Martin Lee on CBD: It's a Molecule, Not a Miracle

use any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. So today we're gonna talk about c b D everything you ever wanted to know, and maybe we're afraid to ask or I'm sure you're getting good answers about now. My guest is a real expert on CBD who I have enormous

respect for. His name's Barton Lee, and I first heard about Martin Lee when he wrote a book in the mid eighties called Acid Dreams, The Complete Social History of LSD, the c I of the Sixties and Beyond, which was you know, really became one of the sort of classic

books in the field. And then about ten years ago he did another book, an award winning book called Smoke Signals, A Social History of Marijuana, Medical, recreational and scientific um Now, Martin in recent years create an organization called Project cb D. It's a fantastic website chock full of tons of information. He's been my go to person whenever I have questions about this. So Martin, thanks so much for joining me

on Psychoactive. My pleasure. He's I've been looking forward to this actually, So could you just explain what is c B D well. CBD is short for cannaba dial that's the scientific name, and cb D and T and C are both components of the cannabis plant, part of a group of compounds called abinoids. T, C and CBD are the most prominent and well known cannabinoids in the cannabis plant. If you look at the molecules, you know, the structure side by side, you'd be hard trested to notice the difference.

It's it's very, very minor. They they have the same atoms basically in history, and you look at the original strains of cannabis, the so called land race strains. Before UH cannabis became popular in the United States in the nineteen sixties, it was often the case that a variety of cannabis would have relatively equal amounts of th C and c b D, and these plants were exquisite in terms of the the psychoactive effects they conferred, much loved by people today even still if you can get hold

of them, names like Acapulco Gold come to mind. Uh. These are the original land race strains, um. But over time, what happened in in the late sixties early seventies when people started to I'm amateur corticulture started breeding cannabis strains, they made an effort, uh, not consciously to breed the cb D out of the strains, but to give a kind of accentuated high, the perfect high they were looking for, and they kind of inadvertently pushed the cb D into

kind of a recessive genetic mode. So we ended up with a lot of THHC dominant cannabis, which has significant medical medical properties. But we kind of lost the access to CBD over time, and these the CBD was rediscovered, you might say, um in around and then began to be reintroduced into the supply. But CBD is not intoxicating, unlike t C, which is an intoxicating compound. But I think it's misleading and incorrect to describe c b D as non psychoactive. That became kind of a marketing slogan.

I think for the emerging CBD industry they want to distinguish it from th HC So the CBD is non psychoactive, t C is psychoactive. But actually CBD is shown to have anti anxiety properties, antidepressant properties UM and if you consume a compound that can change one's mood and make one less anxious or less oppressive, it's clearly then having a psychoactive impact. It's just not an intoxicating impact. And I think that's an important distinction, because there's been an

effort or emphasis on trying to bifurcate CBD. It's separated from T T H c UH, and I think that's misleading. I think one of the problems there is that you know, initially again that the marketing pitches will CBD it's not psychoactive, it will eliminate the high. And originally when we were involved at Project CBD and reintroducing CBD into the medical cannabis supply in California, the emphasis was not so much

as that CBD UM didn't get you high. It's that CBD helped manage this psychoactivity, uh, that it can lessen the psychoactivity um, but not necessarily eliminate all of it, and that that was the point. To manage the psychoactivity of cannabis, which is really the the first challenge for a person using cannabis for therapeutic use um to limit the intoxicating effects so it's tolerable. If indeed that's important

to the person. If one's taken straight c b D, is it possible to get high intoxicated in that sense like marijuana hire or something resembling that. With just straight cb D, even a large amount with no th h D, one shouldn't have an intoxicating effect if you take a straight CBD or pure cbd um. There's a little caveat to that, but maybe we'll get into later in that when CBD is extracted from the plant, whether it's hamp or cannabis, again, it shouldn't If it's just pure CBD,

no intoxication. But if it's made synthetically in a lab, which I think is the coming wave in the future for CBD isolets um. Depending how it's made, it actually could have an intoxicating effect. Because not to get too far deep into the science right now, you know there's a certain um natural form of t C that exists in the plant, all same within CBD, N, T A C both, but when you create it synthetically, it can create versions of c B, d N t h C

that are non natural versions of the plant. And what happens in the lab when you synthesize it, it creates what's called a racemic mixture. Um So, just to step back for a moment, you know, the CBD and the t C molecule have like left handed and right handed versions, and in nature it only curs in one way. But if you have the non natural version, that can actually have a very powerful effect on on the receptors that gets you high. Now are those things out on the

market today? I mean, I thought I was at a part of the night and some woman I met with claiming, oh I get high c CBD. Was that just kind of imagined on her parts of the placebo effect? Or was there are there actually things in the market that could be doing that Now, I would say it's most likely imagined, but it's possible again if it's a synthetically

created molecule. You have not only actually left handed and right handed versions of the molecule which sort of fit in differently into the receptor and could do different things. And in fact, one of the metabolites, it's been shown in a laboratory of these alternative versions of CBD, non natural versions, has a more powerful effect than thh C on the receptor. So it's conceivable that, uh, that that will make you feel high. And I've heard from people

that they purchase a CBD product. It's advertised as being on a whole plant spectrum, meaning other components of the kind of canvas plant, and they're not just the CBD. Yet when we tested some of these, they only had CBD in them um and the person claimed that they got high from it and made them uncomfortable. That this is a person that was and particularly fond of th HC. Not everybody is, So I don't know. I think this is something that has to be looked at very carefully

and regulated very carefully because it could be dangerous. So just going back to the the innovation that was happening, you know among horticultural is trying to get stronger marijuana.

Back in the seventies, eighties when they were trying to kick up the th HC, did that sort of inevitably lower Remember hearing this, I don't know as a rumor or not, that when you try to kick up the TC and the plant, it's going to be knocking down the cbd um And was that originally true and no longer true or is that sort of an edible part of that process of trying to increase th HC potency.

It's kind of an either or thing. I mean, genetically, when when the plant is developing, you know, there's only a certain amount of cannabinoids that can be in the plant. Generally we think of it as maybe you can push

it up to thirty, but you can't have both. So you have certain strains that are kind of half and half to fly equal amounts of CBD and t C. But I remember hearing at some point years ago that there were more and more of the very high th HC plants and that was knocking down the cb D. If it was an either or factor that was resulting in people becoming more anxious and things like that when they smoked marijuana, that sort that was that was that?

Was there some truth to that? Yeah, I think that's essentially correct with what happened, And it wasn't that it was the people were intending to knock out the CBD. Um It's more, you know, the the breeding in those days before we had access to analytical labs that can tell us actually what's in the plant was a lot of it was this as much art, if not more so, than science, you know, and people were creating different versions of the plant and testing it and see what they like.

They they picked and choose, and they sort of inadvertently bred the cb D into very low amounts Genetically. You could think of it this way, if if the th C dominant plants or the brown eyes and the CBD plants the blue eyes, they kind of bread the blue eyes out of it, except those genes were recessive. So when you have all this kind of crazy intermixing of so many different strains of being bred, inevitably a few

blue eye plants would pop up. And that's what happened in two thousand nine two ten when we identified a few plants that had a significant amount of CBD in them. And these were plants that were generally what we call the type two's of the plants that had roughly equal amounts of CB D N t C. Type ones I

t C low CBD. Type two is mix of each type three's high CBD low t C. When once once the hemp entered the picture, uh, in some ways there was less focus on marijuana plants quote unquote with significant amounts of CBD that kind of fell off the radar and got short shrifted a bit, although I think that will come back in the future. I think because I mean,

you know, al and hemp. I always thought, you know, hemp was basically to my mind, it was low you know, low th HC marijuana growing wild all over the place and being cultivated in many parts of the world, but banned in the US until you know, I guess with the farm bill um and often it's being used for industrial and agricultural purposes. But it wasn't the industrial hemp. Was it that was being associated with CBD or was

it originally or was it incorrectly associated with that? What's the story about that hemp plant and CBD relationship when you think about it before, when I'm referring to as the rediscovery of CBD, industrial hemp around the world, wasn't grown for cannabinoid content. It was grown for fiber, for the best heard and also in some cases for the seed oil. But this was not uh, this isn't really little to do with CBD or t a C. This

was not the focus of of industrial hemp. But what happened is when you consider the different categories of him they were basically two the hemp grown for fiber and hemp grown for seed oil. Hemp grown for fiber is really useless in terms of extracting for CBD or th HC or any cannabinoid. These are plants that sort of look like bamboo almost shoots with with just a little bit of foliage. Um. Then you also have the seed oil plants. They're a little bit different. They're a little

bit bushier. And if you actually analyze the content if the cannabinoids and the seed oil plants, the plants that's grown for extracting oil used for soap or paint or also nutritional purposes, they have a little more CBD than the fiber plants, maybe three three and a half percent

if you measured it in an analytical lab. But there's always a few outlayers uh that would would pop up a little bit higher with the cb D maybe up to six or seven percent that kind of a little bit wild in the field, and that's what became the cb D from hamp uh those type of plants kind of the offshoots of enola or seed other seed oil varietals um and that's what became UM Charlotte's web initially and some of the more well known that was the most well known strain of of hemp early on, you know,

you know, when it first burst into national consciousness in and those same plants had th C in them as well, added comparable amounts or what not much. You know, in hemp in general, there's not much resin in there compared to a marijuana plant, and that's where the cb D, n t C lives in the plant. In the resin hemp is low resin cannabis. Marijuana quote unquote is high resin cannabis. That's how I distinguished them. Resin is in the flower tops of cannabis. You know, that's where the

magic is. That's where the cannabinoids are um. If you're getting cb D or thh C from cannabis, it's coming from the resin in the plant. When you go back and look get the actual definition of marijuana within age from the Marijuana Tacks Act of seven and the exact two sentenced definition was poured it over to the Control Substance Act in nineteen seventy. It mentions resin three times in the definition of marijuana. And it's very clear that

anything to do with the resin was considered illegal. That was prohibited if there was part of the cannabis plant um it was just the stalk and no resin. And if it came from a plant that that was low resin plant, that anything in the plant that had nothing to do with the resin that was considered legal according

to the Marijuanattacks Act. Essentially, it means that CBD was made illegal in nineteen thirty seven according to the Marijuana Tacks Act, but it's peculiar because CBD actually hadn't been discovered yet. It was only discovered in nineteen forty by Roger Adams, the chemist at University of Illinois. So CBD was made illegal before it was discovered, simply because of the banning of resident. That Marijuana Tax Act banned anything to do with the resin of the plant, any derivative

from the resident and the resident itself. But the resident is where ccbd lives in the plant, in residents where th C is in the plant. So anything to do with the resin was considered illegal. Um. And the way that the distinction between hemp and marijuana plays out legally now you have an artificial wine drawn across the plant, so that any plant was zero point three t C or less is considered hemp, where if it has more

than that amount of t C, it's considered marijuana. But Mark, I thought the entire hemp plant was actually banned for many decades. Welln't because it produced resin, even if it was a tiny amount. I se. So nobody had figured out how to produce hemp plants and hemp stocks or industrial purposes that would consistently be below point three percent. The law didn't say anything to do. It didn't have anything to do with Europe with that only comes later

with the farm bill. Um. You know, the law was all about resident Anything to do with residon is illegal now because the way things played out politically with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and then in its successors, they went whole log and they basically banned hemp even though parts of hemp had no residented UM and which is also why people could you know, import hemp products which were totally sort of you know, cleansed of any th C that was legal, right, Yes, and then when, of course,

I guess that was a little historical period during World War Two when he was government encouraged farmers to briefly grow hemp because it was part of the war effort, but then rebanded thereafter, and I guess it essentially stayed on banned until just a few years ago, except for

maybe some state authorized research programs that age. With that farm Farm Bill from that year, it became legal to grow hemp um, particularly for CBD H extraction, and that's really what motivated the interest in the CBD that that's what led to the Farm Bill, that the explosion of popular interest in the CBD. But but the Farm Bill is inherently flawed really because I compare it to like a software patch that's created two improve or or remedy

defective software. In this case, that the fact of software is the Control Substances Act, except you can't really fix it. Yeah, you can't really fix that with a software patch because it leads to other problems and then you have to have another patch that fixed the software patch and add infinitum. What it's done is create a situation where people who wanted to grow hemp to extract cannabinoids, in particularly CBD UM, they have a lot of problems they had to face.

I mean, if you have a robust plant, a cannabis plant, they don't like. It doesn't really conform very easily to this politically correct zero point three limit. You know that it is an artificial limit. You know, in in European Union it's zero point two c only that's allowed. In Switzerland they allowed one percent. It's it's it's an arbitrary

number that doesn't have a scientific basis. UM. That's really imposed in US law, I think to keep quote unquote marijuana illegal, to distinguish hemp from marijuana that way, when originally it was about resent content, not about th C content. UM. And this has caused a lot of problems in terms of UM, the industry getting off the ground, UM and just how it's really how we relate to it legally. We'll be talking more after we hear this. You say, there were two farm bills one and one, but you

have this explosion right of hemp production happening. I think all sorts of people trying to get into it for industrial purposes, but also I guess CBD purposes. And then a few years ago you have this explosion of CBD. So are they linked Because most of the CBD then or even now was coming from hemp plants or what plans that were still that were legal under federal law or not. I think that the the the momentum, the popular momentum for CBD had been building for some time.

It really ever since the CNN broadcasts that showed children with severe epilepsy or helped by CBD, almost in a miraculous way, and every since that time the CBD pierced national and international consciousness. Prior to then, very few people have heard about CBD at all. So um, it had been building and and and it's really what led to the passage of the Farm Bills, in which is quite limited what you could do with growing hemp at that point, and then which legalized the growing of hemp both for

cannabinoid content and the classic industrial purposes. The problem is uh that the kind of hemp that they were allowed people to grow was not the optimal source for extracting CBD. You know it again, when you look back to those original noteworthy strains like Charlotte's Webb, you're talking six seven

cb D content by Dryway at most. When you compare that to a marijuana quote unquote plant with the high cb D content um you were talking about, and CBD by Drywaight with about one and one at one t C, which is over the limits for hemp, but still it's it's still very low to h C and it's the

best source of CBD. So what you had was people growing hemp um but not optimal to extract, so they always were trying to push the plant for higher cb D content, and eventually what what happened is that they took these um high CBD marijuana strains um and try to breed them in such a way as to draw down the THHC levels, and it's very difficult to do that. So farmers were growing these plants and they had to play cat and mouse with the authorities because the plants

tended to go hot. You know, hemp plants like that. They don't want to stay at the point three percent t C. They want to go up to that one percent tight C level um. That's the natural form of cannabis for these types of varietals, and um, it really made it difficult for growers. Uh. They would grow plants they go that would go beyond the th h C limit and they'd have to destroy them, and you know,

it became kind of a mess. And so so they would actually try to cheat the regulators to to keep them in the ground, um, just as long as they could to maximize the cb D content. But then it pushed the THHC too high and uh, and they would try to evade the Agriculture department representatives that would test the the plants, and it became very very difficult. Is it's still going on now, yes, so to uh, yes

it is going on. There was a study published by the University of Minnesota scientists working there that concluded that the genetics of the so called high CBD hem plants were actually marijuana genetics. UM. And when you're when you're playing with these type of plants, you you can't grow them to full turn. Otherwise again, you you exceed the

the th AC limits. The longer the plants staying ground, the more cannabinoids that are in their more cbdn let's take a break on this, but let's go to the evidence, because my understanding is that the only f d A approved CBD product, right is the thing that GW pharmaceutical started working on twenty five years ago. Right, it's the statotacts, I guess and and epidolens um, which is found you know, helpful in terms of dealing with children's epileptic conditions. Is

that right? Is that still the basically the only one that's approved. Correct. That is a pharmaceutical version of CBD that's approved by the f d A specifically to treat children with three types of severe forms of epilepsy, and it can only be used for that purpose. Um. And I think that's a positive development to the extent that this can really help children with these terrible diseases. It's proven to that they went through all the rigorous tests that you have to to be proved by the FDA

as a as a pharmaceutical. I don't think that the g W Pharmaceuticals, which was formed in the late nineties and nineties, was focusing initially on this kind of CBD isolate, which is what epidialects of the pharmaceutical you just mentioned, That's what it is. Initially they were focused on a tincture that had roughly equal amounts of cb D and t C. It's called sat Effects, and it is approved as a pharmaceutical in over a couple of dozen countries,

but not in the United States. It's proved for use in neuropathic pain, in um, multiple sclerosis, cancer, and other conditions like that, but it's not available for use in the United States. And it's not your CBD. Sata x is mainly cb D n t C with with a smidgeon of everything else. And you know, frankly, I don't think epidialects is a particularly good medicine in terms of its cannabinot content. It's basically just pure CBD, but also has supralose in it, which is an artificial sweetener which

disrupts the microbiome, you know, has adverse health effects. So when they're giving this to children, um, whatever it's doing for the epilepsy, it's also doing other things that aren't so great. And there was a very interesting study UM

done out of Brazil. Scientists in Brazil did a meta analysis, which is considered a very you know, kind of a gold standard scientific type of study, and they compare it epidialects its effectiveness to full spectrum c B D rich oil meaning hemp oil that was hemp derived oil presumably from hemp UH that was mainly CBD, very little th C, but a little bit of everything else that's in the plant.

And they found that when they compared the full spectrum CBD oil to the isolate, that both were effective in dealing with these catastrophic epileptic conditions remarkably so. And you were talking about children from nothing else helped um, but these isolate required five times the amount of CBD compared to what was in the full spectrum products UH to be effective. So when you talk about CBD as an isolate, which is what epidialec says, it might pass muster easily

with regulate laters. It might be something that the f d A is won't frown upon that's coming from a cannabis plant or a hemp plant. But it's not necessarily the most effective or the best means of using CBD, even for epilepsy. And I think it's important to to highlight because the CBD industry itself in some ways is lobbying for these isolates, particularly in Europe, which is an unfortunate, but it's a game that's played and that's still being

played whenever you're dealing with cannabinoids. Well, it's I guess that's part of the regulatory challenge, right, because if there's reason to believe that it's the entourage effect of the multiple of TCCBD and their elements in the cannabis plant is probably something that FDA and other regulatory agencies just aren't they good at figuring out how to you know, regulate, how to evaluate. I mean, let's face that the FDA

was not established to regulate plant medicine. It was that's not what it's about, UM And interestingly, I don't think it should be in the business of regulating plant medicines. Probably need another kind of agency or something UM. But yes, the problem with the FDA now and CBD is that the f d A privileges the isolate over these more complex or what they call the the full spectrum or the raw plant that has a lot of different components in it. This presents problems, you know, for people working

in pharmaceutical drug development. They don't generally like carnabinoids. They're messy cannabinoids, and particularly CBD does so many different things in the body that you know, and and pharmaceutical development likes to take one compound and harness it to have one particular effect. With CBD, you're having dozens and dozens of effects within the body, you know, even pure CBD. So it just it's it's messier, it's more problematic from

the pharmaceutical point of view. I personally am not against pharmaceutical versions of cannabinoids. What I find troubling is how they are privileged by the regulatory apparatus to the detriment of natural forms of the city. Well, by both the regulatory apparatus and by the fact that it's easier for researchers to focus on individual elements as opposed to looking

at entourage as the combinations. Right, It's it's on both sides, so you know, I mean the earlier today, Martin, I was kind of as I'm looking through your website and I looked at clinical Trials dot gov online, which lists studies underway or studies completed. I just popped in CBD and it's at nine. When these six studies around the world, I mean US, Europe, but also Israel, China, a whole range of places going on. So there's obviously a huge

amount of research going. But meanwhile, I guess there are no there are a number of other controlled double blind studies and human beings which have shown interesting results. There's a bigger number of studies with animals, other animals, UM,

that have shown promising results. And then a whole bunch of stuff that's in vitro right, a test tube stuff which is you know, looking promising, but where it's a long ways to go before we have the kind of controlled double blind studies that we get approved by the f d A. So when we look at the various conditions, right that are out there, the childhood epileptic conditions are the ones that we know about and they have gotten

most of the attention, UM. But when we look at the other areas where CBD has proven most or CBD CBD in combo, what THHC has proven most promising, UM, And where the human you know, control double blind studies, UM, you know have produced positive results. What's stands out right now? What stands out in general is we're at this precipice, as you mentioned, is over nine hundred clinical trials now in effect with CBD. Most of those trials involved just

CBD isolates. There's a massive amount of preclinical data, both in vitro and vitro and in live animals and just test tubes UM and that's very very compelling data that just begs for clinical trials. So we're finally seeing that starting to take place. In terms of results from clinical experiments.

The verdict is out, but I expect that it's quite likely given what we're hearing anecdotally from people who are using CBD products, whether isolates or full spectrum or broad spectrum as it's called, there's enough anecdotal data that's quite compelling and shouldn't be ignored UM that suggests that cb D shows utility and effectiveness and significant benefits in a number of areas for neurological diseases, most definitely UM for

certain mood disorders like anxiety I mentioned, also depression for pain. Also it's it's clear that those are the big three pain, anxiety, and depression. So Marty, you mentioned in neurological diseases, but that means like Alzheimer's, dementia, Parkinson's MS, all of those things that's showing some promise in either in vivo or in vitro, and either you know, uh, you know, lab tests or an animal So far, you know, all in terms of pre clinical work, we all have shown very

very interesting possibilities. And again when you match that with anecdotal reports from people who are actually using CBD in one form or another, now it's compelling. But we've been largely missing the clinical trials that would prove one way or another if the anecdotal accounts are in fact correct. But we're on the precipice where we're going to get

more information and that's exciting. But again, most of these studies are with isolates c the islets, which generally are not as effective when you're talking about a full spectrum CBD product and the people playing around with dose, I mean it often helps. It may just be there finding no result if they're just using levels that are too low on CBD. Yes, that's true. Uh, CBD is shown to it's a pretty broad range in terms of dosage. Sometimes very low doses do seem to be effective, not always.

Sometimes higher, much higher dosis are required. And the things like disorders of the stomach of the gut I mean,

collitis or Crohn's disease. That's once again it's it's essentially anecdotal evidence with a little bit of labor animal stuff, with a lot of lab animal stuff actually, and a lot of anecdotal evidence again, but that the missing piece is the clinical side, so that that's uh, and obviously it's a very very important piece, but without it doesn't mean we should ignore the anecdotal accounts, which are voluminous

and impressive, right right. Diabetes and obesity the same. That's a very very interesting area because you know, when you talk about medical metabolic disorders like diabetes and obesity, you're talking about a condition that that the World Health Organization has identified as basically almost of a huge crisis, of global crisis. And uh, diabetes, I mean, I think actually a lot years of life lost, maybe greater now involving diabetes and obesity than even from smoking cigarettes, or at

least it's neck and neck. I'm not surprised to hear that. Again, it's the same situation anecdotally, what we hear from people using CBD relatively small arounds forty to sixty milligrams a day. When they compare the blood sugar levels before and after a four weeks of using CBD, um it improves the readings afterwards. So I think that's going to be an area in the future that could be a major use for CBD rich products. I also saw on your website

to mention of skin diseases like acne, dermatitis, and psoriasis. Yes, yeah, again pre clinical that that's what we're seeing also for some skin diseases UM in Italy. I believe there's CBD rich creams that are available UM that are part of a you know, within a frame of pharmaceutical framework. But one of the thing I just need to fla understand. So we talk about the benefits of CBD. We also time time talked about the benefits of merril water at

large with all its constituent elements. We talk about the benefits of th HC, But when we're talking about CBD, how much of this medical stuff is about CBD entirely isolated from th h D and other elements. How much of it is about the combination of the two. If we were to ask you which is more medically beneficial, could you say, well, one is more than the other, or that in fact was most beneficial most of the time is the combo of the two. I would think

the latter is correct. It's the combination of CBD and t it C that it will have most therapeutic benefits. And the more th HC one can include in that product, um, the more helpful it will be in the CBD rich product. The problem being that the th HC is going to be getting you high untless you develop a substantial tolerance to the intoxicating effective t well. This is when it comes down to again managing the psychoactivity of th HC. A cb D can be very or the psychoactivity of cannabis.

That's where CBD comes in and can be very very helpful. And you can get versions of cannabis now that are not intoxicating, but that's not the point of CBD. The point is not to ablate or eliminates uh the intoxicating effects. It's to manage it because those of the intox because th HC is has very powerful therapeutic attributes, and you want as much as of th HC as possible and your and your product if you're going to use it medicinally issues that some people don't tolerate TC very well,

so they have now options. How does this relate to what's going on with with with psychedellings, right, I mean, I think where was I reading that? Is that the CBD binds to the same serotonin receptor the five H T two A is LSD, mescalin and uh soloson without

triggering a psychedelic trip. And you now have in the psychedelic research field, you know, all sorts of for profit enterprises and maybe some not for profit ones as well, that are trying to figure out how to take the trip, how to take the high out of the psychedelic and isolate out, you know, the elements that can be therapeutic without people going through the big you know, you know, large dose psychedelic trip. Now is there something analogous without

respect to t HC going on. It's almost to repeat. You know, CBD was hyped as you get the medical benefits of cannabis without the high. Now you have so called versions of psychedelic compounds that are being created um that confer benefits without the trip. So it's a very similar type of approach UM with CBD. It's even more interesting because CBD it binds too many different type of receptors.

Not it doesn't just interact with cannabinoid receptors, and it does so actually in a different way that th H C does UM. Cbd actually has a very powerful affinity for various serotonin receptors, including the serotonin to A receptor,

which is the so called psychedelic receptor. It's the receptor when LSD binds to it, or mescaline or metabolites of psilocybin, it produces the trip, a full blown trip if you have it and you know enough enough of quantity that you're consuming UM and and CBD binds that same receptor as the psychedelic receptor as l s D binds two. And the question is with why doesn't CBD cause a

trip UM. It's its a whole interesting area again to that, there's actually a study out of China of crystallography study within the last year where UM scientists from the Chinese Academy of Science were playing around with different psychedelic compounds to create versions of them that don't confer the trip, and they created a crystallized version of this five H two t A the serotonin to a receptor, and they found that it was actually two points, two binding points

where UH a compound combined with that receptor, and depending which point is being affected, UH, it might induce a full bone trip, or it might not. But whatever happens when you bind to a serotonin receptor, what whatever point of that receptor you're bind to, it does induce um neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, which CBD does. CBD is a psychoplastogen, but not a hallucinogen. And that's just the type of compound that the scientists are now who are working in

the so called psychedelic field, are trying to create. They're trying to create so called psychedelic compounds um without the trip. I call those pseudodelic compounds. That's a phrase that David Luke, a professor in the UK and the University of Credit, he had that phrase to describe that class of compounds that are being developed by scientists from a psychedelic scaffold, but without the hallucinogenic properties. Let's take a break here

and go to an ad. Let's go to the question that is really my starting point, and I would imagine as a starting point for most of our listeners. So all this hype with the with the topicals and the lozenges and this and that, and it seems that when you look, I don't see any controlled double blind studies or anything like that. I have no idea how much

is placebo on on this sort of thing. And I also assumed that most of the folks manufacturing this stuff don't really have an interest in having these control studies and double blind studies happening because they're making money off of the hype. And if they control double blind studies turn out to be, you know, show just nothing better than placebo. You know, there's stuff can go down the drain. What is the story with that stuff? What do you know? What can you tell us? You know, I think we

should take seriously reports from that are anecdotal in nature. Yes, I do think there is a lot of placebo effect going on here. People. If you spend money on a product, you want to believe it's gonna work. The things did get kind of crazy with CBD when there was this huge explosion finally in twenty eighteen UM where it seemed to become almost intergalactic. CBD became one of the most popular health supplements on the planet all of a sudden,

you know, really just exploded. Where you did find CBD in practically everything. We had a piece we rank we call it on the Project CBD website called the CBD Silly Season. Well, you're just ridiculous. Obviously, it was just used for marketing purposes. If you're putting it in in vodka or in clothing, you know, claiming it's going to somehow be absorbed with this skin. Uh. And there's a you know a lot of situations where it's just didn't

seem any apparent reason to include CBD. One example is coffee. Um. You know, caffeine and CBD have opposite effects in terms of what they do in the body, and it doesn't really make sense to put them together, really. Uh. Caffeine works by blocking a dnascine receptor. A CBD indirectly triggers the dentasceine receptor dnasceine involved in sleep regulation and so forth. So if you block it, you get more you feel stimulated,

you feel more energy. That's how coffee works. Well. CBD is what you'd call it an end a dentiscene reuptake inhibitor. It delays the breakdown of the DNA scene in the body, so there's more of it to bind to their dnascine receptors a way that's activating it. But but again, caffeine blocks it, So why would you put CBD together with

caffeine coffee? It doesn't make any sense. Are there any studies at all looking at topical application to deal with everything from muscle ache to arthritis too, other types of you know, problems. There are studies, again pre clinical mainly maybe some now are in process clinical, very interesting research out of hungry UH CBD for acne, which again showed

a great deal of promise. But um, you know, herbal use of topical remedies UH has been, you know, something that people have been doing for for centuries and typically what you see in the products today where CBD is part of it a topical application, there are many other herbs in there that combine, so it's hard to know really what's working and what's not. Is it's the CBD

or is it the other herbs. One thing we do know in this regard is that CBD is absorbed easily, more easily transdermally than t C. There's been studies, again pre clinical studies that indicate that it's about ten times easier to absorb CBD through the skin than compared to t C. So it would make sense in terms of cannabinoids in a topical that CBD would be a good candidate, and there are cannabinoid receptors in this skin which CBD doesn't bind too directly, but it does increase the amounts

of endogenous cannabinoids in the skin, which again could have a therapeutic effect. The scientific basis for understanding how it could work is there. The pre clinical evidence is there, but anecdotal evidence is there. But again we're waiting for the clinical studies. And in terms of taking it orally where you're having it, you know, just going through your stomach. I think even even as CBD infused chocolate bars. Oh yeah,

by all means. You know, it's shown that with CBD, with other cannabinoids there are more effective if taken in an edible form of taken orally, if they're combined with some kind of a healthy fat like a coconut choice or something like that, there's more CBD that's absorbed that way. Oh so that's better than vaping it, for example, you know, vaping it. You know, each of these administration routes that have their own benefits, our own you know, their own

pluses and minuses. You might say, you know, vaping very quick the effect and you don't have smokes and that's an advantage as well. UM, but I caution people it's in terms of using vape products CBD v products. Uh. I would caution people to steer clear of anybody regulating them at this point and not and it's unregulated. And there's a lot of crap in these products. That's what's

found because there's always a carrier age. It's some kind of oil or something in there that CBD, which is generally in Iceland, that's put it added on a dollop of CBD to some kind of carrier agent. Um. It's pretty funky what can be in these products. So so someone let me ask you this, you know. So the one product that I've been you know, consuming for years, and our listener should know, I don't get paid anything

for saying this. I've been used this product for a million years is the Kiva chocolate bars that come out of the Bay Area in California. I think they've got this great chocolate. They have a reliable effect. I like the way they do it. I actually went over and visited the factory and at the owners some years ago. Um. But sometimes I'll use a bar that's th HC and sometimes, Um, it's split, you know, fifty fift THHC and cb D. I don't know that I'm noticing that much difference. I mean,

should the difference be fairly perceptible to me? Or is it only gonna be perceptible to some people? You know, when you have a roughly equal amounts of CBD and th HC, assuming that it's a sufficient quantity, it will be intoxicating. It's not just well though they're definitely equal,

I mean they seem to me roughly equally intoxicating. That's what I'm wondering, because when you combine the two, right, the CBD is supposed to lessen the high a little bit in addition to lessening any potential anxiety or inflammation. That's my understanding, right, but I haven't noticed a big just overall difference in terms of the high the feeling. Um, is it this I'm not paying it close enough attention

or it's a good question. Might have something to do with how the product made, And I agree, I think Kiva products are very good. Uh. I found that when I smoke a CBD rich variety of cannabis that is roughly equal amounts of CBD and t it c It does feel like that that the ceiling of the high is lowered a bit, and you don't get that kind of antsy feeling you sometimes get from very high high th C of cannabis um As for edibles, you know,

we don't know what's going on here. If they just simply added at cbd isolate to the chocolate, that's probably what they did. Okay, and listen, there's another isolate kiva. I think had another candy, but there's another drug that has cb N in it. What's the CBN thing about? Is that like in third place after th HC and cbd is being a prominent and promising substance. Um Is it the one that people use for sleep or other things?

This is an example of a kind of folklore in the cannabis world where cbd N has which is stands for cannabinol. It's really a breakdown product of t c UH. You know, when the cannabis is old in your closet or something that's exposed to light, um it breaks down into CBN UM and which to me is an indication of it's sort of an old product not as good really.

CBN has been associated with treatments for sleep. But I think there's really no scientific basis for this at all, really, and it's it's so I think it's a marketing ploy because the folklore has it the oh CBN good for sleep, even though there's no science showing this. UM it's become a thing in the cannabis world, so a lot of products you know, have this in it. And I think it's basically just I don't think it has any There shouldn't be any risk, and there's just a kind of

a bit of a scam or nothing. But it's not gonna hurt yet. I don't think it would hurt. No, it may, you know, a very very mild version of thh C. You can think of it that way, but in terms of getting to sleep, I don't. I don't think it has really help. And what's the whole thing about cb D and pets, Well, there's a whole area are about certain veterinarians they are looking into using cannabis as part of a veterinarian therapy. UM are very very

excited about CBD. UH. Th HC is a little bit more problematic for dogs, for example, they react very strongly to th HC. So the the emphasis on you know, not getting your animal intoxicated. Um. So there's a natural leaning towards CBD, and I think it's the promising area

for veterinary science, veterinary medicine. Now, Mart going back to the industry here, so I see that on your web Frie example, you don't promote any brand, but you have sponsors, right, and you have I think one or two dozen companies. Now do you vet these companies before they can become a sponsor? I mean to make sure that they are really doing the whole plant thing that they're you know, I mean that basically their products are safe and good.

How do you handle that stuff? You know, it's tricky. Yes, we do vet them, and we look for certain things, um about the product themselves. Uh. Some of it just makes sense. You know if if the products that include a lot of sugar, corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, then we

steer clear of those brands. Um. If the brands are interested in other forms of therapy with functional mushrooms or things like that, it tends to indicate a brought a perspective about healing that would be complementary for for what

we're looking for in terms of of a CBD brand. Uh. If the CBD brands involved with some of these new fangled Delta ten and Delta eight and these uh kind of th C knockoffs, we steer clear of them because these products are not regulated, and again, the the way they're made, it really raises the likelihood that there's going to be contaminants in these products. Um, if there are helps CBD brand at selling vape products, that's a bit of a red flag for us as well. Vape products

and CBD rich vape products sold in cannabis dispensaries. We're okay with that because again, they go through a testing regiment that the hand products don't go through. And generally speaking, I mean when I talk to people who say, you know, I mean marijuana problem with it makes me paranoid. It

makes me anxious. I sometimes find myself saying, well, why don't you try doing something with a high CBD low th HC content In addition to changing the set and setting and paying attention to that may be the most important variable I'm in doing with people you're comfortable with and you know, and all this sort of thing. But I mean, does that make sense that people have had negative reactions in the past that maybe switching that ratio might be the thing that enables them to learn how

to enjoy marijuana. Yeah, exactly. Um, that's that's the whole point of different ratios of CBD and th HC. If you have a lot of CBD and very little th HC, it shouldn't be intoxicating. You know, studies have shown there's a genetic basis for how people tolerate t C. There is certain people who just cannot tolerate t C. We can be talking about six ft five in sky who's two fifty pounds, who will wilt. You don't have to even near t C. You know. Uh, it doesn't have

to do with body type or anything like that. But genetically, about twenty of Caucasians have what's called a polymorphism, or you can call it a mutation, but it's a little bit too strong a word, where the enzymes, the proteins that would normally metabolize THHC and break it down. Um, they're different in those people. So it results in his ability to break down the thh C in a quote unquote normal way, and for such a person, they'll have bad experiences on th HC. So Martin just go back

and we're gonna wrap this up shortly. UM. So the f d A put out something, I mean, I think they're being asked to regulate cb D. I think there's many people in city who would like it to be regul related. I think consumers would like to have greater assurance out there. But the f d A, I think, to the extent it stepped into it, has said some pretty negative things. And we talked before about how they're not really cut out to be evaluating, you know, things

that involve an entourage effect that were's evaluating plans. But what is going on with this f d A now and what do we expect to see happening with them in coming years? These a VCBD. Well, FDA is the foot dragging administration really, and they're dragging their feet on

this issue. You know, it goes back to the Dietary Supplement Health and that that Act that specifically that there is a provision called the exclusionary Provision which states that if a compound is approved as a pharmaceutical, it can't be included in in dietary supplements. Well, that's really the hold up with the FDA because they're sticking to that rule. UM as a way of saying, well, we don't move

on this because because of the exclusionary principle. And and I think that there's a counter push coming that even within Congress, even coming from the Red state senators and representatives who represents states that are hemp growing states, that they want to see the FDA move past this. And I think, you know, the CBD has scrambled the prohibitionist narrative in a lot of different ways, and it's sort of it's forcing this f D a I think, to you know, to change the way it approaches this issue.

In this particular instance, there's just too much popular pressure on this. There's just too much of a need um to have a seriously regulated market here for CBD rather than the wild West that we're seeing with him CBD.

And I would like to see the standards raised so that the way that the cannabis industry, of the legal cannabis industry is regulating um its products, including CBD rich products, that everything else rise to that level of safety, which that would be I think a positive development, But I think I'm not sure if that's what the CBD industry wants to hear. And do you think that as we move towards synthetics, Will they become better at doing not just the cb D and TC, but all the other

minor elements of the cannabis plant. Will that will they'll be producing synthetically sort of synthetic entourage drugs from the front. I mean, there's getting the entourage effects through synthetics. I don't know about entourage through synthetics, and I don't think you can really create recreate a real entourage effect or a full entourage effect just by you know, adding a

bunch of putting a bunch of synthetics together. But I think the potential positive side of this move towards synthetics is that minor cannabinoids with with great therapeutic potential which would not be possible to to access from the plant itself in any significant quantity um, could be made in efficient quantities to do clinical trials with understanding that that's that's the pharmaceutical approach, a reductive approach, that's focusing on

single molecules. I'm not against single molecules. When I'm against is privileging pharmaceutical signal molecules over a full plant. And then uh, you know, which is what you're saying, will inevitably happen as we move to synthetics. Um. Yes, but it's a matter of you know, we have to stand up for artisanal, full spectrum cannabis products. That's it should be part of the mix. It's just that the regulatory apparatus doesn't favor that type of thing. And that's the problem.

It's not the intrinsically um single molecule pharmaceuticals are quote unquote bad um. They can actually work and help people. Epidialects works well. So it sounds like though, as mariana is increasingly legalized, though, it's really going to ease the

way for the therapeutic values of CBD. And since you're basically saying that anytime you're taking CBD, you're better off take in it where it's got some sidly small amount of th HC or even other um elements of the cannabis plant in it, I mean that's going to be all for the good in terms of making CBD as useful as it can be UM for people living here or wherever. That's what we would hope. Okay, Well, listen, Martin, thank you very much for sharing your insights and wisdom

about CBD with me. And my Psychoactive audience. Thank you. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please tell your friends about it, or you can write us a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We love to hear from our listeners. If you'd like to share your own stories, comments and ideas, then leave us a message at one eight three three seven seven nine sixty that's eight three three psycho zero, or you can email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com or find me on Twitter at

Ethan Natalman. You can also find contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive is a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by me Ethan Nadelman. It's produced by Noham Osband and Josh Stain. The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronovsky from Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from My Heart Radio and me Ethan Nadelman. Our music is by Ari Blucien and a special thanks to ab Ario s

f Bianca Grimshaw and Robert Deep. Next week's episode will be all about I Began I'll be talking with Hattie Wells, one of the leading experts in the uses of this remarkable psychedelic substance. The piece that I think might make ibergain seem somewhat daunting. You are sort of immobilized, so you'll be lying down on a bed for at least sort of sixteen eighteen hours without moving, and you can't move,

and that that is definitely an intense experience. Subscribe to Pycoactive now see it all, miss it.