Pot benefits?

Currently, the fastest human in the world runs at a top speed of approximately 27.79 miles per hour. This Jamaican Olympic sprinting champion, Usain Bolt, has used marijuana.

Considered strongly as the best Olympian of all time, swimming champion Michael Phelps has won America a total of 22 Olympic medals and –

 18 of them were Gold. Phelps has used marijuana.

Cy Young award winner Tim Lincecum was booked in 2009 for misdemeanor marijuana possession of three grams in Washington State. He was stopped while driving and caught with the sticky stuff and a pipe. Following that MLB season, Lincecum was named Sporting News National Pitcher of the Year for the second-consecutive year.

The fastest man, the best swimmer and a MLB Pitcher of the Year winner all have used pot.

But the list continues.

Ricky Williams recorded 10,000 rushing yards in the NFL, but his outspoken nature regarding the benefits of the certain earthly herb nearly cost him his career.

WWE wrestler Rob Van Dam wrote, in an article for Cannabis Culture Magazine, “I personally know boxers, body builders, cyclists, runners and athletes from all walks of life that train and compete with the assistance of marijuana, but they might not be comfortable sharing this information.”

Normal, everyday people

But, it’s not just the athletes using marijuana.

Senior nursing student Rachel Douglass says she absolutely knows successful, intelligent people who use marijuana in their daily lives.

“One of my best friends is a lawyer in the Bronx, a public defender, and she uses marijuana on the regular,” she said.

 Douglass says when she consumes marijuana it helps her focus and think deeper into a topic.

Professor Phillip Lamy is a professional who knows countless successful adults and workers who consume marijuana and enjoy its physical and mental benefits. He says he could probably list 100 people who use the drug and lead happy and healthy lives.

“I know a number of professors that are regular marijuana consumers. And doctors, I have a great friend of mine who is a highly experienced, veteran nurse in the Rutland region who uses. Many nurses are in favor of legalization so that more research can be done,” he said.

 Lamy said nurses “run into clients who prefer to use marijuana rather than the prescription drug.”

Pot, science and medicine

In a 2004 study by Spain’s Complutense University, the department of biochemistry and molecular biology found that cannabinoids “kill glioma cells selectively and can protect non-transformed glial cells from death. These and other findings reviewed here might set the basis for a potential use of cannabinoids in the management of gliomas.”

Gliomas (in particular glioblastoma multiforme or grade IV astrocytoma) are the most frequent class of malignant primary brain tumors and one of the most aggressive forms of cancer.

A 2014 study by Rostock University in Germany set out to discover what effects cannabinoids have on lung cancers. The medical scientists found that cannabinoids increase lung cancer cell lysis. Cell lysis is the breaking down of the cancerous cell membrane.

Marijuana has been found to possibly help fight brain cancer and lung cancer, but that’s not all.

Many studies are now providing more evidence that marijuana’s cannabinoids work to fight many different forms of cancer, including even skin cancer and blood cancer.

Pot myths struck down

Professors Brendan Lalor and Lamy recently coauthored a commentary on pot legalization, which will be soon featured in the Rutland Herald. In the article titled “Marijuana Health ‘Experts’ Disappoint,” the Rutland and Castleton residents eloquently strike down a handful of common marijuana myths.

The two professors, citing boatloads of recent scientific evidence, say pot does not make you lazy, pot does not make you less intelligent or lower your IQ, is not physically unhealthy for you, does not make you dangerous and – here’s one you hear all the time — is not a gateway drug.

Rather, as Kimberly Cheney is quoted in the report as saying, “Marijuana prohibition is a true gateway to other drugs, not marijuana itself.”

If finding out more about these benefits and truths regarding pot sounds interesting to you, Lalor and Lamy are both happy to forward anyone of the Castleton community their new coauthored commentary.

 

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