Changing Perspectives

depressed mood or hopelessness, appears to have stronger relationships with outcomes than do stressful events, suggesting that sustained activation of negative affective pathways may provide the strongest links to cancer progression. Moderators of stress, such as social support, (or #cannabis)* have been frequently studied with respect to cancer outcomes. Social support refers to an individual’s perceived satisfaction with social relationships and is thought to play a major role in buffering psychological and biological stress responses. Several studies have linked high levels of social support to improved clinical outcomes in cancer patients.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3037818/

• I added cannabis to this excerpt because, as we in the #naturalmedicine community know, cannabis moderates stress. Healthy, natural ways to lower your stress levels such as exercise, meditation, altruism, and yes cannabis eliminate dis-ease and boost your body’s immune system. They work by changing our perception, of our social relationships, to a more positive one. Even though our situation may not change externally, when we smoke weed, our worldview changes.

I’ve always loved the Cat Williams joke where he’s worrying about how he was going to pay the electric bill, then he smoked some weed and said, F@“% it, I’ve got 12 candles I’ve been waiting to burn! 😎

Study: Patients Find More Relief In Marijuana's Psychoactive Compound THC Than In CBD

CBD, the non-psychoactive compound found in cannabis, hemp and hops, has been getting a lot of attention from the media recently. People talk about CBD’s medical benefits – as it helps treat all kinds of ailments from anxiety to inflammation, about it being incoporated into everything from lubes to coffee, about its surging global popularity… On the other hand, THC, the psychoactive compound in cannabis that makes people feel “high” or “stoned,” is often overlooked (and sometimes even looked down on) when discussing marijuana’s medical potential. However, a new study revealed that THC exhibited the “strongest correlation with therapeutic relief, compared to the more socially acceptable chemical found in cannabis, CBD (cannabinol).”

The study found THC is more effective for the treatment of mental symptoms like agitation, irritability, anxiety, depression, excessive appetite, insomnia, loss of appetite, nausea, gastrointestinal pain, stress and tremors than CBD.

Cannabinoid content, and especially THC content, came out as the main factor for optimizing symptom relief, when tested for a wide variety of health conditions. “Despite the conventional wisdom, both in the popular press and much of the scientific community that only CBD has medical benefits while THC merely makes one high, our results suggest that THC may be more important than CBD in generating therapeutic benefits,” he said. In the study conducted by the University of New Mexico and Releaf App, CBD appeared to have almost no effect on the relief of most of the symptoms they studied. Conversely, THC seemed to generate “measurable improvements in symptom relief.” Bringing up these results, Mr.Vigil called for the “immediate de-scheduling of all types of cannabis, in addition to hemp, so that cannabis with THC can be more widely accessible for pharmaceutical use by the general public.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2019/02/27/study-patients-find-more-relief-in-marijuanas-physchoactive-compound-thc-than-in-cbd/#30cf88ac717a

Our bodies have the miraculous ability to build perfect new healthy cells, all day every day. The key to this beautiful truth is giving your body the materials it needs to build these perfect new cells by eating healthy nutrient dense foods. It’s also necessary to remove toxins from your body. Toxins, from both the outside environment, (found in our water and air, pesticides and chemicals in our food and hygiene products) as well as those toxins produced in our bodies, like stress hormones, all inhibit our body’s ability to create these perfect new cells. A properly nourished body with low toxicity levels will eliminate anything that doesn’t belong to our perfect DNA blueprint, and reproduce healthy new cells.

If we allow ourselves to be in a constant state of stress we are overloading our system with real, measurable toxicity, no matter how otherwise healthy our lifestyle is. The expanded awareness and perspective we get, when we consume this very special plant, helps us to let go of the anxiety, irritability and other stressful feelings that are poisoning us.

“It’s pretty clear that chronic stress disrupts the immune system, making us vulnerable to everything from a cold or flu to the uncontrolled growth of mutated cells,” says Cohen, who with his wife, Allison Jeffries, master of education, coauthored the book *Anti Cancer Living: Transform Your Life and Health With the Mix of Six.*

https://www.everydayhealth.com/wellness/united-states-of-stress/can-stress-cause-cancer-occur-spread/

"If your body does not help cancer cells, they cannot spread as far. So really, the rest of the cells in the body help cancer cells to move, to set up shop at distant sites. And one of the unifying themes here is stress."

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/265254.php

“Stress has a profound impact on how your body’s systems function,” says Lorenzo Cohen, Ph.D., professor of General Oncology and Behavioral Science, and director of the Integrative Medicine Program at MD Anderson. Health experts are still sorting out whether stress actually causes cancer. Yet there’s little doubt that it promotes the growth and spread of some forms of the disease. Put simply, “stress makes your body more hospitable to cancer,” Cohen says.

https://www.mdanderson.org/publications/focused-on-health/how-stress-affects-cancer-risk.h21-1589046.html

Our immune system is our bodies’ natural defense or protective mechanism from harmful invaders. Psychological stress or distress puts our immune system in jeopardy, and once the immune system is down, our body is more vulnerable to infections and chronic inflammation, and is less able to fight off diseases such as cancer.

https://www.cityofhope.org/can-stress-lead-to-cancer

I hope you enjoyed the information in this article as much as I have enjoyed sharing it with you. The beautiful truths shared here are only a tiny glimpse into our new paradigm, (or return to an ancient one) a world where the health of our bodies as well as our communities is understood in a holistic and interconnected way.