrin Schlag, Head of Research at Drug Science, and overseeing the research side of T21. She explains how the project came about, what it aims to achieve, and what benefits there are for patients. She also discusses some promising preliminary findings from T21 shared in a pe...
Kyle Esplin, a professional musician by trade, discovered CBD and hemp after becoming severely debilitated by post viral fatigue. Where conventional medicine failed, CBD and hemp extracts gradually brought Kyle back to health, so he decided to harness his new found passion and create his own CBD brand, Holistic Highland Hemp. A vocal challenger to regulations such as Novel Foods and the licensing of hemp farming through the home office, Kyle is chair of the Scottish Hemp Association a...
Professor Javier Fernández-Ruiz is Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Medicine at the Complutense University of Madrid. He is currently the Principal Investigator of the “Cannabinoids and Neurological Disorders” research group at the Complutense University. Professor Fernandez is also a member of the Editorial Board in the British Journal of Pharmacology. He has authored several papers outlining the therapeutic potential of cannabinoids in degenera...