Episode Transcript

Trevor: Kirk we're back.

Kirk: Hey, Trevor, how's it going?

Trevor: Going good. You and I don't know if people can see this if I hold up to the camera, real well. Ohh look, it's mirrored, but you and I have been reading we've been doing some reading, yeah.

Kirk: Yeah, we're doing a book review actually, that's it's The Cannabis Cancer Connection by Doctor Joe Goldstrich.

Trevor: He is a fascinating dude, so, I'm going to get to the cannabis, but he's done a bazillion other things that just made me super excited. So, because, you know, I'm a math guy. He started out in math because, you know, all good people should start out in math. He was calculating missile trajectories for the US Navy pre-computers then he kind of ended up in medicine. I won't say by accident, but it wasn't sort of the first thing he did. And then in medicine he's there, just so many things and we'll mentioned a few times. There's too much in this book to get it all to the Podcast but just get you an idea. So he he went into cardiology, which is kind of the the evidence-based-evidence-based place you know, he got sort of a thing in cholesterol, but cholesterol is just such a huge thing with, again, a bazillion studies they're showing, you know what, what a statin does versus what, a what, a Mediterranean diet does. Like it's all about the numbers and the evidence and the proof. And so that was. That was his life for a long time. And even in medicine like he said, I'm a cardiologist. But you know, I'm not a typical cardiologist. He didn't like the Cath lab. And anyway, this is a dude who's done a lot of fascinating things for a really, really long time. And then he kind of fell into cannabis.

Kirk: In retirement.

Trevor: So

Kirk: in retirement.

Trevor:  more or less yeah.

Kirk: Yeah, he retired and you know the book’s great. He has a fantastic preface about himself. And there are things in his biography we're not, we're not talking about and and we want to focus on his medical background and his cannabis retirement. In retirement is he discovers cannabis and its connection to cancer, so I think it's fantastic yeah, and.

Trevor: It's not like he was not like he was anti cannabis pre. He used it, he liked it. It was fun. You know, all these other wonderful things and you know it, it may or may not even using it may or may not have even helped the depression retirement brought on but yeah, the whole cannabis, like the title, says, the whole cannabis cancer connection came much later in his career.

Kirk: What I find extraordinary is that as a cardiologist, I mean he is an evidence-based Doc and one of the first things he'll say in the book, which I find counterintuitive, is that, well, there's really no evidence about cannabis really doing good work. However, there's a whole lot of studies on cannabis doing good work. There's such a paradox in it we get into that in the discussion.

Trevor: Yeah. And I don't want to, I want for him to because he says it's better. But I thought that was actually a real strength because as an evidence-based guy like started as a math guy and then when the cart, so all he says several times that well, you know, compared to like a A cholesterol trial, we can't prove any of this. We don't have the studies. We don't have the double-blind placebo-controlled trails which I thought was very honest because you get so other people when they sort of find their thing that they're passionate about kind of gloss over the stuff that isn't working. He didn't gloss over anything, you know, he said, you know, He highlight patients that I tried to use cannabis on and they died. You know, I would have liked this study to show better things, but it didn't like he's he's still kind of all about the evidence guy and the evidence is still not there, and in the US, well, most places, but mostly in the US, the a lot of it's because cannabis isn't really legal to do trials with.

Kirk: Well and in Canada, where it is legal all the all the research is on cannabis as a misused substance, not as a not as a medicine.  So we've got a we've got a, we've got a, they're not doing it, it's a Schedule One drug. We're not doing it because well in Canada, we think cannabis is misused, opposed to as a medicine. I love the chapters in the book. You know it basically spells out about, the disclaimer up front is that we just discussed, but he: introduces the cannabis; he introduces how body heals; the endocannabinoid system; it goes into individual cannabinoids. The entourage affect. Maybe we should let the audience hear him talk and we can come of iy and get into the stuff…

Trevor: Yeah. So let's, let's listen to Dr. Joe

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: I'm doctor Joe D Goldstrich. I'm a retired cardiologist who got interested in cannabis medicine a little over ten years ago and after saying about 3500 patients seeking a medical cannabis card in Oakland, CA. I saw a video, actually I saw, I went to a presentation in Denver on cannabis medicine and Mar Gordon presented a patient, actually two patients with brain cancer and showed before and after scans of their brain showing that cannabis had induced shrinkage of the brain tumor and when I saw that, I decided that was going to be what I wanted to specialize in. And from that time forward I have been a cannabis oncologist, if you will. I've sort of coined that word as nobody else is using it. I'm not an oncologist, but I do work with cancer patients who want to use cannabis to treat their cancer. And that that's what resulted in writing the book, because I thought that I put it out in the universe that many more people than the ones that I had direct contact with might benefit from that information.

Kirk: OK, your background is you are a cardiologist and part of the fraternity of cardiology. And then then you retired. And then in 2015, you became an advocate for cannabis. So you wrote this book, and in the book you say that you were trying to bridge the gap between traditional cancer care and using cannabis to fight cancer. Can you explain that gap?

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: Well, the gap is that traditional oncologists either don't know about cannabis or are not interested in using it as a tool to help their patients find cancer. And so I hope that when they understand that many of the compounds found in the plant have anti-cancer activity, that they might be willing to learn about it. And utilize cannabis as an effective tool to help their patients.

Kirk: OK. And we're we're going to get into that a little deeper. But first I want to talk about the motivation of the book so well, with your experience, and I mean you come chock full as a Cardiologist and then moving into cannabis. What is your suggestions to families and patients who find themselves within a system where they don't accept cannabis as part of the therapeutics?

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: Well, I can't do anything about the system. All I can do is introduce information that may help move the system in the direction that I hope it goes, but I as an individual, that's my only power and that that was one of the reasons for publishing the book and even though I'm board certified in cardiology and clinical lipidology and internal medicine, I was never a real traditional cardiologist. Yeah, in my early training in the Cath lab, I trained when the Cath labs were just getting started in the late, 60’s early 70’s and I didn't like it. I didn't like being in that that situation. And when that heavy lead apron, it made me tired and there was a lot of radiation going on in that room. I didn't want that. So I was never a traditional cardiologist. I I learned about nutrition. In the 70’s, from Nathan Pritikin, the author of the The Pritikin Diet and I worked in that in that arena to help people prevent their coronary artery disease rather than go in the Cath lab and try to treat it after I had already occurred.

Kirk: So you've written the book and, but I guess the question I'm sort of asking you is it what how would you suggest people approach the oncology unit or approach their oncology doctors or caregivers if they want cannabis as part of the therapeutics, what's the best way for them to approach an ignorant system? If that's a good word to use?

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: Well, my magical thinking is that they would give their oncologist a copy of my book, and if they were, and if they were so inclined to, if it interested him. The cover picture, which is interesting, and many people want to open it up after they see that picture, then they might make progress. But if he's but he or she, the oncologist, is closed and won't even open the book, there's little chance that they're gonna move forward to help their patient with cannabis.

Kirk: Yeah, it's funny. I had the book on my reading desk and my wife asked about the picture on the cover as well. So, so getting back to your book. Yeah. So I had to look it up for her and say, oh, that's a cancer cell, love.  So, your book is chock full of studies, right? I mean, it's just absolutely chock full of studies. Every page has studies as footnotes to what you're saying in your narrative. Yet it also says that we don't have enough studies. Can you explain the paradox that we have with cannabis as a medicine?

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: Right. Well, 99% of the studies are preclinical studies. They're done in the laboratory where cancer cells, that are cancer cells that are not taken from a particular patient at that point in time, but are generic cancer cells that can be purchased for researchers to use and then Cannabinoids are then applied to those cancer cells to see if the cannabinoids will have antineoplastic activity. So, this is Preclinical Research and it's a far cry from clinical trials where actual patients were administered cannabis and most of those preclinical studies are done with pure cannabinoids. They're done with THC or CBD or CBG, not whole plant extract of these cannabinoids and it's been shown over and over and again that the whole plant extract is much more powerful then the individual cannabinoids. So this Preclinical Research is a start, but it's nothing like treating Cancer patients with cannabis, that's the part that I bring to the mix because I have the experience in doing that. So, I combined that preclinical information on cancer cells with my experience in treating actual patients with answer and that mix I think is more powerful than either one alone.

Kirk: OK. So that sort of leads to anecdotal evidence is, is anecdotal evidence enough when it comes to practicing medicine or practicing the art of medicine or the science of medicine?

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: No, it's not enough. It's only a smoke. There's no real fire in anecdotal reports, but they are interesting, and as long as we report both sides of the coin. In other words, I mentioned some of the patients that I've treated that have died, where it hadn't worked as often as I mentioned patients who had success using cannabis? So anecdotal evidence has to reveal everything, has to reveal the negative anecdotes as well. And I and I've tried to do that. I've tried to give a balanced report and throughout the book, I say we don't really know the answer for sure. We don't have enough information. We need clinical trials. Schedule One status of cannabis needs to be repealed and I try to be balanced and fair in that regard.

Kirk: Yeah. You know what's interesting because our Canadian Medical Association in Canada, medicinal cannabis, was recognized through the court system in the late 90s, early 00s and the CMA Canadian Medical Association didn't come up with a policy until 2010. And to this day although we've had medicinal cannabis in Canada for two decades, the Canadian Medical Association still does not recognize it as medicine, and they and they say that it's because we don't have enough studies. But yet nobody's prepared to do the studies to prove it is medicine.

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: Right. It's catch 22.

Kirk: It really is. It wasn't until we went nationally recreation that all the studies started happening. But then all the studies were on cannabis being misused, opposed to being medicine.

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: Yeah, I see that. So, I managed the library for the Society of Cannabis Clinicians and so I scan a huge literature and all of cannabis medicine almost on a daily basis and I see these articles in the addiction journals and there are a lot of articles on the negative aspects of cannabis and to tell you frankly, the Society of Cannabis Clinicians is not really interested in hearing about those studies so.

Kirk: Yeah. Well, it's interesting when you look at those studies and compare them to other misused substances, cannabis is so negligent, not negligent. It's so low on the scale compared to all the other misuse substances. It's it really, is really sets it up for the stigma. Going back to your book, Sir. I guess the question really I'd like to get into from your experience which cancer is responded best to cannabis as a medicine?

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: I can't answer that question. I've seen successes and failures for almost all cancers and there's no, there's no slam dunk.

Kirk: Ok, All right, so let's talk specifically about Skin Cancer, as it's one of the most common forms, and as I look through your book, there is you, discussed both oral ingestion of cannabis as well as applying it directly to the cannabis, to the tumor.  So can you talk a little bit about using cannabis and skin cancer.

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: Right. Well, the most success that I've had, it's been with basal cell carcinoma and you can cure, I don't normally use the word cure, but you can make that basal cell carcinoma go away with topical applications of cannabis and basal cell carcinoma rarely metastasizes. It does but, but not often and for that reason pretty much can stop the treatment after the tumor goes away, and then you continue to use the topical cannabis for another 4 to 8 weeks just to make sure. Because I've seen cases where the patient stopped as soon as it went away, and then it came back. But that can be complete treatment. I'm also currently working with a friend who has a squamous cell carcinoma of the skin and he's been applying topical cannabinoids for about a year. He stopped too soon, and it came back, and now it's almost down to being gone. But with the squamous cell carcinoma of the skin there is a higher risk of metastasis than with basal cell carcinoma 3 to 10% of squamous cell carcinoma will metastasize, so I'm encouraging this friend to now add oral cannabis oil to try to obviate the possibility of any metastatic cells showing up later, sometimes with squamous cell carcinoma, the distant metastases don't show up for a year or two, so I think it's important with squamous to do both topical and oral ingestion and then the third most common skin cancer is Melanoma and there is good research, Preclinical Research, showing that Melanoma is sensitive to THC, CBD, CBG, particularly THC. Manuel Guzman from Spain wrote a paper about a year and a half ago showing the explicit sensitivity of brain metastases from multiple myeloma, THC. Having said that, I recently I had a close friend who had a Brain metastases myeloma, and he couldn't tolerate very much THC. He would take about 10 milligrams of THC and he would become totally stoned. So, he was not functional and so he never was able to get to what might be thought of as effective therapeutic levels of THC. And he recently passed away. So based on the preclinical evidence, Melanoma is a great candidate for cannabinoid therapy and would definitely require ingestion of the cannabinoids.

Kirk: OK, I've had experience with squamous cells and so if once you've had the tumor excised and removed and told that it was contained, would you recommend continuing with the with the oral?

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: I would.

Kirk: OK, interesting. Going back to your book. Can you please talk about programed cancer cell death and how it has to do with the anandamide and THC forcing cancels cancer cells to commit suicide?

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: Cannabinoid receptors both CB1 and CB1 on many cancer cells, not all, but many when THC or anandamide bind to these receptors, they stimulate a process that results in program-cell-death, but that's only one of the mechanisms by which cannabis can kill cancer cells. Both CBD and THC can block vascular endothelial growth factor, which is a substance that tumor cells secrete to stimulate new blood vessel growth, to nourish these cancers and their metastases. So cannabis can shut that down. CBD, there a gene that becomes activated in many tumors, called ID1 which is a growth factor. It's very common. Everybody has it when they're a child because we need stimulation and growth factor to make us grow. But after we become adults, that gene shuts down because that's no longer required. But many tumors have the ability to reactivate ID1 and CBD shuts down ID1 and so that's one of the mechanisms by which CBD kills cancer cells. CBD also has some mechanisms that block metastasis, as does THC and there are other non-cannabinoid receptor interactions between THC and CBD that have been shown to have anti-cancer activity. So, it's almost like a shotgun effect. The cannabinoids can do so many so many beneficial things when it comes to cancer, that it's a shame that that it's not used more often, in my opinion.

Kirk: Well, I guess we need more of those controlled studies.

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: I saw an interesting dose response curve to different cannabinoid extracts and one of the research papers that I cited in the book, but just recently looked at again, from Israel, from Dr. Dedi Meiri. Now in this graph they tested about a about 10 different extracts of different cannabis cultivars. Now there was one, and I'll use for our listeners I'll use the word strain instead of cultivar, because that's what they're more familiar with, even though not the proper term, but anyway, this this one strain the tumor cells that were tested were sensitive at 2 micrograms per deciliter concentration, which is a low concentration, could easily be achieved by maybe even as low as 20-40 milligrams of THC a day, and that those tumor cells died at that point. Now some of the other cultivars that were extracted were also able to kill the cancer cells but required higher concentrations to do so. So, that would mean that with those other cultivars, you'd have to take in 50 or 100 or 100 or 200 milligrams of THC a day. So, you know, the old first adage was the a gram a day of the cannabis extract, but that that I talked about that in the book? That doesn't mean anything because we don't know what's in that extract, but nonetheless I have seen some patients respond to as low as 40 milligrams a day of THC and shrink their tumors. But I've seen others that have required over 100 milligrams a day to shrink their tumors. And that's just a manifestation of that those response curve and that research from Israel. So, you never know how much THC you need. So, what I ask patients to do is to take the highest tolerable dose and then I explain in the book how to increase that highest tolerable dose over time due to the tolerance that builds to the THC and keep pushing. Keep pushing. Keep pushing, to get the most THC you can, but I when I first started doing this I told people to take 100 or more milligrams of THC a day, and many did that and were miserable and lost precious time that they might spend with their family as a result. So, I changed that, protocol the highest tolerable dose.

Kirk: OK, so moving on to a question, so this segues to what you were just saying. Making full extract cannabis oil from a variety of plants is what you advocate. Is that because you really don't know if one plant or all the plants work?

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: Right, exactly. So just like the chart that I described with different responses to different plants.  So, if you get and there are even plants with THC that won't kill the tumor cell. So, if you get one of those, if you make your oil from one of those varieties of THC rich cannabis and it's the one that is going to make you shoot blanks, you're going to be wasting your time. So, since we don't know and we don't even know all of the Cannabinoids that have anti-cancer activit. Dr. Meiri recently reported on some research for leukemia line of cancer cells and he found that there were only three cannabinoids necessary to kill that cell on, that there was CBD, CBDV and a cannabinoid that doesn't even have a name. He refers to it as 33118A and so just those 3 cannabinoids are as effective as the whole plant. You know there have been now 166 unique cannabinoids identified in the plant and over 500 unique cannabinoid, 500 compounds including proteins and flavonoids and polyphenols and other compounds. But he did, he was able to be effective with just three cannabinoids. So you want the entourage? You want to make sure that you have the three cannabinoids that will kill your cancer cell, and the only way to do that, in my opinion, is to use multiple cultivars in making the oil. And I even go one step further. I found research where they extracted the hemp plant, one plant with a polar solvent. Polar solvents or alcohols and in this experiment they use methanol. But it's the same thing basically as ethanol, which is commonly used they then extracted on the plant with a with a non-polar solvent, which in this case was hexane. So other non-polar solvents are butane and even CO2 as a non-polar solvent and then they apply the extracts to the cancer cell and the polar extract did not kill any cancer cells, and the nonpolar extract killed the cancer cells. So you can't even be certain that when you make an extract of this multi cultivar concoction that it's going to be effective. Even if all the cannabinoids necessary were in there. You may not have extracted them with the solvent that you used. So I go one step further and recommended combined multi-cultivar extracts of both a polar and a non-polar solvent. Now I know that that's almost impossible for everybody to do, but I put it out there because I'm hoping that as a result of exposing that information that they're gonna be oil makers that are gonna wanna do it. And I'm wanting and willing and hoping to work with these oil makers to help them create the oil that will be the most effective. What I put in the epilogue of my book. If you read that.

Kirk: I did.  There's a paradox in your book, in the sense on page 55 you say that THC and CBD administration should be done separately.

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: Well, no. I talk about that in some detail when I first started and I was working with Mara Gordon, it was her idea. She had seen a patient who did not respond when the THC and CBD were taken and so she separated the dosing and then the patient responded. So based on that one patient, she advised separating the oils, but many patients combine them, but in the book, I detail a plan for using the cannabinoids initially separately and then after the highest tolerable dose of bedtime THC is achieved and the CBD and CBG being taken during the day and that's which it's maximum level also. I then recommend adding the THC during the day to the other cannabinoids. So I have I have a unique way of, since we don't know, we don't have any clinical trial to show which way is best. So I've devised a method that makes the best of both those possibilities.

Kirk: OK. And also there's multiple dosing during the day. I notice that, I do notice that you do talk heavily about the bedtime dose, but so you would do your bedtime dose and then in the morning? You do another dose, so of course it's patient centric, right? This is about cannabis medicine. So how often should somebody be dosing with cannabis? Does it depend on the cancer? Does it depend on?

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: We don't know. We don't know. So my experience tells me that the exposure of the tumor cells to the cannabinoids are the more continuous that exposure is, the more likely it is to result in killing those cancer cells. So my basic protocol is build up to the highest all of the dose of THC at bedtime. While taking CBD and CBG, morning, noon and dinner during the day, and then once the maximum dose of THC is achieved, adding THC, starting with, in the middle of the day because sometimes if you take a another dose of THC and the first thing when you wake up in the morning, having had a pretty good sized dose at bedtime, you will really get impaired quickly even from a small dose of THC. So I go, I really go into the details of dosing in the book and it's too much to discuss.

Kirk: OK, I want to give you an opportunity to discuss any questions I didn't ask you and then I have a question for you at the end, but is there any question I didn't ask you you'd like to get through?

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: No, you've done a good job of picking important topics in the book. And I don't have any cross to burn or there's not one message or one point that I want to get out. It's the totality of the book. You know, I talk about diet and exercise. Intermittent fasting. I talk about the psychological things that may be beneficial if you have cancer. I even talk about off label drugs that may complement. So that I just tried to tell everything I know and everything I learned about cancer with the cannabis focus in the book and I'm getting some nice reviews on Amazon so.

Kirk: It's a good book.

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: People seem to be appreciating it.

Kirk: Yeah, I do appreciate it, Sir. I guess. And this is the question from Trevor. Please explain your 1964 experience.  You tell it in the book.

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: Yeah. Well, I don't want to tell that story again, but I just watched The Paramount Plus documentary “What the doctor saw.”

Kirk: OK.

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: I'm featured throughout that 90 minute documentary and the other doctors who were in Trauma Room One also tell their experience and what they saw, and it's the best documentary that's been published on the assassination of JFK.

Kirk: I appreciate that.

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: I would recommend that highly to anyone who's interested in learning more about the assassination.

Kirk: Sure, Sativa or Indica?

Dr. Joe Goldstrich: Well, I think that indica is better for most people because it's relaxing and but it doesn't make any difference really. The whole classification of Sativa and Indica is really arbitrary and now that the cannabis gene pool is diluted so extensively everything pretty much is a hybrid. You can find some pure sativa mainly from Africa, from these land race strains that I know of one called Kuala Zulu, which is a sativa that the Zulu people used before they went into combat. But I don't think it makes any difference and especially if you have a multi-cultivar I would use examples or samples of both indica and sativa.

Trevor: So, Kirk, that I think I've mentioned before, but I'll officially mentioned on air. I'm really jealous that this worked out, that you got to talk to Dr. Joe. He definitely sounds like someone I would love to spend an afternoon, an evening, a weekend just listening to him talk about what he does. This is a fascinating dude who and again, I really like, he doesn't claim to have all the answers. He's got lots of things that make him think what he's doing is right, but you know, also a whole bunch of other places he'd like people to do more studies.

Kirk: So other things that outstanding to you.

Trevor: Well, Rick Simpson Oil and it's sort of might be a sort of a side thing but we've heard about Rick Simpson Oil on and off for a long time, and I still won't claim to understand all.  There are definitely, you know, heavy duty proponents of this really highly concentrated, lots of THC oil, but Dr. Joe's stuff, he calls it FECO, so Full Extract Cannabis Oil and because he even mentions Rick Simpson Oil a couple of times it, I'm not saying it's exactly the same, but they do seem to be similar.

Kirk: No, they are the same thing. It Rick Simpson's Oil. I don't know if it's a copyright on it, but that's exactly what he's done. Full extract cannabis oil is Rick Simpson Oil and that's what it is?

Trevor: And the other is and I don't I'm not contradicting him. I just don't know the whole, you know, jam as many different cultivars in there as many different strains into it as possible. Extract it with as many different solvents as possible. And the idea being he's trying to get as many different cannabinoids as possible out of it. Almost in the we don't really know what cannabinoids might help, let's see if we can get them all, was kind of the drive I was getting from.

Kirk: The entourage effect. Yeah, I that's what I pulled out of that the book. And also for the conversation is that you know, we live in an economy where people are getting the medicine from Rec Stores and you can get oil from the Rec Store, but you can't get the concentrated stuff he's talking about. This is stuff, that Home Brewers make or compassion clubs do, right? Because in Canada, you can't go get anything above 10 milligrams. Right. Well, the stuff he's talking about, is far beyond 10 milligrams of dosing. And also, it's not just you know we talked about the green culture, and we spent a whole bunch of those episodes where we focused on the world, the banking system and the pharmacology groups and how cannabis will finally find its way into a DIN number. This FECO, will never have a DIN number because it will never be a defined medicine, because it really does talk about making your own.  I mean this is homegrown, this is medicinal cannabis. These are people in Canada that would have a medicinal grow operation and they would be making their own full extract cannabis oil from their harvest, you know? So this is what I got out of this, this, this book is a is really directed to those people who grow cannabis for the purposes of dealing with their medicine. So in this case, cancer. So that's what I got out of that when you start digging deep into it, it's a recipe for home growers.

Trevor: Yeah. And I really liked and again it's too. Buy the book. We'll put some links, but buy the book. There's lots and lots and lots of stuff in here. You know, everything from how he thinks the different cannabinoids are treating cancer. And you know, there's tantalizing things like different cancers have lots of CB1 and CB2 receptors, and maybe that's why we want a really high THC thing to hit them. To you know, maybe how some of the CBD is affected  aroundabout way, but affecting how we get blood flow to a cancer because you know, a cancer doesn't necessarily do anything. You know, a lot of us, if we're lucky, we'll die with cancer when we are, you know, 95 you know, we've all got some cancer growing in us. But as long as it's not doing anything, it almost one of those we don't care and one of the ways to make a cancer not do anything is not feed it, so if you slow how the blood flow gets to the cancer. Well, it's it doesn't grow, which is maybe one of the things that CBD is doing anyway there's lots and he goes in great detail about how he thinks it should be dosed and how to titrate, which we just don't have enough time to do here. But again buy the book. But yeah, and he does.

Kirk: Here, here's the quote. Here's the quote. “THC forces a cancer cell to commit suicide.”

Trevor: Now that's what we want all you know well and that's what cancer cells don't do. That's kind of the definition. Like all cells in the body should die at a certain point, and cancer really simplistically and oncologist don't yell at me, but the cancer cell is basically for whatever reason, forgotten how to die at the right time so it's forgotten how to do the apoptosis, and we're hoping that the something here will sort of tell them, yeah, you really should just go die.

Kirk: Well, my understanding of cancer, how it's explained to me was that it's a normal cell that just can't stop growing.

Trevor: Yeah, but it doesn't die.

Kirk: You know, they're just cells that just keep growing.

Trevor: yeah, but doesn't die. It becomes immortal.

Kirk: Yeah, what I found interesting in the book is and I asked them bluntly about this, you know, cause I do have some clinical experience dealing with skin cancers and squamous type cells, you know, and there is, you know, there's three types of cancers, right. And squamous is sort of in the middle. They can either go bad or can go good. So you if you take out a squamous cells and you.

Trevor: And we're talking about for those who have this is skin cancer. Just throwing that out.

Kirk: Skin cancer. Yeah. Yeah, skin cancer. So if you remove those cells and you know they've encapsulated the nodule they've moved then the question is, do you still have cancer? Well, no, apparently not. But he's saying two years continue with your full extract cannabis oil for another two years and that means, you know, that means taking 2, 3 drops, whatever your dosing is, 2, 3-four times a day. That's what I was saying about this is truly somebody who's growing their own medicine because I don't know if you could afford buying recreational cannabis oil to do this, you know. So the book The Cannabis Cancer Connection found on Amazon, right?

Trevor: Yeah, we'll, put a link in the show notes.  Go buy the book. It's a really good book. Yeah. Another sort of brush with greatness. He mentions Dr. Dedi Meiri a few times in here and I sat on a panel with him, you know. So I'm kind of hoping someone that Dr. Meiri brushes great, you know, knowledge brushed off on me a little bit but yeah.

Kirk: Actually he should be a future guest

Trevor: I tried. I'm not saying we won't try again, but I tried getting him on. Apparently talking to other people, he gets so many requests from so many people that, you know, I might have just fallen into the waste bin. But yeah.

Kirk: It's kind of like me and Neil Young, you know, I want to get Neil Young on this podcast thing.

Trevor: Absolutely. Just a couple lectures of Dr. Meiri as I've listened to, we asked him sort of are you pro or against the entourage effect? And he's kind of both because, you know, in his research, you know, he's found and Dr. Joe mentioned a few times in his book. Dr. Meiri, you know, one of the things he in his lab do, is look for new cannabinoids. So, he has a bunch of cannabinoids that aren't even named. They're just numbers. And he's found, you know, some tumors. Now again, this is tumor cells in a Petri dish. But some tumors that one cannabinoid will take it out. Hey wonderful. But others that you need three different cannabinoids, like any of the three won't do it on their own, but the three together will kill it, so you know. So you know, is it the entourage effect, is it? And he said, well, yeah, probably be both. They'll probably be, you know, cancer X will take this cannabinoid. cancer Y will take these three. And who knows, maybe cancer Z needs 14 of them and some terpenoid. Like there's lots going on.

Kirk: It's Plant medicine, right. And this is the problem that cannabis has being called a medicine within the Western style of medicine is that you can't predict. We know. I mean, Dr. Daeninck talked about it in his episode “When Did Cancer Go To Pot” that, you know, there is some research that suggests cannabis will actually stop cancer and cure from cancer and hell, hell? In this book he talks about THC tells the cancer cell to commit suicide, so we're getting closer to understanding cannabis as a medicine but but but but but right. Yeah. So This is why pharmacists have a tough time with cannabis, you know.

Trevor: What we do and that's not a bad thing, you know, we're up for the learning, but some other sort of reading I've done about cancer lately is that, you know, not surprisingly we've tried been trying forever to figure out what the hell cancer is and how you know, so they've done things. They try to take like a genetic look at all the cancers out there and look for the commonalities between all the different types of cancer, so you know. Ohh this one gene is out of wack. So if we fix that gene, we fixed all cancer it's yeah, the really simplistic.

Kirk: With crisper, we'll fix it with crisper.

Trevor: Sure. But with whatever, first we gotta find out what the problem is, right? Well, the surveys aren't turning out way. More questions than answers, so not it. Not only is Prostate cancer, dramatically different than breast cancer, Judy's breast cancer is dramatically different than Sally's breast cancer. So like, there's so not surprising cancer complicated and even more complicated the more we look at it.

Kirk: Men have had breast cancer.

Trevor: Yes, yes. But it was just you know.

Kirk: It's again it's just cancer is as unpredictable as cannabis is as a medicine.

Trevor: It is and the other just again, he's got so many going on that you can't get it all, but he did spend also a large amount of time, which I quite liked about not just cancer, cannabis treating cancer, making the cancer go away, but using it just to help with symptoms like things. Like you lose your appetite and you waste away. What can help with that? A few other things that that the cannabis will help with even if it's aside from the whole possibly making the cancer go away just, you know, treating some of the very troublesome.

Kirk: Palliative care.

Trevor: It's yeah. And not even just palliative, like even in, you know, early-stage treatments, you know that is one of the you know and we can beat up on pharmacy as much as we want but yeah Chemotherapy, sometimes even when it's working fantastic, makes people feel crappy. So just even having you know cannabis around as a thing is good and the other, I'm sorry because it keeps popping up and I think it was Dr. Daeninck and one of the other lectures I went to, just keep your keep your oncologist in the loop.  If you're using cannabis and you're taking cancer treatments to keep them in the loop. And don't say because Trevor said so, but most cancer treatments and most cannabis it's fine together, but there are certain ones and there are the immunotherapy ones that don't necessarily play well with cannabis because you think about if the immunotherapy is trying to make your immune system do something. And we know cannabis can make maybe your immune system do more or less of that. They don't sometimes play nicely together, but take home the message, if you're going to use cannabis with cancer, just keep your oncology team in the loop about what you're doing.

Kirk: Always. I mean that we preached that from the very beginning. Also, if you like this episode, go back to Dr. Daeninck’s episode because we get into the palliative care side of it. I mean, I mean cannabis came into medicine because of its palliative characteristics, for people who are fighting for it in the late 90s and early aughts, you know, so, yeah. Yeah, the Cannabis Cancer Connection. It's a good little reference for people who want to know more about it.

Trevor: Yeah, and it and don't be daunted, it's not a textbook. It is 200ish pages. Yeah. Flipping to the end. Yeah. So yeah.

Kirk: Plain language plain language but.

Trevor: Yeah, easy, easy read.

Kirk: Quick synopsis is there's so much more we need to know, but what we do know is that it helps people, it helps people who have cancer, and that's and that's the bottom line of the book and it's written by a cardiologist. A retired cardiologist.

Trevor: Who's gotten into cannabis cancer oncology consulting.

Kirk: So anything else to discuss about the book?

Trevor: No, there there's lots there. We missed lots. But it's a great book. Go, go read it.

Kirk: Dr. Joe asked for Imagine by John Lennon.

Trevor: Can't complain about that.

Kirk: So I guess we'll, play out on that. Check out our web page. Ohh we should tell people about our web page. Tell us about Canna Bites man.

Trevor: So Canna Bites. Hopefully we'll be expanding soonish, but it's short explainers about cannabis stuff. By short, I mean like, hopefully 2 less than 3 paragraphs.  Something so, you know, we might have what's THC? What's CBD? Of course, I started to try to do a short explainer on the whole thing, which is what's the endocannabinoid system?  So you know, I tried to take but I think because we get this a lot you know from regular people on the street, and doctors and nurses, pharmacists, you know, so what's that? You know, what's a CB1 receptor? What's CBD? What's the? So I figure if we put little sort bite sized things in there. And you know, these are not meant to be the end all be all. But you know if you've if you've only ever heard of a CB1 receptor and wondered what the hell is that thing? Hopefully we can have a little explainer and have that sort of grow into. If you take a bunch of those explainers together, things might start to make sense.

Kirk: they’ll have a meal, they'll have a canned meal. So baby shoes. You're selling baby shoes. Was that a typo? I left it in.

Trevor: Trevor was being literary there. There's a whole bunch of stories called six-word stories and that one. Baby baby shoe.

Kirk: five words is it not?

Trevor: No, that one was six. “Baby shoes for sale, never worn” was attributed to Hemingway. It may or not have actually been written by him, but it's one of those when the more you think about that line, you wonder What happened in that?  

Kirk: What happened to the baby?

Trevor: I thought that was a nice sort of lead into, you know, that's a really short thing that leads into a bigger story, so had a really so we had a really short thing with endocannabinoid system, which hopefully will make you think about a bigger story.

Kirk: well you grabbed me, I was reading going what about the baby? What about the baby does the baby have CB receptors. Anyways. Reefermed.ca you can find a new addition to our web page called Canna Bites and it should be growing into a meal

Trevor: shortly.

Kirk: So shortly, no, no pressure. And so we'll lead off to John Lennon's imagine as requested by Dr. Joe.

Trevor: That's another good one.