MARIJUANA

Guide to Buying, Growing, Harvesting, and Making Medical Marijuana Oil and Delicious Candies to Treat Pain and Ailments

by

Mary Bendis

Second Edition

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Second Edition, License Notes

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Copyright 2012

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Prologue

I had been on a long search to find a food supplement, a medicine - something that would relieve the throbbing pain in my lower back, and pain in my knees and feet. My Doctor prescribed Tylenol, Aleve, Advil, Tramadol, Vicodin, Celebrex, and Soma to help me get relief from the miserable pain. In taking away some of the pain, the medications side effects made me feel overly sedated, incapacitated, nauseated, and feeling just plain lousy. I wanted something that would let me live my life without pain, but without the lethargy, and possible physical damage and drug addiction that opiates and other pain medications cause. I researched the available medications and decided to try Medical Marijuana. I’m very lucky to live in a state that has legalized Medical Marijuana. I got a legal Medical Marijuana prescription and tried smoking cannabis, but I didn’t enjoy the taste or the burning in my lungs. From a health viewpoint, I became mainly interested in the edible medical marijuana aspect of marijuana use. I know that many people safely and happily use marijuana recreationally to get high, but I wanted to focus on taking edible marijuana for pain alleviation and for its muscle relaxant effect. The edible marijuana had to be low-calorie – less than 15 calories each, easy to make and take, and effective. By experimenting, I developed a way of using my easy recipes that would give a reliable dose of cannabis to relieve those ailments and pains.

I wrote this book to help the reader take the mystery of Medical Marijuana and change it into simple to make edible medications, such as delicious Cannabis Chocolates and tasty Dragon Teeth mints that help take care of their pains, like it took away mine. I distilled months of studying, testing, writing, and assessing the results to come up with a comprehensive guide to marijuana that would be all anyone would need to use Medical Marijuana.

Legal Disclaimer: I am in no way advocating using illegal marijuana. This book is for patients or future patients of legal medical marijuana who wish to learn how to buy or grow marijuana for their own use, and how to make cannabis oil and candies to help treat their maladies.

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Table of Contents

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Medical Benefits of Marijuana

When people think of marijuana, they usually think of the effects of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, for short. THC is the most psychologically active chemical in cannabis, but there are 483 different chemicals found in marijuana. Most of these constituents are found in other plants, but 66 of these chemicals, which are called cannabinoids, are totally unique and only found in the cannabis plant. These cannabinoids seem to work together to create the pain soothing properties that are so useful in marijuana.

Medical marijuana is a versatile beneficial medicine that can help countless medical conditions, with fewer adverse side effects, and is better than a lot of prescription medicine available. And unlike thousands of prescription medicines, there has never been a death attributed to a cannabis overdose. It is superior for many pain ailments; back pain, MS pain, IBS and Crohn’s disease pain, arthritis pain, migraine pain, helps alleviate HIV pain and nausea, and helps severe cramps in many illnesses. It works better for glaucoma than prescription medicine. Some medical studies have shown that THC in marijuana can block the deposits in the brain of amyloid proteins that cause Alzheimer’s disease. Intriguing studies have shown the anti-cancer properties of cannabis, which could lead to new cancer treatments. Many people have had the symptoms of Tourette’s, OCD’s, and even overcoming severe addictions to opiates, cocaine, and other drugs, helped by cannabis. It is much better to take marijuana than be on harder drugs like opiates or other strong pain medications. Even indulging in too much marijuana is preferable to too much cocaine, crack, meth, heroin, ecstasy, tobacco, or liquor, along with most prescription pain medications. Being baked is much better than being fried! Switching from strong medicines or drugs to cannabis, would benefit most addicts. Overcoming addictions should be done with a professional clinic, with marijuana being taken under doctor supervision.

There are so many ailments, afflictions, and maladies that can be treated by medical marijuana, that I have included a long list in alphabetical order at the end of this chapter. Doubtless, there are many other medical problems that can be helped by cannabis, and discoveries of future uses will be made.

The unique properties of marijuana make it work better and safer than many over the counter and prescription drugs. It has a pain relieving properties, along with a muscle relaxant. The THC in marijuana causes the “high” people experience, but in smaller doses, and ingested, it relieves pain. Another element in marijuana is CBD or cannabidiol. It provides the soothing wellness aspect of the medicine. It improves appetite, calms the nerves, and improves the mood of the patient. In 2001, GW Pharmaceuticals found that only a combination of CBD and THC gave analgesic relief for MS patients. If only one component was taken alone, it wasn’t as effective in treating chronic pain, as was the two in combination. The CBD (cannabidiol) part of cannabis is lost in smoking or vaporizing - only in marijuana oil or ingesting marijuana is that vital part available to the body.

The marijuana can’t be eaten raw or dried from the plant to achieve any effect, neither high nor any pain relief. It is only by carefully heating the cannabis plant bud, or leaves with an oil, preferably canola oil, that the cannabinoids are released and activated and metabolized in humans. Alcohols, solvents, and even lighter fluid, can be used to activate THC and CBD, but most of these ingredients are dangerous, and alcohol added to marijuana can lead to unexpected results; difficulty walking, talking or doing anything other than laying down. To reduce pain, medical marijuana oil is the most useful in obtaining results, without adding harmful additives that don’t help. Using marijuana oil preserves all the beneficial properties of cannabis, with none of the negatives of smoking (irritating the airways and the lungs).

Smoking is by far the most used method of using marijuana. There are many medical ailments that are reduced or relieved by smoking cannabis, but it is a far less healthy way of using your medical marijuana. Marijuana smokers don’t smoke nearly as often as tobacco smokers, which mitigates the bad effects. Tar is a component of marijuana as it is in tobacco, but not the nicotine. It has been shown that six marijuana joints roughly equal a pack of twenty tobacco cigarettes. Lots of marijuana smokers are also users of tobacco, so it is hard to separate the cause of some dual-use smoking, and cancer. Marijuana smokers have a tendency to hold the smoke deeply in their lungs for a longer time than regular tobacco smokers. This might make the particulates in the smoke stay deeper in the lungs. Vaporizing is another way to take in cannabis and is healthier than smoking, or using a bong; but it still has some irritants going into the lungs.

For these health reasons, and practicality, I prefer to make marijuana oil and have all the medicinal benefits, and none of the downside of smoking. My exclusive recipes of Cannabis Chocolates and new Dragon Teeth Mints are easy to take anywhere you go and don’t have the downside of finding a place you can smoke some weed. When you ingest marijuana oil, the liver converts it into 11 hydroxyl THC. This hydroxyl THC is four times stronger than the conventional smoking technique of taking in THC. It is estimated that 80% of THC is wasted into the air, instead of into the lungs of cannabis smoker, (along with tars, carbon residue, and nasty particulates). Still, marijuana smokers are far less likely to get lung cancers or other cancers, than tobacco smokers. THC and other cannabinoids have been observed in tests to kill cancer cells, making even smoking cannabis less harmful than tobacco products. A study by the American Thoracic Society international Conference, in 2006, found no link between marijuana and lung cancer. But marijuana has been shown to kill cancer, in clinical studies. In 2007, a Harvard University study found that cannabis cut lung cancer tumor growth in half.

You could argue that cannabis contains a natural chemical that the body already produces called endocannabinoids. Our bodies produce this chemical, and we have cannabinoid receptors in our brain that receive the naturally produced cannabinoids to maintain good health. Research has shown that these natural cannabinoids play a key role in many functions in the body, such as appetite, blood pressure, body and bone mass, and even anxiety control. The National Academy of Sciences found that mice without a proper supply of endocannabinoids had an alarming increase in premature death and were lethargic. Migraines, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and even fibromyalgia, might be caused by a deficiency of endocannabinoids; which would logically call for marijuana to medically balance the cannabinoid in your system. In fact, your system might just need a little medical marijuana adjustment to feel and perform better.

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Symptoms or Conditions that Medical Marijuana Can Treat

ADD w hyperactivity

ADD w/o hyperactivity

AIDS Related Illness

Acquired hypothyroidism

Acute Gastritis

Acute Sinusitis

Adrenal Cortical Cancer

Agoraphobia

Alcohol Abuse

Alcoholism

Amphetamine Dependence

Amyloidosis

Anaphylactic or Reaction

Angina pectoris

Alkalosis

Anorexia Nervosa

Anorexia

Anxiety Disorder

Arteriosclerotic Heart Disease

Arthritis, Degenerative

Arthritis, Rheumatoid

Arthritis, posttraumatic

Arthropathy, gout

Asthma, unspecified

Atrophy Blanche

Autism/Asperger’s

Autoimmune disease

Back Sprain

Bell’s palsy

Bipolar Disorder

Brain Trauma

Brain malignant tumor

Bruxism

Bulimia

Cachexia

Cancer, site unspecified

Cardiac conduction disorder

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Cerebellar Ataxia

Cerebral Aneurism

Cerebral Palsy

Cervical Disk Disease

Cervicobrachial Syndrome

Chemotherapy Convalescence

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Chronic Sinusitis

Cluster Headaches

Cocaine Dependence

Colitis

Colitis, Ulcerative

Colon diverticulitis

Compression of Brain

Conjunctivitis

Constipation

Cough

Cystic Fibrosis

Darier’s Disease

Delirium Tremens

Dentofacial anomaly pain

Dermatomyositis

Diabetes Adult Onset

Diabetes Insulin Dependence

Diabetic Neuropathy

Diabetic Ophthalmic Disease

Diabetic Peripheral Vascular Disease

Diabetic Renal Disease

Diarrhea

Drusen of Optic Nerve

Dumping Syndrome Post Surgery

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