29/04/2022
Shaping Cannabis for the Future
It is true that our beliefs shape our attitudes and biases. We at Entourage Oil are passionate about the world view of cannabis and have our own set of biases that are being continually updated. Our clients and interested parties often discuss how difficult it is to move from viewing the plant called dagga – the pejorative noun used in South Africa – to the more accepting term Cannabis. Cannabis just seems cleaner and sounds way more sophisticated than Dagga – especially the colloquial grind when pronouncing the “gg” - sounding like uninvited phlegm being cleared from the throat. No surprise that the plant suffers a derogatory connotation when called “Dagga”.
So we invite you to a shift in nomenclature that opens the door to further enlightenment regarding Cannabis who, as a curative journeyman has been along-side humans since our ancestors began to walk upright. The invitation includes a shift from the previous 100 year old biases, to acknowledging benefits such as the appreciation of the potential healing properties and the enlightened enjoyment that is evermore acceptable in law and within society these days.
Entourage Oil aims to offer a product that embodies these principals and we like to present the growing body of scientific endeavour that seeks to continually unwrap the potential behind cannabis. In doing so historical negative biases will be replaced with knowledge and empowered choice as to the user’s path towards wellness. The process of this commitment involves us in keeping abreast with new findings and analysis. Exploring and sharing these benchmarks keeps our intentions at the forefront of this exciting aspect of self-healing.
The axiomatic assumption that Cannabis usage damages the human brain has always been at the forefront of the push by authoritarian nay-sayers: “Dagga will destroy your brain cells. These cells will never grow back again” et al The authoritarian types who said this had no inclination to test their proclamation and unlike today, probably had limited access to any tools like the internet to research evidence to prove that. Nevertheless society’s authorities pushed this fear tactic and boy was that strategy effective. Our own previous bias is evidence of the triumph of such a terrible miss-truth.
We make no claim to expertise in the neurological field, other than having spent 26 years living with a brain recovering from severe impact trauma, and the challenges that such a person might experience. We are deeply curious about this idea that an injured brain has the ability through a process called elasticity to heal its functioning following trauma. This led us to Cannabis – not Dagga – and what potential that offers in assisting ourselves. That same curiosity birthed Entourage Oil as a tool assist in the management of epilepsy, as condition that invariably follows severe head trauma.
So we were surprised today when one of our online subscriptions presented a scientific paper that set out to use the most modern testing technology available to us – MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) - in order to determine if young people would suffer brain volumetric loss, hence damage from using cannabis. We do not advocate the irresponsible use of Cannabis in the recreational setting, however young people are inclined to experiment, and as mentioned above, we were told that brains would be damaged in the process.
The study is rather enticingly entitled:
BRAIN ANATOMICAL ALTERATIONS IN YOUNG CANNABIS USERS:
IS IT ALL HYPE?
A META-ANALYSIS OF STRUCTURAL NEUROIMAGING STUDIES
Mata-Analysis, we understand, is the deep level type of research done implying significant detail and complexity. As mentioned, we are not neurological experts, so we encourage the reader to have a look at the paper and draw their own meaning. Hopefully, as we did, this might help shift yet again some of those deep set biases towards cannabis.
Here are a few passages that we understood for their obvious gravity…
“Cannabis use has a high prevalence in young youth and is associated with poor psychosocial outcomes. Such outcomes have been ascribed to the impact of cannabis exposure on the developing brain. However, findings from individual studies of volumetry in youth cannabis users are equivocal” (Characterized by a mixture of opposing elements and therefore questionable or uncertain)
“evidence suggests nonsignificant volume differences between young cannabis users and nonusers”
“In contrast with meta-analytic evidence on adult samples or on samples comprising both adults and youth, this meta-analysis of structural MRI findings specific to youth regular cannabis users suggests no volume alterations, and no effect of age and cannabis use level on group differences in volumetry”
Our deepest thanks to The publishes :
MARY ANN LIEBERT INC.
The papers authors:
Valentina Lorenzetti, Magdalena Kowalczyk, Leonie Duehlmeyer, Lisa-Marie Greenwood, Yann Chye, Murat Yücel, Sarah Whittle, and Carl A Roberts.
The Book :
CANNABIS AND CANNABINOID RESEARCH.
