Episode Transcript

Trevor: Kirk. We're back.

Kirk: Hey, Trevor. How's it going?

Trevor: Good. So, we're going to talk to Bob Hill. Bob Hill is an interesting guy. I think that's an understatement of the year. We've got a trial lawyer who was doing some research into a fungus case and somehow got on to immunology and cannabis. Not a not a bad intro to to Bob.

Kirk: Well, yeah, I think my that I've given you my narrative. You seem to have found a naturopathic, lawyer selling health supplements to boost immune systems bio-acidity using raw cannabinoids. And he's quite the, he's quite the zealot in the sense of how he believes in his business, Life Research. Him and his wife have a business called Life Research. And they're selling hemp oil which is, like you say, and his this whole interview is him explaining the scientific effects of this raw hemp oil on the body. And I was like, oh, my God, this guy is really stretching my science here. I have to go back and study for this fella.

Trevor: Well, one of the things I like about Bob is I'm not saying he's not, he hasn't done a lot of research because he has. But I think because he's not a scientist, I think he does a good job of explaining sciencey things to non-sciencey people. So I thought he did. I thought he did a good job about that.

Kirk: Yeah, yeah, I think he used his analytical lawyer skills to study and teach himself about the science of raw cannabis.

Trevor: Now, up front, you wanted to sort of, place some thoughts in people's minds for things to listen to. The first was not our usual Entourage Affect. What do you want people to listen for?

Kirk: Yeah, I like the word Ensemble Affect. I think that's listen, listen for that. And listen to how he describes why it should be referred to as the Ensemble Affect instead of the Entourage. I found that really quite interesting.

Trevor: And we should, for those of you who did not take the microbiology, we thought we should talk about an organelle. So first we'll start with an organelle. So cells, while they're microscopic. But think of a cell is a big ball. It's got an outer section. If it's a eukaryote, if it's one of us, it's a cell membrane on the outside. And then very center is the nucleus. That's where the DNA is. And between the two of them, there's little things that do stuff, like there's a ribosome that makes proteins. And one of the most important things in any cell is something called a mitochondria. And the simple version of a mitochondria. I'm not a microbiologist, so I'm stuck at the simple version. Simple version. The mitochondria is the powerhouse for the cell. The mitochondria sort of produces all the energy the cell needs. It helps the cell burn oxygen and turn and create this thing called ATP, which is the power of the cell. And the mitochondria produces that. And we talk a lot about mitochondria.

Kirk: Yeah. I mean, I think people they call the nucleolus sort of the brains of a cell where the mitochondria would be the furnace. It's what burns and fuels the cell to go forward. I find the mitochondria quite interesting, I think. I think, we can come out of the interview, I guess and get bigger into the mitochondria because I just, I found this, I found him going deep into this. This is another deep one. And it's like you said, it's a lawyer opposed to a scientist. So it makes it a very unique discussion you had.

Trevor: Yeah. So I think, without further ado, it's time for everybody to meet, Bob Hill. So, Bob, tell us a little bit about yourself and, how you got into cannabis.

Bob Hill: Well, first-of-all, I want to thank you for this opportunity. Do I call you Trevor?

Trevor: Absolutely.

Bob Hill: All right. Trevor. I got into, cannabis quite by chance, in the sense that I was a trial lawyer for about 37 years and had more litigation, which required me, and I was plaintiff's lawyer, so it required me to, do a deep background study of immunology. And I had a real good teacher named Doctor Vincent Marinovich. He's now passed away, but he's from Stanford. Was from Stanford. And so for six years, I basically was learning about the intricacies, of our immune system with the standpoint of how we produce antibodies against specific antigens. And that's a very specific sequence process that the medical community understands well, but the people don't, because quite frankly, we have a rudimentary, at best, understanding of our own immune systems. So, what happened with me is I bought a farm in Paonia, Colorado to grow for CBGa and, basically for all the acidic cannabinoids. Not knowing anything about the molecular structure of them, vis-a-vis the distillates that we're well aware of, CBD, THC, CBN, etc. And so I grew my first crop and my extractor was a young Freemason said, I'm not going to activate your acids, Bob. It's more therapeutic that way. Which I felt like I was dealing with somebody like a Greek. You know, like the Greek Orthodox Church. Everything happens behind the curtain. Well, and I'm a trial lawyer. So I started researching this in November of 2020 and started seeing the abstracts going all the way back to the Israelis and the Japanese, and particularly the Japanese in the 1990s discovered that the acidic version of the molecule, in other words, the precursor acids, when preserved with their Terpenes and their Flavonoids, have the ability to activate the entirety of our immune system, not just the portion of. And the reason is that the electrons, the molecular structure of CBGa, for example, is 22 carbon, 32 hydrogen and four oxygen. But if you look at the molecular structure of CBG, it's only 21 carbon, 32 hydrogen and two oxygen. Well, it doesn't take a trial lawyer long say where the heck?  What happened to those atoms? Where those molecules go? And then, of course, when I asked the question, I had to answer it. And it turned out that this is how we produce hydrogen peroxide. The exact same process. So I said to myself, well, the nature of the universe is atoms and molecules don't act differently in an interior position as they do exterior. So what's happening to that carbon and two oxygen and hydrogen, the carboxylic group, that the distillates burn off. What's happening at the receptors? And fortunately enough, I met a gentleman by the name of Daniel Gona from Nigeria, who I'm very close with, and he works for my company now. And he said, Bob, the entire medical community worldwide is ignoring or, or is unaware that the hydrogen protons embedded in the mitochondria of every living cell will not react or interact with any other molecule that they don't recognize as a like molecule that's electrically charged. That's the famous lock and key mechanism that gets talked about a lot. So I, I slowed him down a little because I'm a generalist and said, whoa, what are you talking about here, Daniel? Bob. If you preserve all of the compounds in the cannabis plant, which we're up to about 540, but.

Trevor: Right.

Bob Hill: Trevor pick a number. My hunch is it's closer to about 10,000. But if you preserve them in the ratios that the plant uses to protect itself. And because this particular plant mimics our immune system, you will fully activate all aspects of, I'll call it the endocrine immune system because the master receptors, the PPR receptors in the gut, the Gaba receptors remain dormant. If they're interacting with a distillate. It doesn't have the it doesn't have the electrons to donate to the hydrogen protons. Now what that means therapeutically I'm not sure yet. But what we are sure is, is that the therapeutic value of preserving all the compounds in the exact ratios that that they were in when the plant was using it to protect its own immune system, protect itself. It is literally going to revolutionize medicine because for the first time, we now have the ability to use a botanical compound to activate the master's, I will call it, the master switch receptors, which pretty much regulate, animate, and modulate tens of thousands of enzymatic actions, and what we call the Entourage Affect.

Trevor: We use that term Entourage Affect a lot. So that's what I was going to ask with you. Is that is that what you'd call it, or do you do you have another term for it?

Bob Hill: Well, it's funny, I, I was fine with it because after all, it was coined by, guys like Ethan Russo and Mechoulam, Doctor Mechoulam. And, you know, it's pretty much considered the godfather of all this from Israel. But the truth is, it's sequenced just like anything else in the body is. So somebody emailed me one day and said, no, Bob, it's the Ensemble Affect because we can sequence these interactions. And I really like that because I think now that we're about to publish this paper, hopefully the research community is going to start focusing in on how do we fully activate the mitochondria and the master receptors. Because once we do that, we're at. What I like to say, Trevor, is we think of ourselves as celestial beings operating on this earthly plane till they put us in the oven after we die and we find out we were just a pound and a half of minerals with electrons going through them.

Trevor: More poetically, Carl Sagan called us Star Stuff. I like that one.

Bob Hill: The Star Stuff. That's. I like that one, too. But the point is electron transfer between cells is critical. And so what these compounds are able to do is regulate and well, on the front end they're able to regulate electron transfers, but they also vacuum up free radicals, which are just the byproduct of turning food into energy at the cellular level. So what basically what we discovered and what I think the medical community is going to discover, is that by fully activating the immune system, the immune system itself will figure out just the right pattern of hormone, or, amino acid rebalancing that needs to be done to resolve the oxidative stress imbalance that is the cause of pretty much all diseases. And by that I mean that we can heal ourselves far more readily, than any foreign protein could ever do. So the single molecules, architecture of medicine is about to be, I think, supplanted by a botanical set of compounds that are just as pure, just as safe, but have the ability to activate the immune system in a way that Allopathic medicine just can't. Because regardless of which compound we're talking about, it's going to treat as a foreign protein sent to the liver and in cannabis cases, you when you send it to the liver, it gets an enzyme 450, I believe, attached to it. And, and then and then you get a bit of the therapy. But with this the therapy begins immediately right at the cellular level. You don't even have to go to the digestive system to start getting therapy. And that's what's exciting.

Trevor: No that's good. And I do want to talk about the paper, but, just back to the mitochondria. So I think it was sort of one of the things that surprised me the most. Maybe it shouldn't have, but I never thought about there being receptors on a mitochondria. Now, if I if you think about it, it kind of makes sense. Like if you go and it sort of adds to something Kirk and I have talked about a lot, but the endocannabinoid system seems to be really ancient, sort of on an evolutionary level. You know, because it's shared by us and fungi and insects and everyone seems to have some version of. So it means that, you know, way, way, way, way back in evolutionary times, everybody had some endocannabinoids. So if you think way, way back to at some point, mitochondria were their own single celled organisms and they kind of got swallowed up and incorporated into us and all other multicellular beings it looks like. I guess it makes sense that they had receptors on the outside, but I just I never really thought about receptors on a mitochondria before. And, and even less so that cannabinoid receptors might be sitting on a mitochondria. So I really found that part of the paper fascinating.

Bob Hill: It was funny for me too Trevor because I see mitochondria, as like filaments in a light bulb. And they have their own. You are absolutely right that mitochondria have their own immune system. They have their own set of properties independent of, the cell that they reside in. And that's when I got excited, because what I learned from Daniel was the lock and key occurs both on the surface protein, because there's got to be a communication between the proteins on the surface of every cell and the mitochondria. They have to speak.  It's like, think of it as, well, like a cell phone. I mean, it's not good unless it's able to communicate. And so what Daniel said is that mitochondria have their own set of proteins sequenced in the order that they need them, and that's why they protect the cell. Because they won't react. They won't act. They'll basically reject any electrical pattern that doesn't suit them because they can't take a chance, because it might be a foreign protein, like a virus or bacteria that have some of the peptides necessary to get into the cell. So when he told me that, it made total sense to me that we're basically our immune system is one big electrical system with switches that are either on or off.  That Russo's famous, endocannabinoid deficiency syndrome is just a fancy way of saying we're not using our immune system because it's not being activated. And that's why I got excited is if we can if we can produce literally medicinal botanical products that fully activate all aspects of the immune system, then I think we're, we're literally on the precipice of a whole, revolution in healing medicines that are not just cannabis based, because the beauty of cannabis is it allows other therapeutics, whether it be mushrooms, whether it be you name it, any kind of, nutraceutical, it improves their bioavailable availability at the cellular level because now the system has homeostasis. It's organized. The electrons. So the PPAR electron or the PPAR receptors are critical because they're regulating electron flows anyway, from cell to cell. Same with Gaba in our brains. And, all I knew for sure was that this made sense logically, that if we if we fully activate our system and understand that the mitochondria are the building block by which all of life is made, then the concentration should be on how do we optimize the stimulation of the mitochondria so that what happens is that the hormones and the enzymes that would otherwise not be there all of a sudden show up. So I've watched, epileptic seizure customers, just the seizures disappear. Same with autism. Same with women's menstrual cycles. Why is this? Well, because there's no oxidative stress imbalance that's causing inflammation, which is causing a acidic condition which allows bacteria and such to populate. In other words, as was said thousands of years ago Trevor, Physician, heal thyself. And Hippocrates too. I'm curious what the Greeks knew about this plant at the time of Hippocrates. Because remember what he said, food. Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food. And that's what I think the cannabis plant has in store for us, but only if we're wise enough to preserve all the compounds in the ratios that the plant uses. For one simple reason, the plant has mimicked our immune system for at least 12,000 years. Some people say as much as a million years.

Trevor: Yeah. No, we definitely seem to have sort of co-evolved with cannabinoids. So let's talk a little bit about the paper. It's dense. We're not going to get to the whole thing. 

Bob Hill: I will tell you I tried to make an eighth grade Trevor and Dan, my research scientist said, Bob, this is designed for research. You cannot dumb it down, so I apologize.

Trevor: No, no, but there's still some interesting bits in there. So let's talk about lock and key. So, I think all we'll call medical professionals have probably heard lock and key, but we'll do the real quick version. So the simplest and so I use this example every day in the pharmacy. insulin. So insulin is it's a hormone. We produce a protein. It goes to the whole body. And I literally tell patients there's a little door in your cell that's literally the lock that goes in the key, opens the door and lets the sugar in. So lock and key pretty common in pharmacy world because that's how most drugs work. They literally hit a receptor and something happens.

Bob Hill: Right.

Trevor: But it's, more complicated and more things going on in the cannabinoid world, isn't it? Like the difference between just isolating some THC and putting on the cell or having the difference between a THCa or, you know, maybe THC, like you said, surrounded by a bunch of terpenoids and, and other cannabinoids. So do you wanna talk a little bit about what else is going on lock and key wise that you guys went through in the paper.

Bob Hill: Yeah. Well first of all thank you for that insight on insulin because that's precisely what we're talking about. But because the cannabis molecule and preserve is so complex. So CBGa, if you look at it three dimensionally, its molecular structure, you'll notice that the carboxylic group is on the exterior of the compound. It's the only cannabinoid, that has that. In other words, there's no bond. There's no, there's no wall of separation between those atoms and whatever they're interacting with. And the molecule actually looks like a missile, which, of course it would, because its only job is to put out information wherever it finds it in the body. Just like insulin has its job, that CBGa job, and it does it by donating those electrons, to protons and or the protons. I don't know. Nobody really knows who's donating what to whom. They do know that the electrons and protons interact. So the lock and key of a cannabinoid that's fully preserved, like a whole plant extract. Because remember, if I say I'm giving you a whole plant extract, I'm not just, that's CBGa dominant. You're still getting CBDa, you're still getting some THCa. You're more than likely won't be getting any of the distillates are very, very, very tiny portions because most of our plants don't convert their Oleanolic acid in pyrophosphate into the distillate. So you start with genetics and plants. But the reason the lock and key, the reason you want to do that is that these compounds have the ability to open up pockets. And then fill them. And so that's what happens when CBGa becomes CBG. Essentially it opens up pockets that allow for something else to be put in there. And the reason isn't so much the cannabinoids, it's the terpenes and the flavonoids that are manipulating the molecular structure of the receptor itself to make the phyto cannabinoid more effective and more efficient and better able to bond. So the key is just what you said is it's opening up spaces within the body by which the therapeutics can take place.

Trevor: Yeah. And I as a pharmacist have found that, again, probably even insulin is more complicated than we think about. But, you know, I literally think about insulin being a literal key going into a literal lock, turning it and opening a quote unquote sugar door. Yes, I know that's not exactly what happens with cell, but that's sort of my explanation every day. But this is, like you said, terpenoid almost binding on the side of the lock, change in the shape of the lock, and then something else different can go in and do something. So there's a bunch of extra steps.

Bob Hill: It's a sequence. That's why I call it the Ensemble Affect instead of the Entourage. Entourage describes probably tens of thousands of enzymatic actions that are occurring in nanoseconds at the same time, really. But there's a sequence to all of it because, again, the mitochondria are in charge. They're not going to take chances so that that sequence isn't there. The whole thing gets shut down and the foreign protein gets sent, you know, into the liver, blah, blah, blah. But you hit upon a really critical point. CBGa, among its other ubiquitous powers or properties, it changes the body's resistance levels to insulin. So CBGa is a known, therapy or compound, for Type Two diabetes. And so, so the initial reaction, that I've been describing is followed literally by a series of reactions designed to figure out where the oxidative stress is causing the organism harm. And of course, with diabetes you don't have a proper insulin response. So CBGa, THCa, CBDa, all are known to change the resistance to put it back into, I guess, what we call normal levels of, resistance, insulin resistance because it isn't diabetes that the, the body is simply not figuring out how to process the sugars.

Trevor: Right. We literally call it insulin resistance.

Bob Hill: Yeah. And that's when I really got excited Trevor is oh my God. We now can use botanical extracts to go after intractable diseases that Allopathic medicine can try to cope with. But simply cannot cure. And that wasn't good enough for me when I found out that these products can actually change or eliminate type two diabetes, because they're constantly trying to figure out how to recalibrate the pattern of hormones and enzymes that make us up, and that they keep us alive. So that they're functioning at the optimum for the organism. And you're right. We don't have to make it complicated. They do it for the plant. Why do we preserve them? And because our immune systems are so identical and have been for literally, probably at least 12,000 years. They'll do it for us. But we're making a mistake when we try to play God by blowing up the molecule and then recombining either a portion of it, or synthetically trying to know we've got the molecular structure, Bob. So we're just going to synthetically create these same compounds to which our immune system says fat chance buddy. I'm not accepting you. You're a foreign protein. I recognize the difference. And this is where it really gets fun. It's about the molecular. It's about the polarity of the energy charge.

Trevor: And yeah, let's talk about that a little bit, because that was another part that sort of struck me. Now again, for those of you listening, sorry, I'm going to go a little in the weeds. But most people I think, have heard about Delta9 THC and Delta8 THC. And for this discussion, that part you all you really need to know is if you looked at them again like keys, they look almost the same. You know, they basically would fit in the same size box, the same size lock. But what you guys are looking at is, the literature says it's not in this case, it's a lock and key, but it's not a, a size thing. It's a polarity thing. Do you want to talk about that?

Bob Hill: Yeah. So the hydrogen protons or the let's just say protons in the mitochondria will only activate if they spot and identically molecular, identically structured molecular pattern that's either positively or negatively charged. We're humans. And so we aren't acid based. We're not alkaline based. We're neutral in the sense of we have a pH. What the compounds are, are electrically charged versions of the exact same molecular structure we have embedded in our mitochondria and on the surface proteins of every cell. So think of it as a two part quiz. Oh, I recognize you. Oh you're electrically charge. I'm not. I want what you have. And that's the plug in. Think of it as, the way I like to put it is the polarity is similar to plugging in a blender. You can have all the best nutrients in the world, all the best foods. But if you can't plug the blender and you got nothing, and that's the same here.  Is the polarity of the molecules themselves. Because when we preserve them, when we don't use extraction methods that are high temperature, or solvent based, then the plant will give the entire enchilada.  I live in Santa Fe Trevor, so everything down here is enchiladas, but you get the full enchilada. Why? Because you preserved the polarity of the molecules themselves, the electrical properties of the molecules themselves. Whereas if you go to the distillates, you've now and you've now neutralized that polarity, it's gone. And you've also wiped out the carboxylic group, which is where the polarity really takes place. Because remember, carbon, oxygen and hydrogen are the three organic molecules by which all life is created and preserved. So if we preserve the plant's ability to literally transact and, and give us the same reactions that it knows naturally, I often like to say how many how many cannabis plants do you know that have acted stoned?

Trevor: Yeah. None.

Bob Hill: None. Well, it turns out. The plant doesn't produce THC. We do. When we cut it, dry it and decarboxylate it. So we are we're really missing the boat if we don't go back to squares. I'm an old Who guy. I still think Who's Next is the best rock album of all time, except for Taylor Swift.

Trevor: It's hard to argue with Taylor Swift.

Bob Hill: But if you remember the Who's Next. That song about getting back to squares. Well, that's essentially what we've done here for hopefully. And it's funny for me, Trevor, because the folks that get this aren't the doctors, they're the pharmacists. They're the immunologists. They're the microbiologists. They're the biochemists. I had one doctor from Australia contact me and said, Bob, you this paper forced me to go back to my very first biochemistry book.

Trevor: Well, I, I was feeling like that too while reading through. It's interesting, but yeah, a whole lot of a whole lot of head scratching. And so. So we don't run.

Bob Hill: So here’s the good news Trevor. Is we can now measure these reactions. Remember we're talking about a lot of potential energy that becomes kinetic energy. And so we're not going to have to theorize much longer. We're literally going to be able to measure the scope of these reactions. And here's where it gets fun for pharmacists and researchers and doctors is there's biodiversity, regardless of the axioms we're talking about, there's going to be biodiversity. So one compound may work for my afflictions but may not work for you because we have a different DNA, blah blah blah. But what's going to be fun is when we can actually measure the scope of these reactions. Compound by compound. Because then you're going to be able to have a literally a platform by which you can heal people literally seeing what their immune system is or is not doing in real time. And that technology, what it's called, mass spectrometry. And there's also you can do crystalline versions of these molecules so you can actually measure the energy transfer and where it's occurring. So we're on the cusp of something revolutionary because the science is going to, like I like to say is the ancient wisdom is getting married to modern technology. And it's about time.

Trevor: Nope. That's good. And now I'll ask one more question. Then we'll just kind of do a wrap up. But so when I talk and that's, you know, people that I'm a pharmacist, I got to talk to the business people to like all the shelves in the pharmacy are filled out basically of one, one molecule for one problem, because that's how licensing of drugs works. You find one molecule, it fixes one problem. Everybody's happy. So the usually the money people we talk to, you know, if they want to fund a new biotech startup, they want one molecule for one problem because that's the easiest thing to license. How's, for lack of a better word, how is a whole plant biotech company going to get off the ground, get funded, get sold? If we're going to say we need hundreds or thousands of molecules for possibly hundreds of thousands of problems, it's it doesn't it's not an easy thing to get licensed and sold at scale. How do you think that's going to go forward?

Bob Hill: You just asked the $64 billion question. Three reasons. One, we're not talking about when I call them whole plant, mainly because I want to get away from the stigma. So when I talk about CBDa, people think I'm talking about THC. So when I say whole plant, I'm just preserving the compounds. The way that the pharmaceutical companies are going to make money is that these specific formulas and the extraction techniques by which we preserve are just as patentable as anything else. But they also activate the receptors that no Allopathic compound that you have on your shelves can do. The PPAR and the Gaba receptors are not going to react to anything I've ever seen. Other than these whole plant botanicals. So the first thing is it's patentable. The second thing is because preserving all the compounds in the ratios that the plant gives up or has for itself, you can now microdose. So in other words, 380 micrograms of these extracts is literally far superior than 500mg of anything else you want to talk about, whether it's CBD or for that matter, even THC or CBN or anything. So we're going to be able to scale so that bioavailability goes up by 100%. Dose response goes down by as much as 10,000%. We have a Doctor Sulak in Maine, who published, one of the first handbooks for cannabis medicine. And at page 320 he says, and we noted that for nausea in cancer patients, we administered five milligrams of CBD to get a response. We administered 1/10,000 of that dose of CBDa and got a superior response. So the industry has been going in the wrong direction thinking more is more therapeutic. It may well be the case for most compounds that are treated as foreign proteins and therefore have a resistance that has to be overcome in the liver. But for these compounds, because they are so identical to our molecular structure, one kilo of CBGa can now produce 10,000 applications of full dose as opposed to 70,000. So I'm just holding up a 30ml bottle. Yeah, 500 milligram. It turns out that if we if we purify and and maintain these, we only need literally 1/10,000 of what we're now taking. In fact, quite frankly, I think they're finding that that CBD is biphasic? Too much or too little? You get nothing. Well, I think what we're gonna find out is that our electrical system, otherwise known as our immune system, does not need redundancy. The switch is either on or off. Just like a cell phone, you know, you either get the password or you don't. And if you get the password, you get everything. If you don't get the password, you get nothing. So I think the second reason that the that the money people are going to come around to this is right now, they are they're wedded to the notion that a single molecule needs to, to, solve a certain problem. And there's a, there's a certain there's a certain truth to that with penicillin. I mean, I understand why the industry. But what they're now finding is, for example, with anxiety. What do the psychiatrists have to prescribe? Antidepressants. Single molecules. What do they do? Mess with our histamines. Do they actually cure the depression? No. Did they lessen the anxiety? No. Do they have massive side effects? Losing sex drive. Eating ten blocks of cheese. They screw up the entire system. But psychiatrists don't have anything to give their patients other than Allopathic antidepressants that are single molecule based. And they fail miserably. And almost every psychiatrist, when they're talking off the record, will tell you that. So we come in and say you try a whole plant botanical and you can list the ingredients any way you want or not list them at all, because it's really all we're really talking about is the same as, Manitoba Harvest. When you eat hemp seeds, you're doing you're eating the exact same set of compounds. It's just that they're not able to activate the receptors at the molecular level. So the third reason is we can get compounds. Follow the FDA, follow the regulatory guidelines just like the allopathic medicines. Literally to the T. And, but with the end result that these work. So I can imagine a world 50 years from now where we haven't gone back to cannabis based medicine. You know, I hate to say it. I'm from Minnesota. You're from Toronto. So you're from south of me?

Trevor: Well, no, I'm actually from Manitoba. I'm a little north of you.

Bob Hill: Well, then then why don't you finish all your sentences with eh. Because when I went to Winnipeg anyway. But here's the point.

Trevor: They schooled that out of me eh.

Bob Hill: And they did eh, but the bottom line is, in 1937, the president of the American Medical Association wrote a letter. To President Franklin Roosevelt on the literally on the eve of him signing an improvident law, stopping the research into this plant in its tracks. After all, they couldn't figure out the difference between a high THC and a low THC plant. So they all must be evil. Except we need to win a war. So what we're about is getting medicine back to where it was then, because in the letter he says, Mr. President, 90 to 95% of all medicines we prescribe in the United States right now are cannabis based. Please, for God sakes, don't rob us of our ability to heal our patients. And which, of course he did. And I'm not blaming him. I'm blaming I'm basically blaming the greed of folks like William Randolph Hearst and Carnegie Mellon, you know, all these all these so-called industrialists that knew the cannabis plant was a threat. Whether you're talking about newspapers or whether you're talking about medicine. So they threw it all out in favor of themselves. So we're going to get back to the future by getting doctors empowered to prescribe the same medicines that their great grand daddies and great grandmothers were able to prescribe in 1937. So in terms of it's going to take some time, but I will tell you, the receptivity among doctors is starting to come around. Look at guys like you. I mean, you I've watched you on LinkedIn. You get this stuff and it's going to happen. And I and I also think we get into the schools. One of the things that I find tragic. If you go to the average eighth grade hygiene class, they don't even tell the kids about their own immune system. That's got to change now. And once that happens, then, then the pharmaceutical companies are going to pay attention. Not before. I agree with you. It's a it's a pushing a rock up a hill like Sisyphus. But my God, I'm going to keep pushing it up the hill, because at least Sisyphus got to remember everybody. Everybody says he was doomed. He was doomed for eternity. No it wasn't. He pushed the rock all the way up the hill, and he got that one nanosecond of pleasure watching it go down before he was forced to push the next one up. And if I could get one nanosecond of pleasure by empowering pharmacists like you to have a whole class, therapeutic compounds naturally based so that you can not just make money off your patient, but also watch as --- it just warms my heart when I watch epileptic kid and I can put this stuff under his tongue. And he calms down. And then I get an email from his mom two months later saying he hasn't had a seizure since. And that's what we're going to be about, Trevor.

Trevor: That's what we all hope for. And the fact you can look at the Legend of Sisyphus in a positive light must make you one of most optimistic people I've ever met, which is fantastic.

Bob Hill: Trevor I can tell you this, I've been in this business long enough to know it's populated by charlatans, scoundrels and skunks. And I can smell them. I could see them and I could taste them. And I'm not giving up. Because the truth of the matter is, we are doing internally what the scientists at Los Alamos we're doing externally. We are taking the basic building blocks of life and applying the basic principles that you learned in your first biochemistry class, and forcing people to stay dwelling there. There isn't a second building block of life. There isn't another pattern that that produces life on Earth. So let's go back to squares and start studying our immune system in an empirical way, using modern technology to prove up the contender from the pretender. And here's the reason I think, the pharmaceutical companies can get interested. If I can come to them with four patented formulations that fully activate your PPAR and your Gabba receptors. And there is no other therapeutic comp. There's no other medicine that can, we can start there. We could literally just concentrate on the master receptors. But then we haven't talked about the TRPM8 receptor. When I found out that CBGa switches off the menthol receptor and therefore robs cancer cells of the ability to get blood from the body --- therefore they die --- we create compounds that literally do that. We have a THC suppository, and we've had stage four cancer patients in Amsterdam where the doctors were out of bullets, nor chemotherapy, no more radiation. Ten year old girl. We gave her THC suppositories. The pancreatic cancer tour was gone within two weeks. Now it's anecdotal, but. But it's also documented. And so I see my job Trevor is getting the word out worldwide, every single day, in every single way I can. That's why I thank you so much for having this podcast. God bless you for having this Podcast.

Trevor: And so I'll end with what I usually do. So it's a large paper. We'll give a link, let people go find it. But, so there's lots in there, but it's there anything we missed, anything that that people should know before we just tell them to go read the paper?

Bob Hill: I think when all is said and done, my wife's who's, a Minnesota Swede. I know you know the type Trevor, said I'm sick of all this science, and I'm sick of all these fancy words. Take it. It works. Don't make me say shut up.

Trevor: Kirk. I know you've been doing a lot of reading lately.  Brushing off the textbooks and you've been doing some brushing up on what them there mitochondria all about. So tell us a few mitochondria tidbits.

Kirk: Well, I was I was really wrestling. I was really wrestling with the whole concept of the acid, not being the decarboxylated in his medicine. So his medicine that he uses is raw hemp oil, CBG, and very heavy on that. And his web page Trevor, is, Liferesearchco.com and it's worth going to he has papers out there and some of the stuff that he explained to us you can find the papers, which I'll link, but in sense of mitochondria yes. Some of the things I learned about the mitochondria I found interesting was that it has its own DNA, and the DNA comes from the mother only, not from the father. You mean basic DNA is, you know, the sperm and the egg meet, and you get the DNA of your mom and your dad, and it becomes you. Well, I guess the DNA of the mitochondria is actually in the tail of the sperm cell. Which makes sense, because the tail of the sperm cells. What's moving? And as we all remember in our basic physiology classes, that the sperm head goes into the egg and the tail falls out. So there goes the DNA of the, of the mitochondria for the male. So which makes that interesting, because mitochondrial diseases, therefore are from your mother, which I found very interesting. I found several papers which I'll link to our web page about how CBD reacts to the mitochondria. And it sort of, sort of explained that why CBD is an effective in many cases of seizure, the many forms of seizures that are typical of epilepsy is the calcium channels, which comes from the mitochondria. And it's such the cells are subject to CBD. So without getting too deep in it, I guess when we're treating epilepsy in children, from what this article suggests, is that it's the mitochondria that the CBD is reacting to, which makes kind of sense, because if it's the mitochondria that's responsible for the, the energy of the cell, then you would think that it's burning a lot of energy during a seizure activity. So I thought that was kind of cool.

Trevor: Yeah. And so some of the other sort of highlights from it. So Entourage versus Ensemble. So I've it just very cool word. I'll start with I like Cole Ensemble. And I guess the idea why ensemble is you don't just have to have a lot of stuff in there, like all the other stuff in the, the plant besides CBD, THC, you need to have them do stuff in the right order. So I so like a musical ensemble. So I think that's, that's where the whole idea of ensemble is coming from. And that leads to a lot of the stuff in the paper he discussed, which was, how when you hit a receptor, how something happens and it and, and we, we talk about like, I use insulin all the time. So we'll talk about insulin. So insulin goes in, quote unquote unlocks the door to let sugar into a cell. And I, I use that little metaphor a lot in the pharmacy.

Kirk: A muscle cell.

Trevor: Muscle cell, a fat cell, and any cell that needs some sugar.

Kirk: Except the brain cell.

Trevor: Except the brain cell. It doesn't use sugar.

Kirk: Yeah, insulin is not needed for brain cells. And that's why hypoglycemia is so threatening because, it's a brain problem, whereas hyperglycemia is a muscle problem.

Trevor: All right.

Kirk: So that's from a diagnostic perspective.

Trevor: Not that's good. But that my simple little picture is, you know, a static key going to static lock turning, opening the door. But there's a lot more going on with both the lock and the key, like things like, THC. So our delta9 THC and delta8 THC are basically the same molecule, basically the same key, but their shape is just a little bit different. And because of that, they go into the same lock and different things happen and other things where, you know, it's just the charge on the key changes, how things happen. And, like you said, sometimes it's things like CBD actually hook on to a completely different receptor that affects a calcium channel, that affects the lock, that affects how THC hooks into like, it's, how these lock and keys work is way more complicated than I would have thought.

Kirk: I really enjoyed the, the reminder about electricity and the route electricity plays in the lock and key mechanism. That was really cool. This story Trevor really took me to the books. I think I was telling you off mic, that I listened to this episode so many times to remind myself about the mitochondria. I mean, I thought I knew about mitochondria. Well, I know more about mitochondria now and how it affects, you know, nursing practice by giving raw CBG, to somebody and how it affects the mitochondria. I'm still a little vague on the whole, dropping the acid. I need to I need to spend more time with that. Or if one of our listeners, knows anything about that, that would be, very helpful. But one thing I also want to remind listeners, if you have not gone back in our library and listened to Episode 46, Biff Naked and, Mona Lisa Healing, this is a companion story because this there are two stories about a manufacturer of hemp oil, and, and what they see their medicine doing for people. So it's, sort of a parallel to that episode I think. And I, and I can't recall if we've, if we've had another sort of hemp oil manufacturer talk to us about their product.

Trevor: I'm not saying we haven't, but you're right. And one doesn't immediately pop to mind. But. Yeah. So while there's lots of takeaways and this was a very dense paper and, we'll, we have, we have a paper here, but it was actually a draft copy. We'll, we'll talk to Bob after the fact and see what version of the paper we can, we could post, but yeah. Have a read through the paper. There was lots in there that we, we didn't get to. But I think some of the takeaways, just like Kirk said, is, you know, mitochondria, how electrical charges move around and how that's important. And just the acid forms of the cannabinoids really seem to have a lot of medicinal properties. And this paper goes into kind of some of the whys about why the acid forms of cannabinoids affect things the way they do.

Kirk: Yeah. It also further and emphasizes the whole, you know, the fear of children getting near a cannabis plant. And why, you know, Manitobans can't grow is because the conservative government thought they were protecting children from a raw cannabis plant. Or here's a business that is, that is, using raw cannabis. So it's obviously not harming people. That's kind of cool, Trevor. It was a it was a cool episode. And, and I'll, I'll try to ensure that those papers get on our web page. I have since read several cannabis mitochondria related papers, which I think I'll also put up on our web page so that people have that reference.

Trevor: Well, and no promises, but I'm with you. I thought the mitochondria cannabis cannabinoid thing was fascinating to the point that there's 1 or 2 other we'll call them mitochondria cannabinoid experts that I'd love to track down and talk more about this because that just kind of again, I mentioned during the interview, but I'll mention it again, kind of blew my mind that mitochondria have receptors and those are cannabis receptors. And wow, that must make our connection with cannabinoids literally millions of years old.

Kirk: Yeah. No kidding.

Trevor Kirk, on something completely different, in our local part of the world, a, what do we call them? A foster home in Winnipeg. Had a bunch of at risk.

Kirk: Was it a Group Home?

Trevor: Sure. Let's go with group home, a group home in Winnipeg, who looked after a bunch of, underage people who had substance abuse issues and allegedly were given the option of using cannabis or what's the word I'm looking for or, an allowance, you know, do you want your allowance this week or cannabis?

Kirk: Yeah. Oh I see, yeah. And they were using it as harm reduction with children at risk.

Trevor: Well that was so that was that the fact that cannabis was growing out was the the accusation in their defense of that was we're using it as harm reduction. And not surprisingly, you know, the headlines are all, you know, group home giving cannabis to children. And the government's now cut ties with them and but, from your and I's point of view, what are you thinking about Cannabis harm reduction in children?

Kirk: Well, you know, Trevor, I think this is actually an interesting discussion because as we said earlier, the mitochondria is affected by cannabis for seizure activity. So when we understand that seizure, children with seizure activities that other medications don't work, cannabis seems to. So we know that cannabis is medicine for some children. So to hear this story, I find it interesting because I think there's a lot of ignorance here. First-of-all, the first ignorance is I think the group home went about it all wrong. I mean, obviously people there were familiar with cannabis and saw that it offered them a harm reduction path. What I think they lacked was the political savvy to understand what this province thinks about cannabis in children, and also the federal government, and how the Cannabis Act is all about protecting our children from this substance of abuse. Well, it wouldn't take people long to understand my opinion about that. And I recommend you go to our blog page where I pretty much call the government out on some of these issues. So I think it's I think it's I thought it was a fascinating story because I think there's more stigma based things happening with this story. I think the group home didn't follow process. I think the the group most definitely should have consulted and came up with a plan as opposed to just doing it. And I think that's just having standard operating practices because I don't think this probably, I'm making an assumption it wasn't written down anywhere as a standard operating practice. So.

Trevor: And we'll just while we're saying again, we don't have firsthand, but from the reports, I think the biggest thing they did wrong and I, friend of the show, Doctor Jennifer Anderson, I listened to a talk of hers about a week ago, and then she was also talking public about this. And one of the biggest things they didn't do right was you can't legally give cannabis to kids under 19 in Manitoba. Like, full stop can't do it. Not legal unless you have a prescriber involved and it's for medicinal purpose. So if they if there was no prescribers involved, then yeah, they broke all kinds of rules. But let's let's take that out. Let's say we have a different situation where we have prescribers are involved and we have kids who have substance use issues. Should they be allowed to have cannabis as, as a harm reduction option?

Kirk: I'll take the risk and say yes when all when proper assessment has been done and proper scrutiny of dosing has been done, and all the other things that we have to do to ensure the child's best interest has been met, I would say sure.  Dr. Jen Anderson's Episode 87 becoming the doctor you needed. And she was she made some decisions that she had to do for her own child. So I think she probably has some huge insights. I, I'm sorry I missed that interview, but my personal opinion as a nurse, I think, I think cannabis is a harm reduction agent. I think that group home than likely did it with the best intentions. I just think they did it poorly and they should have done it with the proper standard operating practices and proper assessments. So yeah, I think I think the I think the whole blow up, the whole CBC thing, I think that was built on stigma.

Trevor: No, I agree, and the part I if I get my public soapbox. So I guess here's our small soapbox. What I don't want is this to become a oh my God, we should never use cannabis for opioid reduction, because I'm not saying it's the only tool or even the best tool, but it's definitely a tool. And we've had several episodes now. Everything from, we had an expert panel who wrote some Canadian guidelines on how to get people off of opioids with cannabis. The TOPS Trial where people who happened to be on opioids, who took cannabis at cannabis clinics, the number of opioids they had went down. We've had a self-described junkie talk about how he got off of opioids with cannabis. We've had a Harvard trained physician who had an opioid problem, who cannabis was one of the things that helped him get off of it. And he was one of the more interesting people in that whole discussion. Because, you know, he has both, the professional, the personal opinion on it. And, you know, he was first to say he's not saying that we shouldn't still use Suboxone and methadone, which are kind of our two standard opioid reduction tools. So don't give up on those. They have a lot of evidence behind them. But cannabis sure could be in that toolbox.

Kirk: Yeah I don't know if they were using it harm reduction for opiate addictions or what they're using it for. But I mean, cannabis is and to use your terminology, it should be in the toolbox for harm reduction. And I've written about it and you'll find it on the blog page, which sort of gets me to the point here that I'm Kirk Nyquist, I'm the registered nurse, and.

Trevor: And I'm Trevor Shewfelt, I'm the pharmacist.

Kirk: Yeah. And we want everybody in the whole stinking world to go to Reefermed.ca and learn about cannabis with us. And go to our blog page where we were where, we give our opinions, our learned opinions about how cannabis can be used. So, yeah. Reefermed.ca. This was this was one of those episodes that I really had to dig deep and, and I think  it's a good, good one. Another good one.

Trevor: Another good one. If you've lasted this long, I'm sure you've learned something. And if not, if you're not listening to me right now, make sure you come back for the next one.

Kirk: See ya man