Episode Transcript

Trevor:  We're back.

Kirk:  Hey, Trevor. How's it going? Good. So what did you think? We'll just jump right into this conversation. I had, gosh, Trevor, I had this conversation a couple months ago, and it started with a conversation I had on social media, and I had a product sent to me, it's called The Nozzr.

Trevor: It's a thing you shove up your nose, but we're really not going to talk about that till the next one.

Kirk:  Yes, so I'm just introducing that this started with someone sending me a gift saying hey check this out and now as a Registered Nurse I cannot accept gifts and I didn't solicit this gift. It was sent to me and I said yeah let's have a conversation but you know this so we set up an interview and as you will see or as you've heard the interview just went off a whole different tangent and what should have been about a 20 to 30 minutes discussion turned out to be close to an hour and 15 minutes. And I think we've got two stories out of Yvette Webb and her husband Clive in the background. And yeah, so I guess we should start maybe just with the Cream of the Crop.

Trevor: Let's start with this part we always forget. I'm Trevor Shewfelt. I am the pharmacist. You are.

Kirk:  I'm Kirk Nyquist. I'm the Registered Nurse and we're Reefer Medness The Podcast. Thank you for finding us and we are going to discuss another story that a business started because someone discovered something about cannabis that they wanted to share with others and this has become a human interest story for me and as you know I like stories. I like hearing people's stories. And I always look for stories. And I find myself in conversations all the time hearing stories. And this is a story. This is a a story about a lady who used cannabis therapeutically and through that created a business.

Trevor: Yeah, no, I think we should just jump in and let Yvette tell us how MS and cannabis and Quentin Tarantino all came together to improve her life.

Kirk:  Yeah, let's just jump right into it.

Yvette Webb: We started, um, because of my cannabis journey. Um, I reintroduced myself to cannabis after I was diagnosed with MS in 2014. And I, um. It was at a point where I developed insomnia and chronic pain, which I'd never had never experienced before in my life was very fortunate. And, um my next product offered to me for management was going to be a Fentanyl patch. And so I was on max maximum synthetic opioids, which apparently we're not supposed to be addictive, but found out false and gabapentin. I was taking six to eight Robaxacet set a day and I was going to be started on a muscle relaxant and my farm, my local pharmacist kudos to Trevor and the pharmacy community called and said he was concerned. That I could decrease my breathing at night sleeping. And he was concerned about that. And back then, medical cannabis was available. And there was stuff, products that were approved pharmaceutically for MS patients. At the same time with my MS, I had a terrible GI situation. And part of that, in retrospect, was part of the MS. And so I went back to cannabis. I'd always used it recreationally, but found out that I wasn't choosing the right products, but didn't know that at the time. And the group that really helped me was SheCann on Facebook. That gave me permission to use what I need when I needed it. And I did go through a physician and baby steps with THC and back, or CBD and oils. And back then they had. They were made with palm oil. So of course we had issues there. But what really interested me were people were saying, oh, this strain is good for MS and this strain of cannabis. And you would use it and you might be get effects, but then you'd purchase it again and you'd have different effects. And it all came down to terpenes. I am very sensitive to terpenes. And one of our divisions of Cream of the Crop is called Terpene Rich. And we're manufacturing products with terpene blends. For different, right now we're launching for skin and scalp. But so re-entering cannabis actually started formulating my own products for me and topicals. And I have a background. I have degree in biology, but I'm also been a Respiratory Therapist for since the early eighties and worked a lot with kids. So I went back on my background with compounding. Again, Trevor, we keep mentioning Trevor as a pharmacist found an amazing base cream to compound and it would take up to 20% of additives, whether liquid or oil, water or oil. And it had in-house studies of skin penetration with CBD.

Trevor: So Kirk compounding used to be something I did a lot of we don't really do any anymore but it's definitely still an interest of mine. I found this fascinating because you, in pharmacy world usually I'm trying and I'll try not to get too geeky too far but we're trying to get small polar molecules through the skin so polar means they dissolve in water and your your skin is basically fatty and water soluble stuff doesn't go through like if you pour some salt in some water and pour it on your skin it's just going to wash right off right that's the whole point of your skin is to protect the rest of your body from the world. So we have to work hard at getting stuff into we call them micelles tiny little flat globs get a something that doesn't want be in fat inside a fat glob and then have that go through the skin to the rest of the body. So getting small polar molecules like diclofenac through the skin is difficult and we need to use some specialized equipment and some specialized bases like she was talking about to have that happen. So that was interesting that she's using a specialized base that holds stuff but from a pharmacy point of view the stuff she's holding is already a lipid. Already a fat. Already an oily thing and then she's using stuff in that base to get it through the skin so really interesting but kind of the opposite of what we used to do in in compounding.

Kirk:  Opposite die because.

Trevor: Because she's trying to get a fatty thing through the skin where I was trying to a polar thing through skin and they're completely different. Think of almost literally oil and water. In fact, the fatty things we try to get through the skin were almost always hormones. So estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, they are... Again trying not to get too geeky but they're all based off the cholesterol molecule. So the cholesterol backbone. So they're all pretty fatty and what they actually told us during a lecture years ago was to get progesterone, a hormone through the skin, all you have to really do is sprinkle it on there it's so fat soluble it will just make its way through now that was obviously an oversimplification for dramatic purposes But yeah, we. We didn't worry that much we just sort of as long as the fatty hormone would incorporate nicely into the cream then it seemed to go through the skin no problem. So it's really interesting to hear her talk about all the extra stuff and she's going to talk a lot about terpenes coming up. That she uses to get fatty things like cannabinoids which are also loosely kind of like on a cholesterol backbone through the skin. Okay let's let's get back to her story.

Yvette Webb: Yeah, it's from a from a big manufacturer. So it's an oil and water based cream. Okay. And the key thing is you don't have to heat it so high to incorporate your oils. So you won't lose the terpenes when you manufacture. And we became so passionate about this. It helped me and my um, journey because I started stacking my cannabis consumption, whether I was using the cream and inhaling and, you know, it was really part of my journey to get off all pharmaceuticals and I am. And the other thing is, um, diet. I avoid lectins for inflammation. I'm very sensitive to dairy in my MS. Um, so, um the terpenes became this, angle where I study flower and I look at the terpene ratios, um, not only the amounts, but also the, the, um um, the ratio of the top three or four. And I like to look at that percent. So I'm kind of nerdy that way, but you know, and I couldn't figure out why I would take a strain that was good. And then the next time it wasn't, then then I found out pinene at night for me does not work cause I start doing long edition. So just all these little things. And, you know, back then, this information wasn't readily available. You're always talking to the licensed producer and they're like, why are you asking this? And things like that. And so that's how we started Cream of the Crop therapeutics. We had a product, a topical that we worked with a third party LP to manufacture. Unknowns to us. They were not in a good financial position. They upset the Ontario cannabis store. Fast forward. And our product is what we have still available is available with one medical platform. And that's with Gord up in Saskatchewan with the North 40. Yeah. He's, you know, so we, the cannabis industry has promised a lot. It's been very discouraging and, you know, the youngins got to figure it out.

Kirk:  Okay. And so a long story short, you have now found a licensed producer that gives, that provides you your industrial use of cannabis now that you have a business, guess, so you're getting it right. Okay, that's that's

Yvette Webb: but unfortunately they went bankrupt. Like many LPs and had our product hostage. And because we couldn't touch it, we had to get paperwork done so we could move the product. And for a while it was in Manitoba with Lineage. But yeah, lots of things have changed. And, and it's just, when you're not all in it, it's very difficult. Part of it is by, you know, there's just so much more, research being done, and it's tagged with cannabis. And so we knew a lot about, and people cross reference essential oils and terpenes, and terpenes are a component of essential oils, I think. And it's just recently people have done studies to show that terpenes aren't the contributing compounds that are so identified with aroma. And really they're not. If you, if you smell a pure terpene, like I always use the example of linalool, everyone relates it to lavender. Right. But if you smelled pure linalool, which is, um, it smells more like the extract of, of, um. Oh, jeez. Sorry. I just had a little brain fart, but, um... Help me, honey. Um, Coriander, coriander oil. Okay. But it's not coriander extract oil. Essential oil is not from the leaves, so it's not the soapy, it's from the seeds. And it smells the exact same as linalool as a separate isolated terpene. Sure. And actually Coriander oil is 75% linalool.

Kirk:  That's curious. But so that's very curious because we have been, we've talked to, we've talk to scientists, we talked to doctors, we talk to growers. And as you probably know, the rec markets, all about THC. Everyone wants the THC and really it's a full spectrum that gives you the effect. And, uh, we were talking to Peter Vermiel, and he was talking about, you know, his low THC plants, uh. When he extracts it correctly, gives a nice enough buzz for people. Like, so it's not necessarily the THC, it's the full spectrum. And you kind of discovered that as a medical user. It sounds like you were really pioneering this stuff.

Yvette Webb: Well, as my husband can say, and he does not consume, he has a very low tolerance for THC, did not grow up with cannabis. He grew up in England, like, except for his, you know, West Indian friends. But it was not on the riverboat on the Thames.

Kirk:  That sounds almost romantic. That almost sounds romantic.

Yvette Webb: I know, but he was only the bartender. But, uh, so, yeah. So the joke is our first date. Um, we've, uh we've been married, um, 20 years, 22 years. Our first date was going to see Kill Bill at the movies and I hot boxed in the car before we went in, you're going to either make it or break it.

Kirk:  Hi, we've just met, want to share this?

Yvette Webb: He didn't mean to, he was.

Kirk:  Interesting.

Yvette Webb: But, um, so, and so he would comment about, cause I would be buying on the medical side and then I, um. And then when, um recreation opened up, I'd be checking stuff out too. And I spent so much money learning cause you know, in early days, cannabis was really expensive. But you could also argue some of the quality was... Better or not. And what, you know, it's just all over the place. So, um, it's quite interesting. And you know you go into a dispensary and the other, what's the first thing that the budtender says indeca or sativa.

Kirk:  Yeah. Yeah.

Yvette Webb: And I go, no, no. No. I want anything without pinene. And they go, Oh,

Kirk:  curious.

Yvette Webb: Yeah.

Kirk:  curious.

Yvette Webb: Um, and then yeah, the gray hair kind of throws them off too, but.

Kirk:  Hey, more and more gray hairs are, I mean, we have an episode called green is the new gray, right? Because our generation are going back to cannabis and we are very curious, which drives me crazy because it seems like we're the government's abandoning the whole medical side while people are starting to get excited about it. Let's stick, before we get the Nozzr, let's stick to the cream of the crop. So how many products do you have? And is it all ointments? Is it all salves?

Yvette Webb: We, the only cannabis one is what's in stock with North 40 and then we're just going to step away from that, but we've been able to work on using that same formulation and taking the cannabis out and working with other plant-based products. And part of that with terpenes is we know the on on the CB1 receptor with our with Beta Caryophyllene and pathways. And now there's research on the different pathways. You know, we always, research kind of puts you in a little bubble and we forget that these things are so complicated. These processes in our body and how cells talk to each other and receptors. And there's now work done on how these different pathways like even CBD goes through other pathways Besides the or our THC besides the, uh, the CB1 and CB2 receptors. And same as some of these, um, the work that's been done on some of this terpene, same idea. So it's not just the smell, even though society of late is all about smell and aroma therapy and, and you know, calming and stuff. And there's a role, there's science to this just like, you know? Um, the herbal and folklore medicine. Now we've got some of the science to going, you know what, the stuff they were doing 2000 years ago makes sense. So the step away from the cannabis that for us as Cream of the Crop Therapeutics, and actually it's very timely cause we're rebranding next month. So we're basically a formulator and producer of plant based products as a big summary. Um, and so Nozzr is a division because um it was for cannabis but and it still is and we like you said we'll go down to that and then the one of the other divisions is Terpene Rich so that is our our right now we're launching a um a Skin Serum and then um some other products with using a lot of terpenes and formulas and um it's funny the feedback you get from people.

Kirk:  No, I'm curious on this because I am, I too am now moving in, like I grow my own medicine, I grow, my own cannabis. And, and what I've been trying to do is learn more and more about the, about the product, right? And one of the, one of the avenues I'm going down is that I am making my own salves now. And that's why I was sort of jumped on the whole.

Yvette Webb: Oh, yeah. So, and the thing is, and this would get me upset because you'd see, you know, the best way to know your product is to know the competitor and to know how to not, and so to show differences and when you have products out there with Arnica in them, who's doing the heavy lifting? Is it the Arnica that's been around all the time or you threw in some CBD and THC and So yeah, we had a one-to-one product and people were like, and then people would come out with, we've got 3000 milligrams. Doesn't matter if you can't get it through the skin.

Kirk:  So, well, Arnica travels through the skin.

Yvette Webb: Yeah, because, but the terpenes and the cannabinoids don't because they're fatty. Okay. You need a carrier and there's different ways how to penetrate the skin. And, um, actually there's some, uh, terpenes that help with skin penetration and studies. Like I wanted to preface that the comments I make are just, I had a dream. You know, I, I do go back on, on the research and, and to see the work that was done and, and, you know, to say, oh yeah, that makes sense.

Kirk:  See, let's share recipes without getting into your proprietorship. We just got back from Morocco, and I brought some arnica and argon oil back, and argone oil is only grown in Morocco and et cetera, et cetera. It's good for your hair. So what I've done is that I took some outdoor cannabis that I grew. I think it was AK-47. I haven't had it analyzed in a long time. But I infused it in a organic olive oil, added arnica and argon oil to it, and a little menthol. And I think the next recipe, I don't know if I'm going to use the menthol or not, and then added beeswax. And that took me a while to get that ratio going. But now what I do is that before I go to bed every night, I apply it to my shoulders. And both my wife and I have sort of forgotten about our shoulder pain.

Yvette Webb: I agree. Yeah, it's an untapped opportunity. And for the over 50, you know, the reason why older people are consuming cannabis is because pharmaceuticals are failing them and people are sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I was there because nobody was blinking an eye to write a prescription for me for fentanyl. And I went through the hierarchy of pain management with my GP and a pharmacist. And when I had to pull over on the highway to vomit because I was on morphine, you know, like it just, and the other thing was with my MS and just trying to overcome the insomnia, the pain, insomnia and all of that. And it just made me fat and unwell. I would fall. Like just everything was wrong. But that was okay. You're here. And then finally, my neurologist said, you know, you're, you're one of the rare ones because you, you want off the drugs, you want to do this. She was non plus that I was going to cannabis. So it shows my GP and, and one of my physicians, um, my last physician was Dr. Shelly.

Kirk:  Oh, okay.

Yvette Webb: Yeah. And it was, and I think I'm a unicorn that way because I've also, uh, had physicians who just, like I knew more than they did, but I, I wanted the script so that I could access certain things that weren't on the recreation side, which is crazy. And then have to pay for shipping and all this stuff. And it's just, you know, it's, it's not, not patient friendly. When you were saying about going to the doctor, like when I was diagnosed with MS, I just, in my medical background, I just wanted to be a good patient. Right? Yeah.

Kirk:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yvette Webb: And so you do everything and then you're like, what the hell? I feel like worse or I don't know. Cause I, you know, in retrospect, uh, with my MS, yeah. And then, um, you know lumbering and this and that and just feeling so terrible, but taking all the drugs, right? And then I also ended up out of frustration with my chronic pain developed in my shoulder. See, we're, we're shoulder buddies now. And out of desperation went and paid to have an MRI done in, uh, in Buffalo because no one was listening and the GP was pointing to the MS doctor. The MS doctor was pointing the GP about, well, you gotta go see an ortho. That's a year away. And so they saw something and in the interim, I changed, um, neurologists. I, I'm now being followed up at St. Mike's in Toronto that has a large MS, they do all the MS research and stuff. And so I would have so much pain, uh, delayed onset pain day two later and stuff and, and, and compensating. And so then finding a really good physio made a difference and, and kudos to Alan Richter at Revive, um, both for myself and my husband, Clive, like he really, he made a big difference impact in our lives. Um, that to the point where my one insurance company, because my neurologist said I go to the gym, not understanding that's where I do my exercise and I lift weights and I'm under supervision, decided I wasn't disabled enough to maintain me. I know. So they want you to be sick and fat.

Kirk:  Yeah. Yeah,.

Yvette Webb: Yeah. So how are you supposed to look when you have them? I know someone said that. Well, you don't look like you have MS. Yeah well, you know, my husband has a, has a blood cancer that's with no, uh, with no cure and for he's on a year 12 now. And it's like, oh, but you don't look like your sick.

Kirk:  But he's not is he is he using cannabis for that is that where you

Yvette Webb: Well, interesting. He has such a low tolerance and so trying to get the CBD, but you know, people, CBD is kind of like that background Tylenol, right?

Kirk:  Yeah. Yeah.

Yvette Webb: And stuff, but he had a second stem cell transplant March of last year and ended up with a lot of nausea, which he had his first stem cell transparent 11 and a half years ago. He had multiple myeloma. And, um, uh, had been progression free for 11 and a half years, but he had so much nausea this time that finally his oncologist gave him prescription for an abalone.

Kirk:  Of course, of course. Yeah.

Yvette Webb: But Mr. light, light THC, you know, what is it? Two milligrams or something. Yeah, no, it didn't work. I I'm going to try it. And I don't, you're not supposed to share other people's prescriptions. I get it. Isolates are what they are. Isolate. And there was this, you know, the good thing about when COVID happened was I sat on a lot of Zoom calls with a lot of medical professionals talking about different things about cannabis. And there was a group out of sick kids using CBD for seizure disorders for children, right? And they started finding that they would plateau on their seizure amounts and they would keep increasing with CBD and what was happening is now all of a sudden they're starting to see issues with their liver. So what do they do? They add a incy bincy teeny little bit of THC.

Kirk:  That's good.

Yvette Webb: But you're not going to get that in a prescription, are you?

Kirk:  No. So just go to full plant. Just go to a full plant spectrum.

Yvette Webb: And so isolates and palm oil. That was, that was so yeah. And so, eibles, I some of the new stuff, I did some work I did some work with with nano. When we came out we, there's a crazy chemist that we found who knows so much about nano and different ways that you make molecules, you know, make the compounds smaller, not the molecule but...

Kirk:  You're talking about nanoparticles? You're talk about nanodynamics?

Yvette Webb: So nano are part are basically what happens is that a lot of these especially fat soluble you know compounds kind of like to stick together and so they don't um in um in digestion especially they don t um get processed efficiently and that's why even with taking an edible and Shecann started this the small fatty snack They trademarked that name. When you take like a half a mil of an oil and you expect to get results to go through your liver and your gut to to to extract the cannabinoids. That's why they say to take a fatty snack so you have more oil for the liver to work better to extract the particles. Another way of doing it is to make the particles so that they're allot smaller, so they're not aggregated. And in this one method, they actually put the cannabinoids through like a really fine sieve and pressure, and that's what separates them all out. So that

Kirk:  Let's just take a jump back to a comment you made about terpenes. Which terpene is needed to go to the skin barrier.

Yvette Webb: There's a couple. Um, and um, um, 13 Cineole. Eucalyptol is one of them. Um. And actually you picked Argon oil and Argon, oil is a skin penetrator. We use it in our face serum. Here, I'll do a plug Terpene Rich. Okay. Yeah. Uh, face serum, so, um. We have a friend who's 81 who's been using it and like the ladies at the Y are jealous now. It's pretty funny. We've got before and after pictures. All the yeah and the receptors like that's more for um skin health and wellness but there's so many receptors, cannabinoid receptors on uh the surface of different skin cells your melanocytes your fibroblasts your immune cells your hair follicles like so there's just so much we don't know

Kirk:  So it's hauling in the cannabinoids then into the skin, the argon and the menthol.

Yvette Webb: Yeah. And so there's like, I think there's three or four different ways that you can get this, the skin penetration. And part of it is breaking the bonds between the epithelial cells and the stratus corneum. Cause that's like your barrier, right? Right. And then part of them send in some of them actually will do a where they're actually their product will do, uh, reaction on under the skin so that something can happen. And there's pH, there's so many different ways, and traditionally in pharmaceutical they've been using a lot of different chemical derived ways of doing that, right?

Trevor: Okay, I love that one of their first dates was to see Kill Bill, a Quentin Tarantino movie. One of Doris and I's early dates was to see Pulp Fiction, another Tarantina flick. So, you know, I feel like a bit of a kindred spirit.

Kirk:  I took Michelle to a Monty Python movie, and that was our first movie. And if she had known how to get home, she would have left the movie sooner, however.

Trevor: Nothing like a captive audience, but no, moving on. So like I was saying during our sort of compounding break in the middle there, getting oily things through the oily skin, I always presumed or was led to believe, or maybe I thinking badly was a relatively easy thing to do. But apparently you've got to work at it a little bit. And one of the things she uses to make that easier are the terpenes. Uh she mentioned a few and then when i was looking them up they sort of overlapped things like limonene and 1-8-Cineole but there's we'll just say loosely there's a few terpenes that help and my understanding now i'm not an expert honestly Yvette is but the the reading I did said so So we've got sort of it dissolved in the fatty part of the cream, we'll call it the carrier, it's dissolved in a fatty part of the carrier and we want to get into the fatty part of skin. So things like terpenes do a couple things, they sort of help it move from the fatty carrier to the fatty skin, so just sort of jump from one blob of oily stuff to another blob of oily stuff. But just like she was saying, not surprising, what I was reading is the terpenes then also help change the fatty part of the the skin into make it a little more fluid, a little more liquid, not melt it, but make it more fluid so stuff gets through it and might actually help. I don't think I have this quite right, but what I'm picturing is, you know, the little cells in the skin are sort of glued together, might help loosen that up a bit so they might not have to always go right through the cell, but they can go in between them. So the quote was disrupt and fluidize the stratum corneum lipid layer. So yeah, that was really cool and if I had learned that before in school I definitely forgot it because yeah, I always thought getting fatty stuff through the skin was relatively easy

Kirk:  Yeah, no, this is like I said to you when I started talking to her, I just got deeper and deeper into her story and her knowledge base. Respiratory Therapist, which is critical that she understands the human body and understands the respiratory system. She's got a biology degree that she did later in life, which, you know, is... I know that we've talked about this before, it seems like education is wasted on the young. You kind of need that. You need that clinical experience and then go back to school and learn what you should have learned when you were in school. But I got a real kick out of her background and how she taught me a little bit about moving substances through the skin. And I was thinking about yourself and back in your compounding days, but even today. What medicines, pharmacology medicines, are used strictly through skin? I mean, fentanyl goes through skin, so how does that go, how does that move? It's like, can you relate it to cannabis at all?

Trevor: No, the one that will be closer and I sort of mentioned it earlier was estrogen. Like we used to compound estrogen cream so estrogen is a hormone and again so it's based on that cholesterol backbone so it is fatty and there is now commercially available estrogen patches so those need to get the oily or lipid, the fancy word, the lipophilic drug molecule through the lipid skin. And again, yeah, it because we made these and we didn't put anything particularly special in there and it went through and worked fine. And estrogen patches, as far as I know, they're not using anything extra special like terpenes to get them through the skin. But on the other hand, the whole using terpene seems to make sense, like having something that sort of disrupts that stratum corneum layer to get stuff through. Makes a lot of sense and I'm glad that she's having success about getting that through, what would be, you know, what we need for most things in the lab. What would be really cool is if you could just take some cannabis oil, you now, without any carrier, some cannabis and, I don't know, coconut oil, some cannabis with some terpenes in it. I'd love to see the experiment of all the different ones on the skin and see what got through fastest or best. That would be neat to know. Unlikely anyone's going to give us the money in the lab to do that but that would be really interesting.

Kirk:  How would you measure that?

Trevor: Oh there's lots of ways like that. That's literally what they do when they're you know if you could have any everything from organelles or little literal skin skin in a dish and sort of let it measure the amount on one side to the amount of the other or you know if it's something like well we will go to fentanyl. Fentanyl we can measure the mount of fentanyol in your bloodstream so you put on a patch and then two hours later you measure the amount in your blood stream oh it must have gone through the in into the blood into your system.

Kirk:  So, going back to basic biology, is this diffusion osmosis that is happening here?

Trevor: Diffusion. So osmosis is going through the.

Kirk:  semi permeable Membrane.

Trevor: And through water. So the chemist can yell at me later but osmos is when it's going through like you said through the membrane but it's basically got water on one side and water on the other. Where this is, that's the whole point is there's no water. It's all lipid, it's all fatty stuff. So it's going from fatty stuff on one side to fatty stuff all on the other. And it's gonna down a gradient. So, you know, there's more cannabinoid on this side and it's with the less cannabinoid. But the cool part from events is, you know, the terpene sort of just helping facilitate that, the terpenes being the facilitator.

Kirk:  So with a fentanyl patch, and again, it's been a while since I've used one, not me personally, but as a nurse applying one, that is working through diffusion, right? Obviously a high percentage of fentanyl on the patch. So what's helping the fentanyl go through the skin barrier?

Trevor: Again, that's the different thing. So fentanyl will be another one of these loosely and again chemists can yell later But we'll call that a polar molecule, small polar molecule something that likes water more than it likes fat And so you've got to get it It's not exactly in water but pretend it's sort of in water dissolved in water in the patch. And now it's got to go through the fatty skin and into sort of water on the other side So you'll have to have something there to help get it through that that fatty skin layer.

Kirk:  Okay, so when you're applying an A535, it gives you that cooling effect that sort of makes you forget that you got pain because now your skin is cool. Is that medicine penetrating into the skin or just evaporating and that gives you the effect?

Trevor: No, so A535, don't sue me, doesn't do anything. So it may get some medication in the top couple layers of the skin, but doesn't anything. That's when the compounded diclofenac came from, is the compounders got this small polar drug molecule. Wrapped up in the right micelles that would go through the skin into the muscle underneath and actually do something and now that works so well. Now there's commercially available Volterra gel which does the same thing that will actually get a polar molecule through the skim and yeah there's lots of medications they've tried and special compounds have tried over the past with varying degrees of success about getting through the skin to the point that... I'm not saying it's recommended, but it's one of these. If we can't get it in any other way, they have tried things like diabetes drugs, like metformin to try to get through the skin. Some people have been tried getting like insulin through the skin. Like I said, these are not first line. These are, oh my God, we can get this into a person in any way. You know, like a million years ago, we had a lady who needed gabapentin in the hospital and wasn't taking anything orally and there was just no other way to get it into her so the doctor had us compound a gabapentin suppository because there was no other way to just get into her and it worked. So some of compounding is like that when you know we don't have any other commercial way of getting it in, let's try this and see what happens.

Kirk:  Uh, so I'm looking, looking at, you know, the kitchen pharmacist, um, doing my research. And again, we talked about this when I got back from Morocco, how I was looking at making my own salves, right? So doing some online research, talking to a Yvette, and I was look at different types of oils. Now, as a pharmacist you're using, you're what, Glaxo Base as a carrier? What would you use? She talks about a pharmacist using something.

Trevor: Yeah, well it depends. So no, Glaxo Base it's a really good moisturizer but it's not going to get anything through the skin. If you want to get a polar molecule like diclofenac through the skin you would use things like PLO, Pluronic Lecithin organophosphate and other things that through a complicated series of what what's in it and how you mix it. You take the polar molecule, you get it into a tiny little micelle, think about a little tiny little glob of fat surrounding a polar molecule then that glob of fat will go through the skin.

Kirk:  Okay, because that's what I'm working on. Like I like Joe, Joe, Joe, Bo, Joe joba.

Trevor: Jojoba.

Kirk:  Yeah, looking at that. Apparently, this penetrates the skin. Liquid modified coconut milk, apparently gets to the skin. But the one that's the one again, going to terpenes was wintergreen. Wintergreen is like an aspirin. And the Research of this says... That you can actually overdose on this through the skin because it's like an aspirin effect and so there's lots of cautions about it. So again, going back to what she's talking about terpenes, I think it's the winter green that actually works the best. But the thing that I'm wondering about is that, sure, I've got these oils. So is the assumption then that the cannabinoids will attach to the oils and that draws Is it in?

Trevor: I don't know. The short answer is I don t know. But just even talking to people who have rubbed cannabis oil on their various body parts, I suspect, although I don't know, but I suspect again because the cannabis oil is lipophilic, it's oily, some of it just goes through the skin because you've got an oily substance and an oily skin and some of will just dissolve. Now that isn't to say that if you added a terpene that it wouldn't go through better but i think some of it is the cannabis oil will literally dissolve through the skin and get to the other side better than like again if you tried to rub salt water sugar water on your skin where those dissolved things in the water don't get through the fatty skin

Kirk:  Yeah, well microplastics find their way in, so cannabinoids should find their way in.

Trevor: Well, yeah, but we eat the microplastics, so it's easy for that to get in.

Kirk:  Sure. This is great. Again, it was a fantastic conversation.

Trevor: A couple quick things I wanted to not that I don't love that but just Yvette mentioned a few of our old friends in there. Oh yeah. We have SheCann who they were way back into season one episode six or S1E6, season three episode six apparently a lot of sixes and then Dr Shelly Turner who we had back in season three, episode five S3E5. So you know some of the people we've been talking to over the years have been uh involved in Yvette's life as well, which is just kind of cool to make those connections.

Kirk:  Well, that's the thing. That's why my 20-minute conversation turned into an hour and 15 minutes is because she's also a fan of the show. She's listened to the show in the past and... Yeah, so it was a really enjoyed the conversation and Clive was in the background and every so often you sort of hear him spout in and in the transcribing I actually gave Clive a couple because you can hear him through the through the noise a little bit that he's there so he's in the transcripts and so that's that's meeting Yvette Webb and talking about Cream of the Crop and since I've been back from Morocco, I've been learning lots about making my own salves. And this was a big part of it.

Trevor: Cool I say let's wrap up this one because depending on how what order you're listening to it we've got another Yvette coming up so let's rap up Cream of the Crop and you should immediately now go download the next one which is the Yvette Webb and the actual Nozzr device.

Kirk:  Yes, that's the Nozzr device. Okay, we'll see you at Nozzr.

Trevor: See everyone later another good one. Check out the complete library of reefer madness episodes at reefermed.ca and make sure to follow us on all the socials for bonus info on what Trevor and Kirk are up to

Yvette Webb: is gonna sneeze. Sorry about that. You get to edit that out, right? Yes, hopefully.