Have you noticed lately the number of retired athletes starting CBD companies and sharing how they have replaced many of their pharmaceutical drugs used to manage chronic pain conditions with various combinations of CBD and other cannabis products?
Everywhere in the news NFL, NHL, NBA and PGA players are endorsing the use of cannabis to manage the chronic pain and inflammation resulting from years of contact sports, pounding the courts and or back and shoulder repetitive use injuries.
Recently Riley Cote, former NHL pro, started a CBD non-profit company called “ Hemp Heals”. Six-time NBA All-Star Shawn Kemp of the Seattle Supersonics just opened Seattle’s first black owned cannabis dispensary, “ Shawn Kemp’s Cannabis.”
What we hear from these athletes is that they are using Cannabis as a substitution therapy for managing pain and recovering from injury, and to avoid opioid use dependence or the untoward effects of polypharmacy .
Athletes are given a cocktail of narcotic and potent anti-inflammatory drugs to manage the pain to keep them playing. Often this leads to addictions and lifelong impacts of chronic disease from stomach bleeding to kidney problems when these medications are used for a prolonged period of time.
The NFL is moving away from punitive approaches regarding cannabis use. Players will no longer be suspended for positive marijuana tests . Also testing will be limited to the first two weeks of training camp instead of up to 4 months before, while raising the units of allowable THC from 35 nanograms to 150. Players who test over the limits will be reviewed by the team medical staff and treatment offered if appropriate.
Several PGA pros have endorsement deals with CBD manufacturers. They are names like Bubba Watson, Scott McCarron, Brandt Jobe, Charley Hoffman and Morgan Hoffmann to name a few. Phil Mickelson is known to have psoriatic arthritis and is reported to be using CBD to manage the outbreaks.
Every year for the past 4 years (pre-COVID) the Cannabis Science Conference was held in Portland, Oregon. At these conferences attendees and presenters gather from more than 20 countries with representatives from Australia, Columbia, Israel, Germany, Canada, Jamaica and the United States discussing the research on cannabis science and medicine.
At the 2018 Cannabis Science Conference I heard Dr. Uma Dhanabalan MD, MPH, FAAFP a physician trained in Occupational & Environmental Medicine, give a talk on how cannabis can be used as an “exit drug” and alternative to opiates for managing the pain and inflammation of sports injuries. There was also a panel of retired pro athletes sharing their stories of replacing pharmaceuticals that have high side effects and adverse reaction profiles like addiction, stomach ulcers and bleeding, kidney and heart failure with cannabis tinctures and topicals’ with various ratios of CBD to THC with few if any side effects.
As Dr Sanjay Gupta, neurosurgeon has said, “Marijuana doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works…it’s a drug remarkably free of toxicity providing it's used intelligently.”
So, for those of us weekend warriors, hackers, hikers, bikers and yoga enthusiasts perhaps cannabis products may be something to investigate and add to our holistic health regime.
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