The CBD Craze: Healthy or Hype? with Dr. Bill Rawls
CBD (cannabidiol) from hemp oil has been getting a lot of press and praise in recent days, especially since the passing of the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized the sale of all hemp products throughout the U.S. Proponents claim CBD offers potent relief for everything from chronic pain to sleep issues to mood disorders and more.But what does the science show? And how can you be sure you’re buying the best possible CBD product in an exploding and unregulated industry?
Get answers to these questions and many more in this live webinar with best-selling author Dr. Bill Rawls. A medical doctor who struggled firsthand with chronic Lyme and fibromyalgia, Dr. Rawls’ research on chronic illness and natural solutions has uncovered key ways to ease symptoms now and overcome underlying causes long-term.
How CBD works on various systems of the body to impact well-being
Which CBD health benefits are real and backed by science, and which have been overblown
What to look for in a hemp oil product even beyond CBD to get the most benefit for your buck
Expert guidance on finding the optimal dose for you
Numerous insights and answers during the live Q&A with Dr. Rawls
Dr. Rawls talks on CBD & Sleep.
Key takeaway:
How CDB works is it affects receptors in the body that oversee neurotransmitters, so it has a nice calming effect. It doesn’t as much put you to sleep as it does set up conditions that make it very easy for you to go to sleep. We know there’ve been plenty of studies looking at CBD and sleep, and we know it doesn’t disrupt normal sleep architecture, so it promotes normal sleep instead of an artificial sleep like a sleeping pill does. That being said, I don’t think it’s a primary herb for sleep. There are other herbs that actually work a little bit better, such as passion flower, motherwort, and bacopa.
My entire family has found CBD oil to help with both sleep and pain. I give the brand we’ve had success with in the link above on LDN & CBD (I am not affiliated with ANY companies). It is potent and in my opinion expensive but you do pay for what you get regarding CBD. If it’s cheap, it probably won’t work. (Just my experience)
Infection of mice with Borrelia burgdorferi causes an inflammatory arthritis that peaks 3-4 wk postinfection and then spontaneously resolves. Although the recruitment of neutrophils is known to drive the development of arthritis, mechanisms of disease resolution remain unclear. Efficient clearance of apoptotic cells (AC) is likely an important component of arthritis resolution. In this article, we show the number of AC increases in the joints of B. burgdorferi-infected mice around day 21 postinfection and peaks around day 28. Injection of AC directly into the ankles of B. burgdorferi-infected mice limited ankle swelling but had no effect on spirochete clearance or arthritis severity scores. In vitro, addition of AC to bone marrow macrophage cultures decreased B. burgdorferi-induced TNF-α and KC and increased IL-10. In addition, phagocytosis of B. burgdorferi and neutrophil migration to LTB4 were inhibited by AC. Exogenous AC caused an increase in peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ (PPAR-γ) expression both in vitro and in vivo during B. burgdorferi infection. The PPAR-γ agonist rosiglitazone elicited similar changes in macrophage cytokine production and neutrophil migration as exogenous AC. Addition of the PPAR-γ antagonist GW 9662 abrogated the effects of AC in vitro. Injection of rosiglitazone directly into the tibiotarsal joints of B. burgdorferi-infected mice decreased ankle swelling and immune cell recruitment, similar to the injection of AC.
These results suggest that clearance of AC plays a role in the resolution of inflammation during experimental Lyme arthritis through the activation of PPAR-γ. PPAR-γ agonists, such as rosiglitazone, may therefore be effective treatments for inducing arthritis resolution.
When cells recognize viruses and gene mutations, they may induce death to prevent the damage from spreading. In apoptosis the cell shrinks and sends out distress signals, which are answered by vacuum cleaners known as macrophages. The macrophages clean away the shrunken cells, leaving no trace.
Scientists are trying to learn how to modulate apoptosis, so that they can control which cells live and which undergo programmed cell death. Many diseases and disorders are linked with the life and death of cells such as AIDS & Parkinson’s. Decreased apoptosis can be a signal for lupus or cancer.
In the study above, they state that injecting the diabetic drug rosiglitazone (reduces blood glucose) into Bb infected mouse joints reduced swelling & immune cell recruitment similarly to injecting of apoptic cells.
Most interesting; however, is the admission that the injection of AC had no effect on spirochete clearance or arthritis severity scores.
So the question becomes once again, is getting rid of inflammation/swelling the sole issue for those of us “chronically/persistently” infected or is spirochete clearance important?
I predict that while rosigliazone might help with inflammation and pain (like so many other substances),spirochete clearance is still important.
This study begs the answer to what is causing persistent symptoms. I think it also important to suggest it may be a number of factors and it may vary from patient to patient.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Lyme/MSIDS, it’s that it is highly variable & complex.
Many herbal remedies could have anti-inflammatory properties. However, the evidence to support the majority of these claims is lacking. Inflammation is the body’s primary defense mechanism against infections, wounds, and other forms of harm.
However, inflammation itself can be harmful in some cases. For example, many conditions can cause inflammation to remain elevated, resulting in tissue damage.
A range of anti-inflammatory drugs exist to help control inflammation in the body. However, they often have side effects and may not always be effective.
Natural compounds that are present in certain herbal remedies also have the potential to be anti-inflammatory. However, there is much less research in this area.
This article will list herbal remedies with the most evidence for their anti-inflammatory properties.
Turmeric
Eating turmeric can help reduce inflammation in people with arthritis.
Turmeric typically comes in the form of a yellow powder from the root of the turmeric plant.
It contains a chemical called curcumin, which may have anti-inflammatory properties.
Several studies have shown that turmeric can help reduce inflammation and discomfort in people with arthritis.
It works by limiting the production of molecules called cytokines, which cause inflammation.
Researchers continue to investigate how curcumin affects inflammation in a range of other conditions, such as inflammatory bowel disease. Curcumin has the most substantial evidence base for its anti-inflammatory effects compared with other herbal remedies.
Turmeric is available in the form of capsules, tablets, teas, pastes, and extracts. Methods of taking turmeric will vary, depending on the intended use.
Ginger
Ginger, or Zingiber officinale, is a tropical plant that has long had a place in traditional medicines.
Ginger may have anti-inflammatory properties. There is evidence showing that many of ginger’s constituents can limit the production of cytokines and the activity of cyclooxygenase enzymes, which promote inflammation.
Research has found that the anti-inflammatory properties of ginger could be useful in treating several conditions, including arthritis and pain.
Ginger can be fresh or a dried root. It can also come in the form of tablets, capsules, and teas.
Green tea
Green tea has anti-inflammatory properties and may disrupt processes that cause inflammation.
Green tea comes from Camellia sinensis leaves. Research has linked it to a variety of health benefits, such as aiding weight loss.
Green tea has anti-inflammatory properties that could underlie some of these specific health benefits.
For example, there is evidence to suggest that a component of green tea could disrupt processes that cause inflammation in the arthritis.
Other studies have found that green tea can have a positive effect on inflammation in people with metabolic disorders. Researchers suggest that it may drive these anti-inflammatory effects.
Green tea typically comes as a hot or cold drink. It is also possible to buy capsules, tablets, and creams that contain green tea.
Many other herbal remedies may also have anti-inflammatory properties. Examples include:
thyme
white willow bark
frankincense
resveratrol
However, there is not much research available on these remedies. Without this research, it is not possible to say with certainty whether these anti-inflammatory effects exist, or if they are effective treatment options for people with inflammatory conditions.
While a greater evidence base exists for the remedies in this article, the research in this area is still in the early stages.
For example, scientists have conducted many studies into the anti-inflammatory benefits of turmeric. However, the quality of these studies is not high enough to support the claim that turmeric can effectively reduce inflammation in humans.
It is also important to remember that studies in this area tend to use highly concentrated forms of these herbal remedies.
In some cases, certain compounds are isolated. One example of this is curcumin from turmeric. This means that the effects may differ when taking different forms of the remedy.
Risks
A person should discuss taking herbal remedies with a doctor as they can interact with certain medication.
As with taking any drug, there is the potential for side effects and complications to occur when taking herbal remedies.
As the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) do not regulate herbal remedies, the exact ingredients and quality of these products may vary. This also means that there is less reliable information on the safety of these products.
However, according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, turmeric, ginger, and green tea are generally safe.
It is also possible for these herbal remedies to interact with certain medications. For example, green tea can interact with certain beta-blockers such as nadolol.
It is important to discuss any herbal remedies with a doctor, who can advise further on drug interactions that may occur.
Summary
There is some evidence to support the claim that turmeric, green tea, and ginger have anti-inflammatory properties.
For people with inflammatory health conditions, consuming these herbal remedies could be useful for reducing inflammation.
However, more high-quality research will be necessary to confirm these effects. These herbal remedies are generally safe, but it is important to consult a doctor before taking them in conjunction with other types of medication.
ROBERT HERRIMAN WITH OUTBREAK NEWS INTERVIEWS GLA’S CHIEF SCIENTIFIC OFFICER TIMOTHY SELLATI, PH.D. TO DISCUSS LYME DISEASE, THE TICK-BORNE DISEASE WORKING GROUP, AND THE IDSA
Read the complete transcript below or listen to the podcast:
Approx. 15 Min.
Robert Herriman: Well hey everybody, this is Robert, and welcome to Outbreak News Interviews. Now the Federal Tick-Borne Disease Working Group recently released their first report to Congress about one year after the panel first convened. The Infectious Disease Society of America, or the IDSA, responded to the report in a letter that contained some criticisms of the report. So what is the Federal Tick-Borne Disease Working Group, what’s in the report, and what did the IDSA have to say? Well joining me to discuss these issues is Chief Scientific Officer for the Global Lyme Alliance, Timothy Sellati, Ph.D. Dr. Sellati, welcome to the show, sir.
Timothy Sellati: Thank you for having me.
Robert Herriman: You bet. So Dr. Sellati, let’s go ahead and start out with some basics ’cause some people may not be aware of this. What is the Federal Tick-Borne Disease Working Group, what’s their mission, and what’s the personnel composition of this group?
Timothy Sellati: So the Working Group was established as part of the Congress’s passage of the 21st Centuries Act, back in December 2016. The intent of that Act was to promote new healthcare initiatives for addressing array of public health issues, and one in particular was the advancement of research on tick-borne diseases. So with that as a backdrop, the US Department of Health and Human Services established the Federal Advisory Committee, the Tick-Borne Disease Working Group. So the Working Group is comprised of 14 voting members, there were seven public members and seven Federal members, and the composition of the Working Group was really drawn from a diverse group of professions. We had individuals that are world renounced research scientists, and physicians from top tier academic institutions and hospitals, subject matter experts from government agencies, as well as key stakeholders from the public sector including patients, and their advocates from several Lyme and other tick-borne disease nonprofit organizations.
Robert Herriman: Okay. So they recently released their first report, it’s a pretty hefty 108-page document. Dr. Sellati, what did you find good and important in the report?
Timothy Sellati: So I think some of the most important or key recommendations out of the report really related to epidemiology, and ecology, that was one of the subcommittees of the Working Group. And there, it was really driven home, the idea that Lyme disease surveillance criteria, which is a criteria that the CDC the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, use for calculating the number of Lyme disease cases that occur annually. Those really should be used for surveillance purposes alone, and not for diagnostic purposes. The other important take home message from the prevention subcommittee was a focus on development of anti tick feeding vaccines, and really trying to work with key stakeholders to build trust via transparent mechanism to help examine and discuss the past Lyme disease vaccine activities, what some of the issues were with it, and the potential for adverse events so that that information coming from a number of different sources could help inform future vaccine development in Lyme disease. In terms of diagnosis, the real take home message was the importance of evaluating new technologies or approaches for the diagnosis of Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases because of the inherent limitations with the current two-tier testing method. And the importance of including children in the process of diagnostic test validation as well, because children are particularly prone to the devastating consequences of dealing with Lyme disease, or other tick-borne diseases.
Timothy Sellati: In terms of treatment, I think conduct of additional clinical trials using appropriate target populations where gaps may exist. And there really, the glaring gap is with respect to patients, that experience, persistent symptoms and disability and diminished quality of life following the current standard of care, which is 10 to 28 days of antibiotics. So it’s really important to understand, this really came through as the overall gestalt of the report, that Lyme disease can be treated with antibiotics, but as many as 10% to 20% of infected individuals do not respond favorably to those antibiotics, so they go on to develop what we call Post Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome, or in some circles, chronic Lyme disease. And so it’s really important to really address that gap in our understanding of how best to treat that patient population.
Timothy Sellati: And then the one last thing, and this was really a common theme that came out of all of the subcommittees’ reports, was the need to allocate increased funding for tick-borne diseases in the areas of research, treatment, and prevention, and have it really pegged to the burden of illness. So proportionally, there is much less federal funding to tackle tick-borne diseases than there are funding for other infectious diseases where the number of cases per year are considerably smaller.
Robert Herriman: Yeah. Now, were you 100% on board with everything in the report, or were there any issues that you had a problem with?
Timothy Sellati: I didn’t have any issues per se, with the report, as much as a concern about one of the recommendations. And this related to the protection of the rights of license and qualified clinicians to use individual clinical judgment to diagnose and treat patients in accordance with the needs and goals of each individual patient. I’m sort of reading that, verbatim almost, and while I don’t have any concerns about allowing licensed and qualified clinicians to care for their patients as they see fit, I also recognize that as a result of desperation on the part of some patients that have dealt with Lyme and other tick-borne diseases for years, if not decades, they are driven to seek out medical care from clinicians using treatment options that have not been carefully vetted by the scientific research establishment, or the medical research establishment. And so there’s a concern that there are some treatment options out there that really have not been proven to effectively treat the symptoms or the diseases that these desperate patients are dealing with.
Robert Herriman: Not too long after the release of the Working Group’s report, the IDSA sent a letter to DHHS Secretary Alex Azar, and it contained some criticisms of the report. You responded to the letter in a post on the Global Lyme Alliance website. Can you spend some time talking about that?
Timothy Sellati: Sure.
Some of the criticisms leveled by the IDSA that really caught my attention was that they had significant concerns with the Working Group’s lack of transparency, and minimal opportunities for meaningful public input. And I just didn’t understand the basis for that criticism, given that the Working Group was really comprised of so many different subject matter experts, and physicians that are treating patients, and the patients themselves, that I think the greater concern on the part of IDSA is that perhaps they didn’t have as much input into the report, or the content of the report, that came out of the Working Group’s extensive efforts.
Timothy Sellati: The IDSA also suggested that some of the recommendations of the working group would “cause significant harm to patients in public health,” and they really urged Alex Azar to ensure that the Federal government response to tick-borne disease’s fallacy rooted in the best available scientific evidence. And you know, part of the problem is in the controversy surrounding Lyme disease, is that the IDSA takes a strict parochial approach to considering Lyme disease, and the consequences of infection with bacteria that causes Lyme disease. From their perspective, they think Lyme disease, or promulgates this idea that Lyme disease is easily treated, and it’s easily diagnosed, and only very rarely does it result in lasting consequences of infection. But there is more and more well established scientific evidence in the main stream literature that argues against that very narrow understanding or narrative that IDSA wants to push forward.
Robert Herriman: Now, going to your first point, on the Working Group, is there any former or current IDSA members on that Working Group? I mean, do you know that?
Timothy Sellati: Yes, I believe there are.
Robert Herriman: Okay.
Timothy Sellati: I believe there are. But on the flip side, there are also, from what I understand, members of the ILADS organization as well. The composition of the subcommittees also was careful to include research scientists and physicians that really span the spectrum from IDSA on one of the end of the spectrum, to ILADS on the other. So I really do think that within the limited, within the capabilities of the Working Group, they were as intent as possible, in terms of hearing the voices of a wide variety of individuals. And again, to some extent, maybe IDSA would like to have had a larger bullhorn in terms of influencing the Working Group’s final report to the Congress.
Robert Herriman: So I just take it from your previous answer, that you don’t think most of the IDSA criticisms really hold a lot of water?
Timothy Sellati: No. No, I really don’t. And that’s what really spurred me to write this rebuttal in the first place. Again, I believe many of IDSA’s criticisms stem from the fact that the overall content of the report doesn’t necessarily fit into their mantra that Lyme disease is easy to diagnose, it’s easy to treat, and only very rarely results in lasting consequences of infection. So when you come into trying to solve a problem with that mindset, it limits how you approach trying to solve that problem.
Robert Herriman: Okay. Well, for the audience if you haven’t seen any of this, I will put up a link to Dr. Sellati’s rebuttal on the website when I publish the podcast, and I’ll also put up a link to the IDSA letter, and you can read it, and you can judge for yourselves. Dr. Sellati, any final thoughts on any of these issues?
Timothy Sellati: Yes, I’m glad you asked. So there is one final thought. As far as the report is concerned, I think there was a very important section in the report titled, “Looking Forward,” and in my opinion, I think one of the most important take home messages from that section was the need to develop and disseminate more comprehensive clinical education that highlights the diversity of symptoms that Lyme and other tick-borne disease patients might present with, expand the geography of infecting tics, and also the limitations of the current testing procedures. So I think if we do a better job of communicating to clinicians, and maybe even at the level of medical school students, the complexity of Lyme disease, and what some of the true limitations are in terms of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, they will be better prepared to take care of the diversity of patients that they see during their practice.
Robert Herriman: Well very good. Well, I wanted to thank you Dr. Timothy Sellati for joining me to discuss these very important issues, I appreciate it, sir.
Borreliosis after sucking ticks is an acute problem in the world. People do not go to doctors after that often, which leads to the development of various complications. Thrombosis of veins of various localization can be one of them. Thrombosis of the portal vein represents a significant problem too with high morbidity and mortality. The risk factors for splanchnic vein thrombosis include infections, but its relationship with borreliosis has not been studied.
А 34-year-old man with chronic helicobacter-associated gastritis and gallstones was hospitalized due to development during the last 11 days of epigastric pain and fever to 38.7 °C after a picnic at the forest without a registered tick bite. The blood leukocytes were increased to 11.2*109/l, lymphocytes 70%, C-reactive protein 34.6 mg/l, procalcitonin 0.195 ng/ml. The multispiral computed tomography of the abdominal cavity revealed thrombosis of portal, lienalis and superior mesenteric veins. D-dimer was 1.98 mcg/ml, antithrombin III 75%. JACK2V617F, oncological, rheumatic, thrombophilia markers, blood and urine cultures were negative. A high concentration of anti-Borrelia burgdorferi IgM 62.2 U/ml and its increasing to 190 U/ml in dynamics was revealed at the immunofluorescence assay. Anti-Borrelia IgM to OspA, p31 and OspC, p25 were detected at the immunoblotting assay.
Anticoagulation, doxycycline, detoxification therapy reduced pain and normalized temperature and inflammation markers. Vein thrombosis was not detected at the control tomography after 2 weeks. Despite that the combination of thrombosis and borreliosis is rare, it is necessary to screen for Borrelia antigens in patients with splanchnic vein thrombosis and fever.
For PVT, doctors recommend anticoagulant drugs — blood thinners such as heparin. If PVT, as in this case, is caused by an infection, antibiotics will also be prescribed to cure the source of the problem.
Interestingly, heparin helps many MSIDS patients:
http://aac.asm.org/content/48/1/236.full.pdf Similarly with Bartonella, some respond miraculously to Heparin, which is a blood thinner. In the above link, heparin was found to inhibit Babesia growth. Horowitz also found it helps clear the parasites from the body.
Heparin helped my husband immensely. His blood looked like snot and continually clotted in catheters.
Interestingly, the authors state that vein thrombosis caused by borreliosis has not been studied, yet emphatically state that the combination of thrombosis and borreliosis is rare.
This is the bizarre disconnect patients live through.
