7 Ways To Manage Pain With CBD

My name is David Anthony Schroeder. I am the author of the book ‘7 Ways To Manage Pain With CBD,’ The Total Newbies Guide to Understanding CBD Basics, Combating Pain Using it in Multiple Forms, & Finding a Better Quality of Life Apart From Opioid Use.

I have been a chronic pain sufferer for fifty years. At the age of five, doctors diagnosed me as hyperactive, and they prescribed me heavy doses of Ritalin. I hated Ritalin with a passion, and I used every excuse in the book not to take that drug, including hiding it under my tongue or acting as if I had put it in my mouth when I didn’t. Unfortunately, I had enormous tanks of energy and I could outlast just about anybody.

While growing up, I didn’t understand that I needed intense activities to burn off all the excess energy that prevented me from sitting still. So I pursued every activity that I could: BMX, mountain biking, rollerblading, skateboarding, martial arts, 100-mile long bike trips, hiking. You name it, I pretty much did it. Because I pursued these high octane activities, I incurred many injuries.

It wasn’t until my fifties that I had the realization my hyperactivity drove me to do some crazy things. To add to those injuries, I had been in multiple motor vehicle accidents. I had been rear-ended several times; hit by a car running a red light and then veering off into a telephone pole; and while driving a Baja Bug, we drove straight down into a ravine on the side of a mountain.

I have also suffered several repetitive use injuries. I drove a commercial bus for nine years and my right knee took a lot of abuse, 700,000 miles of abuse. I spent 20-plus years driving throughout the Los Angeles basin as a contractor traveling on the world’s worst freeway, the 405. I woke up one morning and my right leg was paralyzed from my hip down. Though I have recovered, if I do a lot of driving my ankle and calf begins to ache and I can’t drive. Ice doesn’t help.

My first experience with Cannabis was at the age of 11. It changed my whole world. Cannabis did what Ritalin could not do, calm me down. Cannabis balanced me and allowed me to function, but the cannabis plant was illegal. The fact that it had to be hidden was wrong.

The world thinks in terms of events, economic events, catastrophic events, etc. I have what I term “pain events.” An “Event” may last a few days, often weeks or months, and in some cases years. One injury lasted ten years. Now aging and old wounds create a whole new batch of problems.

In 2016, an acquaintance gave me a CBD painstick that he manufactured. Now you have to understand that I had tried everything over the previous 25 to 30 years as an adult, including prescribed narcotics legal and illegal.

When he gave me the painstick, I laughed and thought it was a joke. It turned out to not be a joke. It would change the course of my life. Now the new problem I had was I had to sort through all the falsehoods of published claims and information.

There is so much misinformation on the Internet that it was hard to distinguish what was true and what was false. It didn’t take long to realize that on the surface; most of what I could find on using CBD for pain were people trying to sell me something but didn’t offer any real-life substance. But, because of the Internet, I had access to all types of medical information and studies that we, the public, didn’t readily have just 25 years ago.

I have to admit, reading medical studies for the medically untrained person is extremely hard. Tedious, to say the least. But I was driven to try and understand how to use CBD. Because I had so many connections with people and manufacturers of Cannabis and CBD merchandise, I got to try a lot of product, and a lot of it was garbage.

During those first few years, I did find some great resources to help educate me. But when purchasing CBD, you have to be careful and do your homework on the product and manufacturer. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a study from the researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. “Eighty-four products were purchased and analyzed (from 31 companies). Median labeled concentration was 15.00 mg/mL. With respect to CBD, they found that 42.85% of products were under labelled, 26.19% were over labelled, and 30.95% were accurately labelled.”

Here is that study: JAMA: “Labeling Accuracy of Cannabidiol Extracts Sold Online” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5818782/.

My Life’s Mission
The highest priority: to always educate the person in front of me. The world is 100% ignorant about the facts regarding the cannabis plant as medicine. I don’t sugarcoat or twist the facts: CBD is not the panacea everybody claims it to be, but for CRPS and other chronic pain illnesses, dozens of medical studies support the effectiveness and its ability to reduce pain.

People cannot benefit from the truth if they lack understanding. Here is a list of resources you may dive into and study for yourself the truth about Cannabis medicine. Search these sites and find useful quality information to feed your brain and possibly heal your body, whatever your issue may be. These sites are not only for pain but for all things Cannabis.

The National Center for Biotechnology Information
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

Northwestern Medicine
https://www.nm.org/

The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids: The Current State of Evidence and Recommendations for Research (2017)
https://www.nap.edu/read/24625/chapter/1

Doctors for Cannabis Regulation (DFCR)
https://dfcr.org/

Clinical Studies and Case Reports
https://www.cannabis-med.org/studies/study.php

Lambert Center for the Study of Medicinal Cannabis & Hemp
https://www.jefferson.edu/university/emerging-health-professions/lambert-center.html

The Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research
https://www.cmcr.ucsd.edu/

The Journal of the American Medical Association
https://jamanetwork.com/

The CBD buyers’ checklist
https://bit.ly/CBDchecklist

For more info on David’s book go to www.thecbdwriter.com