Decarboxylation
- When making cannabis oil for treating late stage cancer it is
important to understand decarboxylation. Cannabis in raw/unheated form
is primarily THCA, which converts to active
THC through heat and time. While some very slow and gradual
decarboxylation does occur at temperatures as low as room temp during
drying and curing stages of weed preparation it is not until higher
heats are encountered that all THCA is converted to THC. If you are
making cannabis oil you need to make sure the oil is cooked sufficiently
to complete full decarb. Raw cannabis is very beneficial and
cannabinoid acids like THCA, along with naturally present terpenes, are
believed to be very beneficial with possible anti cancer properties.
However, it is active THC, and CBD, that has the majority of clinical
and anecdotal evidence supporting its cancer killing effects. So, based
on what is currently known, cannabis oil that is most potent in THC
content is likely going to be the most potent medicine for curing
cancer. Raw cannabis in the form of juices and unheated oils are
beneficial too and would make a great addition to someone's treatment,
but should not replace cooked cannabis oil, and often require much
larger quantities for therapeutic value. Raw or partially cooked oils
will contain a wider range of components including cannabinoid acids and
terpenes, which are lost when oils are fully cooked, but THC is the
most essential cannabinoid for fighting cancer so make sure you decarb
your medicine properly to maximise its potency. The Rick Simpson method
only guarantees partial decarb from the rice cooker stage, and while
full decarboxylation can be achieved with the use of a coffee warmer or
candle warmer it can take some time to complete this process and other
gentle heating devices may not be hot enough. Many of the solvents used
have boiling points below the optimum temps for full and rapid decarb.
If you do not have a coffee/candle warmer, of even if you do, it is
recommended to put your oil in the oven at 110 degrees Celsius for about
an hour (optimum temperature range is 110c to 130c/230F to 266F).
Visible bubbling will cease when the solvent and water, along with
volatile terpenes, are boiled off. But you will see very small pin prick
explosions on the surface of the oil during decarboxylation. When this
has ceased and there is no activity on the surface of the oil at temps
of 110c or above, then you know that decarboxylation is complete. While
you want to ensure that temperature does exceed 110 degrees Celsius for
decarb, it is also advised to stay below 140 as temps above 140 can lead
to a loss of THC through vaporisation or degradation to CBN (vaporising
of THC occurs from 157c). In
an ideal world everyone would have access to both raw and cooked
cannabis in a well controlled manner, but in this world where oil making
can be expensive and risky it is best to make sure your medicine is as
potent as it can be to maximise its potential. Source: A Friend
Compound in cannabis may help treat epilepsy, researchers say
British
researchers have determined that a little-studied chemical in the
cannabis plant could lead to effective treatments for epilepsy, with few
to no side effects.
The team at Britain’s University of Reading,
working with GW Pharmaceuticals and Otsuka Pharmaceuticals, tested
cannabidivarin, or CBDV, in rats and mice afflicted with six types of
epilepsy and found it “strongly suppressed seizures” without causing the
uncontrollable shaking and other side effects of existing anti-epilepsy
drugs.
According
to the findings, reported this week in the British Journal of
Pharmacology, CBDV also delayed and reduced seizures when used in
conjunction with two common anti-convulsant drugs. “There is a
pressing need for better treatments for epilepsy,” said Dr. Ben Whalley,
the lead researcher. “It’s a chronic condition with no cure and
currently, in around one third of cases, the currently available
treatments do not work, cause serious side-effects and increase
fatalities.”
The study, he added, highlights “the potential for a
solution based on cannabinoid science. It has shown that cannabidivarin
is the most effective and best tolerated anticonvulsant plant
cannabinoid investigated to date.”
The casual use of marijuana --
or cannabis -- to control seizures dates back to ancient times. Its most
prominent component, THC, is among those shown in animal studies to
have strong anti-convulsant properties, but its mind-altering effects
have made it unsuitable for pharmaceutical development.
A number
of the plant’s more than 100 cannabinoids are non-psychoactive, however.
The most studied among them is cannabidiol, or CBD, which has shown
promise for multiple sclerosis spacticity, nausea, epilepsy and
schizophrenia. Animal studies with CBD have also shown it to be
effective as a neuoroprotectant and cancer-fighting agent.
In
recent years, California’s medical marijuana proponents have begun to
breed plants for higher CBD content and develop customized tinctures for
patients with a range of ailments. Those treatments combine high doses
of CBD with smaller amounts of THC.
Yet CBD’s widely known
structure and well-studied uses mean that the pharmaceutical industry
has less of an opportunity to protect patents on its use and profit from
any drug development, said Whalley and Raphael Mechoulam, the Israeli
researcher who first identified the structure of the compound nearly
half a century ago and has conducted many key CBD studies.
CBDV is
a closely related chemical compound. While it was discovered in 1969,
the research made public this week was the first conducted in animals,
said Whalley, and only two small in vitro studies have been published,
neither of them related to epilepsy.
“The commercial protection
can be good even if the compound itself was identified some time ago, as
long as the proposed use is novel,” he said. “The better described the
‘new use’ is, the stronger the protection.”
Medical marijuana
proponents largely dismiss pharmaceutical industry efforts as too
profit-driven, and say that encourages researchers to find a “magic
bullet” compound rather than work with the complex benefits that the
whole plant provides. Yet Whalley countered that “to make a
cannabis-based medicine available and accessible to a global patient
community, the only viable route is via conventional drug development,
which is dictated by governmental legislation [and] regulation.”
Dr.
Stephen Wright, research and development director for GW
Pharmaceuticals, which already markets a drug outside the U.S. that is
half THC and half CBD for multiple sclerosis patients, said the company
hoped to advance the CBDV research on epilepsy to human trials by next
year.
Epilepsy affects about 1% of people worldwide, and is caused
by excessive electrical activity in the brain, which leads to seizures
that can be fatal.
Mounting evidence shows ‘cannabinoids’ in marijuana slow
cancer growth, inhibit formation of new blood cells that feed a tumor,
and help manage pain, fatigue, nausea, and other side effects.
Cristina Sanchez, a young biologist
at Complutense University in Madrid, was studying cell metabolism when
she noticed something peculiar. She had been screening brain cancer cells because they grow faster than normal cell lines and thus are useful for research purposes. But the cancer cells died each time they were exposed to tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the principal psychoactive ingredient of marijuana.
Instead of gaining insight into how cells function, Sanchez had stumbled upon the anti-cancer properties of THC. In 1998, she reported
in a European biochemistry journal that THC “induces apoptosis [cell
death] in C6 glioma cells,” an aggressive form of brain cancer.
Subsequent
peer-reviewed studies in several countries would show that THC and
other marijuana-derived compounds, known as “cannabinoids,” are
effective not only for cancer-symptom management (nausea, pain, loss of
appetite, fatigue), they also confer a direct antitumoral effect.
A
team of Spanish scientists led by Manuel Guzman conducted the first
clinical trial assessing the antitumoral action of THC on human beings.
Guzman administered pure THC via a catheter into the tumors of nine
hospitalized patients with glioblastoma, who had failed to respond to
standard brain-cancer therapies. The results were published in 2006 in
the British Journal of Pharmacology: THC treatment was associated with significantly reduced tumor cell proliferation in every test subject.
Around the same time, Harvard University scientists reported
that THC slows tumor growth in common lung cancer and “significantly
reduces the ability of the cancer to spread.” What’s more, like a
heat-seeking missile, THC selectively targets and destroys tumor cells
while leaving healthy cells unscathed. Conventional chemotherapy drugs,
by contrast, are highly toxic; they indiscriminately damage the brain
and body.
There is mounting evidence, according to a report in Mini-Reviews in Medicinal Chemistry, that cannabinoids “represent a new class of anticancer drugs
that retard cancer growth, inhibit angiogenesis [the formation of new
blood cells that feed a tumor] and the metastatic spreading of cancer
cells.”
Dr.
Sean McAllister, a scientist at the Pacific Medical Center in San
Francisco, has been studying cannabinoid compounds for 10 years in a
quest to develop new therapeutic interventions for various cancers.
Backed by grants from the National Institute of Health (and with a
license from the DEA), McAllister discovered
that cannabidiol (CBD), a nonpsychoactive component of the marijuana
plant, is a potent inhibitor of breast cancer cell proliferation,
metastasis, and tumor growth.
In 2007, McAllister published a detailed account
of how cannabidiol kills breast cancer cells and destroys malignant
tumors by switching off expression of the ID-1 gene, a protein that
appears to play a major role as a cancer cell conductor.
The
ID-1 gene is active during human embryonic development, after which it
turns off and stays off. But in breast cancer and several other types of
metastatic cancer, the ID-1 gene becomes active again, causing
malignant cells to invade and metastasize. “Dozens of aggressive cancers
express this gene,” explains McAllister. He postulates that CBD, by
virtue of its ability to silence ID-1 expression, could be a
breakthrough anti-cancer medication.
“Cannabidiol
offers hope of a non-toxic therapy that could treat aggressive forms of
cancer without any of the painful side effects of chemotherapy,” says
McAllister, who is seeking support to conduct clinical trials with the marijuana compound on breast cancer patients.
McAllister’s
lab also is analyzing how CBD works in combination with first-line
chemotherapy agents. His research shows that cannabidiol, a potent
antitumoral compound in its own right, acts synergistically with various
anti-cancer pharmaceuticals, enhancing their impact while cutting the
toxic dosage necessary for maximum effect.
Breast cancer cells killed by CBD on right compared to untreated breast cancer cells on left. (Courtesy Pacific Medical Center)
“Cannabidiol offers hope of a non-toxic therapy that could treat
aggressive forms of cancer without any of the painful side effects of
chemotherapy.
Investigators
at St. George’s University in London observed a similar pattern with
THC, which magnified the effectiveness of conventional antileukemia
therapies in preclinical studies. THC and cannabidiol both induce
apoptosis in leukemic cell lines.
At
the annual summer conference of the International Cannabinoid Research
Society, held this year in Freiburg, Germany, 300 scientists from around
the world discussed their latest findings, which are pointing the way
toward novel treatment strategies for cancer and other degenerative
diseases. Italian investigators described CBD as “the most efficacious
inducer of apoptosis” in prostate cancer. Ditto for cannabidiol and
colon cancer, according to British researchers at Lancaster University.
Within
the medical science community, the discovery that cannabinoids have
anti-tumoral properties is increasingly recognized as a seminal
advancement in cancer therapeutics.
