Could Strong Marijuana Strains Help Prevent ARDS with COVID-19?

Reginald Reefer: Cannabis.net

2021 has been eventful so far and it has only been 10 days since writing this article. We’re still undergoing the viral siege on society known as COVID-19. While vaccines are “under way” and have been administered to some folks – other healthcare workers are less eager to take a vaccine so quickly.

The main reason people are refusing to take the vaccine is due to “trust”. The previous few years of political shitfuckery has obliterated “trust” for many people – in fact, healthcare workers are more skeptic than the general population by 2%.

But then again, why wouldn’t there be mistrust? Agencies like the DEA and the FDA have been notoriously tampering with science to maintain a political stance on cannabis for decades. I remember the phrase, “Not your Grandma’s pot” being thrown around to scare people into believing that smoking cannabis can lead to schizophrenic breaks.

Of course – it may do so in people with undiagnosed schizophrenia, but then again the wrong kind of cheese could do the same if the experience was traumatic enough to induce a psychotic break.

Anyhow – we’re not talking about Schizophrenia today – we’re talking COVID and the latest findings from the University of Lethbridge who have been working on possible treatments utilizing cannabis. What they found was that “Not Your Grandma’s Pot” aka Strong Strains may help prevent Acute Respiratory Disease Syndrome (ARDS).

The research, in conjunction with Pathway RX, is led by Dr. Olga and Igor Kovalchuk who are professors in the University’s Biological Sciences Department. What they found was that certain strains showed a potential to calm down an overreacting immune system – which could help prevent ARDS.  You can watch the exclusive Cannabis.net interview with Dr. Kovalchuck here!

While currently the study is being reviewed by the scientific community, the findings can be found on Research Square.

“The main aspects of severe COVID-19 disease pathogenesis include the increasing hyper-induction of proinflammatory cytokines, also known as ‘cytokine storm’, that precedes acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and often leads to death. COVID-19 patients often suffer from lung fibrosis, a serious and untreatable condition. There remains no effective treatment for these complications. Out of the cytokines, TNFα and IL-6 play crucial roles in cytokine storm pathogenesis and are likely responsible for the escalation in disease severity. These cytokines also partake in the molecular pathogenesis of fibrosis. Therefore, new approaches are urgently needed that can efficiently and swiftly block TNFα, IL-6, and the inflammatory cytokine cascade in order to curb inflammation and prevent fibrosis, and lead to disease remission.

Cannabis sativa has been proposed to modulate gene expression and inflammation and is under investigation for several potential therapeutic applications against autoinflammatory diseases and cancer. Here, we hypothesized that the extracts of our novel C. sativa lines may be used to modulate the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines and pathways involved in inflammation and fibrosis.”

Cannabis has shown exceptional promise in helping with autoimmune diseases and considering that the Cytokine Storm, is essentially turning the body against itself – getting the body a bit “stoned” could be the remedy we all have been searching for.

Of course – this doesn’t mean that cannabis cures COVID, far from it. It merely suggests that we could be utilizing cannabis as another form of treatment to help stop or reduce the impacts of diseases such as COVID-19.

“When we started reading up in the literature on what drives ARDS, it’s very clear that it’s driven by the same molecules that are implicated in a lot of autoinflammatory and autoimmune diseases. One of them is interleukin-6 (IL-6) and the other is called tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNFa),” says Olga. “We found that three of those strains were the most effective in causing significant down-regulation of TNFa and IL-6. On top of that, they also inhibit a whole array of other inflammatory molecules that are involved in auto-inflammatory diseases, as well as cytokine storms. We noted that some of the extracts we identified also target molecular pathways implicated in fibrosis.” – [Source]

This doesn’t mean that hitting your bong will shield you from COVID or taking high CBD products will protect you by any means. We have to remember that the research team is working with particular strains. These strains have their own unique cannabinoid profile with terpenoids and flavonoids. Out of thousands of strains, they are only focusing currently on 7 with three of them showing great potential.

Now imagine if this research was done a few decades back, except the same perpetuators of “Not your grandma’s weed” were the same guys who cock-blocked research into a plant that could very well have saved millions of lost lives during this pandemic.

Instead, the government spent their resources on incarcerating minorities because of “safety” or some other nonsense. In a way, the FDA and the DEA are partly responsible for the COVID-19 deaths due to 40 years of stifling research into a plant that is now showing promise in helping prevent fibrosis in the lungs.

Reginald Reefer: Cannabis.net