July 25, 2011 – A number of recent studies have confirmed the cancer-fighting, tumor-shrinking value of medical marijuana.

Although the first study to demonstrate that cannabis has anti-carcinogenic properties was done back in 1974 by the U.S. National Institute of Health, more recent studies, which began abroad in 1999, have shown that cannabis can effectively and safely treat many forms of cancer.

Since 1999, there have now been a number of studies that clearly demonstrate that cannabis has the ability to effectively shrink tumors, kill cancer cells, and safely treat many aggressive forms of cancer, including brain, breast, skin, prostate, and lung cancer.

However, due to the political controversy that surrounds medical marijuana, some physicians still remain unaware of these valuable studies, and mistakenly believe the misguided government reports that cannabis actually causes cancer. In some cases, it may be important to educate your doctor about the important research discussed in this column.

A study done at UCLA in 2006 showed that not only does smoking marijuana not cause lung cancer, as had been previously thought, but that smoking cannabis actually protects the lungs from cancer. The study followed four groups of subjects: nonsmokers, cannabis-only smokers, tobacco-only smokers, and cannabis and tobacco smokers.

The results showed that nonsmokers and cannabis-only smokers had the same amount of lung cancer, and that tobacco-only smokers had the highest rate of lung cancer. Those subjects that smoked both cannabis and tobacco had significantly less lung cancer than those who just smoked tobacco. In other words, smoking cannabis actually had a protective effect on the tobacco smokers’ lungs.

Recent talks by medical marijuana expert Valerie Corral at the Santa Cruz Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) meetings have focused on the valuable medical properties of highly-refined, therapeutic cannabis oil, which may be the most powerful cancer-fighting agent that has been developed from the cannabis plant to date.

Cannabis oil, also commonly known as “golden oil” or “honey oil,” is a concentrated extract from the cannabis plant that is highly refined and chemically standardized, so that the amount of bioactive components (known as “cannabinoids”) in the oil are of a consistent strength. The clear-golden oil is a resinous matrix of cannabinoids, which is similar to dark-colored hash oil, only more distilled and much more potent.

Rick Simpson, founder of Phoenix Tears, an organization which studies and promotes the medical use of cannabis oil, has become a leading spokesperson for the medicinal value of cannabis oil, after effectively treating himself with the oil to help heal from a serious head injury in 1997. For years, Simpson has been supplying the valuable oil to medical marijuana patients free of charge. According to Simpson, many of the cancer patients who have used his oil were cured or vastly improved, and that many other illnesses have been effectively treated with the oil as well.

Although the medical establishment and the mainstream media have largely ignored the evidence that cannabis oil has powerful cancer-fighting properties, it appears that this silence is beginning to end as more and more people are discovering the truth about this forbidden medicine.

For example, according to ABC News, a father in Montana, Mike Hyde, claims that cannabis oil helped to cure his two-year-old son of a stage 4, malignant brain tumor on his optic nerve. Hyde said that he secretly slipped cannabis oil into his son Cash’s feeding tube out of desperation, after the boy’s chemotherapy treatments were making him too sick to eat. According to ABC News, Cash, who is now 3 years old, has made “a miraculous recovery.”

Spanish researcher Manuel Guzman has done a whole series of studies since 1999 demonstrating the efficacy of cannabinoids to fight cancer. Studies have demonstrated that (isolated chemical components of cannabis), such as THC (tetrahydrocannibinal) and CBD (cannabidiol), can shrink tumors, and some reports suggest that the whole plant extracts are more effective than the isolated cannabinoids.

There is evidence that not only do some cannabinoids kill cancer cells, they cause healthy new cell growth in the brain–a process known as “neurogenesis”–and that the cannabinoids may have a protective effect on the nervous system as well.

WAMM is currently working with physicians and biochemists to develop the use of this enchanted oil further. Cannabis oil is extremely nontoxic, and unlike every pharmaceutical drug that is approved to treat cancer, there are no serious health risks associated with using it. In all of human history, no one has ever died from a cannabis overdose. It is arguably the safest, therapeutically-active drug known.

Cannabis oil can be vaporized, orally ingested with other oils, or used topically. Oral ingestion will produce the strongest effects, and would likely be the most effective for serious medical conditions.

And yes, the oil is also quite psychoactive. It can make you very high, and it can even bring on a full-blown psychedelic experience. I think that this (often-sought and sometimes-criticized) aspect of the healing herb’s effects should not be disregarded, trivialized, ridiculed, or (Heaven forbid) removed. I suspect that that the well-known mental effects–an improved mood and transcendent perspective–are vital aspects of the healing mind/body magic that cannabis can provide. Source.

To find out more about cannabis oil see: http://phoenixtears.ca/

To find out more about WAMM see: www.wamm.org

November 28, 2007 – If you have breast cancer, you may have considered the use of “medical marijuana” at some point during your chemo treatment. Smoking marijuana has provided some women with relief from the nausea and vomiting that can accompany chemo, relief that the range of normal side effect drugs weren’t able to give. Some states permit the legal use of medical marijuana; most don’t. Nevertheless, most women who want to try marijuana seem to be able to get it. Personally, I didn’t experience any severe problems with nausea. But I was astounded at the number of people who, prior to treatment, offered to get me a supply if I thought I needed it!

Now, doctors at the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute in San Francisco have released a study, in the current issue of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, that may in the future open the door to a much more critical use of marijuana: stopping the spread of metastatic breast cancer. It seems that a compound found in cannabis (the scientific name for marijuana), CBD, has been shown (in the lab) to stop the human gene Id-1 from directing cancer cells to multiply and spread.

California Pacific Senior researcher Pierre-Yves Desprez, in an interview with HealthDay News, noted that the Id-1 genes “are very bad. They push the cells to behave like embryonic cells and grow. They go crazy, they proliferate, they migrate. We need to be able to turn them off.”

Desprez and fellow researcher Sean D. McAllister joined forces just two years ago. Desprez had been studying the Id-1 gene for 12 years; McAllister was a cannabis expert, but not involved in cancer research. Together they found that Id-1 is the “orchestra conductor” that directs breast cancer cells to grow and spread. And that CBD inhibits Id-1; it turns it off, puts it to sleep, pick your metaphor. Bottom line, it neutralizes it. And the cancer stops spreading.

Both researchers pointed out that CBD is non-toxic and non-psychoactive. In other words, patients wouldn’t get high taking it. And its non-toxicity is an important attribute; Desprez and McAllister predict that, to be effective, patients might have to take CBD for several years. They also cautioned that smoking marijuana isn’t going to cure metastatic breast cancer; the level of CBD necessary to inhibit Id-1 simply can’t be obtained that way.

While studies are still very much in the preliminary stages, it’s interesting to think that a plant that has been used medicinally for nearly 5,000 years may in the future be a key element in controlling cancer. As recently as 1937 (when it was outlawed in the U.S.), marijuana (“cannabis sativa”) was being touted as an analgesic, anti-emetic, narcotic, and sedative.

Parke-Davis, once America’s oldest and largest drug manufacturer (and now a division of drug giant Pfizer), offered “Fluid Extract Cannabis” via catalogs. Until the invention of aspirin in the mid-1800s, cannabis was the civilized world’s main pain reliever. Now it’s illegal. Here’s hoping that someday soon cannabis returns, this time as a successful treatment for metastatic breast cancer.