I found this and it made me so happy and I am keeping it here so I can find it in the future:
Clinical Endocannabinoid Deficiency
Syndrome (CEDS) is an umbrella term for a group of illnesses, including
fibromyalgia, migraine and irritable bowel syndrome. A growing number of
respected scientists in the medical community think low levels of endocannabinoids are the root cause of these devastating conditions.
https://www.projectcbd.org/article/dr-ethan-russo-cbd-clinical-endocannabinoid-deficiency
Project CBD: So I’ve heard it described that CBD is
like THC without the psychoactivity. Is that accurate? Or is that sort
of a blunt description that really doesn’t get at what’s going on here?
Are there other conditions that really CBD seems more suitable than THC?
Russo: More the latter. It is really distinct.
Something I haven’t mentioned is that in its own right cannabidiol is an
endocannabinoid modulator, in other words, when given chronically it
actually increases the gain of system, which is, at its core, a
homeostatic regulator. To explain that: homeostasis is a state of
balance. Many diseases interfere with a balance in a given system and if
we can bring that balance back to where it should be there’ll be
improvement in the overall condition. This is one reason that
cannabidiol is such a versatile medicine because so many disorders
operate on that kind of level. So, if there’s too much activity in a
system homeostasis requires that it be brought back down. If there’s too
little, it’s got to come up. And that’s what cannabidiol can do as a
promoter of endocannabinoid tone, we call it.
Russo: It was a concept I introduced then, I had a
larger review paper in 2004, and just this year 2016, I submitted
further review that’s currently under consideration for publication.
Basically it occurred to me that many diseases affect neurotransmitter
levels. A couple of examples: We know one of the primary problems in
Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias is a lack of Acetylcholine, the
memory molecule in the brain; similarly in Parkinson’s disease there’s
not enough dopamine and you try to replace that with a medicine with a
medicine call L-Dopa. So what would a deficiency of endocannabinoid
function look like? Well, we already knew that. If you don’t have enough
endocannabinoids you have pain where there shouldn’t be pain. You would
be sick, meaning nauseated. You would have a lowered seizure threshold.
And just a whole litany of other problems. It occurred to me that a
number of very common diseases seem to fit a pattern that would be
consistent with an endocannabinoid deficiency, specially these are
migraine, irritable bowel syndrome, and fibromyalgia. They have some
things in common. They’re all hyper-algesic syndromes, meaning that
there’s seems to be pain out of proportion to what should be going on,
in other words you can look at the tissues they look okay, but there’s
biochemically something that’s driving the pain.
Additionally, they occur in the same individuals. If someone has a
chronic problem with migraine there’s a high likelihood they’re going to
have fibromyalgia at some point in their life; similarly, with the
irritable bowel syndrome. Previously there wasn’t a lot of genetic
linkage, but we’re still looking for evidence of that and there seems to
be a possibility that there’s some linkages there. But again, the
theory as it started out was that they would have in common an
endocannabinoid deficiency. Subsequently to the review paper in 2004,
there’s been a great deal of work done both clinically and
experimentally that supports the concept. I’ll just give one example:
Some years ago in Italy a group Sarchielli, et al, measured the
anandamide levels in the cerebrospinal fluid. They did lumbar punctures,
spinal taps –
Project CBD: Anandamide being one of the endocannabinoids.
Russo: Exactly. They showed in people with migraine
that the levels were vastly lower than in normal people that didn’t have
migraine headaches. So this was the first strong objective proof, if
you will, behind the theory. There have been other examples that have
tried to document the new paper.
Project CBD: Given just the notion of measuring of
the levels of one’s own endocannabinoids, if there was a technology that
was relatively inexpensive and accessible that would seem like a very,
very valuable diagnostic. Is there such a thing in the works as far as
you know?
Russo: Well, in development – we’re not there yet.
There are direct measurements, hopefully we’d have a technology that
didn’t require an invasive procedure like a lumbar puncture to figure
these things out. There are also physiological scans like PET scans and
to a lesser extent functional MRI scans that could look at that, but
we’re still in early stages of trying to harness the kind of technology
that would give us these answers particularly without resorting to more
invasive techniques.
Project CBD: So if you have a situation where the
cannabinoids like CBD and THC from the plant are binding not only to the
cannabinoid receptors but other receptors, and then we have other herbs
– you mentioned kava, there’s others as well – that are interacting
with the cannabinoid receptors, what does this mean in terms of our
conception of what the endocannabinoid system is? I remember years ago
when I was fumbling around as a non-scientist trying to get a handle on
some of these concepts, the idea was I think maybe somewhat narrow: you
have compounds in the plant, they bind with these receptors, great, and
good things happen. Is that too narrow a conception when we say the
endocannabinoid system in that classic way, do we need to expand our
idea of it?
Russo: Well it’s a great question because it
highlights the problem that we have. First and foremost, we need to
better understand the role of the endocannabinoids in our lives and our
health status. That’s been ignored, possibly because of its name –
having cannabis in the name of this pejorative connation has impeded
education, even in medical school. Basically, it hardly exists. Let’s
consider this. There are more cannabinoid receptors in the brain than
there are for all of the neurotransmitters put together. That being true
– and it is – recognizing that fact, why would one ignore this system?
Why isn’t this being taught? Our public needs to know about this and how
lifestyle and diet affect this system, and how it could be brought to
bear to improve their life condition.
http://www.bellasgold.com/
Side note. I decided to look up
anandamide since they said the levels in those with migraines is lower than the average person. At the bottom of the Wikipedia post on Anandamide there was a mention of people having Lucid Parties where people eat 20–30 kilograms (which is almost a pound) of chocolate and therefore lots of anandamide, are legal and becoming trendy. What? People are so crazy. Maybe chocolate will be illegal soon....
https://amuse-i-d.vice.com/is-cacao-the-best-new-party-drug/
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