If you have a juicer, chances are you’ve used produce from your garden to make your morning smoothie. Monday’s smoothie may contain lots of fruit. Tuesday’s may have more vegetables. Perhaps you always include kale no matter what day it is. For Katie Marsh, a rheumatoid arthritis sufferer from Madawaska, Maine, her daily ingredient is cannabis.
“To drink it straight is kind of bitter, but it’s not at all objectionable in a smoothie,” she told Fox News.
After trying various treatments for her condition with little to no results, Marsh, who was living in California at the time, decided to obtain her medical marijuana card. After revealing her plan, a friend suggested she juice it instead of smoke it, Fox News reports.
“I had never heard of it before but it immediately resonated with me,” Marsh said.
Marsh met with Dr. William Courtney to discuss which strains to seek out. Courtney, a physician, raw dietary cannabis leading expert and researcher out of Mendocino, Calif., told Fox News that around 8,000 of his patients have seen positive results from raw dietary cannabis. They juice it, blend it or chop it up and add it to coleslaw. He said that “one of the biggest benefits is the positive effect cannabis has on the body’s endogenous cannabinoid system, which is made up of endocannabinoids, or chemical compounds found throughout the body that perform different processes … when the brain’s cannabinoid system is activated, it triggers the release of antioxidants that remove damaged cells and improve the efficiency of the mitochondria, which generate energy for the cells. This process, in turn improves brain function.” He believes cannabis should be in everyone’s regular diet.
Dr. Courtney isn’t the only physician who believes in the benefits of raw cannabis. According to Fox News, double board certified surgeon and managing director and co-founder of NYC Surgical Associates Dr. David A. Greuner said “juicing raw cannabis has the same therapeutic effects for certain conditions and in certain populations that smoking medical marijuana does.” The relieving of pain and nausea was cited as a way raw dietary cannabis can help an ailing individual.
The difference between heated forms of cannabis (smoked, in baked goods, vaporized) and raw dietary cannabis is that the latter doesn’t make you high, Fox News reports. Courtney did state, however, that one or two of his 8,000 patients reported having an allergic reaction when the raw leaf touched their skin and that one in 1,000 of his patients reported experiencing psychoactive effects after eating both the leaf and flower. Courtney now advises against ingesting both the leaf and flower.
Even though Marsh and doctors have cited the benefits of ingesting raw dietary cannabis, there is still the issue of obtaining it, given that it is only legal in 23 states and the District of Columbia. Courtney would like access to improve, while Marsh has released a book called “Juicing Cannabis for Healing.” She hopes to one day find it in the frozen foods section of Whole Foods.
