As far as cannabis oil and cancer go, this treatment is offering a low-risk alternative for the most aggressive forms of breast cancer:
As a medical advisory for Sol*CBD I wish to of course extoll the virtues of Cannabidiol (CBD) in this article. But first indulge me as I discuss a couple of recent insights into how we’re looking at the pandemic topic of breast cancer followed by how our amazing plant extract heals it.
Nothing shakes someone’s soul more than the ‘C’ word. We never want to discuss it and wouldn’t wish it on anybody. But cancer does affect many millions of people worldwide. Breast cancer is no different. Breast cancer awareness is all around us. From the Susan G. Komen Fundraisers to the American Cancer Society’s public service announcements, women are receiving a multitude of powerful and also confusing messages each and every day. Chances are that virtually everyone comes to know someone who has experienced this diagnosis, a partner, sister, mother, aunt, and so it really does reach all of us.
In 2015, an estimated 231,840 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in women in the U.S. Breast cancer is second only to skin cancer in incidence of diagnosis and is the second highest cause of death amongst women next to lung cancer. Though women of all age groups and ethnicities can be face breast cancer at some point in their lifetime, we see that white women have a slightly higher incidence while African-American women have a higher death rate from breast cancer. The good news is that breast cancer incidence and death rates have declined in the past decade after having risen in the previous two (1).
Despite this bit of good news, it turns out that fear is driving women with breast cancer to extreme measures. Surveys show that in roughly 12% of US women with cancer confined to one breast, and where mastectomy is indicated, more often than not results in a woman’s decision to have the healthy one removed as well (2). Reasons suggested for this rise from just 2% ten years earlier include: mandatory insurance coverage for radical mastectomy that didn’t exist before, improved plastic surgery techniques that restore symmetry to both breasts, and also the ‘Angelina Effect’. You may recall that in 2013 Angelina Jolie, who lost her mother to breast cancer, elected to have a ‘preventative’ radical mastectomy when she tested positive for the BRACA gene.
Adding to the conundrum for women, mammograms, the accepted gold standard diagnostic jewel for breast cancer have recently been shown to be of limited value than previously considered (3). According to a survey reported in JAMA of 547 counties across the US, excessive screening often results in false positives that cause unnecessary invasive procedures to be performed. Ideally, the counties with more widespread screening should see a payoff in the form of lower rates of breast cancer deaths. Instead, the researchers found “no evident correlation between the extent of screening and 10-year breast cancer mortality.” Yet Amidst the confusion, mixed messages and fear mongering on the part of the media and the medical community, a bright light shines its way through the muck.
Here’s why we love CBD
The scientific community is strongly embracing CBD due to its non-psychoactive character as an up-and-coming, low-to-no-risk treatment for women diagnosed with the most aggressive forms of breast cancer. Though the experiments are currently limited to animal and in vitro observations, what we’re seeing is that CBD plays a very direct role at the tumor site itself, inhibiting growth and metastasis of even the most severe, triple negative (unresponsive to hormone therapy) breast cancer cells (4). CBD is also seen to be active in inhibiting gene expression of metastatic breast cancer cells, suggesting a possible role in future gene therapy in cases otherwise unresponsive to conventional treatments (5,6).
Though we are still in the infantile stages of its research, CBD continues to impress the scientific and medical communities in its far-reaching application in a number of acute and chronic diseases, with minimal to no side effects. If things progress as they should, and the government eventually get on board with full legalization of medical marijuana, more greatly needed human clinical and experimental studies will be performed to show just what this incredible healing molecule is capable of. I hope that articles such as this, along with the studies cited herein, begin to offer women a glimmer of hope during times when health care choices seem to becoming increasingly limited. Keep searching, never allow yourselves to be told there’s no hope, and always maintain a positive outlook.
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References:
1. http://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/understand_bc/statistics
2. http://www.wsj.com/articles/defying-doctors-more-women-with-breast-cancer-choose-double-mastectomies-1436545322
4. Mol Oncol. 2015 Apr;9(4):906-19. doi: 10.1016/j.molonc.2014.12.010. Epub 2015 Jan 19.Modulation of the tumor microenvironment and inhibition of EGF/EGFR pathway: novel anti-tumor mechanisms of Cannabidiol in breast cancer. Elbaz M1, Nasser MW2, Ravi J3, Wani NA4, Ahirwar DK5, Zhao H6, Oghumu S7, Satoskar AR8, Shilo K9, Carson WE 3rd10, Ganju RK11.
5. Breast Cancer Res Treat.2011 Aug;129(1):37-47. doi: 10.1007/s10549-010-1177-4. Epub 2010 Sep 22.
Pathways mediating the effects of cannabidiol on the reduction of breast cancer cell proliferation, invasion, and metastasis. McAllister SD1, Murase R, Christian RT, Lau D, Zielinski AJ, Allison J, Almanza C, Pakdel A, Lee J, Limbad C, Liu Y, Debs RJ, Moore DH, Desprez PY.
6. Mol Cancer Ther.2007 Nov;6(11):2921-7. Cannabidiol as a novel inhibitor of Id-1 gene expression in aggressive breast cancer cells. McAllister SD1,Christian RT, Horowitz MP, Garcia A, Desprez PY.
