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 24, 2009 – Tim Timmons is not your average pot smoker. The former risk management consultant, college professor and stand-out athlete has never considered himself a hippy or a pothead. Even so, Timmons has been smoking marijuana nearly every day for the past six years.

He doesn’t smoke to get high. According to him, he’s just taking his medicine. Timmons is slowly wasting away from Multiple Sclerosis, a painful disease that attacks the nervous system.

“I would be considered in one of the final stages of the disease right now,” Timmons said.

Diagnosed 22 years ago, the former football player and bull rider is now confined to a wheel chair. He is paralyzed from the waist down and no longer has control over his bladder or bowels. Timmons relies on his wife to help him go to the bathroom, take a bath and get in and out of bed.

In addition to losing control of his muscles, Timmons must also live with a great deal of pain and frequent muscle spasms. “The pain is overwhelming, to the extent where you’re in bed the only thing you can do is hold yourself in a fetal position,” said Timmons.

Doctors have prescribed him a virtual pharmacy of powerful narcotics to treat the pain and symptoms his disease causes. At one point he was taking as many as 20 different drugs up to four times a day. Timmons never thought to treat his pain with marijuana until a chance encounter with a former high school classmate at their 30th class reunion six years ago. The man offered Timmons a joint and told him it might help ease his pain. Desperate for anything that could relieve the constant pain, Timmons took a toke. “The pain relief was immediate. And I thought, ‘Whoa, what’s the problem with this if it works this well for people that are in pain,’” Timmons said.

Not long after that first joint, Timmons began looking for someone to supply him with pot. He did some research on the Internet, which led him to a restaurant where he began asking waiters where he could find some marijuana. By the time he left, he had a bag of weed. Timmons now gets his “medicine” from Mendocino, Calif., an area known for producing some of the highest-quality marijuana in the U.S. He said he spends about $480 a month for one ounce which typically lasts him three to four weeks.

While California and 12 other states have legalized marijuana for medicinal use, pot is still illegal in the state of Texas. Timmons is trying to change that. “You think, ‘Well how is it, it can be helping these people in these other states but it won’t help me in Texas?’” Timmons said as he puffed on a pipe filled with marijuana, taking a deep breath of the white smoke, holding it in a few seconds and exhaling with a smile on his face.

Timmons accidentally became the face of the movement to legalize medical marijuana in Texas when he spoke at the State Capital in 2007 and urged state lawmakers to pass legislation to protect patients. During that speech, he admitted he was a daily pot smoker and invited police to come arrest him, even giving his home address and phone number so they could easily find him. A video of that speech was put on You Tube and has been viewed thousands of times.

Despite his attempts to get arrested, no law enforcement agency has ever taken him up on his offer. Unlike other states that have successfully passed laws legalizing medical marijuana, the focus in Texas is to get lawmakers to pass a bill that gives patients an affirmative defense. Under current law, patients who get caught buying or using marijuana to treat their illnesses can not use that as a defense in court. “You’re barred from mentioning that and how ludicrous is that. That you can’t even tell the jury why you were doing it. You just have to sit there and be silent,” Timmons said.

“We are not even trying for medical marijuana in Texas. We’re trying to simply get it to where someone in the position like me would at least be able to offer an affirmative defense to the jury and say, ‘This is why I was breaking the law.’” The first attempt to get medical marijuana legislation passed was in 2001. Every bill that’s been introduced each session since then has died in committee.

Timmons believes socially conservative politicians are unwilling to risk their political careers on such a hot button issue, particularly one that has the medical community at odds. For years many doctors and medical organizations have stated pot has no medical benefit. Many of those same doctors and groups, including the American Medical Association, are now changing their attitude when it comes to medicinal uses for marijuana, calling for more serious studies. “I have to believe that there might be some medicinal effects of it, and if science can prove that it can be delivered in a form that isn’t harmful, great,” said Joel Marcus, a Clinical Psychologist at the UT Health Science Center’s Cancer Therapy and Research Center.

Marcus is one of a handful of psychologists who are helping cancer patients deal with the effects of living with cancer. He said many of his patients ask him about using marijuana to relieve the nausea and vomiting that come with their radiation treatments. Marcus tells them to stay away.

“I can’t in any good conscience recommend something that could be carcinogenic,” Marcus said.

“I see far too many patients living with and dying from lung cancer to say go ahead and smoke anything.” Instead Marcus, and many other doctors, offer patients a drug called Marinol which is a synthetically produced version of the main chemical in marijuana that gets you high and relieves pain — that chemical is THC.

In fact Marinol is the only legal “medical marijuana” available in the U.S. that is approved by the Federal Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Agency. Still, patients like Timmons said they tried Marinol and found that it doesn’t work as well as real marijuana. Patients said Marinol takes up to three hours to begin working, whereas taking one toke of a joint provides instant relief. Those patients also said marijuana can be ingested into the body without smoking it.

In most medical marijuana dispensaries in California, patients can buy baked goods and candy made with pot. Joel Marcus said the jury is still out on the effectiveness of those types of delivery methods for medicinal marijuana but he’s keeping an open mind on the subject. “I’m all in favor of finding out new methods of controlling symptoms,” Marcus said. “We’re all about quality of life and improving quality of life, and if a study of the medicinal properties of marijuana in a butter form or a liquid form or in some other way that isn’t carcinogenic could provide relief for or patients, I’m all for it.”

Until science can prove pot is medicine patients like Timmons say they will continue to break the law to get the medicine they need. “If I can break the law as many times as I possibly can to help someone else that’s in a similar situation escape the pain and actually function and become a part of the procession of life, then heck man, I’m all for breaking the law,” he said.

Source.