How about some ganja juice or salad?
Leaves, seeds and flower can help restore balance to body, ward off diseases
IF HEARING the words ‘ganja’ or ‘marijuana’ evokes thoughts of ‘gateway drug’ or ‘dangerous plant’, the following information will require that you unlearn all you believe you know about ganja. It will require the adoption of a new thought pattern to truly appreciate the role the plant plays in the functioning of the human body.
The average person’s cannabis knowledge is based on the past 80 to 100 years of prohibition. But the plant has a 5,000-year history, and as countries begin to loosen the restrictions on cannabis, a new normal is emerging, taking us back to the period where it was not only an indispensable medicine but a dietary essential.
All humans are born with an endogenous (endo) cannabinoid system (ECS), which is developed very early during gestation. The ECS governs homeostasis in the body and regulates other systems such as the immune and central nervous systems, promotes healthy inflammatory response, and enhances cell vitality.
The ECS responds to interaction with cannabinoids, both those produced by the brain (endocannabinoids) and by
plants (phyto cannabinoids).
Medical practitioners who support cannabis use have long argued that the fact that we have an endocannabinoid system with over 300 receptor points indicates that our body recognises cannabis, needs and uses it, and our health is better with it.
“There is no other botanical that has a chemical composition that mirrors the endogenous cannabinoid system and talks to it as well as cannabis,” said Dr Lakisha Jenkins, traditional naturopath and registered herbalist.
Jenkins was recently talking on ‘Phyto cannabinoid Supplementation Essentials’ at the Plant Medicine Summit, a digital forum hosted by the Shift Network.
A 2010 study, The Endocannabinoid System and Its Relevance for
Nutrition, surmised that: “A dysregulated endocannabinoid signalling is heavily involved in eating disorders, cardiovascular diseases, and gastrointestinal pathologies, suggesting that endocannabinoid-oriented drugs might be next-generation therapeutics to treat these conditions in humans.”
And that’s where the real value of cannabis can be obtained, not as medicine but as part of a preventative lifestyle, according to Dr William Courtney, a US-based physician who specialises in dietary raw cannabis.
He believes that cannabis’ ability to heal on a cellular level makes it the “most important vegetable on the planet”.
“Cannabis can be manipulated to become a medicine after the body has broken down,” Courtney said in a YouTube docuseries, “but in its best form, it’s a preventative – preventing cancer is a lot better than trying to treat it.”