The Illustrative Case of Caffeine vs. Cannabinoids
- cbeck32
- Jun 23, 2019
- 2 min read
Do you feel comfortable using a medicine that blocks signals of your body's fundamental, physiological needs? What about using one that supplements a chemical needed to send those signals?
I'd prefer the latter - to give my body the tools it needs to repair itself, to open my attention to organic, internal cues, instead of blocking those cues.
If you agree with me, then you see how cannabis could be a more appealing drug than even coffee.
The reason cannabis works as medicine is because the body requires its own version of its active ingredients to function. Like caffeine comes from coffee or tea leaves, or like aspirin was originally derived from willow bark, helpful medication can come from the cannabis plant. And just as our bodies require plant-sourced vitamin C to function, some bodies may require supplemented cannabinoids such as THC and CBD, derived from the cannabis plant, to function properly.
For those who ask why we can't just use lab-synthesized cannabinoids as we do with other important medicines... We do, but they aren't a better alternative.
Why? The Entourage Effect.
Active plant compounds perform differently in chemical isolation than when inside the original plant context, mediated by other phytochemicals too numerous and dilute to feasibly map out. This phenomenon is called the entourage effect, and it underlies the difference between enjoying a cup of coffee and taking a caffeine pill - one's usually a stimulating, refreshing experience, and the other is more likely to give you chest pains and sweats.
With regard to cannabis, even from a recreational point of view, users often expect more side effects or negative aspects to their high when using high-THC distillates, compared to lower-THC products with higher-terpene and other cannabinoid combinations. So a lab-derived analogous molecule to THC (nabilone) should (and does) have therapeutic value, but at higher risk than if consumed in the full-spectrum plant form.
TLDR: The potential benefits from the entourage effect in plant-based medicines often win out over the potential risks of standardized, single-molecule medicines. And that adds to the case in favor of medical (and even recreational) use of cannabis.