Joe Payack

Rick Simpson oil (RSO) was developed by, surprise, Rick Simpson. Rick developed skin cancer in 2004, and having read about the healing powers of topical cannabinoids, decided to make his own topical oil to apply to his skin lesions. The cancer disappeared, and Rick became an advocate for cannabis as medicine. He became mildly famous for this, and his work is immortalized in the name of his oil. RSO can… Read More »RSO – What is Rick Simpson Oil?

Amongst the issues facing the cannabis and hemp industries are inconsistencies with testing. Proper assays of potency are critical to many facets of the field. Accurate flower assays provide information to the consumer on the strength and cannabinoid content of the material they will smoke. Flower assays are also used to determine extraction efficiencies and yields. We use in-house HPLC Testing and will discuss our methods in this post. The… Read More »Cannabis HPLC Testing

The term “Full Spectrum CBD” is mentioned a lot. What does it mean, how’s it made, and how is it different from CBD isolate? Well, isolate, as I’ve talked about previously, is simply pure CBD. GW pharma sells their isolate as Epidiolex (with the blessing of the FDA) for tens of thousand dollars a year. This is a travesty, since a year’s supply of isolate on the open market is… Read More »Full spectrum: what does it mean?

There are so many forms of CBD on the market and we have been exploring the differences for you, the consumer, to make an informed choice. Let’s discuss CBD isolate. CBD isolate is simply pure crystalline CBD. Good quality isolate should be 99.9% CBD. Anything less, in terms of purity, indicates the “isolate” was not made properly. CBD is a beautifully crystalline substance at room temperature. All of our extracts… Read More »CBD Isolate – What is it?

CBD can be sold in many forms, from pure CBD isolate, semi-purified distillate to full cannabinoid spectrum oils. We will discuss CBD distillate here, and try to provide clarity on what it is and how it’s made. All compounds that have vapor pressure will distill. What is distillation? Distillation, in its simplest form, is simply heating a compound to its boiling point. This liberates the compound into the gaseous (vapor)… Read More »CBD Distillate – A Guide

CBD is a potential treatment for depression. Now a new article in the journal Behavioral Brain Research (doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2020.112627) makes the argument that DNA methylation in certain brain regions is regulated by CBD.  The authors’ Abstract:   Cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychotomimetic component of Cannabis sativa plant, shows therapeutic potential in psychiatric disorders, including depression. The molecular mechanisms underlying the antidepressant-like effects of CBD are not yet understood. Previous studies in… Read More »CBD for Depression – Recent Study

Many folks have reported that cannabinoids (a mixture of CBD and THC) are an effective treatment for essential tremor. There are two main movement-disorder disease types: Parkinson’s (and its cousins), which are group of central nervous system degenerative diseases; and essential tremor, which is mediated by peripheral neurons in the spinal cord.  Now, a new article in the prestigious Nature Neuroscience journal sheds some light on how cannabinoids can help… Read More »Cannabinoids and Tremor

Many of our customers (including me) use CBD for relief from chronic pain. Unfortunately, there is little in the way of clinic data on this use, and the FDA prevents us from promoting CBD for pain. None the less, the anecdotal evidence is quite compelling. We need a high-quality, controlled clinic trial to assess the effects of CBD. In the meantime, let’s compare CBD to approved treatments for chronic pain.… Read More »CBD and Chronic Pain

If we go back a decade, cannabis, hemp and CBD were considered “controlled substances” with no known medicinal value. How far we have come. Now CBD is FDA approved to treat epilepsy, other important effects of CBD have been discovered, and cannabis is legal in so many states I’ve lost count. It all started with Charlotte’s Web. This strain of cannabis is high in CBD. It produced remarkable effects in… Read More »CBD and Epilepsy – What to Know