This is not intended as advice, medical, legal or otherwise, and is to be used solely for educational purposes. See Program Agreement for further disclaimers and release of liability.
Dear People,
Countless numbers of people have found enormous pain relief, safely, using cannabis. We hear about others who have successfully healed their cancers. To my and the entire industry’s knowledge, no one has ever died from using just cannabis. They might have had a terrible, not-soon-forgotten emergency room experience. But they haven’t died. Before the 1920’s-30’s, it was regularly prescribed in small amounts for pain and nervous disorders by family physicians. In the 30’s it became demonized by the Rockefellers and the nascent pharmaceutical industry, eventually making cannabis so illegal and propagandized as evil, people were jailed for the rest of their lifetimes just for having the tiniest amount in their possession. However, it must be used responsibly and with mindful purpose. Some cancers it might aggravate instead of heal. Some people have allergic reactions of various types using cannabis.
So, you see all the disclaimers scattered around my cannabis topics. I hear you. Many are in so much pain, are desperate for relief, and have been around the medical establishments’ merry-go-round so many times that the disclaimers no longer matter. But here on this site, please know that in any of my cannabis topics as you review them and might start doubting again, hold your despair at bay a bit. I want to let you know that even if cannabis also ends up being not for you, this site is loaded with tons of alternatives that so many others have successfully used to reduce their pains WITHOUT any cannabis at all, or with just the slightest amount one time a day. I so encourage you to continue to explore the rest. Perhaps you too will be one of those truly free from all the drugs! Please give yourself a chance.
The ENTOURAGE Effect
The entourage effect basically says all the constituents of something working together as a whole is more effective, or the only way something is effective, rather than just a single component being the answer.
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
This is true with health pursuits. Most people find truer and longer lasting health and well-being from combining a variety of things—real food, clean water, very particular and few supplements, sleep, movement, mindfulness, etc. rather than just trying to gulp down supplements, pharmaceuticals or taking a shot for example and ignoring all the other items.
And it’s true for cannabis. I think the term was actually coined just for cannabis, but it works when considering following health and wellness ideas too!
For cannabis, the entourage effect explains why cannabis whole plant formulas, whether consumed naturally by smoking the whole plant like in smoking a cannabis flower bud, or consumed as a cannabis product artificially created by adding several cannabis compounds together into the product seems to be more effective than just taking a cannabis isolate like only CBD isolate.
In fact, seemingly not with any of the other cannabinoids extracted out as single items, but particularly CBD isolate seems to have a problem when consuming it on its own. For each person, consuming CBD isolate usually creates something called a Bell Curve Effect (see the middle of the linked page for a PDF about it), where at some point in time, and in certain quantity for any given individual, the CBD will just stop working as it was intended and as it started.
In cannabis products, this entourage effect seeking product is called a full spectrum cannabis product. It is one that combines at least CBD and THC, but also other cannabinoids along with terpenes and sometimes flavonoids and flavonols in varying quantities and ratios.
The full spectrum product is made by the manufacturers first extracting out singly each cannabis compound from the whole plant, and then adding these extracted compounds back in any ratio and combination into any final product.
Trying to create full spectrum naturally can only be done by smoking/inhaling of the raw cannabis flower bud, either cannabis marijuana or cannabis hemp.
When trying to create a full spectrum product at home by heating and/or infusing full, whole plant (meaning the full raw cannabis flower, bud, upper leaves) in oil for example, different compounds are usually destroyed or evaporate each at different temperatures in the process so it’s hard to keep all of them when some of the primary ones need higher heat for example to activate while then sacrificing the more delicate compounds like the terpenes in the process.
However, though these homemade formulas might be missing some of the compounds added back into products by the professional manufacturers with specialty equipment, the home formulas are still considered by most to be far more effective and superior than consuming only one cannabis isolate for something.
So a full spectrum cannabis product is made with an artificial process, either professionally or at home.
And a broad spectrum cannabis product is also made with an artificial process.
The term broad spectrum cannabis products, are cannabis products that only contain CBD and THC in various quantities and ratios but none of the rest of the whole plant compounds.
Making broad spectrum cannabis products at home are usually not very successful, but not really needed. The best “whole plant” homemade products are those made by the consumer using raw cannabis plant flower buds/leaves. These formulations will contain mostly the cannabinoids of the plants used, the CBD, the THC and any minor cannabinoids and most people think these recipes are usually the most successful and effective for the consumer.
Here is a little more info on all the cannabis compounds in the cannabis plant of whatever type.
The raw cannabis flower (and some of the upper leaves) has the medicine of the plant which are the sticky trichomes best seen with a zoom camera or magnifying loupe. These trichomes are full of hundreds of compounds, the “medicine”, not just CBD or THC. There are over 200 cannabinoids besides CBD and Delta 9 THC, like CBG for example. Like Delta 8.
And there are hundreds more various terpenes, flavonoids and flavonols and other compounds in those trichomes as well.
Some cannabis product makers, especially pharmaceuticals, have been intent on isolating out one compound or another as a single item that is supposed to change some symptom in a certain way.
Many manufacturers even of straight-to-consumer cannabis products do extract out all the compounds their equipment can as single items.
They believe this purifies the product (which is true if they extract correctly) since they can also extract out all the chemicals used to separate and pull out these isolated compounds.
They then sell these single compounds as single item products such as CBD isolate, CBD or THC “diamonds” (which are purified CBD or THC molecules forming an isolate with no other cannabis anything in it), or THC isolate, or CBN, or isolated Delta 8 etc.
These product manufacturers can then more readily standardize, concentrate if they want, doses of their cannabis products, like oil tinctures or patches, or concentrates like “diamonds and sauce” (which is THC isolate and terpenes added together after extracting them individually) by adding more precise amounts of certain compounds back into a final product.
The pharmaceutical companies too want to extract out and “prepare” single compounds, like only CBD (that is then used for epilepsy in Epidilex® for example) or THC (used for cancer patients in Marinol™ for example) and patent their formulas and make profit selling just the isolated compound for various use.
But non-pharmaceutical cannabis product makers still extract out all the compounds individually and then, like a cake recipe, start adding various compounds back into a product formula like an oil tincture, edible, transdermal or other product and calling it a “full spectrum” product.
They do this to artificially create the entourage effect in their products. Which is ok!
This is done because most people have a more effective experience using cannabis with the entourage effect in mind instead of using just one isolated component of the cannabis plant medicine.
Consumers can then consume these products to solve a symptom, or inhale (smoke or vaporize) from whole plant flowers to get the entourage effect.
Or consumers can make their own edibles, oil tinctures or butters themselves.
People have found the medicine far more effective when many, most or all of the compounds are consumed together.
Consumers of cannabis often therefore seek out and choose to consume full spectrum cannabis products when available over an “isolate” (that can be sold like any other cannabis product in a dispensary or online, or grocery store wherever legal) and over pharmaceutical preparations (that can sometimes make the cannabis compound toxic because of the way it’s then combined into and with other pharmacy base ingredients).
As a note, probably the truest way to experience the full entourage healing effect is by inhaling the premium plant flower.
When heat-activating the primary cannabinoids for THC and CBD to make our own edible and oil products, most/all of the terpenes and other compounds are often destroyed in the initial heat of the decarb step or in the infusing, re-heating process. There is still an entourage effect, but usually with just the cannabinoids—since beyond CBD and THC, in these homemade products the CBG and CBN and others do end up in the final product.
When purchasing commercial preparations of oil tinctures, transdermals, salves etc. where you have purchased a full spectrum or broad spectrum cannabis product, the manufacturer will have added back the two main cannabinoids and often, like adding “a bit of essential oil”, they add back certain terpenes into the mix and call it full spectrum or broad spectrum.
Again, this is ok. The “how much in what ratios” of which cannabinoids, which terpenes or other that ultimately are added back in are the “cook’s” skill or idea! And ingesting/consuming those products or our own homemade products become an experiment to see what combination or which manufacturer’s products produces the effect for what we want to solve.
In any case, most people find any cannabis product that contains combinations of cannabinoids and/or terpenes or other cannabis compounds to be far more effective and successful at solving their symptoms than taking “isolates” or single compounds.
Here is a great article explaining more about this phenomena in cannabis.
