What the Liver Does to an Edible Before You Feel Anything
When cannabis is swallowed, the liver converts a large share of the THC into 11-hydroxy-THC before it ever reaches the brain, which is why edibles are slow to start and long to finish. Controlled human studies put blood concentrations of THC and…
Cannabis for Chronic Pain: How Large the Benefit Actually Is
Does cannabis work for chronic pain, and by how much? Across 32 randomized trials in 5,174 adults, non-inhaled medical cannabis produced a small improvement in pain, a very small improvement in physical function, and a small improvement in sleep, with…
What Heat Actually Does to Cannabis: The Chemistry of Turning THCA Into THC
THCA decarboxylation is the heat-driven reaction that converts the acid form the cannabis plant actually makes into the THC most people are looking for. Laboratory kinetic studies put the activation energy near 88 kJ/mol and show the reaction completing…
Cannabis Plant Anatomy: What the Microscopy Actually Shows About Where Cannabinoids Come From
Cannabis plant anatomy, read from the microscopy literature rather than the infographics: cannabinoids and most terpenes are made and stored in glandular trichomes on the surface of female floral bracts, not within leaf, stem, or root tissue. Stalked…
When Insomnia Is a Symptom: The Medical Conditions Behind Persistent Sleeplessness
The medical causes of chronic insomnia span neurologic, respiratory, gastrointestinal, pain, cardiac, urologic, hormonal, and psychiatric conditions, each disrupting sleep through a different mechanism. Community data show chronic insomnia at roughly two…
Glass, Metal, Ceramic, Wood: Does Your Inhalation Device Material Change What You Inhale?
The popular claim that glass beats metal and wood for vapor quality has no support in the peer-reviewed literature, and cannabis vape device materials turn out to matter for a different reason. Laboratory work from Health Canada and the National Research…
CBG, CBN, CBC, and THCV: Which Cannabinoid Claims Come From Human Studies, and Which Do Not
Minor cannabinoids reach store shelves with confident functional claims years before anyone gives them to a human being in a controlled trial. CBG now has two small human studies that reached different conclusions, CBN has two randomized sleep trials…
Why the Same THC Dose Behaves Differently at 30 and at 70
Cannabis pharmacokinetics in older adults rests on a thinner evidence base than most clinical discussion suggests, with the only controlled trial in adults over 65 enrolling twelve people. Route of administration shifts the balance between THC and its…
Where Cannabinoid Receptors Actually Live: A Working Map of CB1 and CB2 Across the Human Body
CB1 and CB2 receptor distribution is the anatomical foundation under every clinical question in cannabis medicine, and most summaries of it are vaguer than the primary data require. This page maps both receptors from the original cloning and…
Pre-Seizure Symptoms: What an Aura Is, What a Prodrome Is, and Why the Difference Matters Diagnostically
Pre-seizure symptoms fall into two categories that get confused constantly. The aura, which the 2017 International League Against Epilepsy classification treats as the beginning of a focal aware seizure, carries localizing value, while the prodrome can…