Dr Rupy: Cannabis products, have you seen any lately? Over the last few years, we have become completely inundated with cannabis products from across the shelves of health and wellness stores to online, and there are blogs that claim miracle cures from everything you can think of: sleep, anxiety, cancer, autoimmune conditions, eczema, acne, libido. I'm not making this up. There are so many things out there. And as a doctor, I'm asked about this from patients a lot, but quite honestly, I've had no formal training in the products, and up until now, I haven't really looked at much research. This is either an incredible, legitimate supplement with a myriad of uses, or this is modern-day snake oil. Well, today I'm speaking with Dr Danny Gordon. Dr Danny is a double board-certified medical doctor, integrative medicine physician, family medicine doctor, and world-leading expert in CBD and cannabis medicine. She also co-founded the non-profit UK Medical Cannabis Clinicians Society, the MCCS, which trained the UK's first cannabis medicine specialists and helped set up the UK's first cannabis medicine centres as well. She's lectured at Imperial College, King's College, and UCL on medical cannabis. She's also developed the first medical cannabis training programme for physicians in the UK and is a consultant for clinical research in cannabinoid medicine, working with top researchers around the world. She is the perfect person to be speaking to on this subject, and we have a fascinating conversation that could have gone on for double the amount of time, but I decided that we should probably wrap it up a little bit early because I'm sure that Dr Danny's going to come back on the podcast to talk about more subject matters. We literally scratched the surface. But today, we talked about her first interaction with cannabis as a medicine and plant medicine in general, the historical use of cannabis as a plant medicine, the different types of chemicals that you find in the cannabis plant and how there are a myriad of different phytonutrients, the endocannabinoid system and how cannabis may exert its effects across multiple different parts of the body, the risks of using it as a medicine or as a supplement, the uses of cannabis in dementia, Parkinson's, and gut disorders specifically, and tips on how to use cannabis if you choose to do so as a wellness product. Now, it goes without saying, but I'm going to say it anyway, before trying any new product, whether it be a supplement or CBD or cannabis, it's advisable that you speak to your own doctor or healthcare professional to find out what is right for you, especially considering the official advice from multiple regulatory bodies on CBD at the time of this recording. This can only be an educational tool. This isn't an advice to take anything, and certainly if you have any diagnosis of conditions, you must speak to your own practitioner. I can't stress this enough. There are a number of different things that are exciting about the research looking at CBD as a wellness product, but there are so many unknowns as well. So I can't stress this enough, you really do need to look into this. The other thing that I would stress is that there are two main strains of how cannabis is currently being used. One as a wellness product where you can buy things over the counter, which typically have low amounts of the two common chemicals that you find in cannabis, CBD and THC. But there are other strains that are prescription use, and we're going to be talking that about that with Dr Attam, who's an anaesthetist and one of the only registered prescribers of cannabis in the UK. So, definitely listen out for that podcast as well. But for now, I'm going to let you listen to the long conversation that we have, and I'm sure you're going to find this absolutely fascinating. On to the pod. This episode is sponsored by TUI. Now, if you love holiday chat and comedy, I've got the perfect combo for you. Pack your bags with Russell Kane is a travel podcast brought to you by TUI, and it's hilarious. The podcast unpacks the suitcases, both literal and metaphorical, of celebrities exploring how their travel experiences have shaped their identities, influenced their careers, and left lasting impressions on their lives. From transformative journeys to unforgettable mishaps, each episode reveals the powerful role travel plays in shaping who they are. With the help of TUI and Russell Kane, we're getting our holiday fix because we know the benefits of travel on our health, from boosting our mental wellbeing to reducing stress. Travel is something truly special, and this podcast celebrates this. So if you're dreaming of your next trip or just want a good laugh, tune in to Pack Your Bags with Russell Kane, available now wherever you get your podcasts. Get ready to pack your bags with TUI.
Dr Rupy: First of all, I'm sorry that you couldn't come to the kitchen and cook with me because I love cooking for the guests because you get to come here, we get to chat for a bit, it's all nice and relaxed, and it's just a nice way to start really, just with a nice meal. What would I have cooked for you if you wanted me to cook for you?
Dr Danny Gordon: What would? So right now, I usually like really spicy food, but right now because I'm having some heartburn because of the pregnancy, probably a less spicy version of something, but I don't know, I love every type of food. What are your specialties? I'd probably ask you for your specialty.
Dr Rupy: So, I made a chilli lime peanut broccoli curry the other day. A bit of a mouthful, but it tasted really nice. You've got like the savouriness and the chilli, a bit of the heat from this Chinese blend that I use, and some sweetness coming from a little bit of maple syrup and then the tomatoes as well. And it's, you stew that for like a good half an hour and it's really nice.
Dr Danny Gordon: That sounds incredible.
Dr Rupy: So I'll make that for you, but maybe not with the heartburn, probably less chilli, so.
Dr Danny Gordon: Yeah, maybe, yeah, maybe like, yeah, when the baby comes, it shall go away hopefully, so.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. Great. Okay, cool. How long are you good for time, like for an hour or so?
Dr Danny Gordon: I am totally, I have nothing after this because I'm finding I'm usually so energised. I usually work until like 7:30 at night. I love to work. So usually my husband makes dinner and I don't have to worry about any of that stuff and I just continue on writing, but now I'm finding like 4 o'clock rolls around and I'm just tired. So I didn't book anything after this. So I am good to go.
Dr Rupy: Epic. That's great. Yeah, I'm speaking to someone who loves to work as well, like late, and I'm actually trying to get into a habit of not working after 6:00 p.m. I'm more of a morning person rather than like an evening lark, and so I'm much more productive. And so even though sometimes I work late, I'm less creative.
Dr Danny Gordon: Oh, interesting.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, I need to get that morning energy and like start minimum like 7:30, 8:00 in the morning, and then that period of time, like the first three, four hours, I get so much done. And in the evening, I can spend like literally two or three hours doing something that should have taken me half an hour. I get distracted and yeah, it's very, it's weird how we're all different, right?
Dr Danny Gordon: Exactly, because I find when I'm writing, sometimes I'm way more creative in the afternoon and the evening. But if it's other stuff, if it's really technical detail, I have to do it in the morning. It's very, I guess it's very classical, isn't it?
Dr Rupy: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Well, let's carry on with the pod and then. So otherwise we could chat like for ages. I'm super interested in like your background and how you got into this and the way I thought, and your book is incredible. I've got it in front of me here. It really is a Bible. Honestly, I've been fascinated by it. And this is going to be an education for me too, because this is something I think I'm in that transition point from canna-sceptic to canna-believer or canna-convinced.
Dr Danny Gordon: Canna-convinced. Okay. Canna-believer kind of works as well.
Dr Rupy: It does. It totally does. Like a Justin Bieber fan.
Dr Danny Gordon: Yeah, exactly. It's a bit evangelical, you know.
Dr Rupy: So, I wanted to talk about your starting journey. So like where you trained in medicine and your first sort of interaction with cannabis as a recreational plant, but also something that could have medicinal value.
Dr Danny Gordon: So, I trained in Canada. So my first, I did my undergraduate degree. It's a little bit different in Canada because you have to do this undergraduate science degree first. And then you apply for medical school, which I did at the University of Western Ontario, near Toronto, Canada. And that's where I did my medical school, and then I went on to do my residency, which I think you guys call something different as well over here. But basically, it's when you're a junior doctor and you're slogging it away in the hospital for those.
Dr Rupy: We call it foundation years one and two.
Dr Danny Gordon: Yeah, and then the family medicine part of the family medicine specialty. So I did that at the University of British Columbia, also in Canada. So that was my training. And of course, none of that included any cannabis knowledge or education, any learning about the endocannabinoid system. Like everybody else, I had half of a day of nutrition in about eight years of medical training, like we all did. And I know that's something you talk about a lot as well. So that was basically it. And I was always really interested in natural medicine. So I was taking a lot of different natural medicine courses kind of along my conventional medicine training. And in my family medicine specialty years, I found a mentor who was doing integrative medicine in Canada. And he did a lot of plant medicine, a lot of botanical medicine, but not really cannabis, more other herbal medicine. He did integrative cancer care. He was an MD from the University of Montreal. And I studied with him. And then really, I went on to do my integrative medicine specialty in the US. And in 2012, and then when it became a fully board-qualified specialty in 2017, I took all those specialty exams. So that was kind of my integrative medicine piece. I was doing botanical medicine. I was giving people supplements and botanicals alongside pharmacotherapy for years and years in my family medicine practice. But not cannabis. So cannabis for me was, I grew up in the States actually, not in Canada, and I grew up in South Carolina. So quite conservative area. And I grew up in the war on drugs era. So for me, it was this cannabis was this like dangerous drug, and it was going to make everyone go crazy and going to make you dumb. And I never touched it as a teenager. A lot of my friends smoked cannabis recreationally, as many youth do in Canada, it's very common. But I never did. I was really into sport and in my studies. So the first time I ever even tried cannabis recreationally was with my best friend, and I had about probably like a few puffs of a joint when I was in my 20s because she still couldn't believe I hadn't tried it. And she actually had an autoimmune condition, and she was convinced it was helping her inflammation, but we didn't have any idea why at this point. So she's like, well, you're into plant medicine, why don't you just try it? And I mean, you should see what it's like. So we did, and it was very typical. We sat there and we watched Sex and the City, and we laughed a lot, and we ate some potato chips. And literally that was the first time. And it was almost really the last time for many years because I wasn't drawn to THC really at all. But I was glad that I tried it. I think if you the more you experience in medicine, it's the same with all these plant medicines, I think it can give you some perspective. So that was kind of it for many years. And then it came back into my professional life because my patients were using it. And because I did integrative medicine with them, they were telling me about it. They're like, doctor, I'm growing this in my backyard. I think it's helping with my pain. I think it's helping with my sleep. I'm making a tincture out of it. I found this recipe online. So that was really back in 2012, 13, and then I started really looking into what's going on here. And started reading a lot of the preclinical research, like a lot of the animal studies, Ethan Russo's early work, who's a very esteemed colleague and he's really the pioneer in this in this area. And it wasn't for a few years later till I started prescribing it because it was still really grey zone in Canada and it was really stigmatised and I was helping patients find THC versus CBD balance in the strains that they were growing. But it was really limited what I could do because I didn't have a ready-made bottle from a company like we have now on the medicinal side and saying this is this much CBD, this much THC, and this is the dose, and it was really, I really call it, I call it with my patients cowboy medicine because we really didn't know for sure what exactly was in it. And then when I started prescribing kind of the licensed forms of it through the Health Canada programme, it got a lot more technical and easy in some ways. But still, you know, it's a plant medicine. So it's not, it's not straightforward. But yeah, that was basically my my journey with it.
Dr Rupy: It's amazing and really progressive that you were using plant medicine so early in your medical career because this is something that I've only just come round to later on after I, so I I trained as a general practitioner in the same way that you did, so your family medicine, that's what they call it in Canada and the US. And through my own personal experience with ill health, that's when I went back to nutrition and lifestyle, all the things that we're traditionally not taught at medical school. But plant medicine for me came even later than that. So it was great that you had that introduction really early on.
Dr Danny Gordon: Yeah, I think it was really because of this mentor I had because I was the same as you. I came into it from a nutrition angle first and a mind-body angle. I went through a really difficult period in medical school. I went through a harassment situation at work with a actually a senior colleague and it got quite serious at one point and I it really it really threw me and because of that, I really had this epiphany about mind-body medicine and I started meditating, coming out of that because it was such a stressful experience and in the end, my university was very supportive. I ended up getting a formal apology from the department and so forth about it. But at the time it was really, really stressful and it was when I was going through my surgical rotations. It was the person in charge of me basically who who this was happening with. So that was really my start was nutrition and then really getting into mind-body medicine, yoga, meditation, that kind of side of it. And then I had this mentor who was really into plant medicine and it was a whole new thing for me. I didn't really know much about it.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. I mean, it's it's great that you had someone who could really guide you through that and who's like your senior and someone who could mentor you because it can be tough when you're coming up against sceptics. And I think as medics, with good reason, we are sceptical, but that shouldn't go into harassment. That's a terrible situation. For those of the listeners who are new to cannabis as a plant or even plant medicine, you've done this beautifully in your book. You've gone through the ancient history of it, where it came from, where it was cultivated. But perhaps you could give us a snapshot of how long cannabis in its various forms has been used in ancient medicine and you alluded to it earlier because you grew up in the era during the war on drugs. But why it's kind of fell out of fashion over the last 50 or 60 years.
Dr Danny Gordon: Yeah. So when I first started to know this myself and research cannabis, I was completely shocked by this information. And I was someone who should be really open to cannabis as a medicine because I was already prescribing plant medicines and teaching my patients about things like meditation as well as giving them, you know, normal drugs. So really, cannabis has been used as a medication, we think as an herbal medicine for thousands of years. Certainly, it was used in ancient China many thousands of years ago as a fibre for clothing, maybe for food, we don't know for sure. Some of this is kind of blurry in the, you know, the historical archaeological records. But certainly, we know that in in India, in Ayurvedic medicine, this was really one of the power plants. This is one of the the the releasers of anxiety in traditional Ayurvedic medicine and it's it's in some of the really very old, you know, sutras or, you know, traditional traditional Indian texts. So we're talking thousands of years. But of course, they didn't know about THC versus CBD. They were using a natural form of cannabis that was probably quite low in THC at this point. It probably wasn't the stuff you're seeing, you know, in the US on the recreational market, which gets you really stoned. So that probably didn't exist yet. And excuse me, because we have this system in our body that can use these types of plant chemicals that come from the cannabis plant as well. It was a natural fit for really our bodies and and as a medicine, just like other plants were too, like a lot of other Indian herbs, for example, that I use, like Ashwagandha is one, Chinese herbs, there's so many of them. But cannabis really is one of these power plants. So that really continued on for really thousands of years. And really, it was in kind of even in the Victorian era, you know, in the 1800s, it was still thought of as a medicine. It was prescribed on pharmaceutical formularies. So, you know, it was in the the book of drugs in the UK even.
Dr Rupy: Wow, I didn't know that.
Dr Danny Gordon: Yeah, so it was in the UK pharmacopoeia, the US pharmacopoeia. And then there was kind of the shift at the end of the 1800s because there was other things on the list of drugs that you could be prescribed and that was actually available over the counter at this point without a prescription, like tinctures of cocaine and, you know, poppy and things, other things that are probably not so good for to be people self-medicating with. So, you know, a lot of the academic bodies got quite concerned about this and said, okay, well, we have to kind of curtail what what these potentially harmful substances, these powerful substances, how how easily they can be accessed. And cannabis was kind of lumped in there. So the cannabis tinctures that were you were finding in these pharmacies were kind of lumped in with the poppy and the the cocaine tinctures. So this all kind of, you know, came to a head in the US and it had a lot of political motivations in kind of the 1920s when you had prohibition era. And there was a lot of political and quite actually quite racist, anti-black, anti-Mexican sentiments at the time. And the cannabis plant was a bit of a scapegoat because this the cannabis plant was utilised in Mexican culture. And it was it was actually utilised as a creative tool for a lot of black Americans at the time as well. So what happened was it kind of became kind of acquired its own set of morals and it was really pitched as this kind of demonistic element by the powers that be at the time, the government, it was supported by the media in a very anti-scientific campaign against the plant. And this went on into the 1940s and then the New York Academy of Science said, well, maybe we should just see scientifically if this is all true. Does it really make people go psychotic? Is it really the cause of these violent crimes? And they found that it wasn't and it was actually quite low risk. But this report was just ignored at the time. So this kind of sentiment continued really until really into the 90s until the HIV crisis was, you know, hitting the US really hard. And in California, they decided to pass a law letting people with advanced stage AIDS access cannabis to help them with their their pain and their end of life care. And really, up until that point, it was illegal really to even study it. And excuse me, in in the US and like we do in the UK, after the US kind of demonised it back in the 60s and 70s, we took it off the formulary here too in the UK. And then, you know, then you have the UN coming into the scene in the 60s and the, you know, the Commission on the narcotic drugs Commission of the 1960s where they said, let's just lump cannabis in with cocaine and opioids and poppy and heroin basically. So we're coming out of all that now, but it's taken a while and the lagging we see in the way we think about cannabis as doctors, as scientists, as politicians, it's going to take a while for that legacy to fade.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I'm I'm definitely guilty of that myself because that era of demonising cannabis still impacts my initial thinking about it when it was first suggested that I should even be speaking about it on a podcast. And that was coming from a lot of my colleagues, but also followers and patients as well. Like, you know, I've heard about cannabis, I really want to know about it. And I'm coming at this from, you know, a position of wanting to learn more because looking at some of the data and some of the research now, it's like, okay, wow, there is quite a bit to this complicated plant. And like you've dissected as well, it's more than just the THC and the CBD that is contained within the plant. It contains a number of different cannabinoids, a number of different phytonutrients that I love talking about when it comes to like just generally in food and herbs and spices and stuff. Perhaps we could talk a little bit about just how complicated this plant is and what the potential avenues are for all these different elements that you find in different strains of of the plant.
Dr Danny Gordon: Yeah, it's, you know, as far as botanical medicines go, I use, like I said, I use herbal medicines alongside drugs. So, you know, I'm no stranger to them, but as far as plants go, this is still one of the most complex that I use. So, there's just so many strains, as you've said, and different strains have different kind of ratios of these different plant chemicals. And when we put the different ratios into our bodies, our bodies can react differently to these ratios. So, there's hundreds of biologically active compounds in this plant. There's the cannabinoids, so that means THC, CBD, and over a hundred others. And then there's other things like flavonoids, terpenoids, all these other big names that basically are other types of chemicals in the plant that are natural that are in loads of other plants as well. And they all we think work together in our nervous systems, in our bodies, in our immune system, in this like synergistic or kind of helper fashion. So, you know, when we, when I first started to speak about cannabis as a medicine, and when I first started to learn about it as a medicine, we didn't even really know as doctors the difference between CBD and THC. Like I would speak to doctors and they would say, well, cannabis is really bad because of the high addiction potential. And you know, I would say, well, you know, I I usually start with really low THC varieties and they would be like, well, what's that? So, we're really talking about almost hundreds of different plants. It's kind of like heirloom tomatoes, which are one of my favourite vegetables. So you can have purple tomatoes, you can have green tomatoes, you can have yellow tomatoes, and they're all tomatoes, but they all taste slightly differently. They have different acidities. They all have different like plant chemicals inside of them slightly. There's just so many chemicals in this plant. So, of course, everyone's probably heard about CBD, which is cannabidiol, and THC, which is, you know, the stuff that everyone knows about making you feel high, although it's also really good for other things, like pain and spasm and many other symptoms. So, besides those two, which are the most two common ones, the ones that are most concentrated in the plant, there's many what we call minor cannabinoids. So they appear in smaller amounts. So you can't get loads of these things out of a single plant generally speaking, although they are really starting to genetically modify the plants so they can really enhance some of these minor fractions. One of them is CBG, which I think is the one that besides THC and CBD, people may have heard about, especially because of COVID, because, you know, in the beginning of COVID, everyone was saying, let's just put CBG in everything because it's in it's called cannabigerol. The reason why is because it has some antibacterial, antimicrobial qualities. So, some people were saying, well, maybe we should just all be taking CBG, we should just bathe in it, we should wash our hands with it. And then COVID will just go away. So, unfortunately, it's not quite that simple. But it does have some antibacterial qualities, antiviral qualities. And they are investigating it for for some of those properties, potentially with COVID, but really it's it's not something if, you know, people are always asking me, should I buy a hand sanitiser with CBG? The answer is no, get the ones that are 70% alcohol. If you want something that has additionally CBG just to be a bit trendy, that's fine, but that's not what's going to protect you. But CBG is really interesting because it does a lot of other things too, and it's what we call the mother compound in the plant. So you have this basically before, basically at the top of the the tree when the plant starts to make all these, you have something called CBGA, which is an acid form of CBG. And then it gets converted into CBG, active CBG. And then CBG goes on to make some of these other cannabinoids in the plant. So that's one of the ones that's been kind of, I guess, most, got the most press besides CBD and THC. But then you have things like THCA, which is an acid form of THC. It's not very stable, so until recently, we didn't have a lot of products that you could give someone, but I've used it in a tincture, like an oil form, in my patients in Canada as an add-on therapy, sometimes to CBD and THC. It has some anti-autoimmune properties, anti-inflammatory properties, potentially even some anti-seizure properties when combined with CBD at a smaller amount in some some types of epilepsy. But there's just so much that we don't know about all these other compounds. So a lot of what we do know is from animal studies and it's from petri dish studies. So the human studies are still really to come with most of these things. So it's really in its infancy and a lot of it's just, you know, taking groups of patients and saying, what have they noticed about a certain strain? And then saying, why don't we try this and see? So it's it's an educated guessing game to some extent at this point, once you get beyond a CBD and a THC ratio in a product.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. I I spoke to a colleague of mine who's an anaesthetist and he's one of the only registered prescribers of um CBD, THC medications uh in the UK. And he talked about um the entourage effect, which you've mentioned in your book as well, about the impact of not only just those constituents of the plant, but actually, you know, the combined the combination of all the other um chemicals that we're yet to study in as much depth. Um do we have any inclination as to why it's that holistic element of the plant uh that gives its effects?
Dr Danny Gordon: We do have some some idea, yes. So, how most plant medicines work is through this entourage effect or usually in herbal medicine, you call it synergy. So, for example, you know, when if someone comes to me for a sleeping problem and they either don't want to try something like zopiclone or benzodiazepine or we want to try something, usually we want to try something lower risk first. And we've tried the CBD for sleep, we've done all the mind-body stuff and they still need extra help. I don't usually prescribe them a single herbal because it doesn't really work that well. So I won't just prescribe someone valerian root tincture or passion flower. I usually combine a bunch of them together and that seems to work a lot better because the plants work in our bodies together better. Now, why is that? Well, it's complicated and we don't have all the exact answers, but we do know, for example, that CBD can modulate the effect of THC at the CB1 receptor. And we know that CBD is kind of like this overall kind of orchestrator of the system. It doesn't really bind to one single receptor in the endocannabinoid system. It just kind of goes all over and tweaks things. It's like the tweaker. So when you combine this with other chemicals from the plant, these are all bioactive compounds and they all potentially impact things like uh inflammation cascades in the brain and the body. So inflammation pathways are extremely complex and we really don't understand it all. And we even think it might impact things like um other uh active chemicals in the brain like serotonin, um histamine. There's antihistamine effects from THC in preclinical work. So this is really interesting because I have I have patients with a lot of weird stuff in my practice like mast cell instability disease and um histamine triggered um mental health symptoms and all these things that are really poorly understood. And sometimes they find THC vaporise helps them, but of course they don't want to use it all the time because it can also make them feel um slightly intoxicated or impaired. So I think there's just so much to learn. Like the the mylu in our brains are so complicated that I think if ever if someone says to me, yes, I understand exactly how it all works, I I tend not to believe them because I don't think we're there yet.
Dr Rupy: This is the complex thing about studying plants and plant medicine in general, right? Because we have this paradigm of RCTs, randomised control trials being the gold standard by which we are able to demonstrate efficacy. But like you beautifully portrayed there, you know, if you're using a little bit of valerian, a little bit of hops, a little bit of another tincture to get the desired effect in your patient, it's very hard to strategically and efficaciously study that in something that can be presented in a in a journal that can, you know, be be um accepted by the wider medical community.
Dr Danny Gordon: Yeah, and I think I think as time goes on, I really realise it is very challenging, but it is possible. Um it's just, you know, how we go about doing it. I think it's just a little bit of outside the box thinking or a lot. Um for example, if you're going to test, you know, a combined herbal medicine product, okay, well, you can standardise certain fractions of that and then you can say, okay, we're going to, you know, use this combination of herbs, these standardisations at this fraction, we're going to give it to the same type of person. It's still not going to be as easy though as a single molecule because then you still have all those different molecules interacting. Everyone's genes are different, you know, of course, everyone now talks about epigenetics, so how the genes get turned on and turned off. And um it it's just more complicated. So the good news of all this is even the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration is now, they put out a paper in 2018 about what they call real world evidence or real world data. So they're now starting to even come on board, some of the big regulators, um with this concept. And I also uh work as a um advisor to Professor David Nutt's group for drug science and Project 21. And that's going to be the biggest real world data collection for cannabis patients ever. So we're going to, you know, aim for 20,000 patients. And even, you know, in that process, we're I'm always kind of um saying how can we collect data in a better way, this real world data. Um and then how do you put that together so it will be accepted? But I think we have to really um rethink some of this RCT data as the um the blind, we have these blinders on sometimes um with with, you know, that it's the only way to test something. And of course, even with RCTs, I'm I'm also, you know, I I've done I'm a published researcher as well. So I know, you know, when you look at statistical modeling, even within that narrow framework, you can make things look a certain way potentially, depending on how you collect that data. So it's not as foolproof and straightforward and objective as people might think it is, even though it's still the best we have.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, absolutely. I'm doing my master's in nutritional medicine at the moment at the University of Surrey, and I love the exercises where we go into different groups and we analyse different papers and we realise what looks incredible from the abstract actually is, and I don't mean to be flippant with the way I'm describing it, but it's quite it's a lot of junk. So, you know, we have this sort of like pretty image of randomised control trials, but you really have to dig deep and look um at it uh quite literally um to actually interpret it and and understand whether this is good or bad research. Um I wanted to talk about the uh endocannabinoid system uh and and you have this wonderful mnemonic of of how you describe what it does. Um and I wanted to talk about the endogenous endocannabinoids that we have and whether the components of the um the cannabis plant can can override that, impact it in a negatively way, or is it enhancing?
Dr Danny Gordon: It's a really, it's a really good question. It's a really complicated question. So we'll try to break it down. But basically, um the endocannabinoid system, you can think of as the overall balancing system in our brains and in our bodies. What that means is it kind of, I like to say it sits as a skin on top of some of the other systems, like our happy hormone system, serotonin, or our stress response system. And it kind of helps tweak things all over these different areas. So the mnemonic that I really like as well, and I cannot take credit for it. And I can't even tell you who made it up, to be honest. I wish I could. But basically, it's um eat, sleep, relax, protect, and forget. So what that means is that the endocannabinoid system is very much involved in everything from brain protection from toxins, from trauma, to um immune regulation. So that helps preventing our immune system from getting too over excited and causing autoimmune problems or detecting of cells that should not be there anymore, like potentially pre-cancer cells, getting rid of those. Um it has to do with inflammation. So regulating inflammation so it doesn't become uh negative or chronic inflammation that contributes to problems in the brain and the body. Um it helps regulate appetite, sleep, sex drive, all of these really important functions. So it does a lot of stuff. And you know, that's why people say to me a lot of times if I go give a lecture to a group of doctors who are not familiar, they say, I just don't understand how cannabis can do all these things. It just seems like a snake oil. Um but then once you teach them about the endocannabinoid system, it starts to kind of make logical sense. Um because we can, you know, especially CBD interacts with a lot of these different elements. So the other part of the question was, we do have these natural endo, meaning inside of our body, cannabinoids. These are chemicals that we all make naturally, just like we have an endogenous opioid system. That's why, you know, when we we have to be very careful with opioids because they've caused a huge massive problem with chronic pain. But with acute pain, they're really good. I mean, I had a terrible accident with my hand and I mean, they put me to sleep and fixed my hand and they gave me morphine after and I was very grateful for the morphine for the first 24 hours because I had pins sticking out of my arm. So we have and the reason morphine works for us is because we have chemicals in our own brain and body that work like morphine too. So it's the same with cannabis. So, you know, do does the cannabis plant override this system? No, because it it sits in the in the kind of locking key models in the receptor sites differently. That's the first thing. Um but there is a theory that, you know, we all have what's called this base endocannabinoid tone, which means we all have this kind of like ideal ratio of how much natural cannabinoids our body and brain makes. And if it gets out of whack, just like if our hormones get out of whack and we someone has low testosterone or, you know, you have too much cortisol hanging around, then you get clinical symptoms. Um it's the same with cannabinoids. This is a theory. It's it's very preclinical data so far, but uh Dr. Ethan Russo was the first person to really talk about this um way back in 2006. And the theory is that, you know, some people with certain conditions may have a a lower tone than they need to kind of balance their brain and their body. So people with IBS, chronic migraines, fibromyalgia, this might be a problem with their having um needing a top up or like a some help regulating the endocannabinoid system. And the theory is that this is why plant cannabinoids seem to help these people so much when a lot of other conventional pharmaceuticals seem to really do very little for them. So, in in short, it doesn't override the system, but of course, when you're talking about putting something into the system like THC, which does have risk, especially at the higher doses, especially if you don't have a lot of CBD on board to buffer it, and depending on the person, everyone responds to THC differently. Um then, you know, we have to be careful we don't um we don't overdo it, just with any power plant. I say like even coffee is a power plant. Um cocoa is a coffee plant, uh is is a power plant and it can be cocaine or it can be used pharmaceutically to help with um, you know, um nose bleeds in the hospital. So, you know, all of these power plants, um they have a double-edged sword to them.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, absolutely. And and on that note actually, with regard to the potential issues with um uh components of the cannabis plant, um you mentioned mental health disorders, um the potential adverse impact on fertility. What are the main things that you want people to be aware of before they start even considering whether they should be asking about cannabis plants or even supplementing themselves over the counter wherever it's legal?
Dr Danny Gordon: Yeah, it's a really good question. So, I think, you know, the the FSA has come out in the UK with recommending that if if people want to try CBD as a wellness supplement, not under the care of a doctor, that they should stick to 70 milligrams a day of CBD or below. Now, there's some preclinical data why that is. They've kind of taken the animal research and they've kind of put it into humans and said, well, maybe this is a safe limit. They don't really know what the safe limit is. I think it's probably probably quite a bit higher than that for many people, but the thing is, you know, I also don't demonise what they've done because there's this thing called the precautionary principle. So if we don't know for sure, and you're going to be giving advice to a mass population without medical advice, it's really just best to be airing on the side of caution. Um and we've learned this again and again with medicine throughout the years. There's all kinds of things we thought were really had no um no risk whatsoever. And I always tell people there is nothing that has no risk. Um although CBD is very low risk for most people. Yeah. Um and it's a lot lower risk than a lot of the other over-the-counter things that people um take too much of. So I think it's all about perspective. So I think, you know, that's the first thing. If you're if you're taking it for a wellness use, it's probably best to follow that recommendation. Um and if you're using it for a for a medical issue, it's always best to see a doctor. So, um I've been working here in the UK mentoring and training some of the first UK specialists in cannabis medicine and um I'm the vice chairman of a nonprofit that does that. And I do a lot of nonprofit work in that area because I think the more doctors who can talk to their patients about this, it's going to be safer for people. So if you're using it for a medical condition, I always recommend you see a doctor because it could, you know, potentially interact at the higher doses, even CBD with medications in some cases, not always. Um I certainly use it with many medications together, but it's done in a more controlled fashion. Um and the same with THC. So THC, certainly if you have a history of certain mental health problems in your family, even in a first-degree relative, or of course, if you've had a personal history of them, like mania, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, um any kind of psychotic break, that's a really good reason to avoid THC in general. THC in certain people, a small percentage of the people who whose brains are very sensitive to THC and the THC actually binds differently in their brains, that can potentially increase the risk of having a psychosis or a manic episode. The question is, is this person going to be going on to have that anyways? Is it just unmasking something earlier or is it truly elevating their risk? It's still, I think the jury is still out, but again, best to be cautious. I don't prescribe THC cannabis um for people with those histories. However, the plot thickens. So one of my my friends and colleagues at Cambridge University, he's working, she's um one of the specialists in the area of the CB1 receptor model in the brain and she studies psychosis. She's a she's a psychiatrist and she works with psychosis patients. And she's finding and there's early research to support this that people who already have schizophrenia, already have psychosis, when they use um THC, I'm not going to say recreationally because I think they are using it to medicate, but you know, from a black, quote unquote, black market source, they find that their medication side effects go down, that they stay on their medications potentially longer and um some of the some of their mood symptoms improve. So it's really, really complicated. So, interesting. Yeah, it's um it's a really um exciting area for cannabinoid research because psychosis is just so poorly treated. It's in terms of we have we have lots of drugs that can really help, but those drugs have really bad side effect profiles. So, um people are really interested and I'm really interested in this area as well because, you know, when you look at CBD, CBD has an anti-psychotic effect in the brain. Um and in some early studies have compared it to conventional anti-psychotic drugs and found that it might be comparable at very high doses, but the side effect profile is amazing. So, you know, this is really one of the new exciting areas I think for for patients as well to give them some hope for potentially a better treatment with less side effects, maybe even combining the two.
Dr Rupy: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, that that's super exciting and it just goes to to say about how complicated the uh impact of this medication can be on people depending on who it is as well. Um I wanted to talk about the the potential uses now of of uh cannabis. You've gone through a whole bunch of different things in your in your book. Obviously, we don't have time to go through everything, but I highly recommend people read it because you talk about stress, you talk about uh the impact on autoimmune conditions, psychiatric issues. I wanted to talk about a few. Um the first is the brain uh and and largely because you've had personal experience of uh it in your in your father, um who unfortunately had uh mild cognitive impairment and then went on to have a full-blown um uh dementia, I believe it was. Can you talk about a little bit about what your experience was like then?
Dr Danny Gordon: Yeah, so when my dad was going through his illness, um this was before I got into cannabis as a medicine. Um I'd started to do integrative medicine, but it was I was still in medical school when it all kind of kicked off. Um and it started with him having, he'd already had quite a few kind of um potential risk factors for dementia. Um a little bit of family history, but more kind of life things that had happened to him. And then he had a really bad head injury and he was in a coma. Um this is when I was 13 and I remember him putting the wrong lamp shades on things after he'd recovered and come out of the coma. He was so-called normal. Um but he was never the same. And you know, only those really close to him would notice it, I think. But as time went on, um and he got older, a lot of other things started to happen. He had a lot of other um physical health conditions. He they almost um he he had a bowel problem and he had a burst bowel and they almost lost him on the operating table. So a lot of brain insults as well. And you know, a lot of gut problems. He always had gut problems, constipation, and all these things that looking back as an integrative medicine doctor, you know, I really think there was a lot going on with leaky gut, leaky brain for probably many, many years. Um so, you know, by the time he actually got diagnosed with both Lewy body dementia and they said he had a mixed dementia, there wasn't really a lot um to be done and you know, it's always hard when you're a doctor and you see those ones close to you because you have all this advice, but you know, it's hard to get sometimes people to take the advice early enough. And then, you know, when people have a a very kind of set in dementia, there's really not a lot you can do to reverse it. It's more about keeping them comfortable. Um and at this point, I really wish my dad would have had cannabis as as as a tool because I use it in my patients with dementia and Parkinson's. And it can help with tremor in many Parkinson's patients. It helps with sleep-wake cycle. My dad was up, he was he was having a lot of hallucinations. So he was up all night, he would sleep during the day, his sleep-wake cycles got really reversed. And he was just in a lot of um you know, emotional, mental pain. I mean, he was he used to teach maths at the university. He's a very smart guy and to have that taken away from him and to have his physical, he couldn't swallow at the end. It was just so horrible. Um and yeah, I've used I've used cannabis medicines to help with, you know, sleep, behavioural agitation, um mood, engagement with the environment, tremor, because he was really Parkinsonised. He had a lot of Parkinson's features. So he was really stiff as well. So for me, I think, gosh, like I really wish that someone would have um recommended that on his palliative care team. Um yeah.
Dr Rupy: I think there's so many potential uses of it. And just diving into some of the research that you uh you put into the book, um I think we as a medical profession are getting a bit better at diagnosing mild cognitive impairment. And with um some of the pioneering work of Dale Bredesen, who's, you know, an advocate for everyone having a cognoscopy uh around the age at which we can actually do something and try to prevent premature um brain aging. I think uh, you know, we're going to be a lot more forgiving and a lot more proactive about um brain health in general. I wanted to ask you about the potential mechanisms by which um cannabis can have uh an impact on a number of different ones. You've mentioned in your book Parkinsonian disorder, um Alzheimer's, um and even some other um uh brain disorders that, you know, I wouldn't have thought were all linked, um but but yeah.
Dr Danny Gordon: Yeah, so yeah, the the early research is really promising and exciting, and it's still early. I think that's important to really be be clear about. Um but certainly both THC and CBD and whole plant extract cannabis seems to have what's called a brain protective or a neuroprotective effect. Um in many different areas of the brain. So it seems to be potentially helping with things like inflammation, potentially things like plaque formation, um which we get in Alzheimer's, which I know you'll know this if you follow Dale is and his amazing work is, you know, we used to think that these plaques in Alzheimer's, you could just just take away the plaques and the Alzheimer's will go away. But now we know this is actually an immune reaction gone wrong. So, you know, cannabis actually interacts with our immune system in our brains. So it seems that there's a lot of potential um early on for the cannabinoids maybe to even be a part of a mild cognitive impairment protocol so we can actually prevent um potentially in some cases at least, the the progression onto dementia. Um and you know, Dale Bredesen's work, he's reversing some of those things. Um we we actually spoke at a conference together a few years ago and he was presenting some of his research and his brain imaging studies that hadn't been published yet and it was just incredible what he was doing. Um with you know, with his really a natural medicine protocol and functional medicine testing and all this kind of stuff. Um and I do a lot of that with my patients too. So I think, you know, if you look at some of the animal models studies coming out, um they give animals different types of cannabinoids and extracts and they track things like um mild cognitive impairment as they would see it in a rat model. And some of the changes are reversible when they start giving them cannabinoids. So, you know, of course, rats are not humans, but it's a really good start and that's how all drug trials start. They start with the, you know, the animal model and then you move on to humans. Um and I think even though in in patients with um advanced brain disorders, I don't think cannabis is going to be able to reverse those changes once they're really set in. But certainly as part of a a brain health protocol, um I think you know, like high CBD forms of, you know, hemp cannabis, like CBD um oil, potentially these types of things that are very low risk, generally speaking, um do have uh some potential there for um for some of these brain disorders that are probably all connected um and have endocannabinoid connections as well, dysregulation.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, it's it's fascinating. This this whole area of how interconnected the immune system is, inflammation is to brain health disorders. I remember watching a lecture um where Rudolph Tanzi was talking about his research where they uh were able to elicit those stereotypical tangles in the brain that you see with Alzheimer's uh patients by injecting salmonella into the brain. And you you begin to realise, okay, the tangles and the tau and all these things that we know are pathognomonic of Alzheimer's are actually the the body's reaction, the immune reaction causing this. So it stands to reason, and this is very preliminary, but if you have a substance that can impact the endocannabinoid system, which has an impact on dampening down the immune response, then potentially that has a preventative role. But like you said, rat studies, animal models, we still don't know yet, but it's it's really promising and with something that has such low profile, low side effect profile, it's it's certainly worth, you know, investing some money into some clinical research. You mentioned the gut there and your dad's um uh history of of leaky gut or also known as intestinal hyperplasia. Um and the the utility of hemp-based products on on the gut. Um perhaps we could talk about the gut-brain axis and and your personal experience of using uh cannabis with patients with IBS and and um and IBD.
Dr Danny Gordon: So, yeah, the gut-brain axis, it's something I've been rambling on about for pretty much the past decade. Um and the reason why is because, yeah, the gut has its own immune system, it has its own little brain, and a lot of the brain chemicals that help regulate the brain are actually made in the gut, like serotonin and GABA, which is our kind of calming brain chemical and many, many others, as well as endocannabinoids. So, why does it help all these different gut conditions? Well, probably a number of reasons. Um it may help with the tight junctions, making the gut less leaky, but again, really preliminary. We don't have big studies yet in humans. It's just it's an educated guess based on how those cascades work. Um but certainly, we know it has an anti-inflammatory effect on the gut. Um people with IBS, so irritable bowel syndrome, it doesn't cure, none of these things are a cure. Um but I do find that it's very helpful in patients with IBS. And you know, I think I always say as an integrative medicine doctor, a lot of these things are kind of final common endpoint buckets, like IBS. Okay, well, what what is it actually from? Was there an infectious trigger? Um is the microbiome unbalanced? Is the gut leaky? What is the gut's immune response to an invader looking like? So you can, you know, there's there's a lot of functional medicine tests that you can do that are quite fancy, but they're also quite expensive. So I start to I tend to start with food um and some really simple supplements and usually CBD is one of them because, you know, in in government medicine in Canada, you know, where I treated thousands of patients using these these things including cannabis, um you can't get functional medicine tests covered. It's like the NHS. So if if I can get them better with treating them with food and a few supplements and CBD, you know, like low THC medical cannabis, then they're happy and I'm happy. So we might not know exactly why it's working. It's not a cure. Um but certainly, I've used it in patients with um uh inflammatory bowel disease. And these were patients who were on a biologic, so quite a high-tech medication. Um but they were still needing, these were like refractory cases, they were still needing steroids for these flares. And we all know steroids are quite bad for you when you have to use them all the time. They can cause um diabetes, they cause sleep-wake cycle disruption, they can even cause depression. Um and these patients had really tried everything, natural stuff, drugs stuff. Um so, you know, we added the very high CBD um medical cannabis and they were able to come off their steroids and stay off of them. So, and so far, you know, no interactions with the biologics that they were on. So, I mean, those are massive success stories in my opinion because their quality of life returns and they have less side effects and it's just such a win-win situation. Um and in the same with, you know, IBS, I've seen similar uh, you know, results. But because IBS is such a diverse bucket, you do have to kind of think what is actually causing it.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, it can be quite complicated, particularly IBS because there's psychological components, there's food components, there's interaction with a whole bunch of other conditions, you know, it's it's really um it's really complicated. But but having something like cannabis as a potential useful tool as a supplement, it seems like an interesting avenue to at least um experiment with under the direction of a practitioner who's who's experienced in this as well. Um we could talk about a whole bunch of things. Like you've talked about in your book, you talk about skin, you talk about sleep. Um but I I want to I don't want to this to sound like a massive advert for CBD, like everyone just go out and like try a supplement. But I thought we could um perhaps end with some tips uh for for choosing a supplement. Um because one of the the biggest um uh tips that I got from the book um is the fact that the cannabis plant is a bio-accumulant in that it will leech uh the toxins and heavy metals out of the soil uh and store it in the plant itself, um which I didn't know. So that stands to reason you've got to be really careful about where you get your supplement from. So I thought perhaps we could talk about some top tips when when choosing a supplement if you choose to do so.
Dr Danny Gordon: Yeah, absolutely. So, on the wellness side, so these are things um that you can get over the counter in the UK. So I think that's always a good place to start because that way people can know what they're seeing on the shelves and how that may apply to them. So, when you're choosing an over-the-counter CBD wellness product, the first thing is you want to make sure it has what's called a certificate of analysis. And there's a whole section, there's like a whole chapter about this in the book, but basically, bottom line is this is like a a report, a third-party lab report that says, okay, it actually has this much CBD in it, like it says on the bottle. It doesn't have any nasties, doesn't have heavy metals, it doesn't have pesticide residues, um it doesn't have, you know, microbes that you don't want in there, and it doesn't have high amounts of THC where it shouldn't be. So, that should be um and every batch is tested. So that should be available from the company that you choose. Um it may not be on their website if you're buying it online, but you can ask for it via email if they don't have it. Sometimes it's just a space issue on their website. Um but Holland and Barrett will have COAs for all their products. Like any retailer, you know, that's um reputable. So that's the first thing. Um the second thing is people say, okay, should I go for a full spectrum CBD or a CBD isolate product? Um right now, in the UK, we can get both. But and of course, the full spectrum product is nice because it has all, well not all, because some of the um other plant chemicals get kind of um kind of leached out when you process it, but it has at least some of those other plant chemicals in there and it's that entourage effect again. So a lot of people do find it works better for them at lower doses when they have a full spectrum product. Um or at least a broad spectrum, which means it still has some of those other things in it, but it doesn't have any THC. So the broad spectrum will have less than a full spectrum in it, but it will still have more than an isolate product. So CBD isolate, people say, well, does it actually work? Well, for most people, it probably does work, but you a lot of people need a lot higher doses. And that's what we're seeing in the research studies. Most of the research studies with CBD have actually been done on CBD isolate, but they're very high dose. But they're really treating pretty hardcore clinical stuff, you know, like epilepsy and psychosis and really bad uh general anxiety disorder. So, um there's nothing wrong with a CBD isolate as long as it's coming from, you know, a good supplier. Um but certainly, um and actually that might be the only choice we have uh in March because of these new rules that are coming in about CBD. So, basically, um unfortunately, a lot of the really nice full spectrum products that you see on the shelf right now, it looks like they're no longer going to be legal in the UK.
Dr Rupy: Oh, wow. I didn't know that.
Dr Danny Gordon: Yeah. So it's really thrown the industry into a huge massive turmoil. Um and there's been a lot of lobbying against this and the Hemp Farmers Association, um which I support, um they say, gosh, like this is really going to decimate a lot of these small producers and and artisanal producers and it's true. Um but that looks like it's going to be the case. So it may be that you only have that choice. And then people say, well, what else can I do? Well, you can still combine it with, you know, other herbals, other things to get that synergy effect. Um there's probably going to be people putting turpenes back into the CBD isolate and like adding things back in to kind of kind of make up as as best as they can, like approximate what a full spectrum would have been. It's never going to be quite the same, but it looks like that's probably the way things are going to go in the UK.
Dr Rupy: Oh, wow. Is there a particular reason why that is the case? Uh
Dr Danny Gordon: Yes, it's very complicated. But basically, I'm throwing loads of complicated questions at you today. I'm sorry.
Dr Rupy: No, no. It's I mean, the the big question, well, it's a great question though. Like, why, why is this happening? Um there's something called the novel food novel food regulation in Europe, which basically says if something hasn't had a a traditional use, um it's considered novel in the human diet. And then it has to be kind of regulated almost like as a almost like as a medicine. It has to go through this very expensive process and you have to know exactly what's in it. So to do this with a pure CBD isolate, it's possible, but to do it with a hemp extract, which has all of the stuff in it, not possible or very, very difficult because the batch-to-batch um uh consistency is going to be a little bit different each time. And the kind of ridiculous part about this is even some of the the drugs that have been made from the cannabis plant like um Epidiolex, it still has what they say they're impurities, but actually it's some of the minor constituents in the plant and they allow a very small percentage of that um as long as they classify it as impurities. But when it comes to the the um the novel food regulation, it's it's stricter. So, um it's very much a political kind of situation. Um rather than really um, you know, people say, well, is it because full spectrum CBD is less safe? Well, no, as long as it's, you know, from a good source and it doesn't have any contaminants in it, it's just as safe as isolate. Um but it's more to do with um the other uh non-science uh reasons and the it's to do with regulatory um uh issues.
Dr Rupy: Gotcha. Gotcha. Is that why um I I I don't keep an eye on stocks or something, but my one of my friends informed me in anticipation of this interview that uh the shares in um hemp uh farms fell over the last couple of weeks. I don't know whether it's because of this or there's there are other reasons as to why.
Dr Danny Gordon: That's a good question because I'm I'm also not a trader, so I'd have to ask someone more knowledgeable than me, but that might be one of the reasons. Um there's also been talk in Europe about classifying CBD generally as a narcotic once again. Um I don't think it's going to happen. I think it's just talk, but there's it's a really uh kind of um difficult time, I think for the CBD industry right now. There's a lot of unknowns, a lot of uncertainties. Um so a lot of people are saying, yeah, maybe um I won't invest in the sector or in certain parts of the sector.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. Interesting. Well, I should start another podcast looking at what to invest in. I'll have to listen to that.
Dr Danny Gordon: Danny, this has been brilliant. Honestly, I've learned so much, uh and I've learned so much from the book as well. And we've literally just scratched the surface of of the information. I mean, it's literally a Bible. I mean, you talk about everything from skin disorders to, you know, autoimmune conditions, the history of the cannabis plant, how to choose a good quality supplement, the different administrations. We haven't even talked about that, you know, oil versus vaporising. Um but otherwise, we probably have to do this again or another point. Probably better when it's not over Zoom so we can actually have a full full conversation. And you can try some food as well.
Dr Rupy: I love that. I'm I'm a terrible cook, but I love to eat, so it's a match made in heaven. I really, really hope you enjoyed that. Dr Danny is brilliant. I'm so enamoured by her work and um I feel that we're going to have a lot more questions on this subject. So I'm sure we're going to have to chat to her again. But just to round up some of the um tips on uh if you are going to use something like this yourself, you must, must always speak to your own practitioner about using any supplementation, particularly with cannabis, as it can have a number of different interactive effects with medications and uh it may not be advisable for you as well. Please remember that it is a bio-accumulant. So making sure that you have a look at the certification to make sure there are no toxic um additives to it. I would suggest using a very low THC if anything at all. Remember the entourage effect, which is the combination of the different chemicals that you find in cannabis. Always start slow. Think about the methods of administration. We didn't really talk about that today. Um but uh certainly vaping and the different uh methods of vaping uh can can either be safe or toxic, particularly if you have respiratory conditions. So please, please be aware of that. Um always, always start slow. And uh there are a number of different law changes that are coming into effect that we mentioned at the end that could impact whether this is even available by the time of this recording. So always check with um the the legality in your area, which is different across the globe as to whether this is a product that you can legally interact with as well. Again, this isn't advice to try it. This is purely for educational purposes only, and I really hope you enjoyed the podcast. I'm sure we're going to get lots of questions and uh we may have to touch this subject again soon. Take care and I will see you next week.
