DOES MARIJUANA CAUSE CANCER? RESEARCH SAYS MARIJUANA FIGHTS CANCER by Lisa Garber
Does marijuana cause cancer? The censorship-happy government’s war on marijuana may be sorely misplaced, especially when considering all the other issues in need of focus. Dr. Sean McAllister of the Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco has spent years researching cannabidiol, a cannabinoid found in cannabis, the plant that flowers marijuana. “Cannabidiol offers hope of a non-toxic therapy that could treat aggressive forms of cancer without any of the painful side effects of chemotherapy,” he says.
You might remember Cash Hyde, the 3-year-old boy from Montana diagnosed with brain cancer but who beat it with his father Mike’s help and marijuana oil. Well, Hyde’s case isn’t the only one revealing the positive relationship between marijuana and cancer.
Does Marijuana Cause Cancer? THC as Therapy
In 1998, Cristina Sanchez of Complutense University in Madrid reported in a European biochemistry journal that THC—the famed psychoactive component in marijuana—“induces apoptosis [cell death] in C6 glioma cells,” which are a type of brain cancer.
Lead author of another study and Harvard University researcher Anju Preet says, “THC can have a potential therapeutic role.” His findings, presented in a 2007 American Association for Cancer Research in Los Angeles, showed that THC has a direct antitumoral effect.
THC’s First Human Trial
The first clinical trial studying THC’s antitumoral effect on humans was conducted by Manuel Guzman and his team of Spanish scientists. Guzman administered THC to nine patients who had not responded to traditional brain cancer therapies for the study. As published in a 2006 issue of the British Journal of Pharmacology, tumor cell proliferation reduced in response to THC administration through a catheter – showing the medical benefits of marijuana.
THC and the Lungs
Another Harvard study reports that THC slows lung cancer progress. Moreover, unlike chemotherapy which damages all cells—healthy or cancerous—THC specifically destroyed tumoral cells without harming healthy ones.
In another study published in the Journal of American Medical Association, spanning from 1985 to 2006, over 5,000 men and women smoked about one joint daily for seven years. Co-author Stefan Kertesz found that subjects, rather than having damaged lungs, showed increases in lung air flow rates. Surprising findings indeed.
Cannabidiol and Breast Cancer
With backing from the National Institute of Health, Dr. Sean McAllister conducted a study and found that cannabidiol inhibited breast cancer cell proliferation, metastasis, and tumor growth.
McAllister researched cancer’s relationship to the ID-1 gene—a protein active during embryonic development but, in healthy subjects, turns and stays off. In the case of breast cancer patients, the gene turns back on, which causes malignant cells to metastasize. In the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, McAllister wrote that cannabidiol switches off the gene’s expression.
McAllister found that cannabidiol can even work alongside standard chemotherapy treatments by performing synergistically with pharmaceuticals. This means that maximum, toxic doses don’t have to be administered.
Despite accusations that marijuana smoking can compromise the immune system, mountains of research indicate that the plant has more to offer than a high. More studies are undoubtedly in the works.
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In this research, Manuel Guzman located in Madrid, Spain discovered that cannabinoids substantially inhibit the growth of tumors in a variety of lab animals. In the study he also found that not one of these tested animals endured any kind of side effects seen in many similar chemotherapy treatments.
If all of the research doesn’t appeal to you, then maybe the 2,500 total studied patients throughout these 37 controlled studies may. None of the patients reported any kind of adverse side effects from the use of THC and based medication – further adding to the benefits of medical marijuana and strengthening the positive connection between marijuana and cancer.
So, does marijuana cause cancer, or does it fight cancer?
potential downsides of a poker lifestyleby Ket, September 15
This post by RiKD got me thinking about a few things, I was going to write a reply in the thread it's from but thought it's a worthy discussion in its own right and deserves its own post.
On September 15 2012 10:33 RiKD wrote:
One thing to consider is poker can be pretty damaging to other facets of life and development.
Getting to the point:
[other text that was getting to the point in the thread but not the point here]
I'd love to hear some more thoughts from RiKD, and anyone else who wants to join the discussion, on how poker can be damaging to other facets of life and development. It would be good to get the perspectives of current other professional poker players, but actually especially valuable to get the perspective of guys like RiKD who have seen both sides of the fence. Guys who used to live the poker grinding freedom lifestyle and are now following different, more traditional paths, and so have seen both sides of the fence.
I have my own thoughts which I'll outline below, but do add to the discussion and let me know if you see it the same way, or where your perspectives vary, and especially new ideas I haven't been able to consider as someone who's only seen this side of the fence.
When you get strongly interested in poker (a period that i think pretty much all players that manage to become successful experience at some point) and the whole process of playing and learning and improving, you find you become addicted to this creative process and want to invest 100% of your limited mental energy+focus every day on the process. Personal growth generally happens as a result of mental energy/focus being invested in something challenging, and to limit the avenues you invest your mental energy in is to limit the avenues in which you'll grow. By investing only in poker you'll only grow in the areas of risk management, rational decision making, mental discipline and being able to play card games well (obviously). Breadth of experience will be sacrificed for great depth in one limited area, which can have all sorts of suboptimal consequences on personal development and therefore ultimately, happiness and quality of life (anyone disagree with this leap of logic?).
In my experience both personally and from talking to several other poker playing friends, a very common facet of life that poker brings negative consequences to is social development. As poker is inherently a very isolated profession, much more effort needs to be made to rectify the default situation than for someone in a traditional job who spends large parts of his work life interacting with colleagues, and social groups are easily and conveniently formed from the workplace. Generally, overcoming any kind of life-inertia like this takes some conceited effort and will, and so not everyone will do it. The problem can be especially compounded by the possibility that if the dedicated poker player is investing 100% of his mental energy into getting better at poker and/or trying to make more money, and some mental energy is required to overcome inertia, it's unlikely to happen if there isn't any left. Your most likely social group (the one for which the least amount of energy invested in overcoming inertia is required) as a poker player is other poker players, and so your perspectives and circle all become limited, which limits your potential avenues for growth, development and discovery (going back to the idea of breadth of experience being a positive).
I believe that while professional poker does present these challenges and can bring these pitfalls, it's up to the individual player to overcome the inertia of the default situation playing poker for a living puts you in with an investment of energy and will. This is quite a difficult thing to do generally, and that's why you see a lot of unhappy professional poker players and a lot of obese people to name another example. Since this is just some stream of consciousness thoughts to open discussion, I won't bother to write any sort of tidy conclusion beyond this and instead hope the discussion starts flowing from here
Been lurkin on this site for almost 4 years now. I guess I feel like I owe the cummunity some content. I am a Limit holdem player and will try to post my thoughtprocess and progress as I go.
I have been playing for almost 10 years in what I call a part-time professional capacity. I am moderately successful but have lately been very driven to perfect my game. Join me on tracking my progress.
BOOOOOM, back to poker lifeby Joeingram1, September 13
Was waiting till I got back on the grind till I posted my summer blog
Basically started 3 day drive home to Vancouver, fly to Vegas, Win bunch at 50/100 plo and take bobbys room shot and profit, fly to San Diego for a few days, Fly to Ibiza for 1.2 weeks and proceed to fall in love with raging/drugs/edm/potentially a person, fly to Barcelona with group I met in Ibiza, fly to Belgium for Tomorrowland which was one of sickest things I ever been to in my life as well, fly to Malta to visit ze german TimStone and bigasiga, get convinced by stinger to fly back home to Chicago for Lollapolooza, Rage hardddd there and meet a crew of people who are into staying awake until 8am and raging crazy style, decide to go out with them for a few weekends in a row and wake up questioning my life lol, debate investing in a nightclub, book place for 3 weeks in Vancouver with stinger instead, and leads to this graph of being back these first 3 days. Now I HAVE to write the blogs for this summer because its some crazyyyy shit
been trying to get eating utensils out of my kitchen drawer but there's a stack of plastic measuring cups that gets stuck against the end part where the wood material hands down a bit lower every time i try to open it (there's a bunch of crap behind the cups that prevents me from moving them back to get unstuck). i tried jamming it a little but i'm afraid the cups will break b/c they're plastic. anyway pretty bummed, i've been to starbucks twice today because i cant get it open. http://i940.photobucket.com/albums/ad241/bouttreefiddy/stupiddrawer.jpg
I wish they would make good hybrid tablet/laptops. Ive tried ipad and sold it, now using a droid tablet and its not any better. Laptops are too heavy and battery life is bad. Why did they invent these things anyway lol
I've decided to do a quick post detailing how I am allocating my income beyond my basic expenses each month. At first, I was thinking that debt-paydown should be my number one priority, but I think that throwing all of my savings at debt would put me at a real risk of busting my roll during any major downswing. So I've made a set of guidelines for myself that dictates how I "spend" all of the money that I receive that I don't spend on monthly expenses. The entire system is based on the amount of cash in my bankroll at the end of each month. I broke it up into four phases outlined below.
Phase One:
If my BR is $25,000 or less, 100% of income beyond my monthly expenses will be allocated to increasing it to at least this amount. Being below 25k is emergency status for anyone playing 5/10, so obviously I would have to pile as much as possible at the BR to get back to that level.
Phase Two:
If my BR is between $25,000 and $40,000 I will allocate 50% of income beyond monthly expenses toward the BR, and 50% toward investments in my brokerage account. I believe this provides an additional safety buffer/downswing protector as I'm still keeping all of the cash that I have in an easy to access place, but I am also investing for the future at the same time
Example: I have a 25k roll and earn 15,000 during a month and spend 5k on expenses. The additional 10k will be allocated 5k to BR, 5k to investments and my BR would be 30k to start the next month.
Phase Three:
If my BR is between $40,000 and $100,000 I will allocate 25% of income beyond monthly expenses toward the BR, 35% toward debt, and 40% toward investments in my brokerage account. I think having the roll above 40k plus some money invested will allow me to safely pay down some debt and have a much lower risk of ruin.
Example: I have a 50k roll and win 15k and spend 5k. $2,500 would go to the BR, $4,000 toward investments and $3,500 toward debt.
Phase Four:
If my BR is above $100,000 I will allocate 25% of income beyond monthly expenses toward the BR, 60% toward debt, 15% toward investments in my brokerage account. I think I will always allocate 25% toward my BR so I can keep climbing the stakes, but with >100k I think I can throw 60% of extra income safely toward debt
I believe by following these four phases I will be increasing my wealth substantially while ensuring a margin of safety against losing my income. Let me know if you would do anything differently or have any questions/comments about my plan.
I have been a lurker on the teamliquid forums for the last 2 years and recently discovered the LP website. I think it is an awesome community.
I have managed to do well in most of the things that I've put my mind to (Chess, Soccer, Quake Live and Quake 3). However, SC2 and Poker have been to two things that I have never been able to be "Good" (not the best) at. I suck at SC2 because I feel that I don't have the natural talent and I don't have the will to put in enough effort to be the brilliant at it. I have played about 50-80 games in total and I am still bronze. I know if I put in enough time into it, I will eventually reach diamond but that is as far as I will go. The reward (sense of achievement) is not worth the time I will have to put in to be good at SC2. I do however, want to beat poker.
So let me give you some background. During the last 4 years I have been playing Poker casually (I mean as a gambler, no BRM etc). I have lost alot of money playing Cash games that are out of my league. My tournament game is above average and I have placed in quite a few tournaments. I've managed to cover up half of my cash game losses via tournament wins.
I am looking to get into Poker properly (not hardcore like full time, but when I do play I must take it seriously). I do not need the money and I am not playing for the money. I want to play poker because I feel that over the last couple of years it has gotten the best of me. I need to BEAT it. My goal is to eventually beat 200NL at a minimum of 2BB/100 over 50k hands.
I have a few questions if you guys could maybe help me out with some of them It would be great:
1) I played for a month in 2009 and managed to beat 25NL at a rate of 2BB/100 over 10k Hands. I recently (last month) tried to play 2NL on a random poker site and dropped 2 BI's over 5k Hands. Has poker gotten alot more tougher over the last 2-3 years?
2) I am planning on starting out with 200 dollars. How important is HEM? Has anybody here beaten the game up to 100NL without using HEM/PT? What I'm asking is, should I buy HEM and play 5NL or not buy HEM and play 10NL. Also which is Better HEM or PT?
3) I do not have time to put in the amount of volume like most of you guys. I am planning on playing poker as a hobby not for a living. So maximum 10K Hands a month. Will my poker improve with this kind of volume? Should I just leave grinding 10 25 50 NL out and just play MTT's during weekends and play 100NL once i'm rolled for it (I think I might donk my roll away if I do this)?
4) I have this bad mindset where I make rules around my game because I keep looking at poker as an "Absolute". Like i'll say okay in order to be good at poker I need to make a rule to only 3bet 5% of the time. I know that this is exploitable, how do I get around this kind of thinking pattern? I guess I'm used to the way MTT is being played because of the blind structures etc. I know that at that given point in time what the optimal strategy is (Blinds are Big, M is small, Shove Kx or Better etc etc) please tell me if I'm making sense here or I'm just talking bullshit.
Stars -> Moneybookersby rS.Wisdom[9], September 10
Hey guys,
I'm looking for someone to trade $15 on Stars or Party for $15 on Moneybookers, since apparently Party won't let me withdraw unless I've made a deposit in the last 6 months.
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