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Marijuana As Medicine with John Malanca "Health Talks"

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Video Transcript


John: I want people to realize that this is medicine. It doesn’t work for everybody. I don’t want everyone to think that this is the golden pill, the golden ticket, the golden everything.
Jonathan: Like anything out there, right. No [one] diet works for everybody: no prescription med or health supplement.
TeriAnn: We talk about that a lot [crosstalk 00:08:42.]
Jonathan: Everybody’s different.
TeriAnn: Everyone has a different body, different makeup-
Jonathan: Different metabolism.
TeriAnn: Everything works differently for everyone, but this could be something that impacts you in a positive way.
John: It can. The majority of the events that we go to, 99% of them that we speak to are not in the cannabis industry. It’s all integrative oncology, epileptic, pediatric, seniors, geriatric. And I always do this one slide when I speak it, and it’s my favorite slide, it’s a big roll of duct tape, and I said, “People always ask me, does this work?” And I said, “I have the duct tape up here because I don’t want to say it’s like duct tape with a million and one uses, but it truly is.” I’ve seen it with arthritis — the elderly with sleeping. Depression, cancer, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, aids, the list goes on, and on and on, and you can Google these. You can go to Google Scholar. There are more studies done on medical cannabis and the benefits than I think on other topics like this.
Jonathan: Absolutely.
John: So, it’s not something that just popped up three years ago. The CBD phase came into effect, and so it’s been around. It was banned in 1937. Our government banned it. I think just because of the different laws. [I’m not going to go into all of the politics,] I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but they said it was the minorities who used it, and it’s bad, and it’ll have these hoodlums come and take your white daughters away from you.
Jonathan: What I’ve read all about, right, where they gave it the street name marijuana.
John: Totally, right. Marijuana.
TeriAnn: Yup.
Jonathan: Changed it from cannabis to marijuana, and they were able to get laws passed, because people didn’t realize that they were talking about cannabis, right. They thought it was marijuana [crosstalk 00:10:37]
TeriAnn: People are afraid of what they don’t know and understand, and it wasn’t understood.
John: We were those people.
TeriAnn: Yeah.
John: We were those people. And so, I never use the word marijuana. I never use the word cure. I use cannabis. I use it to heal. [I use it because cannabis] kills cancer cells; it’s been proven. You can search it, Google it. Everything’s Google nowadays. Go to Google Scholar. But you will show that THC kills cancer cells while CBD stops the spread, and CBD and THC are cannabinoids. Just like the different varieties in wine, there are a bunch of different varieties in cannabis, with all different. There are 113 different cannabinoids in the cannabis plant, and still, people are discovering more each and every day.
John: The most popular one is THC, which gives a psychoactive effect. Also, right behind there is CBD, which is a non-psychoactive, which you’re hearing a lot of patients using for seizure disorders for children and adults. But if my father-in-law was on a straight CBD regiment, I know for a fact he wouldn’t be here today. THC was needed.
John: Same thing with epileptic children. A lot of these states have CBD only laws, which they’re designed specifically for pediatric children. CBD works for epileptic children, epilepsy. With just straight CBD, it’ll work about 12-15%. Add a minute amount of THC, that number will go up to about 70%. So, THC is needed. I don’t want people to be afraid of thinking that CBD’s the medical portion of the cannabis plant, and THC’s the recreational portion of the cannabis plant.
Jonathan: Well, and let’s just talk about that, because most of us, or at least I’ll speak for myself, right, in my teenage years, the early 20s, right. What I know about cannabis is rolling it up in a joint, smoking it, sticking it in a bowl, smoking it. Nobody was using it for medical stuff then. Now, I mean, all of that’s different. Let’s talk about the difference between medical and recreational use because you don’t have to smoke it, right. You don’t have to roll it up in a joint; you don’t have to smoke it, you don’t have to sit around somewhere and be lazy all day just smoking weed. We’re talking about a totally different thing here.
John: A totally different thing. So, we speak at a lot of retirement communities around the country, and I always ask the seniors how many people have used medical cannabis? And at first, you’d have 8-12% of the room. Now, when I ask that question, it’s like 90% of the room. But I ask the question, how many people think the only way of consuming medical cannabis is via smoking it? And the same thing used to be at 12%. Now, they look at me like, come on, throw us a harder softball question than that one.
John: So, you don’t have to smoke it. There are tinctures under the tongue. There’s topical, great for arthritis. Vaporization, which is another form of ingesting, but not lighting up your bowl, lighting up the flower material. Some people use it for suppositories. Now, they have patches, transdermal patches that you can put on your wrist, or your ankle, or your neck that will bring in the different types of cannabinoids. There’s a lot of different companies that have different types of … just like with your Organixx products, you have a line. So, they have a different line of different cannabis products.
Jonathan: Different delivery systems.
John: Delivery systems, but also different cannabinoids in those delivery systems.

[Podcast] Empowering You Organically Ep. 14: How to Use Cannabis and CBDs to Heal Your Body

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Podcast Transcript


Jonathan: All right. Welcome beautiful people to another episode of Empowering You Organically. I’m joined today as always by my co-host TeriAnn Trevenen.
TeriAnn:  Hey everyone.
Jonathan: We have our special guest back, John Malanca.
John: Hi.
Jonathan: Thanks again John for coming back. Listen, if you guys do know who John is, tune in to our last episode where we were talking all about cannabis and THC and the medical uses. You can hear John’s story. It’s a phenomenal episode. There’s a lot of misconceptions out there about cannabis, and I just can’t encourage you enough to go listen to that episode and then come back and join us for this episode.
Jonathan: Today, we’re talking about how do you use cannabis for specific ailments? Whether that’s pain relief, anxiety, sleep, stress, diabetes, all sorts of them. And we’re gonna talk as well about the differences between recreational use and medical of cannabis. We’re gonna talk about different dosages that you can use and some of the different medical speak that’s gonna be out there as you go and talk to your doctors and things like that. So this is a very specific podcast, I mean this for you to really get the how-tos, of what you need.
TeriAnn: Yeah and let me just say too on our previous episode with John, if you don’t understand cannabis and you’re wondering you know, “Isn’t this a controversial topic.” And you’re not educated on it, I encourage you to go back and listen for that reason as well. We really talk about the myths around it, what people understand about it, the history. And so I would highly encourage you even before listening to this one, go and get educated with our previous episode and then come back and check this one out. It’s gonna give you a lot of good information going into this as well. Really important.
Jonathan: Absolutely. And that’s the reality is it’s a bunch of misconceptions, and this is one of the most versatile plants in the world. I mean, it’s been used for thousands of years, it’s only the last 100…
John: They say 5,000 years.
Jonathan: 5,000 years.
John: 5,000 years. I didn’t wanna cut you off.
Jonathan: You’re good John.
John: I’m excited because…
Jonathan: You’re our guest and you’re welcome to. Let’s talk for a second. This was something we didn’t get to on that first episode and we talked about cannabinoids.
John: So, you mentioned in the beginning about talking to your doctors. And I think it’s really important. It’s not illegal, a lot of your followers are probably in illegal states and legal states. So, it’s not illegal to have this conversation with your doctor. One question I’d have that I ask for your listeners. When you talk about it with your doctors, ask them if they know about the endocannabinoid system. So the endocannabinoid system, all mammals with a vertebra have an endocannabinoid system. All mammals, not just human, all mammals have it. And so…
Jonathan: Which means?
John: Which means what its craving is cannabinoids. And what are cannabinoids? From the cannabis plant. That’s why for 5,000 years plus and probably even further than that. But I think 5,000 years ago was the first noted documentation or transcript … is that the word, transcript. That people have actually known how to write and write things down. And so before it was just stories. So the body—all mammals that have a vertebra are craving—have an endocannabinoid system, they’re craving cannabinoids which is cannabis.
John: You can also have endocannabinoid deficiency which is the root cause of many diseases which were leading to different types of disease, dis-ease of the body which is a pain, inflammation. Inflammation is huge. Stress, you know stress is a number one killer.
John: So I recommend if anybody has tried cannabis before or has not tried cannabis and they’re in pain and they’re listening to us right now. Take your own self-check, close your eyes, take a big breath, exhale and just see where your pain level is on a scale of 1 to 10. 10 being the highest, 1 being the lowest and just see where you are. And if you are in a legal state and you have tried cannabis, or you’re in an illegal state and you have tried cannabis, just take that to see where you are. And ingest your cannabis if you are a user legally or illegally. Don’t take a lot. And just take a reassessment of where you are afterward. Inhale, breathe out and just see where your pain levels are.
John:  Some people can have success with 1 to 2 milligrams, some people need 100 milligrams, I don’t think majority people need that. I think you can have success at one to two milligrams, nothing that you’re gonna have any psychoactive effect. But it goes into the body, it’s incredible. The number one—I guess we use Google a lot. But the number one Googled term is for pain. And so back in our podcast one that we did, we spoke about the different—the difference with Secret Plant. We did season one which is seven-part docuseries, season two which was another seven-part docuseries, both with webinars as well.
John: And then we just finished our pain masterclass. So we asked our followers, “What do you wanna listen to?” Our followers are over 190 countries, patients 190 countries, both medical professionals, government officials, and patients who are about to start the cancer masterclass. So cannabis helps. It’s an analgesic it helps with pain, helps with inflammation, helps with sleep, you know, there are so many—we talked about the different types of uses and one thing that when I’d always speak, I always had the—I mentioned in podcast one about the duct tape that I showed on our screen. People always ask me, “Is it like 101 million uses like duct tape.” And it really is.
John: I don’t wanna give anybody false hope. But there are so many benefits of this plant. You don’t have to be high to use this plant.
TeriAnn: Let’s talk about that for a second. I think that’s a really great point. Let’s talk about the difference between the medicinal side of it and the recreational side of it.
John: Got you. So in a lot of people’s minds, the recreational side is a bunch of kids smoking weeds, saggy pants and…
TeriAnn: Getting into trouble.
John: Getting in trouble.
TeriAnn: Yup.
John: Getting stoned.
Jonathan: It’s a gateway drug.
TeriAnn: I think that’s a lot of people’s perception. Don’t even take the medicinal side of it. I think a lot of people just look at it as a recreational use product. It’s not…
Jonathan: They think that it is being approved for medical use. Is just for a bunch of stoners to get it legally.
TeriAnn: Yeah, yeah, and they just think, all of those things you just said. That’s a lot of people’s perception of this.
John: And it was our perception when we first got into this. I mean, my wife was, “Come on, give me a break.” That’s what her idea was, “Give me a break.” It’s just another legal way of people just to get stoned. And then we were thrown into this with my father-in-law and she was somebody who’s never tried cannabis. She was never a drunk. I think she had her first sip of alcohol when she was 33 and we’ve never—you know, a glass of wine every four or five months is what our alcohol intake was.
John: But for her to see, we were thrown into this as we mentioned, cancer or any disease doesn’t discriminate. We were thrown into this for listeners that did not listen to podcast one. We were thrown into this because my father-in-law was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and I’ll just fast-forward the story for the people that did hear it. He’s still alive today and it will be eight years.
Jonathan: He was given two weeks to live.
John: He was given two weeks to live with stage 4 lung cancer, metastasized to his brain. It will be eight years this February. So cannabis, we rolled our eyes to that. We also saw the benefits of this plant.
John: And so back to recreational and medical use, there really isn’t a difference, there really isn’t a difference, just the laws. California has been legal since 1996; 22 years for medical use. This past year, they passed into law for recreational use, for adults only 21 and over. In our industry, I get a lot of backlash on this because I voted no on it. Blows a lot of people’s mind, “How could you vote no on this for recreational?”
John: Because we were so medical that I’ve seen what it’s done in other legal states and hopefully that will change. But in California, it’s been considered the medical state, where Colorado has been the recreational state. I’m not saying one’s better than the other. I’m just saying 99% of the patients who come to us are true medical patients looking for health, “I have cancer, I have a disease, I need help with this.”
John: What the recreational laws have done in these legal states and now happening in California, once they open the door for recreational use. Everybody is saying, “I don’t need a doctor. I can just go in. I’m 21, just like going to be a bar and I can order myself a drink. I can go into a dispensary, like going into a 7-Eleven and I’ll take that, I’ll take that.”
John: But they need to realize cannabis is not a one size fits all. Age, weight, current health condition, any medications you may be on should be looked at. I truly believe a pharmacist should be involved, because you go into your pharmacy right now, they have a section where you get it. But they also have a section, “Do you have any questions on this?” And they’ll ask you, “What are the medications you’re on?” There are drug-to-drug interactions. We speak in a lot of neuropathy groups, for diabetic neuropathy groups as well as cancer neuropathy groups.
John: And some of these patients are in so much pain that they’re taking six Oxycodone a day. And then they try cannabis, they do two to three milligrams. And there is a study that shows cannabis can intensify a medication by up to two or three times. So imagine taking six Oxy a day, “I’m perfectly fine.” Add two milligrams of cannabis, your Oxy is doubled and now you’re climbing the walls saying, “I’ll never do cannabis again.” When it really wasn’t cannabis. It was a drug to drug interaction.
John: That is why I truly believe that a medical professional is needed, is why again I voted no on it because I’ve seen what it’s done. It’s pushed out—in other legal states, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, it’s pushed out the true medical professional doctor. Because no one’s coming to the doctors and doctors are closing shop and either moving to another state or just saying, “They don’t need my help to write recommendations or guidance anymore.”
Jonathan: I mean it’s everyone just trying to self-medicate, right?
John: Self-medicate and…
Jonathan: I guess there’s somewhat a place for that. But the reality is, is most people are not—maybe I’m wrong here. But most people are not recreationally using cannabis anyway. And a lot of people that are likely listening to this are learning for the first time, or really understanding cannabis and maybe they smoked a joint back in high school or hundreds of joints back in high school. But now they don’t and they’re trying to understand the medical use. And just going to the dispensary and grabbing yourself a gram and filling in a pipe and smoking it. That’s not the way that you use it for medical.
John: Well, then you have the other side that argues, the recreational user. They say, “Listen, I have stress, anxiety, I’m not on my meds anymore. I’m not drinking alcohol anymore.” A lot of people come home from work and have a martini or a glass of wine, and then wake the next day hangover, something like that. They say, “Hey, I’m using it for recreational use. But guess what, I’m hanging out at my house, we’re not going down the bars fighting, we’re not taking any pharmaceuticals. I’m not getting in my car and driving, crashing, getting a DUI.” Which I don’t recommend people to drive and use medical cannabis.
John: But in states that recreational laws have passed, DUI numbers have dropped down, opioid addiction has dropped down, opioid overdoses have dropped down. So these census and surveys are showing that it does help patients. Why I personally was against voting this, is because I’ve seen other patients in different states—because patients call us at United Patients Group. We have medical professionals who work with patients not only here in the U.S. but overseas, help give us guidance, dosing, formulation protocols, it’s not a one size fit.
John: But they’re also saying, “I don’t have any more doctors in my area.” Because the doctors are like, “People are self-medicating and they don’t need me anymore.” If you need help to sleep, go try it. If you’re 20 years old, go try it. If you had too much, you’re like—we’ve all had in our lives, being a young kid and you’re like, “Oh, I won’t do that again.”
Jonathan: Sure. Well, it’s a little different. I mean I think that we’re in the infancy of it becoming mainstream again. It went illegally in 1937 I think and it’s coming back to the mainstream. And I’m all for it being 100% legal personally – whether it’s recreational, or medical, or that kind of thing. The challenge here is you don’t go to your local grocery store or whatever, and you’re feeling some pain and you buy some Ibuprofen or Advil, or, Tylenol, and there’s no dosage on there. You don’t just get a bottle of 50, and then you decide, “Well, I’m just gonna take 20 of these because I don’t know.”
TeriAnn: Yeah, I think that’s a great example.
Jonathan: That’s where I think your hesitation comes on the recreational side and I agree on that sense. Because you’re not telling people, “Okay, well, just go buy some cannabis and you just decide how much you need.” Well, I’ll tell you right now, you go to your dispensary and you buy some 10-milligram edibles and you’ve never done it before and you go home and you eat two or three of those, you’re gonna be out of your mind.
John: Great point on the edibles. So, your followers that didn’t listen for podcast one. There are so many different delivery methods. Edibles are one. Edibles are—they call edibles “medicated foods.” Brownies, cupcakes, lollipops, ice cream, drinks, you know, I’m missing it. But anything that you can make a food product they can—now are making it popcorn, nuts, they can…
Jonathan: We can make it into a butter. You can make with butter. You can…
John: Totally. The thing with that is talking about direction in dosing, everyone is different. I’m a lightweight, I can have a glass of wine and sip on that whole glass of wine. That’s all I need, too, I don’t feel good. We have other friends who can drink two bottles of wine and go, “Man, I’m perfectly fine.” That’s not how my body works. I’m sensitive to salt and butter and stuff like that. And some patients are sensitive to cannabis, some people are allergic to cannabis, so cannabis is not for everybody.
John: But back to an edible, the delicious brownie, some the size of a 50 cent piece are 5-milligram dose and some are 100-milligram dose. You get rid of that wrapper you don’t know what is what. And sometimes it takes a minimum of 45 minutes for you to feel anything. So, imagine eating something you’re like, “45 minutes nothing, nothing, I guess I didn’t take enough.” They eat again and guess what, it comes on in an hour, now you have a double dose in you. And this happens to seniors all the time; happens to everybody all the time.
Jonathan: It happened to my mom. My mom just turned 70 years old. She was living in California a couple of years ago. And I won’t go too detailed into this mom so you don’t get mad at me. She was having some pain, she was using some pain medication. Wanted to get off of that. Having neighbors that said, “Well, you oughta try some edibles, you know this will help you.” So she ate a cookie, or a brownie, or something and 20, 30 minutes later didn’t feel anything. Ate another one, and I think two hours later she’d had two or three. And I think her whole night was crazy.
John: Shaking
Jonathan: Yeah, after that it’s like, “I’m not touching that again.” And the neighbor was like, “Oh my gosh, you ate all that?” She would have gone and saw a doctor and just said, “Hey, help educate me. What do I need? Where should I start?” And it’s like, “Well hey, maybe you shouldn’t even start with a cookie, to begin with. Why don’t you try a little tincture, or try a little something here? Let’s get it.” And I’m gonna get into this for a second. Like, “But let’s get the right ratio of CBD to THC so that there is no psychoactive response.” Beause right now we’re talking a lot about this and there’s just a lot of people think there’s a psychoactive response and there doesn’t have to be. That only happens when you take a large dose.
John: Yeah, and you don’t need to be high to have successful cannabis, and CBD which is making a lot of headway in the news right now. I think the media has confused a lot of people’s thinking. CBD is the medical portion of the cannabis plant, the good portion of the plant, THC is bad. And so THC, CBD, these are just different types of cannabinoids in the cannabis plant.
John: Currently, there are 113 different cannabinoids that have been discovered and more are being discovered each and every day. Some help with sleep, some help with inflammation, some help with anxiety, nausea, cancer fighters, seizures. You hear a lot of patient’s CBD made it to the mainstream because of children with seizures, not wanting the kids to get high. Brain development, I’m not a big fan of kids smoking it and you don’t have to smoke it. They’re taking oils under the tongue, they’re taking droppers under the tongue, they’re taking transdermal patches for these patients.
John: There are so many success stories. One of my best friends, his child was Cash Hyde. I know your dog is named Cash. But they’re out of Montana. And Cash was the pioneer, literally the pioneer. You google medical cannabis in children, nothing came up before Cash. But it wasn’t mainstream enough that Today Show, Good Morning America, Dr. OZ, Anderson Cooper, they would contact him and saying, “Can we get you on it.” “Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ll get back to you.” And then calling him back a couple of days, “We can’t bring in this. It’s too controversial enough.” Nowadays, a child has hiccups and he’s using cannabis, “Let’s put it on The Today Show.”
John: And so Cash was the first legal medical cannabis patient and youngest legal medical cannabis patient in the United States out of Montana. He had a rare brain tumor. His mom Kalli is a delivery nurse. And so he was in the hospital, he was on chemo-radiation. He was on a 49-day-coma, blown up like a Pillsbury doughboy, the chemo cocktails are on. When he was going to the bathroom, his insides were shaking like a snake, that’s the chemo was doing.
John: And so Mike the dad went in there. It’s like they’ve said, “Pull him, he’s gonna be a vegetable, he’ll never make it. Pull the cords and cut. And Mike said—so he told his wife, “I wanna give him cannabis.” And they said, “Are you out of your mind.” And they said, “Look at him, he’s two years old, look at him.” He said, “If you don’t let me do it, I’ll steal him out of the hospital, and I’ll go up the mountains and I’ll treat my own son.”
Jonathan: I have a two-year-old daughter. And so like…
John:  So picture that.
Jonathan: … you tell me that story and someone is like, “No, you can’t do that.” And she’s already going through chemo. Yeah, I would [crosstalk 00:19:17].
TeriAnn: Well and talking about what state he was in just makes you sick. And it’s like we talked about previously you get to the point where it’s like, there’s nothing you wouldn’t do, especially when you see your child like that.
John: So he started putting cannabis oil in Cash’s tube and within hours…
Jonathan:  I’m sure I’ve seen this video.
John: I highlighted him in The Sacred Plant to share the story. And so Cash wakes up and he wanted a cheese sandwich. And they said, “I’ll be darned.” He goes, “If I knew my son was hungry, I know he has—and he was in a coma for 47 days. So he started eating, the whole family is crying every night and the doctors would leave, he’d put cannabis oil into Cash’s tube. He’s two. His pain medication went down to zero, his inflammation went down to a normal 2-year-old kid and he walked out of there, ringing the bell, the cancer bell, and they thought, “Look what we did. All this stuff worked.”
John: And so Mike was living—they were from Montana but they were going back and forth to Utah. And so Utah at that time was an illegal state. And so he said, “We can’t share.” And everyone was like, “You have to share the story.” Mike finally—they got back home and he shared the story. Three months later, they went back, they were checking and the brain tumor came back. And they said, “I’ll be darned, let’s do this again.” And they started juicing the cannabis plant, which is THCA, which we can go into in a bit.
John: But they put it back into his feeding tube and the tumor disappeared again. So they said, “Oh my gosh, we have to do this on a regular basis as wellness.” So again, you can take this as a wellness preventative medicine just like you would take any of your nutrients. Just as a wellness dose, like you, take vitamin [crosstalk 00:21:04]-
Jonathan: any kind of supplement.
John: The laws changed in Montana. So the laws were as legal, then the laws changed to illegal. And at four and a half, Cashy … November, 14th 2012, Cashy was like, “No more pokes, no more pokes,” the exact words. He was kind of tired of getting poked and prodded, poked and prodded. And his last night on earth was at our place in Montana. You know but it’s been tough seeing death especially in a child, you have a two-year-old. But Cashy was the leader of people saying, “Oh my goodness, you can give this to children and have success.”
John: So they started a foundation called the Cash Hyde Foundation for pediatric cancer. So you can take a look at that. They were one of the main families in The Sacred Plant. I know we got off track here.
TeriAnn: I think that’s a great segue. That’s one of the places where people have a misunderstanding of where it can be used and how it’s being used. And we wanna talk a little bit today about—and that’s an incredible story and I know you have a lot of stories like that. We wanted to talk about some of the uses for it. And one of the things I wanna talk about. Very first you mentioned it in Cash’s story is inflammation and inflammation is our body’s ways of telling us something is wrong. And often times it’s the beginning phases of knowing there’s something else going on or warning you that you need to correct. So talk about cannabis and inflammation.
John: So one cannabinoid is THCA and the A is for acid, the acid form. So just like you would juice wheatgrass, you can juice a cannabis plant. Before it’s heated, it’s non-psychoactive. So you can juice it. If you have a cannabis plant—not too many people have a cornfield of cannabis plants. But there’s a famous doctor up in Northern California who brought this to the public and his name is Dr. William Courtney. His wife Kristen had a major autoimmune disease. And they said, “You’re toast. You’ll never have children, and you probably won’t be on this earth for much longer.”
John: Anyway, he is a major cannabis—was activated and a doctor and he said, “You know juicing the cannabis plant, non-psychoactive. So she was juicing it, putting it in blenders and doing everything else like that. There’s a great story so if you’re—again, I always go throw it back to Google. But she’s alive, they have children now. So they’re the ones that brought juicing the medical cannabis to the forefront. So that’s great for inflammation, great for inflammation which is a lot of cases a root of disease and dis-ease in your body.
John: And so there are now a lot of companies that make THCA tinctures infused in coconut oil, MCT oil, grape seed oil. The one thing about this and I chuckles is because, if you—a lot of women will keep it in their purse. I can share a story, we had a nice stand, but if it hits up, it will convert to THC. So a lot of patients will have it in their purse. You leave anything in your car or even a bottle of water…
TeriAnn: It gets warm.
John: In your car. You know, “Oh, great,” and come back, it will convert. So there’s one day we had it on our nightstand at home and a new bottle and I would take it in the morning and I go to work. The next day, take it in the morning, go to work and there’s one day I get to work, I’m feeling something. So I go into the office and I say, “Karin, that bottle, What was it? She goes, “THCA, non-psycho…” I said, “I’m feeling some right now.” Well I didn’t realize, we would leave in the morning where it was dark and we’d come home and it was dark and the sunlight is moving across the room by the bedside stand, and it was in the sunlight and it converted to THC.
John:  So, I think if you are gonna have medicine—we don’t have any kids around. But I advise everybody if you are gonna have this medicine around keep it in…
TeriAnn: In a cool place.
John: …your refrigerator, or in a cool place, or in the dark place, away from kids, away from pets, away from others that come into your home.
Jonathan: Like you would any other medicine.
John: Any other medication.
Jonathan: That’s the thing here and that’s where I’m hoping this podcast and hundreds of other podcasts and interviews and your docuseries with The Sacred Plant does is educate you that this is medicine. It’s serious medicine, it’s not high schoolers using it as a gateway drug to get high. This is a real medicine that is healing hundreds of thousands of people around the world and it’s truly healing people.
John: Research, if you do wanna watch our series, Sacred Plant, you can go to my website on unitedpatientsgroup.com, go online research the endocannabinoid system, talk to your doctor about the endocannabinoid system, ask them if they’ve studied this in medical school. Unfortunately, they don’t talk about this in medical school.
TeriAnn: It’s not surprising, isn’t it?
John: Yeah, it really isn’t.
TeriAnn: No.
John: When we do our seminars, our conferences, we have partnered—we are the first cannabis company that partnered with the California State University, we did Day of Education for that. We’re the first cannabis company that’s partnered with education, with pharmacy organizations. Like it or not, it’s coming, this type of medicine, this type—just like chiropractic you know. I have chiropractors in my family. I’m a big fun of chiropractor, I’m a big fan of health. But chiropractors back in the ’60s and earlier, even in the ’70s were quacks, “Doesn’t work, doesn’t work, doesn’t work.”
Jonathan: Well, prior to that, it’s what everybody body practiced and then it went through a period when mainstream pharma and medical is like, “Oh, that’s all quackery.” The same thing has happened to cannabis.
John: It has.
Jonathan: And now we are—I mean, most of us know we go to a chiropractor, we go get adjusted, take a big deep breath again, feel good again, get your stuff realigned.
John: Realigned.
Jonathan: It’s gonna be the same thing with cannabis.
TeriAnn: Well yeah, they’re running a business and all these natural ways that you can do it, so much cheaper and preventative medicine.
Jonathan: It prevents profits.
TeriAnn: Prevents profits and so it’s not surprising. This is such an important aspect of our body. But no one is being trained on it.
John: And slowly but surely people are becoming trained in it. A lot of the universities now are talking about and doing it. I think even Harvard has done some conferences. We do our conferences. I don’t want anybody to think this is the golden pill in plants as I mentioned in the podcast we did a while back. It doesn’t work for everybody.
TeriAnn: But people should be aware of their options.
John: They should be aware of their options.
TeriAnn: And they should be educated on everything that’s out there.
Jonathan: That’s the most important thing.
John: Educate…
TeriAnn: I mean, that’s the reason we do this podcast. Is people don’t have all the information that they should. So you can make an informed decision if you don’t know.
Jonathan: And if you choose to use it, great. If you choose not to, that’s great too. This is your body but to not have the information is where we’re failed as a society.
TeriAnn: So we’ve talked a lot about cancer and how people can use it for cancer and not only the first episode but now this episode. And there are a few things I wanna touch on. One of the issues that this can really help with is sleep. So, let’s talk about sleep and cannabis.
John: So, sleep alone is the root for a lot of diseases. A lot of fibromyalgia patients. You know, it a domino effect. You work on your sleep, it’ll help with pain. A lot of doctors who work with—that’s the first thing they say, “How is your sleep?” For fibromyalgia patients. “What’s your sleep like?” Let’s work on your sleep, and it will be like I said, a domino effect on what…
TeriAnn: Sleep is so important.
John: Sleep is very important.
TeriAnn: We’ve talked about that, and just how critical it is.
John: It really is. And so a lot of patients come to us and say, “I have anxiety. I have depression. I have stress.” The first thing I ask, “How’s your sleep?” Look at your sleep see if everything—How many times have we lost sleep and the next day your anxiety is up, your stress is up, and your mind’s not working at its full capacity. And so sleep, that’s another—Earlier we talked about one of the number one uses that people come to us with is a pain. But I think sleep is a big thing as well.
John: When Corrine was battling cancer, we tried to get her to sleep as well. Just so your body can heal. So cannabis—I just recently did something with M.D. Anderson and they said, “Less than six hours and more than nine hours of sleep is bad.” And so I think the sweet spot is, of course, six hours, seven hours, eight hours. I don’t always get that. I don’t know about you. But…
Jonathan: I wish.
John: But a lot of patients use cannabis for that right about an hour before bed, once so if they have a psychoactive effect, that they’re not wanting, they can sleep through that. But two, it just helps them sleep, and when they wake up, they’re not groggy, they do not feel like melatonin. I used to use melatonin and you have some crazy dreams on melatonin. Now I use L-Tryptophan. Like we have in—do you guys sell that product?
Jonathan: We don’t.
John: No. But I use that. I think it’s 500 milligrams, you know natural but I wake up perfectly fine. And a lot of patients use cannabis for the same things where they can take it. They fall asleep naturally, they wake up and they’re not groggy. A lot of pain patients will use it before sleeping. Some will take an edible, we talked about edibles. But they’ll do that. And sometimes they wake up in the middle of the night. We recently just did a thing on sleep and pain with our pain masterclass.
John: Having the right mattress is important. Not having caffeine after a certain amount of time, not watching TV and having—what is it? The blue…
Jonathan: Blue light.
John: The blue light. I’m guilty of the blue light. I like having noise, but I like falling asleep with the TV on and…
Jonathan: TVs, phones, all of it. There’s a lot of things that definitely affect sleep. How does cannabis affect your REM sleep? I mean it’s…
John: So, as I mentioned earlier, you have Indica, Sativa and the different hybrids, I will just go start with the three basic there. So, Indica is one of the varieties of different—it’s a variety of cannabis. Just like you have red, white, and blush rose wines, the same thing. And I always use that because I think people can understand different varieties of cannabis just like you can with wines.
John: So you have Indica, which is a variety— a certain type of plant that helps for sleep, body pains and a lot of patients are in pain and it helps for sleep. Indica. Remember when you were a kid and you have your left and right hand. “Oh, it’s your left hand. Oh, it’s a L for left.” So Indica and a lot of people to make it easy, Indica, in the couch. Meaning I should relax and I’m gonna fall asleep. And so a lot of people use that at night time for sleep.
John: Sativa, which is more of upbeat daytime use. So people use that in the daytime, they can be active. You’ll do that and then you have a hybrid.
John: So for sleep what I would recommend, what we see is people using Indica for night time dosing, more of relaxation, sedative if you wanna say. But no side effects, there’s not one reported death of medical cannabis. You can’t say the same for alcohol. You can’t say the same opioids.
Jonathan: Definitely can’t say it for opioids.
John: And so…
Jonathan: For any pharmaceutical.
John: For any [crosstalk 00:33:05].
Jonathan: So, let’s talk for a second. Because as people go and they talk to their doctors, I mean here’s the challenges. They’re gonna talk to a doctor and the doctor’s not gonna know. And so the person can say, “Well, my doctor doesn’t know enough about it. So it must not be good.” How can we educate our audience? Let’s give them some things to understand. So when they do talk to a doctor, they can find if that doctor really knows what they’re talking about or not.
Jonathan: And let’s talk for the first one. Let’s talk about ratios. Beause you’ve mentioned that before outside of the podcast and I wanna make sure that our audience knows that.
John: So ratios are THC: CBD ratio or CBD: THC ratio. A lot of companies—I know now probably a lot of your listeners have seen CBD. So that’s a CBD dominant. They can have 0.3 THC and they’re not enough for you to feel anything. But there are a lot of companies in legal states in California. I’ll use that example, where before eight years ago when we got involved in this, you would see all the products would have a 4:1 ratio, a 2:1 ratio. And the 2, the first number was always THC: CBD, now a lot of these companies have said, “You hear a 2:1 ratio, 4:1 ratio, 8:1 ratio, 16:1 ratio is CBD: THC.” So for our listeners here, always ask what that first number is. Don’t be afraid to ask that question, what is that first number?
Jonathan: You’re good. That’s exactly what we wanna know so…
John: So how important ratios are, so just because my father-in-law had stage 4 lung cancer metastasized to his brain, his ratio was four parts THC, one part CBD. Cannabis is not a one size fits all. Other seniors, 77 at the time, I have seen with lung to brain cancer, I’ve seen them have success with a 1:1 ratio which is 50:50, THC: CBD or CBD: THC. There’s one company in the world which you’re hearing now, it’s a pharmaceutical company called GW Pharmaceuticals, which makes cannabis non-synthetic. So there are synthetic THC out there which is called Marinol. The only health benefit there for cancer patients is that it helps with nausea and some pain, but it is synthetic cannabis, and it has side effects.
Jonathan: We’ve talked a lot about synthetic…
John: Have talked about Marinol?
Jonathan: Not that specifically, but synthetic supplements versus whole food supplements right? There’s a big difference when you go to your store and you buy just some cheap synthetic and how well your body can actually process it, and use it, and the side effects versus just using the whole food which would be the same thing as getting just real cannabis…
John: Product and I call that whole plant medicine.
Jonathan: Exactly.
TeriAnn: Well let me ask you a question on that because I’ve been thinking about that for the last few minutes. We talked to people about being educated on how your supplements are manufactured, the source of the ingredients, there’s not a lot of companies out there who care a lot about what they’re doing. They’re just caring about what they’re making off from the product. How do people who are interested in cannabis do their homework and their research on reputable companies that are creating clean quality cannabis that they can use, what do they look for?
John: So first off, if you live in a legal state or you’re traveling as we talk about cannabis refugees and before you actually uproot your family and yourself and your life and your job and your doctors and everything, to move to a legal state. If you’re in a legal state like Texas and you wanna see if this even works. My advice before you move, or break the law and have it illegally sent in here, go to a legal state, obtain it from a legal reputable location, ask for test results. Test results should be mandatory; they aren’t in all states. But they are to be going in that route, you are putting this plant and this medicine into your body so you should know what you’re putting into your body.
John: So you’re not responsible for getting the test results, the people you’re purchasing your medicine from are dispensaries or rather almost like a compound pharmacist. I use that term loosely, but there are some great companies in this industry that test their products. They test for mold, pesticides, fecal matter, making sure that the ratio is the same. There are some great companies that will test their product before in its flower form. And then when they’re making it into the medicine, they test it again to make sure the formulations stay the same. There are a lot of hemp companies. Again I’m not—I’m still on the fence with hemp so be careful because a lot of the hemp, CBD companies are manufacturing and producing this stuff in China and other in Canada, in Europe.
Jonathan: And let’s clarify for the audience the hemp. Hemp is the male version of the Cannabis plant, correct, and Cannabis is the female version which gets the flower, or I’m I wrong on that?
John: Yes and no. I’m not a big hemp expert and I think you can have both in the hemp plant. I could be completely wrong, so if anybody’s out there who wants to educate me, I learn every day so I’m not telling you that I know everything and that’s it. But there’s a lot of—there are different regulations in different countries. Hemp in the back day was always called ditch weed or mock weed and the reason it got that name as if there was a toxic spill which happened in Nevada numerous times with nuclear waste way back when they would grow hemp. It would suck up the toxins in the ground. They do a couple of rounds of that, and then they go. Next thing you know they’re dirt clean and they’re farming on it, they’re building homes, they’re building schools and playgrounds.
John: So hemp in history has been known as mock weed. It will also suck up a lot of metals and pesticides and other different toxins in the earth. Not saying anything bad about China hemp, but they’re finding that there are pesticides and metals showing up.
Jonathan: Simply from being in the soil.
John: In the soil, and so if you are gonna go and you’re stuck in an illegal state and your only option is a hemp product, I would go with a US-based, US-grown hemp product, but I’d ask that company to see the test results. If you’re in a legal state the same thing. Finding a THC product, cannabis product. You wanna see the test results, ask them to see test results. If they don’t have them and you’re getting it at the dispensary, contact the manufacturer. “I wanna see the test results.”
John: If they don’t have them go to another product. There are a million other products out there just like your supplements products. But you wanna find the company that has tested the product. Make sure that it’s a recent test, don’t use something that’s been around, “Oh I have something from January 2017.” “Okay, what have you guys been doing. Has it been”…
TeriAnn: No and it should be tested regularly. We have to test our products regularly because you have to make sure that those ingredients are still clean every time you go through a new batch of products, then you need to know that that’s still clean.
John: Read the label, we do seal of approval for top companies, top organizations, top products in the industry, top doctors, top dispensaries.
Jonathan: Who’s we?
John: Sorry our company, United Patients Group.
Jonathan: And so is it unitedpatientsgroup.com?
John: I should give you, unitedpatientsgroup.com, we don’t sell products but we’re patient advocates, we have medical professionals on staff that do consultations not only here in the U.S. but overseas via phone or video. We don’t sell products, we don’t have any ulterior motive to say, “Oh, you need this by the way.” [crosstalk 00:41:08]-
Jonathan: Come on sell us one.
John: We don’t do that.
TeriAnn: Just a place people can go for help and guidance
John: So this is a place where they come, “We need your phone or video guidance,” and your own doctor is—we always invite a family member, which we do recommend. And if your doctor is open to it or not, please invite them in. So we have a lot of doctors saying, “I need to learn, I wanna know what’s going on.” And I think everyone’s on the same page because this is their patient so why not be on the same page of conventional medicine with alternative medicine. All of our medical professionals come from a conventional medicine background who specialize in cannabinoid therapeutics.
John: And so with that, talking about the formulation and doses and ratio, it’s not a one size fits all. You have to look at age, you have to look at the weight of the patient, my father-in-law who is in wasting syndrome. If we would have given him the gram amount that we talked about, he would not be here today. He had a heart arrhythmia, so we could not give him a Sativa strain because it would have sped up his heartbeat. So you have to fine-tune.
John: Hopefully one day it will be like cancer, you know, hopefully, one day, “Here you have this, take this. You have this, take that.” So it’s not like that, you are finding the sweet spot. So back to age, weight, current health condition. What are you battling, each cancer is treated differently, breast cancer. You have so many different types of breast cancers. Some breast cancers need a higher CBD ratio over a higher THC ratio.
TeriAnn: When you talk about people being on other medication and then adding this and to remain careful with that, so I think there’s a lot that goes into it. You have to be really careful.
John: It is medicine, you know, and so have this talk with your doctor. Have this talk with the doctor if he or she has even researched into the cannabinoid system and cannabinoids. So we’ve talked about the docuseries, The Sacred Plant, that I host. It’s great hearing patients saying, “I was in my doctor’s office and they have your docuseries on a loop, or I have doctors, we speak in international oncology conferences every year, and they say, “You know what, we have your docuseries on a loop in our office.”
TeriAnn: Yeah, people are just becoming more aware. This has been so insightful for me and I have a lot of knowledge and background behind this just because of what we’ve been through and gaining knowledge through content, but I think this is gonna be very informative for people. But I think this is another thing where it’s coming back to the forefront of people’s minds. It’s no longer just going to be a controversial topic, it’s gonna be a well-known topic and people are gonna be talking about it in a way that this can help you but you have to be careful just like all things. Too much of anything can be detrimental.
John: Too much water can be detrimental, you know.
TeriAnn: Absolutely, but the great thing about this and what I’m walking away with is, this is meant to be a part of us. The cannabinoid receptor we talk about, there are so many issues that this helps with, seizure, sleep, anxiety, stress, cancer, diabetes, auto-immune disease, pain, inflammation. The list goes on and on and on, and it’s just all about that education, what works for you, what doesn’t work for you.
TeriAnn: And this is something people need to be educated on and there are resources out there to learn more. The Sacred Plant is one of them, you know, you talking about the advocacy and the guidance that people can gain from what you’ve been doing. And this is something people need to listen in to, something they need to get educated on.
John: You don’t have to be sick to use medical cannabis. You can use it prevention, you can use it as wellness…
TeriAnn: Great point.
John: It’s great for inflammation, it’s great for sleep which is the root cause for a lot of other diseases. Don’t wait until you’re terminal, don’t wait. Get educated because I can’t tell you how many patients we’ve had over the years that said, “You know, we saw the Cash Hyde story, and now my child without even knowing is going through this, and this allowed us to take the next step, watching The Sacred Plant. I was so on the fence, I was so anti-cannabis until we saw your docuseries on the benefits and the science behind all this, and now I’m a major advocate. I’ve changed my whole life on this.”
John: “For my wife and I, cannabis was not our lifestyle and we’re thrown into this because my father-in-law was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, metastasized to his brain, he was not eating, we did not know the medical benefits then, but we came across a study that showed 40% of cancer patients pass to malnutrition before cancer takes over. And so, that’s where we were and so we asked his oncologist about cannabis for appetite stimulation, not even knowing true medical benefits.
John: And after we research and research and research his appetite, he started eating 24 hours later. And he continued to eat, he got his energy back, his complexion came back, his mood came back, his pain started to diminish. The next thing you know he’s walking, shuffling, I should say, around the house. So we said, “Wow,” he’s like, “Well something is working.” And we thought, “Great, he’ll pass peacefully, he made it through a week.” Our doctor gave us two weeks.
John: Two weeks came, then six months came is when hospice fired him, and they would come over and just play cards. And it was kind of a joke like what do you—”Well, we’re playing Gin rummy.” And they finally said, “Stan I think you—We’re gonna have to fire you.” And we laugh about the term “fire.” He got fired from hospice but that’s basically what it is, it’s like…
TeriAnn:  How many times do you hear that story? You don’t, you don’t.
John: It doesn’t.
Jonathan: So, to wrap things up here and I think the key here is, do your research, get educated, and you can watch John’s docu-series, thesacredplant.com. You can go to his website as well unitedpatientsgroup.com. Go to Google and start searching. Listen, cannabis is not a dirty word, it’s not an illegal word right, you can search cannabis on Google and you’re not gonna have the alphabet boys knocking on your door in 20 minutes. You can go search, get educated, understand all of the benefits of cannabis and understand all of the benefits all of the uses. And get very educated because there’s too much misinformation out there.
Jonathan: And I even encourage you when hearing other people putting out misinformation, challenge them. Challenge them on what do they know, what research have they done? Are they just repeating something that they’ve heard for the last 30 years because that’s what somebody has said about cannabis?
John: It’s not illegal to ask your doctor about cannabis.
Jonathan: I love that.
John: And ask your doctor about the endocannabinoid system, do they know about the endocannabinoid system? If not do a print out offline and say, “Here, I’d like you to read this.” There’s a lot of information out there, it’s a lot of good information, a lot of bad information on any topic. But do your research.
Jonathan: Talk to a doctor. This is medical use, I mean, yes you can self-medicate if it’s something simple like maybe I wanna sleep a little bit better or something like that, you can go try it right, why not, but really…
TeriAnn: Do your research behind that too though. I think you have to have your information right as well.
Jonathan: Exactly. Go talk to a doctor and figure out exactly what you need and try it out and try out the different ratios, try out different dosages.
John: And back to what you were saying, self-medicate, be careful with that, I’m not the one to say, “Titrate off your medicine, go cold turkey because a lot of patients have been taking a sleep aid for years over the counter as well as prescription.” So it’s important to meet with someone who knows about titrating off medications whatever route you go. If it’s, you know, you wanna get off your medication and you wanna go cold turkey, I think to talk to your doctor about that anyway. If you wanna incorporate medical cannabis into titrating off your medications, talk to a doctor who knows medical cannabis.
TeriAnn:  But when you said, you know, a few years ago and beyond, people weren’t really educated on this in the medical field but now it’s becoming more common. And so you’re going to be able to find a doctor out there who can talk to you about this. Search until you find that, find someone who will talk to you about it.
Jonathan: If your current doctor doesn’t know, go find one that does.
TeriAnn: Yeah absolutely.
John: Or ask him if he or she can recommend somebody that they might think may know because I think all doctors know, “Okay, I know Mr. Jones down there is a little more open alternative to medicine than I am.” I bet you he or she would know about that. You were mentioning about how the topic before, a lot of doctors didn’t talk about it so Corrine and I would do a lot of medical conferences. We’re the only cannabis company that they would invite. And we’d do trade show booths. We did pharmaceutical or pharmacy I should say, not pharmaceutical, pharmacy conventions, and the first couple of years people would walk by our booth like, “I’m not looking, I’m not looking.”
TeriAnn: Couldn’t forget you.
John: You know you have one or two stragglers and…
TeriAnn: So taboo, yeah
John: And now our booth is swarmed, “What information can you give us? Talk about it and help us educate.” Now they’re saying, “Can you do a conference with us?” So, that’s why all of our conferences are approved for CME by the AMA giving continuing medical education credits. Doctors and medical professions every year have to get a certain amount of credits. Why not get it on something that their patients are starting to ask about right now. So…
TeriAnn: Thousands of years it’s been around and it’s gaining movement again, it’s awesome.
Jonathan: Excellent. I’m gonna plug one more time just so that people get it, you can go to thesacredplant.com, unitedpatientsgroup.com, You can also go to empoweringyouorganically.com to get the transcripts, the show notes, Cliff’s notes, the links to everything that we’ve talked about here. And you can watch us on video, you can download the audio, so, however, you want to enjoy these podcasts. Thank you so much, John, for joining us.
John: Thank you both, thank you very much.
TeriAnn: It’s been awesome, thank you.
Jonathan: Thanks TeriAnn, thank you, everybody, who’s listening on the airways. Thanks everyone.
TeriAnn: Thank you.

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[Podcast] Empowering You Organically Ep. 13: What's Nature's Most Versatile Healing Plant?

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Podcast Transcript


Jonathan: Welcome everyone to another episode of Empowering You Organically. I’m joined today by my cohost TeriAnn Trevenen.
TeriAnn: Hey, everyone.
Jonathan: Also joined by our special guest John Malanca.
John: Thanks for having me.
Jonathan: Thanks for being here, John. Today, we’re going to talk about … it’s got to be the most versatile healing plant in the world. So, if you suffer from any kind of pain or sleep insomnia, anxiety, stress, diabetes, autoimmune, inflammation, the list goes on, and on, and on, this is an episode that you need to pay very close attention to. So, John, why don’t you give us just a little bit about your story.
John: So, my name’s John Malanca, and back in 2011, my wife and I were thrown into this industry because my father-in-law was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. [inaudible 00:00:49] to his brain. I had just lost my father, not to disease, but a heart attack a year prior, so I was … when I saw my father-in-law going through this … I know that tissues are there because I do get emotional. I was on him. I was his caregiver. The family was the caregiver, but he went from a healthy 77-year-old man, retired dentist, athlete to literally a prisoner of war, and wasn’t eating, wasting away, and every day the phone would ring, we thought here’s the call, here’s the call.
John: And so, one day, I said, “I want to go to your next oncologist appointment,” and so we went, and I picked him up, carried him. He was on full-time oxygen, and we went to the hospital. And we were in the room probably the size of the studio here, and I asked his oncologist, “How much time do we have?” And she said, she looked at us in shock, and said, “Do you really want to know?” And my father-in-law said, “This is my family. Share.” She said, “Probably two weeks.”
TeriAnn: Wow.
John: Get emotional just talking about it. And I said, “Well, what could we do?” And she says, “Really, nothing. I can give you morphine,” and he said, “I’m not in any pain.” And I looked at my wife and looked at my in-laws, and I said, “I don’t mean to offend anyone here. We came across a study that showed 40% of cancer patients pass of malnutrition before cancer.” So, I looked at everybody, and it’s never been talked about, and I said, “I don’t mean to offend you,” I said, “What about medical cannabis?” We’re from California,” and I said, “And they’re popping up everywhere.” And I said, “What about medical cannabis for appetite stimulation?” The doctor said, “I know nothing about it.” My family said, “We’ll try anything.” And I said, [inaudible 00:02:37] the caregiver, and we laughed because I call Corinne Mary Poppins. Didn’t drink to the smoke.
John: And so, she’s looking at me like, what am I going to do? I said, “Just do that, the blind leading the blind, and we’ll do this.” And so, we went around, and you know, there was no help. There was no help, and we just started. And we knew he couldn’t smoke anything, so I found a coconut oil capsule infused with raw and heated cannabis, which I’ll go further into that in the show here. But three milligrams, and we didn’t know anything about dosing, so I just wanted to go minute-to-minute, and we would give it to him. And within 24 hours, he was eating. And we said, “Okay, it’s working. He’ll pass peacefully.”
John: Day two, day three, day five, he’s still doing it, and by day eight … and remember, he’s on full-time oxygen. I mean, all you heard is … you know. And so, day eight, we’re at the house, and he’s shuffling around the house now. And we looked at him, I said, “What are you doing?” And he’s like, something’s working. And I said, “Okay.” And then I said, “Well, don’t get too cocky on us.” And he said, “Well, something’s working.”
Jonathan: I get chills just hearing it.
TeriAnn:  I know, me too. [crosstalk 00:03:47]
John: I got chills on my arm.
TeriAnn: Yeah, yup.
John: So, I’m going to fast forward six months. Six months, he’s walking, he’s driving. Hospice has fired him as a patient, and we just thought, fantastic. And so, you asked me … Kerry or Teri?
TeriAnn: Teri.
John: Teri with the [crosstalk 00:04:05]
TeriAnn: Yup, you got it.
John: I’ve had many years of walk-mans on, and so [inaudible 00:04:08].
TeriAnn:  It’s all right.
John: It’s Teri I said.
John: So, six months later. You asked me what my background, so my background was branding marketing advertising. I worked for a travel magazine and websites for years, and so I just said, “God, there have to be a million other families out there like us that cannabis is not our lifestyle,” and so I said let’s build a website. And so, we built a website called United Patients Group. We don’t sell products, we’re strictly education and information. The leader of education and information, and we teach local, state, international governments, as well as local, state and international medical institutions about medical cannabis. All of our courses are CME approved continuing medical education.
John: So, that was at six months’ mark. So, at the three month mark, we said, “This is a need,” so we started building this, and then at the sixth month mark, we realized that who was good in the industry, which was bad in the industry, what was needed, and so we incorporated a little heavier dose, which was called full extract cannabis oil. A lot of people have seen it. It looks like molasses. We did such a minute amount with that. He would do it at night under his tongue before bed, so if he had any psychoactive feeling, he would sleep through it.
John: By that point, we had read a bunch of studies that showed THC has been proven to kill cancer cells. CBD, which is in the news every day, has been proven to stop cancer cells, as well as spreading. So, the combination of the two is what we were looking for. So, we incorporated a four to one ratio, four parts THC to one part CBD under his tongue at night before bed. Again, a minute amount. Maybe about five milligrams, nothing major. And that was at the six-month mark.
John: At the nine-month mark, and they were never going to get scanned. At the nine-month mark, it was 10:00 at night, Saturday night, and the phone rang, and we said, “Here’s that call. Here’s that call,” to my mother-in-law, and we said, “Everything okay?” And she said, “Check your email. “We jumped out of bed, and it was the first scan that came back, it said, “No evidence of recurrent disease.”
TeriAnn: Wow.
John: So, talk about just tears of joy. So, my background, cannabis, was never our lifestyle. For the first nine months, I didn’t put Malanca on anything. We would do press releases, and I would just put John.
TeriAnn: So, you were just afraid of [crosstalk 00:06:36]
John: Well, because of my background.
TeriAnn: Yeah.
John: My family.
TeriAnn: Yup.
John: Just relationships I’ve had in my life. A lot of people have this stigma, cannabis, drug user, stoner.
TeriAnn: And how long ago was this? What year was this in?
John: This is 2011.
TeriAnn: 11.
Jonathan: It’s the reason we wanted to do this podcast, right. And if you’re listening, and you don’t know much about cannabis, or all you know about it is that it’s illegal, do not tune out. This is the stuff that you need to hear. This is the stuff that you’re not hearing on your local news. This is the stuff that you need to understand because I mean, this is a powerful plant that’s been used for thousands of years, and many different [crosstalk 00:07:21] ailments.
Jonathan: Not all treatments will you get quote-unquote “high,” or some sort of psychedelic response, or anything like that. So, there are all kinds of different things that you just got to stay tuned as we talk about this. And let’s do that, let’s talk about when this shift happened, because of pre-1920, 95% of all nutraceuticals, pharmaceutical supplements, whatever-
John: Had cannabis in it.
Jonathan: Had cannabis in it.
John: As a medicine.
Jonathan: Right.
John: Can I back up before my brain goes elsewhere? We’re 2018 right now. My father-in-law’s still alive, and he’s had 17 lung and brain scans, and they all, knock on wood, come back with no evidence of recurrent disease.
Jonathan: Wow.
TeriAnn: Wow.
John: So, he is a happy senior living his life cancer free, and if I didn’t see it with my own eyes and experience that, we would’ve never believed that. We would’ve never had believed that. And so, the goal I want people to realize that this is medicine. It doesn’t work for everybody. I don’t want everyone to think that this is the golden pill, the golden ticket, the golden everything.
Jonathan: Like anything out there, right. No diet works for everybody. No prescription med or health supplement.
TeriAnn: We talk about that. We talk about that a lot [crosstalk 00:08:42]
Jonathan: Everybody’s different.
TeriAnn: Everyone has a different body, different makeup-
Jonathan: Different metabolism.
TeriAnn: Everything works differently for everyone, but this could be something that impacts you in a positive way.
John: It can. The majority of the events that we go to, 99% of them that we speak to are not in the cannabis industry. It’s all integrative oncology, epileptic, pediatric, seniors, geriatric. And I always do this one slide when I speak it, and it’s my favorite slide, it’s a big roll of duct tape, and I said, “People always ask me, does this work?” And I said, “I have the duct tape up here because I don’t want to say it’s like duct tape with a million and one uses, but it truly is.” I’ve seen it with arthritis. The elderly with sleeping. Depression, cancer, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, aids, the list goes on, and on and on, and you can Google these. You can go to Google Scholar. There are more studies done on medical cannabis and the benefits that I think on other topics like this.
Jonathan: Absolutely.
John: So, it’s not something that just popped up three years ago. The CBD phase came into effect, and so it’s been around. It was banned in 1937. Our government banned it. I think just because of different laws. I’m not into the whole political, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but they said it was the minorities used it, and it’s bad, and it’ll have these hoodlums come and take your white daughters away from you.
Jonathan: What I’ve read all about, right, where they gave it the street name marijuana.
John: Totally, right. Marijuana.
TeriAnn: Yup.
Jonathan: Changed it from cannabis to marijuana, and they were able to get laws passed, because people didn’t realize that they were talking about cannabis, right. They thought it was marijuana [crosstalk 00:10:37]
TeriAnn: People are afraid of what they don’t know and understand, and it wasn’t understood.
John: We were those people.
TeriAnn: Yeah.
John: We were those people. And so, I never use the word marijuana. I never use the word cure. I use cannabis. I use to heal. I use cannabis kills cancer cells, it’s been proven. You can search for it, Google it. Everything’s Google nowadays. Go to Google Scholar. But you will show that THC kills cancer cells while CBD stops the spread, and CBD and THC are cannabinoids. Just like the different varieties in wine, there are a bunch of different varieties of cannabis, with all different. There are 113 different cannabinoids in the cannabis plant, and still, people are discovering more each and every day.
John:  The most popular one is THC, which gives a psychoactive effect. Also, right behind there is CBD, which is a non-psychoactive, which you’re hearing a lot of patients using for seizure disorders for children and adults. But if my father-in-law was on a straight CBD regiment, I know for a fact he wouldn’t be here today. THC was needed.
John: Same thing with epileptic children. A lot of these states have CBD only laws, which they’re designed specifically for pediatric children. CBD works for epileptic children, epilepsy. With just straight CBD, it’ll work about 12-15%. Add a minute amount of THC, that number will go up to about 70%. So, THC is needed. I don’t want people to be afraid thinking CBD’s the medical portion of the cannabis plant and THC’s the recreational portion of the cannabis plant.
Jonathan: Well, and let’s just talk about that, because most of us, or at least I’ll speak for myself, right, in my teenage years, the early 20s, right. What I know about cannabis is rolling it up in a joint, smoking it, sticking it in a bowl, smoking it. Nobody was using it for medical stuff then. Now, I mean, all of that’s different. Let’s talk about the difference between medical and recreational use, because you don’t have to smoke it, right. You don’t have to roll it up in a joint, you don’t have to smoke it, you don’t have to sit around somewhere and be lazy all day just smoking weed. We’re talking about a totally different thing here.
John: Totally different thing. So, we speak at a lot of retirement communities around the country, and I always ask the seniors how many people have used medical cannabis? And at first, you’d have 8-12% of the room. Now, when I ask that question, it’s like 90% of the room. But I ask the question, how many people think the only way of consuming medical cannabis is via smoking it? And the same thing, used to be at 12%. Now, they look at me like, come on, throw us a harder softball question than that one.
John: So, you don’t have to smoke it. There are tinctures under the tongue. There’s topical, great for arthritis. Vaporization, which is another form of ingesting, but not lighting up your bowl, lighting up the flower material. Some people use it for suppositories. Now, they have patches, transdermal patches that you can put on your wrist, or your ankle, or your neck that will bring in the different types of cannabinoids. There’s a lot of different companies that have different types of … just like with your Organixx products, you have a line. So, they have a different line of different cannabis products.
Jonathan: Different delivery systems.
John: Delivery systems, but also different cannabinoids in those delivery systems.
Jonathan: So, talk about that. I mean, because I want that education. What are cannabinoids?
John: So, cannabinoids are part of the cannabis plant, and so just like in a variety in wine, you can grow a pinot wine or a chardonnay wine. Merlots and cabs. And the same thing with cannabis. So, now, you have a bunch of farmers growing different varieties of cannabis for different ailments. Again, THC was and has been probably the most popular, and it’s gotten a bad name because people assume that THC goes with the recreational stoner, and this is what you see the kids on the corner, which we saw in high school. That’s what people used. And now, with people discovering different types of cannabinoids … it’s called an entourage effect when you’re combining the different cannabinoids. It’s like baking a cake and forgetting you leave water, flour, eggs. Your cake is not going to rise.
John: And the same thing with different types of cannabinoids. You can mix them in there. Some are better for sleep. Some are better for inflammation. THCA, which is a non-psychoactive, which I’m a big fan of. So, THCA, you’re in the vitamins world. Remember wheatgrass? I’m a big fan. I do wheatgrass every day. And so, you can juice wheatgrass. Well, you can juice cannabis plant. And so before, you have a beautiful cannabis plant in your backyard, and you can cut it down, and you can juice it, and you can juice it into wheatgrass [inaudible 00:15:28]. Take a shot. Non-psychoactive, great for inflammation. Great for cancer fighters and other disease fighters. Great for dementia patients, for brain inflammation. Parkinson’s. There are so many studies on dementia and Parkinson’s now, and for some reason, I’m seeing more cases of dementia and Parkinson’s than I ever have in my life.
TeriAnn: Yeah, absolutely. Do we have a rough number about how many cannabinoids there are out there that are known right now?
John: 113.
TeriAnn:  113.
John: 113, and then you tie in the terpenes. Terpenes, myrcene, Limonene. Those are the different smells. So, you got to a-pinene, like you go up in the mountains. We’re from California. You go up to Lake Tahoe, and you can smell the pine. That’s pinene. Myrcene is in mangos. Linalool is in lavender. And so, I think you carry a lavender product, and I carry a jar in my briefcase just to smell for calming. And so, that’s the difference.
John: So, now, you have companies that are making different … they’re almost like compound pharmacists. They’re not pharmacists, I’ll use that term loosely, but they’re making different formulations, and adding different terpenes in that you can smell, and it’s for calming as well.
John: Perfect example of why I truly believe a medical professional is needed, as well as a pharmacist, is needed, is because my father-in-law had a heart arrhythmia. Now, I’m really going to go off the thing here, but in the cannabis plant, you have indica, which is for a lot of pain patients, helps with sleep. You have sativa, which is another variety for basically a daytime, and then you have a hybrid, of course, a mixture, which you’re seeing again in wine. I use wine. My family’s in the wine business, but I just use that example because people say, “I don’t want to get high,” and I say, “It’s the same thing.” You can have a sip of wine, or you can drink three bottles of wine. Same thing with cannabis. You can have a sip of THC, which you’re not going to have major. But if you had three bottles of this THC like you would, you’re going to feel something. So, again, more is not better in anything. Less is more. We’re a big fan of micro-dosing.
John: One, it’s better for your body, I believe, and it saves money. You were going to say something. Sorry, Jon.
Jonathan: No, I’m listening, because I love your analogy to wine. I think that that is the most relevant analogy not just with the different kinds of wines that are out there, but the fact that we all know we may be able to have a half of glass or a glass of wine and be fine, and if we have a bottle, or two or three, we’re not fine.
John: You’re going to feel something. Yeah.
Jonathan: And I think that’s where a lot of fear … I think there are two places where fear comes in around cannabis, and I think that is, oh, it’s illegal, which means it has to be bad, but which we could go down that rabbit hole. I don’t think we’re going to, because it’s becoming more and more legal, and in a few years it’s going to be legal everywhere.
John:  It’s legal in 33 states in some form or another.
Jonathan: Exactly. So, politics aside, I mean, this is going to be available to everybody very soon. The other fear is I don’t want to get high. And I get it. I mean, there’s a lot of people that don’t consume alcohol, because they don’t want to lose control, and they don’t know what it’s going to feel like. Am I getting high, am I going to see pink elephants? Like, they just don’t know, right. That’s not going to happen, because you can totally manage exactly your doses, your micro doses to just a little bit. And that’s why you highly recommend seeing an expert about this, right? This isn’t like sit at home, and try to get out your own little chemistry lab and try to make up your own cures.
John: That’s a great point. So, cannabis is not a one size fits all. You need to look at age, weight, current health condition, your ailment, and any other medications you may be on because there is drug to drug interactions, and so it’s very important to have that. When we were 17 years old, you’re like, oh, won’t be doing that again.
Jonathan: Right.
John: The majority of the patients we work with are … I would say 99.9 are true patients battling something. We have about 65% of them are senior citizens who have never tried cannabis, or maybe they did it was 50 years ago. And so, it’s changed a lot. It’s become more of a science. The products are a lot more potent than they were then. I always use a pharmaceutical example analogy as well. Your doctor’s not going to say take eight pharmaceuticals every hour. He or she’s going to say take one every eight hours. And the same thing with cannabis, more is not better.
TeriAnn: Well, you even said with your father-in-law, that you started out slow, but look at the impact. Because you didn’t know the dosage, so you wanted to be careful.
John: We never went higher than that. So, I don’t know.
TeriAnn: He stayed on that same regimen.
John: Same. And people used to doubt us at the very beginning. Impossible. I don’t know if your listeners, how far they’ve delved into this industry. There’s a lot of great information on any product’s nutritional value. You know, your vitamins and stuff like that. And there’s a lot of misinformation. There’s a lot of misinformation on cannabis. A lot of people think you need to take a gram a day. To me, a gram a day is having a glass of wine one day, and two jugs of whiskey tomorrow. That’s overkill.
John:  If my father-in-law went straight out of the bat, and took a gram a day … remember he wasn’t eating, and 40% of cancer patients pass of malnutrition. He would’ve been so out of it stoned. I hate the word stoned, but stoned.
Jonathan: That’s what would’ve happened.
John: And he would’ve just been stoned and comatose in his bed, and again, he wouldn’t of eaten, and he would’ve passed away, which has happened to a lot of patients. And so, less is more. And so, in a gram of oil … this industry has a long way to go. They still use the measurement of a rice grain. Where did they come up with a rice grain of oil? I have no idea, but that’s what stuck. And so, in a gram of oil, there are about 16 grains of rice in a gram of oil. This is what the internet says. Take a gram of oil.
John: My father-in-law never exceeded a half a grain of rice. Never exceed a half of grain of rice, and he’s had success. So, people are like, impossible, impossible, you have to take a gram a day. So, now, a lot of doctors are saying, no, micro-dosing, and they came back, and said, “How did you know that?” And Corinne and I were lucky. It was trial and error, we didn’t have any error. We really didn’t have an error. I don’t know if you know, but I just recently lost my wife to pancreatic cancer, and cannabis did not help her.
John: Pancreatic is the worst of the worst. We’re still scratching our heads. It’s like, how did this happen to us? We saved my father-in-law. We’ve saved thousands of families.
Jonathan: You and your wife together had.
Jonathan: You and your wife had saved thousands of people.
John: Thousands of people. We’ve done a lot for this industry to change the stigma on this. I mean, we started our company, it’s a nonprofit, and we were the first medical cannabis company in the history of the United States to be invited to the US Capital to speak, and it was an open mic. Next, it was United Patients Group come on in, and we did a day of education, and it was for Congress, bipartisan, and we were in the US Capital, and we did lunch, and it was a full day event.
John: We’re proud to do that. We’re not Mormon. We’ve been invited to Utah twice. We were part of the reason for them recently passing the law. But we’ve done this, and they look at us because we don’t sell a product. We’re strictly education and information, and we have a great reputation, and I’d like to think that we’re great ambassadors for this industry and this plant.
John: It helps a lot of people. Like my wife, it did not help her. Pancreatic is a tough, tough cancer to fight. I remember I used to call all of our patients when we first started. How is your husband doing? And this one lady said, “He passed on Tuesday.” We cried every day. Good and bad. We cried every day. And I said, “I’m so sorry.” She said, “John, you allowed him to get out of a hospital. You allowed he and his brother who were at odds because the brother was in denial that his brother was dying, but you allowed him to get out of the hospital, and we upped our daughter’s wedding by three months, and we had it in the backyard, and he got to walk our daughter down the aisle, and he passed.” And without cannabis, that wouldn’t have happened.
John: And so, it does a lot of good. I know it’s not for everybody. I don’t want to ever give anybody false hope. But hope, we had a lot of hope. I lost my wife in four months, and I’m still in shock. Like, how did this happen? She passed on the 19th, and today’s the 19th. So, every 19th, I mean, it’s-
Jonathan: I’m sorry, man.
TeriAnn: That’s so hard.
John: It is hard.
TeriAnn: So hard.
John: And flying out here. I mean, not only was she my wife, my best friend, my business partner. When I say we were together 24/7, we were together 24/7, and so having that other half my body, it’s tough. So, if anybody’s going out through this right now, I send you love, and prayers and a hug, because I’ve lived it. I’ve been on both sides. I’ve seen this plant be a successful medicine, and helping others, and losing someone as close as my wife.
TeriAnn: I think your story’s so important too. I mean, I appreciate you sharing, and that’s a really personal story to share with people who are going to be listening, but we talked earlier in the episode, and we’ve talked about this a lot in the episodes about how every individual is unique and different. And the beautiful thing about your story is is you’ve been through this incredible story of your father-in-law and all these people you’ve helped, and then to go through that with your wife, it’s such a tender thing. And for you to feel like it didn’t end the way we wanted it to end, but you’re still here talking about this thing that you’re so passionate about, you and your wife were so passionate about, you’re still so passionate about. You’ve helped so many people. And every single person is unique, and every story’s going to be different, and here you are still telling this story, because this can truly help people and change people, and you’re not going to give up on that. And I think that’s such a powerful story for people to hear.
John: We do a lot with the International Integrated Oncology World, and so this last year I was in … you asked me if I traveled a lot. Where was I? I was in Florida, and there were about 350 International Integrated Oncologists who have known us for the past seven years. We’re the only cannabis company they ever invited in, and I stood up on stage. And these are doctors, International Integrated Oncologists, that do everything besides chemo and radiation. There’s a 2.1 success rate of chemoradiation here in America. There’s a 2.3 success rate in Australia. Why they use Australia as a marker, I do not know. So, I would never tell anybody not to conventional.
John: I’ve had family members who have had success with conventional. My aunt is going through breast cancer right now, and her daughter and they’ve had success with breast cancer with conventional.
TeriAnn: And everyone has a choice, choice of your health is so important, right.
John: Cannabis does work extremely well with chemo and radiation. It helps with not only inflammation, better mood, pain-free, nausea, as well as appetite, and so they go well with each other. So, again, I don’t ever want to tell anybody don’t do this and use this.
TeriAnn:  I want to touch on something as we’ve talked about this in this entire episode. We talked in a previous episode about nutraceuticals versus pharmaceuticals, and the history of that. Now, we’re talking about the history of cannabis, and it all kind of happened at the same time. We talked about how did we get back to a world where supplements are accepted again, and people are taking them, and natural medicine is coming back into play, and something so unique and interesting about your story, is your bringing something that was so accepted before, and thousands of years this has been used, and just in the last 100 years did people start saying no, no, no, and they didn’t understand it, and they were afraid of it. And here you are, this pioneer in cannabis and all that goes with it, and bringing it back to light again. It’s another way of naturally treating yourself, and it’s so misunderstood, and people don’t take the time to educate themselves.
TeriAnn: And just like Jonathan said, not everyone, but a lot of people just have this bad perception of cannabis, and they think, oh, it’s this, it’s that, it’s illegal, it means drugs, and bad things happen, and crime. But it’s not just that. Yes, there is that side of it. There are bad sides to everything. Too much can be detrimental, right, but it’s just a very fascinating story, and I think people have to realize this is another part of the natural industry like supplements, like organic food and non-GMO that’s coming back to light again, and people are noticing.
TeriAnn: I was telling Jonathan the other day when we were talking about doing this episode. I saw a kiosk in the mall for cannabis, right, for CBD oil. Like, could you have imagined that even five years ago?
John: No. You go into health food stores all across America, and I see that.
TeriAnn: Yeah.
John: And it’s frustrating because just like in the supplement industry, there’s a lot of-
Jonathan: Junk.
John: Junk. That’s a good word.
TeriAnn: Yeah.
John: I was going to say something else. And that’s a great point that you bring up, because it’s frustrating because a lot of these companies, and I’m not against hemp CBD at all, but CBD, this craze has popped up, and everyone thinks CBD, CBD, CBD, and it’s frustrating when I hear these big companies say CBB. And it’s like, you’re messing that up.
TeriAnn: Yeah. Yeah.
John: Cannabidiol is what a CBD. Charlie, Bravo, David. And you’re seeing a lot of these people just jumping on board thinking it’s a get rich quick industry, and it’s frustrating. And it’s frustrating for the people who have been in this from the … I shouldn’t say beginning, because we’re not from the beginning. Cannabis has been legal in the state of California for 22 years. Corinne and I got into this eight years ago, so there’s a whole pioneer before us that had to fight this fight to avoid the cops, and stuff like that, just for medicine.
John: So, it’s been used for medicine. It’s always medically approved in California 22 years ago. People don’t realize that. It was approved for glaucoma and aids patients, and then as time has gone on … the joke is, when I travel a lot, it’s like, everyone has glaucoma in California. But it’s frustrating, because there are a lot of states that have approved qualified conditions where epilepsy is approved, and cancer’s not.
John: We were in Utah, and one of the parents I was speaking with, their child, they have two children, one has epileptic seizures, which is a legal patient, and their other child has cancer, which is an illegal patient. And I said, “Goodness gracious, what do you do?” He goes, “I break the law. I break the law.” And he was high up in the church. He was high up in the church. And I said, “How awful is that?” He goes, “It is awful.”
TeriAnn: That you have to feel that way.
John: You have to.
Jonathan: Well, it’s kind of absurd that they’re making it ailment based, right, so disease based. So, yes, you can use it for this disease, but not that disease. I mean, come on.
TeriAnn: Doesn’t even make any sense.
Jonathan: Right.
John: Yeah.
TeriAnn: Doesn’t make sense.
Jonathan: Yeah. And for those of you listening, we’re going to go further down this rabbit hole. We’re actually going to have John back, and we’re going to do another episode after this where we talk about the specific uses, like exactly what to use, where to get it, who to talk to, so hang tight. Don’t think that we’re just doing a whole podcast where we talk about it, and you’re left in the dark at the end saying, well, now what?
TeriAnn: I want to ask one thing before we end today. This has led you on an amazing journey, it’s connected you to a lot of people, but in those beginning years when you started with your father-in-law and saw what it could do for him, what did you do? Because I loved how you were like, I wouldn’t even put my last name on anything, and now you’re just like, I don’t care. Like, I know how this can impact people, so I’m going to share my story. That’s so powerful. But what did you do? What did you and your wife do? Where did you go for information? Where did you go for your research and things like that? Because when people hear this, and they understand there’s a different side to what they’ve always believed, the first question’s going to be like, information, information, information, and I think you have a few good places to refer people from what you’ve been through and now where you are on your journey.
John: So, the studies are out there. So, remember when I had my brain drained a minute ago when I said I forgot, about my name. So, that night when my mother-in-law said, “You guys saved your father’s life,” I said, “That’s it. I’m never turning back, and the rest of the thing was-
TeriAnn: My name will go on everything.
John: Malanca was everywhere because I had a lot of people in the industry when I was … we would do press releases, and people would get upset with me. Like, how can you not put your name here? I said, “Well, this was not my lifestyle.” And so, I do have other business colleagues that probably would just like, are you kidding me, what’d you do? So, anyway, after that, I put my name on everything.
John: Where did we get information? We researched like crazy. My wife Corinne was a major researcher. My father-in-law, like I said, he’s Stanford graduate, retired dentist, and so he loved these. So, we started handing him a bunch of research papers, and we’d read. So, there are more studies.
TeriAnn: It’s out there.
John: It’s out there.
TeriAnn: You can Google it I’m sure.
John: There are more studies. Well, nowadays, you can Google everything.
TeriAnn: Everything, yes.
John: I’ll tell you a funny story. My brother was walking my little nephew to school one day, and he’s like, “Dad, can I get a sister?” And he’s like, “Well, that’s something you need to ask your mom.” He’s like, “Why do we need to ask mom; you can just Google it and buy anything online.” He’s like, “Good point, kid.”
TeriAnn: So funny.
John: But there are more studies done, this will blow your mind, in China, Czech Republic, Israel, all over Europe on cannabis than here in the United States. We should be the leader. We should be the leader, but they’re leading the pack right now in this. It’s turning around. We’re starting to become-
Jonathan: We were the leader at one point.
John: And our government owns a US patent on medical cannabis CBD as a nutraceutical, but they also put it as a schedule one at no medical value. And my father-in-law, we shared that with him, I don’t know, seven years ago, and we were sitting up there at their retirement community, and he looked at us, and he goes, he’s a very humble man, he said, “Why isn’t someone suing the US government for murder?” And I said, “I’ll be darned.” We did an article on that. Not to throw anybody under the bus. We’ve done articles on side by side with fibromyalgia patients with Lyrica. We have a great, and I’ll send it to you, but we have a great ad. It was a magazine ad that we’ve put out, and so many different, but it was a side by side of fibromyalgia, Lyrica, and the side effects, benefits and side effects, and cannabis side effects zero, sleeping, hunger, and the benefits, and I’ve had a lot of people call.
John: This one guy called from Arizona, he said, “Is this John?” I said, “Yeah.” He goes, “I think it’s wonderful what you’re doing, and I love that ad. I just wanted to talk to you before the pharmaceutical company takes you down.” I don’t want to look at as a pioneer or an outlaw. And we never looked at it that way. Maybe I’m jinxing myself here, but it was never. We never looked at is as fear. We just thought we’re helping people.
TeriAnn: Yeah. When I was talking about you being a pioneer, there are certainly people who have come before you, but you’re getting the message out there. And now at this point in your life … so a lot of people can go and just Google the research [inaudible 00:35:19], and I’d love for you to send me that side by side so we can post it for the listeners. But where are you at now in the journey as far as sharing the information?
John: Yup, and so I was thinking on that too. And so, a couple years ago, Jon your dear friend, Manny Goldman, came to us, and he … you guys have worked together for a while, and he wanted to do a docu-series, and getting the word out. He called it The Sacred Plant. And so, Manny’s wish list and punch list was he came into the industry and spoke to a couple people. Ricky Lake, the talk show, and so she did a docu-series that we were involved with. He said, “Here’s my punch list. Can you help me? I’m looking for one, a reputable company, two, a host, preferably a husband and wife team who has a good reputation,” [inaudible 00:36:14] third one, there’s my thing.
John: She started laughing, she says, “Well, not only do I have that. It’s the same people.” You know, reputable company, reputable host, and they’re husband and wife, and so Manny came to us, said, “Hey, I’m doing this docu-series, would you guys like to be the face of this docu-series on medical cannabis?” And over the years, we’ve been approached numerous times. And I said something my dad shared with my brother and me, he’s like, you have one name, one reputation, don’t blow it. And I said, “Manny, here’s my punch list now of what I will do, what we will do, and what we won’t do.” He said, “Great.”
John: And reputation is huge, you know. Without our reputation, we wouldn’t have been invited to Utah, we wouldn’t have been invited to the US Capitol in Washington DC. We wouldn’t have been invited to the New Zealand Parliament, and stuff like that. And so, Manny said, “Here’s what’s going on,” and I said I wanted to review everything before we spoke about it, and so we’re about to finish season four. It’s called The Sacred Plant. It’s a docu-series all on medical, medical cannabis, the history, different types of ailments, speaking with doctors, and scientists, and researchers, and nurses and other medical professionals, as well as patients, and the benefits of this. Just like the duct tape, we touch upon all that.
John: And so, it’s a free docu-series. The season one. We did seven docu-series, and then followed up with seven webinar series for live Q&As with interactions with patients, and we’ve reached 190 countries. I think we’ve had close to 600,000 viewers on that season one. Season two, it was healing secrets explained, I think is what it was called. Excuse me, and I’ll give you the correct title. But we followed up with different patients, what it’s like to speak to a doctor, what it’s like to obtain medicine, why it’s important to have tested medicine, why it’s important that it’s not a one size fits all, and we talk about dosing, and formulation, and ratios, and protocols, and guidance, why it’s important for guidance. And bringing this talk to the masses. It’s not illegal.
John: A lot of patients, you know, we’re here in Texas. We have so many Texans that we work with, and they’re afraid to talk about this with their doctors. It’s not illegal to speak about this with your doctors. Back to the senior community, I asked how many speak about this, talk about this with their doctors, and at first, the small hands, shortage of hands would raise, and now the whole room is up there. But then I said, “What was the reaction?” And she said, this 80-year-old lady, she goes, “My doctor said if I hear you ask me this question again, I’m going to ask you to [inaudible 00:39:02] doctor,” and I said, “What’d you do?” She says, “I fired my doctor.” And the whole room chuckled, but it’s the truth. You should have a right to try a different mode out. It’s your health.
Jonathan: I love that statement, it’s your health, it’s your body, it’s your choice. We’re all adults here that are listening to this podcast or living our lives, and quite frankly, it’s BS when we’re forced to only take this, or only learn about this information, and so it’s upon you as a listener to do research. I mean, that’s why we had John on here, and you can go to TheSacredPlant.com, and watch these docu-series. Educate yourself, hear all these stories, learn all the different treatments that it can be used for, and really get educated. And that way when you go talk to your doctor, if they don’t listen, you can walk away and go talk to another doctor.
Jonathan: And listen, you may need to hop on a plane and go to another state to talk to a doctor that has more experience, or you might need to go somewhere else. This is your health, this is your body. You have the right to educate yourself and you have the right to take care of yourself.
John: And you made a great point, go to a different state. So, a lot of our followers say, “John, I don’t live in a legal state. How do I have access to it? I don’t want to break the law.” And so, it’s legal in 33 states in some form, and so I always share with people before you become a cannabis refugee, which is literally uprooting your life and going. Some patients are forced to do that for their children or their loved one, or themselves. But go to a legal state. I would say go to California. California’s been legal for 22 years. We consider that the medical state, where Colorado is a recreational state. I know we’re going to talk about the difference between medical and recreational, but go there. Take a long weekend, four or five days, two weeks if you can, to see if this plant even works for you.
John: If it does, then you know, okay, it’s something I should look into to see how to obtain it. Do I go there? I’m not advising anybody to break the law, but I’m certain people do. I know a lot of Texans that we’ve worked with over the years have gone to different states and obtained it, and how they get it back home it’s up to them, but you better believe I would’ve gone to the end of the earth to do something for my wife, or my father, or anyone.
TeriAnn: Absolutely.
Jonathan: You have the right to life.
John: Yeah, right.
Jonathan: And so, if you need to go to another state, go to another state.
TeriAnn: Absolutely.
Jonathan: Nobody’s saying to specifically do anything, break any laws, but you have the right to life, and to do what you need to do for you and your family.
John: And when you’re in a situation like I was with Corinne, and Corinne and I were together, I consulted with doctors in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Italy, America. I brought her down to a clinic down in Mexico. And I would still go back down there, but our doctor in California said I think you should go down to Mexico. I said, “Come on. I’m not going to be one of those people taking my wife down to a Mexico clinic,” but you know what, it was an American doctor who’s been down there for 18 years. You know why he went down there because he can try different modalities that are not legal here in the states. Cannabis was not one of them, but we did other things. Stem cells, different other types of treatment, and I would do it again. Pancreatic is just the worst of the worst. It sneaks up on you.
John: We did all the blood tests when we first had some symptoms of sore back and stomach. All the blood tests can back negative. Okay, let’s do food allergy tests. We did extreme food allergy tests. Oh, you have a little allergic reaction to pineapple and vanilla. Babe, we can live without pineapple and vanilla in our life. And then one day, it came on like a stomach ache, we went down there, we thought okay, maybe an ulcer. I mean, she doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, works out, stays on top of her health. Our life is nutrition. And it was a four centimeter mass in her pancreas. And so, it sneaks up on you. It doesn’t discriminate. Disease does not discriminate. Cancer does not discriminate.
John: And I know a lot of our followers not only at United Patient Group, but at The Sacred Plant, and I’m certain with yours, someone in their life has had a major disease.
TeriAnn: Everyone knows someone. And I think that’s a great way to close out this episode. I think this is such a misunderstood topic.
John: Totally.
TeriAnn: And just like you would’ve done anything, I think that’s how a lot of people feel, but you have to know what the options are, and they’re not just necessarily what your doctor’s telling you. And so, I think that people need to be educated. This is a topic people absolutely need to be educated on. When I asked you about where you’ve got your research and your information, obviously, you did a lot of prior to even coming into Sacred Plant, but you can go to SacredPlant.com, find a lot of information there, and I’m excited for where we’re going to go in episode two talking about the recreational versus medical versions of cannabis, and then also talking about the different uses of it.
Jonathan: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s the thing to understand it is. Cannabis isn’t just for terminal illnesses. You can use cannabis-
John: Prevention, wellness.
Jonathan: For prevention, stress, diet, inflammation, sleep insomnia. The list goes on. So, don’t feel like, oh, well, I’ll checkout cannabis if I ever get diagnosed with cancer. If you’re taking some prescriptions for most anything, why don’t you do a little research and see does cannabis help that too. There’s a reason it’s illegal, right, because there are prescription drugs being sold to you for a much higher price than a cannabis treatment could be, and you could get a natural, all healthy natural response.
John: Without negative side effects.
Jonathan: Without the side effects, exactly.
TeriAnn: Absolutely.
John: And I know we’re closing this out, but family’s everything. My mom’s everything to me, as well, and before my dad married my mom, I always heard that she was going to be a nun. So, my dad got a hold of her, like no, come back over here type thing. But our whole life, you know, we never talked about cannabis. It wasn’t a topic. My dad passed away 10 years ago. It’ll be 10 years this Christmas Eve. Death, I’m not a fan of death. I don’t think anybody’s a fan of death, but I remember all my mom’s friends not only saw, have watched The Sacred Plant, but have watched Corinne and I, and her father-in-law, my father-in-law over the years with medical cannabis, and so they’re saying, “Can I speak with John,” so she’s handing out my cards like lottery tickets, and I get all her friends from church calling.
John: And I remember one day I came back to the house, and there’s a big beautiful bouquet of flowers. I’m like, wait a minute, who’s sending you flowers, mom? She’s like, that’s MJ, you helped her, and she just wanted to say thank you for doing that.
John: So, one night, Corinne and I are home, and I always talk to my mom three times a day, say goodnight to her, and she’s 81, very active. If I said let’s go for a five-mile hike, she would go. I mean, she’s active. So, one day, she says, “Can I ask you a question?” I said, “Yeah.” I’m on the phone with her, and she says, “Do you think cannabis can help,” you know, she was a tennis player, “My shoulder, as well as help with sleep?” And I said, “Yeah, why?” She goes, I’ve been taking some, and I was silent. And Corinne goes, “Be supportive. Be supportive.”
John: I’m like, “Yes, yes yes.” And so, just to show you that she wasn’t feeling comfortable about the topic. She didn’t tell my brother for three months.
TeriAnn: Wow.
John: But she takes one little piece about two milligrams. She uses it in popcorn. Now, we didn’t talk about edibles. You have edibles now, which that’s another thing. Edibles, if you want to help with sleep and the inflammation, great, but for fighting disease, smoking is not the first source. I think you truly need to get sublingual in the gums and salivary glands and get it that way. Edibles pass us through the liver. I don’t think it’s good for sleep. Anyways. But not fighting major diseases. Anyways.
John: She uses one piece of popcorn. She sleeps, she’s rested. But she’ll go, and she’s like, “My shoulder doesn’t hurt. I feel good. I sleep. I’m rested.” She goes, “God, if I had known about this when your dad passed, I probably would’ve taken this over an Ambien.” I remember she took an Ambien, she had [inaudible 00:46:58]. She’s like, I’m waking up totally cotton mouth, I’m just totally groggy. Now, she gets up, and go, go goes.
Jonathan: Yeah, let’s not even talk about Ambien, or a whole list of other pharmaceuticals. So, let me plug your site again.
John: Yeah.
Jonathan: It is TheSacredPlant.com.
John: Yup.
Jonathan: You can also go to EmpoweringYouOrganically.com, and we will have transcripts of this episode. We will have cliff notes. We will have links to everything that John has talked about. We will get that side by side up, and likely link out to some other studies.
Jonathan: Stay tuned to our next episode. We’re going to have John back. We’re going to talk about specific uses for cannabis. So, we’re going to talk about how do you use it for stress, how do you use it for anxiety? What are the best ways to use it? Where to go, how to talk to your doctor. We’re going to go deep down this rabbit hole, as deep as we can on a podcast. And again, if you really want to go down that rabbit hole and learn more, I cannot encourage you enough to go to TheSacredPlant.com. Thanks, John, for joining us. Thank you, TeriAnn.
TeriAnn: Thank you.
Jonathan: Thank you guys for listening at home on your walks, in your cars, wherever you’re listening, and we will see you on the next episode.
TeriAnn: Thanks, everyone.
Jonathan: Be safe. Thank you. Bye, bye.

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