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The Ultimate Guide To Marijuana Tasting

Wine tasting has become a huge sub industry with wineries offering tastings from Virginia to Washington state.  But do you know you can do marijuana tasting?

Visits to wineries are slightly down from 2019, but are still going strong. It seems from Total Wine and Bev Mov to local wineries and groceries stores are doing tastings. Thanks to Two Buck Chuck, palates have expanded and who doesn’t want a free taste of wine? So here is the ultimate guide to marijuana tasting.

There was great hope California would have consumption lounges allowing people to really dig into flavor and experience.  But Governor Newsom but a big stop on the concept.

RELATED: California or New York, Which Has The Biggest Marijuana Mess?

With marijuana is being treated more like alcohol these days, it stands to reason the scene could soon see an uprising in cannabis tastings. Similar to the swish and spit rituals taking place at wineries and other liquor-slinging establishments, the reach of marijuana will one day be given center stage for customers to hit samples before making a purchase. Cannabis discussions around tastings are become more commonplace not on in dispensaries, but in living rooms.

Appearance

The first thing a true cannabis aficionado looks at is the overall appearance of the bud. These folks get excited when they see the herb is covered in crystals. That excitement spirals into an excitement when they realize the color of the crystals is more yellow than white. Typically, the more yellow, the more THC. But no matter how yellow the crystals, always ask the weed steward when they what is their roll plan so you can be prepared.

Photo by HighGradeRoots/Getty Images

Aroma

Now that you’ve identified a good-looking bud, the next step is to examine its aroma. Don’t worry. You do not have to be well versed in the art of cannabis selection to represent like a marijuana master. Similar to how it is done in beer and wine tastings, just wave the herb under the nose and take shallow sniffs. The goal is to try and get a feel for its components. You might catch a whiff of citrus, pine or even the business end of a skunk. But, as a rule, if the aroma is pleasing, chances are you will be happy with the next step.

RELATED: How Much Does Weed Cost?

Flavor

There are a variety of methods in which to capture a rush of optimal flavor. Some say a French inhale is the best method for tasting bud. But the most important aspect of this process to remember is the first hit is when the magic happens. Unless a person has been assigned to pen an elaborate tasting profile on a particular strain, the best advice here is to just take in the smoke, hold it in, and search for the flavors that turned you while testing the aroma. Chances are you will stumble onto something new to tickle the senses. Just make sure the device you are using to sample the bud is clean.

Photo by David McNew/Staff/Getty Images

Effect

This is the fun part — the test drive. Just kick back and see how the herb hits. Does it make you chatty, sleepy, or does it turn you into a cartoon character? It is important to understand how a strain works on you personally. But remember, there are more strains to sample. A good weed testing will consist of around 5-6 strains. You’ll need to try all of them. But be sure to cleanse your palate after every sample. Fruit juice or plain crackers are good for this.

Best Ways To Have Marijuana In Your Coffee

In a commonly repeated legend, Kaldi, a 9th-century Ethiopian goatherd, first observed the coffee plant after seeing his flock energized by chewing on the plant. Most agree coffee drinking the middle of the 15th century in the accounts of Ahmed al-Ghaffar in Yemen. It first appeared in Italy around 1600 (thank you again Italy for something wonderful) and then spread to Europe and the rest is history.

Coffee is an integral part of daytime activity for billions, 30-40% of the world’s population consume coffee every day. First prepared in samovars across Semitic countries before dominating Southern Europe via Italy and France, it’s part of the story of global exchange. Now we know that cannabis was too. Combining it with caffeine is done to increase euphoric feelings and hopefully work output as well.

People have their coffee in a myriad of ways, but spiked with cannabis is one of the all-time greatest hits of psychoactive experimentation. Some people use the combination of cannabis and coffee to kick off mornings pain free, others use for a laser sharp focus. No matter your reason for this pairing, it’s a satisfying way to get your dose of both substances.

1.Non-Dairy Creamer

If you are a routine follower, you probably already know exactly how much creamer you need on a weekly basis. Simply adding a glycerin tincture to that coconut or almond milk creamer will enhance the flavor and be safe on the fridge shelf for the duration. Measure if you’re a perfectionist, eyeball if you’re more chill.

2. Bulletproof Canna-style Coffee

This much-touted ‘brainhack’ includes a dose of either butter or coconut oil in your morning cup. Those are two things you’re likely to have around if you cook with cannabis even occasionally.

Related Story: Coffee And Marijuana Will Make You Love Mornings Again

You may need to use some type of blender to get the consistency right, but people go crazy for it as-is. Imagine how good it is with some THC!

3. Cannabis Whipped Cream 

We squirted this on everything from hot cocoa to golden milk*, but having a canister of Canna-Whip in the fridge leaves you likely to add a swirl to your coffee. Each squirt is a pretty low dose, so you wind up with just the right amount per cup.

Related: Great Fall Whiskeys

That’s a bit of a feat for many, until overindulging in edible cannabis finally gets the analysis it needs to keep everyone high and healthy. Something this chill will be a nice boost but also incredibly delicious and gourmet feeling.

4. Cannabis Cold Brew Ice Cubes 

Check out my recipe for Cannabis Cold Brew for up to a week’s worth of generous and strong pours of glorious pre-iced coffee. Making cold brew is so easy that it qualifies as hipster meal prep. Put the last cup into an ice cube tray for simple microdosing your virgin coffee.

Original art from Danielle Guercio

5. Hash Honey

Have you actually had coffee with honey? It’s amazing. Mix .25g of decarboxylated hash with 1 cup of gently warmed honey for 4mg THC per teaspoon of honey that you can add to anything.

6. Chocolate Melt

Got weed chocolates? Put one in the bottom of a mug before you pour over your hot coffee. You don’t need to add cream or sugar to have a tasty treat, simply stir and enjoy.

7. Boozy Coffee

Alcohol based weed tinctures are usually very strong tasting and therefore aren’t always pleasant to consume. Add yours to a 1oz pour of rum and make some pirate coffee. It’s actually a halfway decent hangover cure!

Now you can always use the entourage effect with the extra points you get from coffee’s beloved stimulant, caffeine. There’s not much better than coffee and spliff, even if it’s a 2-in-

Hacks To Transform Your Bathroom Into A Spa

While a key, function part of the home, like the kitchen, the bathroom is also a key point for alone and de-stress time. A study of 2,000 adults found 42 per cent often escape to the bathroom for a bit of peace and quiet away from the rest of their household.  It is such a happy place 55% regularly have an extra-long bath or shower so they can have more time to themselves.

But not everyone can indulge in redoing a bathroom and making it into something spectacular, so here are some easy hacks to transform your bathroom into a spa.

Change Your Shower Head

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A good shower head can change your life, and if you’ve never changed yours then you’ll surely appreciate this tip. Changing shower heads is very simple so you can do it yourself, and there are a few cheap (good) shower heads that you can buy online or at your nearest hardware store.

Related: Cannabis Can Help You With Stress

This $20 rain shower head is great if you’re using the default shower head that came with your bathroom. If you want to get a bit crazier and splurge, you can purchase this shower head for $50 that changes lights, regulates water temperature, and will make you feel like you’re showering in space.

Oil Diffusers And Candles

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A candle is a really important item for your bathroom, making it smell good and providing coziness and warmth.  Oil diffusers are also great and less flammable, making you feel like you own and manage a really great spa. Both of these items are easy to purchase and really make a difference in the mood and feel of your bathroom.

Clear Toiletry Clutter

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There’s nothing more stressful than a ton of toothpaste, pads, hairbrushes and lotions all piled up together because you can’t find a place to put them. Invest in jars and other containers that look good and that will keep things organized. Mason jars are a classic and cheap option for Q-tips, cotton balls, and other loose items. Be sure to get rid of the toiletries and empty bottles of product that are cluttering your bathroom in the meantime.

Bath Salts And Scented Soaps

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Bath salts are great and super relaxing, doing wonders for your skin and making you feel like you’re doing a good thing by spending time in your bathroom.  While baths are time consuming and annoying (since you have to scrub your bathtub clean before you use it), they can be a pretty delicious experience with the right tools.

RELATED: Rough Week, Here’s How To Relax

Bathroom Speakers

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Buy a waterproof speaker for your bathroom and make yourself a playlist with natural sounds, such as rain, water, and anything else that you might find relaxing. Having this speaker will surely make your baths and showers more fun and enjoyable, while also making you feel rejuvenated, as if you spent some time doing something productive. Yay, you!

People Are Choosing Marijuana Over Sleep Aids

According to estimates, 50 million to 70 million people have ongoing sleep disorders – and not all solutions work the same.

Cannabis has been used for pain relief and to promote sleep for thousands of years. Over the past several decades, a therapeutic role for cannabis in mainstream medicine has increasingly emerged.  Research into the benefits of cannabis for sleep has shown some progess with many people report using cannabis as a sleep aid.  Yes, people are choosing marijuana over sleep aids because they tend to work better with less side effects.

A study demonstrates this way of thinking is not at all uncommon, showing less people are purchasing over the counter sleep medications when they have access to legal marijuana.

The study, published in the journal Complementary Therapies in Medicine, was conducted by researchers from the University of New Mexico and California State Polytechnic University. These scientists looked into retail data collected from the Nielsen company in order to understand how legal marijuana in Colorado affected the sales of over the counter sleep medications. Nearly 600 stores (587) were analyzed, and recreational dispensaries from different counties were also sampled.

RELATED: How Using Marijuana Can Effect Your Sleep Patterns

“For the first time, we show a statistically significant negative association between recreational access to cannabis and OTC sleep aid sales, suggesting that at least some recreational purchasers are using cannabis for therapeutic rather than recreational purposes,” says the study.

Marijuana Does Not Make You Dumber, According to Science
Photo by Mayara Klingner/EyeEm/Getty Images

The study explains even if there’s no clinical evidence that supports marijuana as a sleep aid, people are still taking matters into their own hands, causing a significant reduction in the use of over the counter sleep medications.

“Our results are consistent with evidence that legal access to medical cannabis is associated with reductions in Scheduled II-V prescription medications (e.g., opioids and sedatives), many of which may be used in part as sleep aids,” say the authors.

RELATED: How Does Marijuana Affect My Sleep And Dreams?

While changes such as this one mean that marijuana is a trusted alternative medicine from a variety of users, the fact that there isn’t enough science to back up these claims means that the people responsible need to catch up. The more that marijuana is embraced, the bigger risks the general population will be willing to take. This isn’t a problem with over the counter sleep medications, which aren’t all that serious, but it might become an issue with other types of conditions.

Does The Food On The Floor For 5 Seconds Rule Work

It happens, you are in hurry, you get distracted, the phone rings and before you know it, the food you were excited about it on the floor.  But there is the 5 second rule right?

The Fresh Toast – Most people have done it, mainly in secret, but does the food on for floor 5 second rule work?

High school senior Jillian Clarke during a six-week internship in the food science and nutrition department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign decided to see what we do (whether it is right or wrong). Meredith Agle, then a doctoral candidate, supervised the study. Well.  She also conducted a survey in which 70% of women and 56% of men said they were familiar with the rule. Women were more likely to invoke it. Not surprisingly, people are inclined to eat dropped cookies and candy more often than dropped broccoli and cauliflower.

The urban food myth contends that if food spends just a few seconds on the floor, dirt and germs won’t have much of a chance to contaminate it. Research in my lab has focused on how food and food contact surfaces become contaminated, and we’ve done some work on this particular piece of wisdom.

Related: Weed and the Munchies

While the “five-second rule” might not seem like the most pressing issue for food scientists to get to the bottom of, it’s still worth investigating food myths like this one because they shape our beliefs about when food is safe to eat.

Turns out fallen food does pick up germs immediately upon making contact with the floor, and the amount of bacteria transferred can be enough to make you sick, according to Paul Dawson, PhD, a food science professor at Clemson University.

So is five seconds on the floor the critical threshold that separates an edible morsel from a case of food poisoning? It’s a bit a more complicated than that. It depends on just how much bacteria can make it from floor to food in a few seconds and just how dirty the floor is.

A well-known, but inaccurate, story about Julia Child may have contributed to this food myth. Some viewers of her cooking show, The French Chef, insist they saw Child drop lamb (or a chicken or a turkey, depending on the version of the tale) on the floor and pick it up, with the advice that if they were alone in the kitchen, their guests would never know.

In fact it was a potato pancake, and it fell on the stovetop, not on the floor. Child put it back in the pan, saying “But you can always pick it up and if you are alone in the kitchen, who is going to see?” But the misremembered story persists.

Related: Late night treat, grilled oysters and cookies

So what does science tell us about what a few moments on the floor means for the safety of your food?

Paul Dawson, Professor of Food Science at Clemson University published a study – the only peer-reviewed journal paper on this topic – in the Journal of Applied Microbiology. The goal was to know if the length of time food is in contact with a contaminated surface affected the rate of transfer of bacteria to the food.

To find out, they inoculated squares of tile, carpet or wood with Salmonella. Five minutes later, bologna or bread was laced on the surface for five, 30 or 60 seconds. Then they measured the amount of bacteria transferred to the food. They repeated this exact protocol after the bacteria had been on the surface for two, four, eight and 24 hours.

Toast via www.shutterstock.com
Splat.

We found that the amount of bacteria transferred to either kind of food didn’t depend much on how long the food was in contact with the contaminated surface – whether for a few seconds or for a whole minute. The overall amount of bacteria on the surface mattered more, and this decreased over time after the initial inoculation. It looks like what’s at issue is less how long your food languishes on the floor and much more how infested with bacteria is thepatch of floor.

They also found that the kind of surface made a difference as well. Carpets, for instance, seem to be slightly better places to drop your food than wood or tile. When carpet was inoculated with Salmonella, less than 1 percent of the bacteria were transferred. But when the food was in contact with tile or wood, 48 percent to 70 percent of bacteria transferred.

A study from from Aston University in the UK used nearly identical parameters and found similar results testing contact times of three and 30 seconds on similar surfaces. They also reported that 87 percent of people asked either would eat or have eaten food dropped on the floor.

Should You Eat Food That’s Fallen On The Floor?

From a food safety standpoint, if you have millions or more cells on a surface, 0.1 percent is still enough to make you sick. Also, certain types of bacteria are extremely virulent, and it takes only a small amount to make you sick. For example, 10 cells or less of an especially virulent strain of E. coli can cause severe illness and death in people with compromised immune systems. But the chance of these bacteria being on most surfaces is very low.

And it’s not just dropping food on the floor that can lead to bacterial contamination. Bacteria are carried by various “media,” which can include raw food, moist surfaces where bacteria has been left, our hands or skin and from coughing or sneezing.

Related: How Spam Became One Of The Most Iconic American Brands Of All Time

Hands, foods and utensils can carry individual bacterial cells, colonies of cells or cells living in communities contained within a protective film that provide protection. These microscopic layers of deposits containing bacteria are known as biofilms and they are found on most surfaces and objects.

Biofilm communities can harbor bacteria longer and are very difficult to clean. Bacteria in these communities also have an enhanced resistance to sanitizers and antibiotics compared to bacteria living on their own.

So the next time you consider eating dropped food, the odds are in your favor that you can eat that morsel and not get sick. But in the rare chance that there is a microorganism that can make you sick on the exact spot where the food dropped, you can be fairly sure the bug is on the food you are about to put in your mouth.

Research (and common sense) tell us that the best thing to do is to keep your hands, utensils and other surfaces clean.

How To Consume A Marijuana Gummy

They are the most popular way to consume marijuana…do you know how to do it?

Most people have tried a candy gummy, but the adult version can be WAY better. Marijuana gummies accounted for nearly $2+ billion in retail sales last year, capturing more than 70% of the cannabis markets according to data from cannabis data firm Headset. About 50% of the way people consume is through the adorable gummies.  They are inexpensive, easier to manage a dose and are a on the go treat without the smell.  No wonder they are gaining legions of fans. But do you know how to consume a marijuana gummy?

First, figure out why you are taking a gummy.  Is for fun, to manage stress or pain, or is it to sleep? All are popular reasons the public has embraced the sweet, loaded treat.

What to expect

Edibles take longer than smoking or vaping cannabis to kick in — typically around 30 to 60 minutes.  The rule is start low and grow, so if you are new, go with low dosage and one gummy.  As you become more experienced, you will be able to manage the state you wish to enjoy.  If you are managing stress, low dosage may be exactly what you need.

marijuana edibles candy
Photo by IRA_EVVA/Getty Images

How To Find The “Right”  Gummy

The good news is they usually come in a pack, providing a number of “journeys”, you can take more cost reasonable than some other forms of cannabis.  Strength and flavor are both key aspects to choice.

Start by figuring out what dosage you desire. The common mg per gummy is 10 mg, but some companies have 5 mg. This is nice because you can dial back the effects if you need it to be lighter for work or social situations, or even double up if you’re having “one of those days”.

Fruit flavors abound and you can enjoy popular flavors including watermelon, peach, and sour apple. This will take some testing and also the mood you are in.  Summer says watermelon while grape has year round appeal.

RELATED: Myths Vs. Facts: Everything You Should Know About CBD Gummies

Gummies have a shelf life of about 6-12 months. Of course it is influenced by various factors like specific ingredients, the packaging, and the storage conditions. Short term or for travel purposes, a ziplock will do.  For longer term, an opaque container or in a dark space. Light, particularly UV light, is one of the primary culprits for degrading cannabinoids, including THC.

Now you know how to consume a marijuana gummy.

Best Tricks To Control Marijuana Induced Sleepiness

Dosing is a bit of an art, and having a little too much (like alcohol) can make you doozy

Stress, fun, pain, people consume marijuana for a variety of reasons.  It has long been known as a sleep aid, guiding you gently into the land of nod.  But sometimes over indulging can induce sleepiness when you don’t want to be sleepy. Here are the best tricks to control marijuana induced sleepiness.

Marijuana affects our endocannabinoid system, which is different than alcohol which is a  depressant. Alcohol affects the central nervous system. Once it enters the bloodstream, it circulates to the brain, where it proceeds to slow down the firing of neurons. When neuronal firings decrease at a normal rate, it can result in relaxation, fatigue, and sleepiness.

Seasoned marijuana consumers know their bodies well enough to have their favorite strains, which produce reliable effects that they can control. Less experienced users can struggle with consuming and remaining alert, even if surrounded by people or are consuming during the middle of the day.

Exercise

study shows how marijuana can motivate you to exercise
Photo by bruce mars via Unsplash

RELATED: 5 Ways Marijuana Can Improve An Active Lifestyle

Working out is one of the world’s best natural energy boosters, helping you sleep more soundly and decreasing fatigue. The more regular the workouts, the better your body will function. Many cannabis smokers report that exercising while high helps them work out for longer periods of time, increasing their focus and allowing them to have more fun.

Smoke smaller doses  

If the cannabis you’re consuming is making you too sleepy, try reducing the dose, steering clear of couch-lock. Ingesting smaller doses of cannabis will also limit paranoia, anxiety, and the munchies.

Sativa!

While indicas are relaxing and tend to make you sleepy, sativas are known to produce uplifting effects that pair great with other types of activities. Sativa strains tend to create more cerebral highs that make it a good option for daytime smoking, working out or doing something creative. 

Take a shower

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RELATED: How 5 People Cover Up The Smell Of Marijuana

If you’re at home or at a friend’s house and start feeling that powerful marijuana induced stupor, hop in the shower. This will help you relax and wake up, causing you feel refreshed and ready to do something fun.

Coffee

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Coffee or green tea are always great options for when you need a quick burst of energy. Some studies suggest caffeine can enhance the effects of THC and produce a more pleasurable and effective high. You should start slow when mixing these two elements, considering that one is a depressant and the other a stimulant.

And if the best tricks to control marijuana induced sleepiness aren’t working or you aren’t interested, you can always take a short nap.

This Video Game Lets You Grow And Sell Weed

Consumers are using marijuana like crazy and sales are booming, but it is a big leap to become a cannabis entrepreneur. Well, if you are part of the pproximately 3.26 billion people worldwide play video games, there is a solution.  With 89.5% of video game sales happen in the digital world, you can experience what it is like to own a weed grow and figure out all the opportunities.  Yes, Stardew Valley is the one, this video game let you grow and sell weed.  Granted, it is a game, but you can see what people are doing and you don’t have to deal with Mitch McConnell.

Gamers consider enjoy the calendar of Stardew Valley. The popular game provides the opportunity to build the agriculture empire of your pixelated fantasies, tilling soil, rotating crops, and raising livestock. Thanks to a new gaming mod, you can now grow the hottest cash crop in the land — cannabis.

By downloading  ‘Smellyhippie_’s’ Cannabis Mod you can become a full-blown ganjaprenuer, planting and cultivating marijuana plants. The mod includes 40 new items and 37 crafting recipes, including tobacco (for spliffs and blunts), and two strains for both male and female variants of cannabis.

New items like a resin sieve will separate the THC resin from the actual bud of the plant while a hash press can turn that resin into bricks of hash that you can sell. There’s even recipes for joints with different mixtures of marijuana or, if you roll like that, spliffed with tobacco. It’s an incredibly thorough mod for people who always wished they could turn their farm into a grow op.

Related: The Ultimate Newbie’s Guide To Marijuana

With Canada and 24 states fully recreational and 40 states medical, it stands to reason the citizens of Stardew Valley would enjoy a consuming as well. However, the mod is dedicated only to the cultivation and production of growing cannabis. You won’t be getting high on your own farming supply.

Those interested in growing cannabis and those who already do so in real life will be impressed with the level of detail to cannabis production.

Via Den of Geek:

Once you’ve grown some weed, that’s where the real fun begins. Not only are you able to use new tools to separate the resin from the mature buds and press your resin into profitable hash bricks, but you can craft a variety of joints and blunts using your new product. There’s even an option to grow tobacco and incorporate it into your joints for all you spliff fans out there (we know who you are).

But cannabis enthusiasts and gamers alike have to be impressed with the robust options available in this grow op mod. While not as popular as Dota 2, the community is embracing it wholeheartedly. The only negative is you can’t sample what you grow in the game.

A Physician’s Advice On CBD And Chronic Pain

Patients’ lives improved in multiple ways after using CBD, including sleep, anxiety relief and hope. They began calling hemp a “miracle plant,” and we can understand why.

Chronic pain can be a tough diagnosis, yet about 20% of the population suffer from some sort of long term issue.  For those of us without this condition, it’s hard to imagine what someone with chronic pain is going through. Chronic pain is usually secondary to some form of trauma, making a bad situation far worse. Imagine the worst pain you have every experienced and then try to imagine having pain day in and day out for months or worse, for years.

Imagine not being able to sleep and becoming chronically sleep deprived. Imagine not being able to find a comfortable position to sit, stand or sleep. Imagine your significant other or children wanting your attention and you not having the capacity to give any. Imagine not being able to have enjoyable sex with the one you love. Experiencing chronic pain continuously changes you. Depression and anxiety are commonplace among this patient population.

While physicians have access to tools to deal with pain, chronic pain is resistant to a quick fix. Interventional procedures, surgery, physical therapy and pain medications have historically been the go-to therapies to address pain. Historically, because they are accessible and inexpensive, narcotics — particularly opioid narcotics — have also been one of the go-to therapies.

RELATED: Study: Three Puffs Of Marijuana A Day Will Combat Chronic Pain

Given the opioid crisis, physicians are less likely to lead with narcotics, and some of us are deciding not to prescribe them altogether. The problem with narcotics is they work. They work really well. Sometimes too well, leading to a patient becoming so comfortable they “forget” to breathe. So, while reducing the amount of narcotics prescribed to patients is a good thing, the problem is physicians don’t have a lot of good alternatives to recommend to their patients, until now.

cbd as medicine how much do we know so far
Photo by OlegMalyshev/Getty Images

Not all of America has access to medical cannabis yet, but the whole country has access to hemp-derived CBD. The eight pain clinics I run in North Carolina have been recommending CBD to patients for a couple of years now and observing some incredible results. We continue to learn everyday what CBD can and can’t do for our patients in chronic pain.

Shortly after our exposure to hemp and CBD, we conducted a study on 100 patients early and learned some valuable lessons. Our patients’ lives improved in multiple ways including sleep, anxiety relief and hope. The patients began calling hemp a “miracle plant,” and we can understand why.

Sleep is an extremely important aspect of life. It is the time our bodies and brains rejuvenate ourselves and prepare us for the next day. Without good quality sleep, the toll on our bodies and mental capacities really adds up. But CBD helps with sleep. On average, our patients’ sleep duration grew from 4.5 to 6 hours, and they reported the quality of sleep was significantly improved. Patients even told us they started remembering dreams, which was a surprise for them. Given the amount of medications these patients take, it’s no wonder many of them had not dreamed in years.

RELATED: Chronic Pain Patients Are Ditching Opioids In Favor Of Marijuana

Chronic pain wears on your nerves. It is common for patients to experience severe anxiety. Historically, patients have been prescribed benzodiazepines (Valium and Xanax) to deal with this problem. Unfortunately, the combination of narcotics and benzos has led to increased overdose deaths. During our study it was clear our patients experienced less anxiety. Instead of reaching for a friend’s benzo or alcohol to deal with their anxiety, they instead started reaching for their CBD oil.

Chronic pain leads to a feeling of despair and hopelessness. One wonders if the pain will ever end? Will I ever get my life back? An unexpected finding during our study was our patients were coming back to us saying they were hopeful. Instead of their glass being half empty, it was now half full. Hope is powerful. When you have hope, your mind starts to work for you instead of against you. You start to imagine things can be different. You find the motivation to get off the couch and get busy living instead of waiting to die. This feeling of hope inspired these patients to start engaging in activities we had encouraged them to do for years, like doing yoga, eating healthier, losing weight and moving more.

Personalized Treatment: The Future Of Medical Cannabis
Photo by seksan Mongkhonkhamsao/Getty Images

Our initial assessment of pain relief was at first disappointing. We typically only see a 10-20 percent pain reduction on average when a patient uses CBD. While some patients reported complete resolution of their pain, it was the exception, not the rule. Patients with a strong inflammatory component or fibromyalgia seem to get the best results.

As we continue to work with CBD our knowledge of the power of this plant is growing as well. We are obtaining much better results as we work with our patients to think themselves out of pain. You might think I’m kidding, but I’m not. Chronic pain changes the brain and lays down dysfunctional pathways. CBD promotes neuroplasticity and neurogenesis — the formation of new brain cells developing into new pathways of thinking. We are encouraged and excited to continue to work with CBD to maximize its potential to address chronic pain.

RELATED: Science Says Medical Marijuana Improves Quality Of LifeCB

If you are living with chronic pain, hemp offers you hope. CBD can be purchased online or over the counter in many forms in every state in the U.S., and many places around the world. The good news is CBD has a very broad safety profile, and you should feel comfortable trying it. Dosing is key.

Taking too much won’t harm you, but it might not help you either. Please be sure to talk to your physician about CBD. In my next column, I will offer some tips for having this conversation, particularly if you feel awkward about cannabis or hemp, or suspect your doctor might react badly to your interest.

Trick To Open Wine Without An Opener And Other Hacks

No corkscrew? A broken cork in your bottle? No time to chill? Here’s how to navigate some of wine’s most frustrating scenarios.

If you drink wine like 75% of people, you’ve no doubt come across a situation where you screw something up. Years of experience as a sommelier have taught me how to handle most of those situations. Before you panic, here is the trick to open wine without an opener and other hacks to keep handy.

The Fresh Toast – You have been there, so here is a the trick to open wine without an opener and other hacks

Unchilled wine

Probably the most common issue that people have is they realize that, at the exact moment that they want a glass of rosé, the only bottle they have is at room temperature. If patience isn’t a virtue you possess, the absolute fastest method I’ve found to chill down a bottle without access to heavy machinery is to fill a large bucket with ice, add in half cup or so of salt (rock salt is perfect), and then fill about halfway with water. Put the bottle in, and turn it every 30 seconds or so. You should have a chilled bottle within about 5 minutes, though for sparkling wine you’d probably want to give it more like 10; the thicker bottles take longer to chill.

RELATED: 4 Signs You Need To Send Back That Bottle Of Wine

Rosé Deodorant
Photo via kaboompics

Broken cork

I face this one pretty regularly on the floor of the restaurant, and I have a range of tools at my disposal. Assuming you’re limited to standard wine openers, techniques here vary based on how badly broken the cork is. If the remaining part appears to still be solid, I’d just dive back in: this is where a waiter’s corkscrew comes in handy. If the cork is crumbling though, I often make the decision to just push the cork down into the wine. Some people would then filter the wine through a coffee filter, cheesecloth, or strainer, but I prefer to decant the wine into a clean vessel, and then pour it into another decanter: this allows me to get all or virtually all of the cork out without damaging the wine.

No wine opener

We’ve all been there: a bottle of wine and nothing to open it with. The best approach I’ve found is to us a fairly long key: your car key, perhaps, and to slowly work it into the cork. Once it’s in as far as it will go, you slowly twist the bottle while very gently pulling up. It can take a while, but it’s the safest method I’ve found, both for you and the bottle.

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Champagne alternatives
Photo by RondellMelling via Pixabay

Cleaning wine glasses

This does require at least a small bit of foresight: cleaning glasses is much easier if you don’t let the wine totally dry out, so at least putting some water in the glass at the end of the night will make your life a lot easier. I then like to use a wet cloth or rag, and no soap if I can avoid it, as I find that soap tends to leave streaks and stains on most wine glasses. If you have a hanging drying rack that’s ideal, but if that’s not an option then I start my glasses face down and then flip them about an hour later. I usually still have to polish them if I want them spotless (and by all means spend $8 on an actual polishing cloth), but it helps minimize the water spots.

Now, go forth and drink with confidence!

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