CBD Can Help Heal Broken Bones, According to Dr. Rasmussen

Will wonders never cease?

If I were to sit my colleagues down and provide them with a lecture on all of the positive uses for cannabis and CBD they would think I was nuts, and laugh me off the stage. Typically when you hear someone pealing from a soapbox about how great a product is, that it cures dozens of different aliments, you should run the other way. That’s because (allopathic) medicines don’t have huge applications across dozens of organ systems. Like the snake oil sold to thousands at the turn of the century, products come and go. Most are complete nonsense.

Incidentally, snake oil was a rich source of omega 3 fatty acids which DID make it a very useful drug. But in general drugs, tinctures, extracts, whatever, never really cure dozens of different diseases. They may be great for a limited application but that’s where the fantasy ends. At least from the pharmacopeia that I use every day.

THE CANNABINOIDS

Well, there’s a new sheriff in town that is changing how we will use drugs and treat diseases. The new sheriff would be the cannabinoids. I have never seen a class of compounds that seem to have so many powerful disease-fighting properties. Which makes all of this terribly frustrating because nobody can get any research done with human volunteers due to the DEA class I scheduling.

MEET THE OLD BOSS, SAME AS THE NEW BOSS

Nothing seems to be changing either. Just in the last two weeks, congress shot down an amendment that would have placed cannabis in a new category, still technically schedule I but the new class would have approved cannabis for clinical research. Why that didn’t pass I’ll never know.

While the rest of the first world research community is hog tied to a park bench, there remains a little gem full of great minds doing respectable research.

WELCOME ISRAEL

That would be the Israelis. This tiny country apparently has a better form of democracy than the US. They actually listen to the masses and respond appropriately. That means that cannabis research is full-bore in this desert nation.

Appropriately enough a very interesting publication came out earlier this year.

A new study published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research by Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University researchers explores another promising new medical application for marijuana. According to the research, the administration of the non-psychotropic component cannabinoid cannabidiol (CBD) significantly helps heal bone fractures. The study, conducted on rats with mid-femoral fractures, found that CBD — even when isolated from tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the major psychoactive component of cannabis — markedly enhanced the healing process of the femora after just eight weeks.

The research was led jointly by Dr. Yankel Gabet of the Bone Research Laboratory at the Department of Anatomy and Anthropology at TAU’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the late Prof. Itai Bab of Hebrew University’s Bone Laboratory.[ref](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150716124359.htm) 07/23/2015 (original publication: Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, 2015; DOI: 10.1002/jbmr.2513.[/ref]

After the discovery of CB receptors within bone matrix, the road was paved for research into the effects of cannabinoids on bone mineralization and healing. They found that CBD makes bones harder while enhancing bone mineralization. After treatment with CBD the bone will be harder to break in the future said Dr Gabet.

The clinical potential of cannabinoid-related compounds is simply undeniable at this point, said Dr. Gabet. While there is still a lot of work to be done to develop appropriate therapies, it is clear that it is possible to detach a clinical therapy objective from the psychoactivity of cannabis. CBD, the principal agent in our study, is primarily anti-inflammatory and has no psychoactivity

…We found CBD alone to be sufficiently effective in enhancing fracture healing. Other studies have also shown CBD to be a safe agent, which leads us to believe we should continue this line of study in clinical trials to assess its usefulness in improving human fracture healing.[ref]IBID[/ref]