I got an offer today send me a free panacea.
We’d like to offer you some of Dose of Nature’s CBD health products for your review on your blog.
CBD is one of the most exciting health supplements in the news because of it’s broad scope of health applications. It has amazing anti-inflammatory and anti-pain properties, yet that is just the beginning. Research is showing CBD to help with most neurological and mental disorders. These include anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s, epilepsy, autism, ALS, and Alzheimers. It is also showing to be useful in autoimmune conditions such as Chron’s, colitis, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and HIV. There is research demonstrating it to be anti-tumoral, neuro and immune-modulating as well as neuro-protective and regenerative. CBD may be the closest thing to a real panacea that there is.
The combining CBD with an advanced delivery system is big news.
We’d like to offer you a sample Redstrap CBD in organic olive oil for your review. You can check out doseofnature.com for more information and, if you’d like to participate in this sample and review offer, just reply to this email and I’ll follow up to get your shipping information and get it sent to you.
Any questions? I am here to help!
She seems nice.
Anyway, CBD is short for cannabidiol — as you can guess from the name, it’s a cannabinoid, so this is simply a marijuana extract. I had no idea that stuff was so potent that it cures cancer, arthritis, and Alzheimer’s!
Should I write back and take her up on her offer? It’s like someone is offering me free weed.
I wondered what their advanced delivery system
was. Here’s their description:
Our innovative technology embeds uniform nano-sized nutrients within ultra-purified micro-clusters of water. The result the most advanced cellular hydration and bioavailable nutrition.
What a fine collection of meaningless phrases, all sciencey and fancy and all. I suspect that what they do is dissolve their extract in water and add it to olive oil, then shake it up real good to make teensy bubbles. I’m a little confused, though: cannabidiol is water insoluble, so it’s going to get extracted into the oily fraction, right? What’s with all this talk about hydration and dissolving it in micro-clusters of water?
Gosh, their technology is too sophisticated for me.
Hang on, I’ve found a better cannabinoid delivery system.
chigau (違う) says
Quantumn!
Neil Rickert says
I would have flagged that email as spam.
moarscienceplz says
Obviously, most medical researchers are thinking way too small. Most of them work years and decades to develop a treatment for ONE disease or condition. They should choose to invent a single medicine that can treat a broad scope of health issues? It sure would be more efficient, wouldn’t it?
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says
Add a little bit of surfactant to the oil-cannabidiol mixture, like a phospholipid, and this will allow for micelle dispersion in water. But I don’t see that from the word salad.
Daz: Keeper of the Hairy-Eared Dwarf Lemur of Atheism says
Damn, and here’s me been eating all that non-available, non-biological nutritiony food.
freemage says
My thought upon seeing ‘micro-clusters of water’ was actually… vaping.
Gregory in Seattle says
It’s a homeopathic extraction, duh.
cag says
They forgot to mention that it regrows amputated limbs.
What a Maroon, oblivious says
It’s also a floor wax.
nomadiq says
The preparation is probably an emulsion using some kind of detergent.
You know my science career is really tanking and all I see are these sciencey products on the market with really cheesy but not exactly wrong writeups about what they do or what they are. They are clearly written by science degree graduates. I have a PhD! I could do so much better. I wanna suck on the corporate teat for a while. It’s already humiliating begging to justify my existence, might as well be humiliated and get paid.
komarov says
Nerd of Redhead, my first thought was sonication. It should make it look like it’s dissolved long enough for the snake-oil salesman to wrap it up and ship it off in good conscience. As an added bonus it looks fairly scientific should anyone ever ask. I certainly haven’t seen an ultrasound bath outside a laboratory.
Thinking a bit further, once the oil separates out again it’ll look even more sciency. Nooo, those aren’t oil droplets, those must be the hydrated micro-clusters!
unclefrogy says
if that is true than it is obvious that to get the maximum dose and concentration it would be cheaper to just get some really strong ganja and use it every day
daily dose and all, perfect health and long life at least it would seem like it!
uncle frogy
John Horstman says
@moarscienceplz #3: I think the obvious woo-ness of this product’s marketing copy is leading you to snark in an unjustified manner. Willow bark extract – salicylic acid i.e. aspirin – is another naturally-occurring compound that treats a fairly broad number of conditions, thanks to its anti-inflammatory, antipyretic, anticoagulant, and analgesic properties. That particular claim is not entirely without precedent, and CBD does indeed show potential for development as a treatment for a number of conditions, due mainly to the large number of processes our endocannabinoid system helps regulate. This particular company is selling snake oil – they obviously don’t have much of a clue what they’re talking about – but it happens to be snake oil that may indeed contain pharmacologically active ingredients and could thus be accidentally useful. And plenty of pharmacologists work in exactly this manner: they may identify plants that are used in local traditional medicine (or have otherwise been observed to produce therapeutic effects), try to determine if any actual pharmacological effect is at play (versus psychosomatic effects), isolate the active compounds, and determine standardized treatment dosages for treatment of any relevant conditions. Penicillin is another example – that one was developed from a fungus.
hyoid says
Free Weed will not be scoffed.
John Small Berries says
And thus you would have missed the opportunity to shine a public light upon a scammer (and hold her up for contempt and ridicule) on your blog.
Daz: Keeper of the Hairy-Eared Dwarf Lemur of Atheism says
John Small Berries #15:
I assumed that was a joke about crappy food…
Alverant says
I’d ask for evidence and proof of their claims and see how they’d react.
a3kr0n says
Micro-clusters of water? That’s what the water fraudsters tell you about their cure-all water machines.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says
Komarov #11
Sonicate your jewelry and glasses:
http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Ultrasonic-Jewelry-Eyeglass-Cleaning/dp/B001DKDAVW
Pierce R. Butler says
I keep reading that first line as an offer to send our esteemed host a free pancreas.
He could get a bunch of them, and insulinate his attic!
leerudolph says
> I have a PhD! I could do so much better.
Long ago (indeed, pre-Ph.D.), I decided that The Dielectric Constant and YOU would be a great title for the kind of book you (used, anyway, to) see in a “health-food” store (hey, it was on Main Street just a couple of blocks from MIT, and nearly the only place in those days that I could get my hands on bulgur and the like). You’re welcome to what you can make of it.
Daz: Keeper of the Hairy-Eared Dwarf Lemur of Atheism says
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls #19:
I have absolutely no need for one, yet still I want.
Kevin Kehres says
There are many, many places in the liberal blogosphere where the benefits of cannabinoids are touted. It indeed is viewed as a magical cure-all. Especially a cancer cure-all.
It’s laetrile all over again.
chigau (違う) says
re: update
holy shit!
anym says
#23, Kevin Kehres
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
ivarhusa says
A less encompassing claim for CBD would have been much more appropriate. The “Charlotte’s Web” cannabis strain is used with spectacular success to treat some forms of juvenile epilepsy. http://cannabissativa.com/2013/12/josh-stanley-at-tedx-boulder-on-cannabis/ Certainly a much more modest claim, but quite significant nonetheless. Let us work to make medical marijuana accessible to all states. OK, recreational too (I’m from Washington State), but that is a different story.
Blondin says
Mmmmmm, I love panaceas with maple syrup and real butter…
Oh, never mind.
noahsarkive says
Love the Octo-doobie!
Rich Woods says
A waste of good olive oil.
Daz: Keeper of the Hairy-Eared Dwarf Lemur of Atheism says
Octo-doobie? No! it’s a cephaloblunt.
brucegee1962 says
It sounds as if “nano” is the new “quantum.” Stick it in front of everything!
Best of all, it’s true! Your product actually is made of nano-particles! (Assuming it’s made of matter, that is.)
lorn says
I’m trying to figure out how this is different from the hash oil we used to make. You know, the one where you stuff a couple of ounces of grass into a pot with some oil, heat it slowly, stirring it occasionally, for a good long time. Then you filter the mess. The end product is a couple of vials of amber liquid with a slight green tinge that can be added to food or smoking materials to achieve a profound high. It was a grower sort of thing because it was not very efficient cost wise if you weren’t getting high quality weed dirt cheap.
Added to the butter in a brownie recipe, labeled and left on the table at a party, the inevitable result was about two dozen people laying around looking like a bomb went off. Good times.
Al Dente says
I prefer the traditional delivery system.
Kevin Kehres says
@25…RawStory for one. It is not a bastion of conservative thought. Nor of skeptical thinking for the most part. And any story there that even whiffs of marijuana is inundated with comments regarding the AMAZING cancer-curing properties of Mary Jane.
And just about every story about cancer is inundated with the same comments.
If you’d like links, I’d be happy to supply them…but they’re easy enough to get on your own.
Why would you think that conservative blogs and websites would be advocating for use of marijuana derivatives?
Lofty says
I hear that many people working in the Central Business Districts are already on CBD.
Holms says
Free weed! Have snacks on hand and go for it. Just don’t expect it to do anything health related of course, that’s just silly.
comfychair says
Homeopathic weed is guaranteed to be profoundly disappointing.
NateHevens. He who hates straight, white, cis-gendered, able-bodied men (not really) says
*facepalm*
This is why I sometimes hate being a pro-legalization advocate… I have to share it with woo-peddlers like these and the gullible masses who believe them.
Sophi Daniels says
i miss my medical marijuana…. it was a lot cheaper than recreational marijuana…. and i could buy two ounces at a time….
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says
Part of the problem is that while there appears to be real indications where cannabis can help, the paranoid US laws and DEA officials mean that the DEA will not allow any research on the subject, or if they must allow it, the DEA supplies (by law they must) weed of such inferior quality that they know it won’t show any efficacy. Which is why the states are leading the way in allowing the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes. Even some rethugs are for allowing medical cannabis. Usually all it takes is Uncle Sam *sic* tossing his cookies while trying to eat after receiving chemotherapy, but not doing so after toking up.
gog says
The squid blunt is wasteful and impractical. Get me a squid pipe and we’ll talk.
CaitieCat, Harridan of Social Justice says
I’m with gog. I don’t even need a squid pipe, just a nice Gandalf-style longstem wooden pipe, to cool the harshness before it hits my throat. Well, and a reliable, affordable source for what is for me a useful medicament (pain-related nausea, as well as relaxant properties).
NateHevens. He who hates straight, white, cis-gendered, able-bodied men (not really) says
Sadly… yeah.
It’s sort of medicinal for me, as well. Helps me sleep, helps my calm anxiety attacks… in small amounts (small enough to avoid getting me high but still affect my mental state enough to help me relax) I can even get through a day of being social without shutting down half-way through. If I could get my hands on a portable vape or a method of making THC e-juice to use on the vapes I already have, my life would be a lot better in general.
But now that I live in New York, I’m way more terrified of breaking the law than I was in Florida… and the medical laws passed here do not include things like anxiety, insomnia, and so on…
WMDKitty -- Survivor says
I really wish these fringe nuts would stop pushing cannabinoids as some kind of panacea.
There are things weed helps with — including, but not limited to, pain, nausea, insomnia, and anxiety — but it isn’t going to make a tumour go away or regrow a lost limb or magically make you super-healthy.
gog says
The laws in New York are less harsh than Florida. In most jurisdictions simple possession for consumption is a civil infraction. You’ll pay a ticket. Public view is an aggravating factor that can land you in jail, though.
cantspellgeekwoee says
cantspellgeekwoee says
Reminds me of one of George Carlin’s routines about marketing. Too bad this is an actual attempt to sell a product.
Sunioc says
As someone who works in the medical cannabis industry, this shit really pisses me off. People like this woman and Rick Simpson give my industry a bad name with their “weed cures everything” bs and gives ammo to antilegalization folks who say we are just making shit up to get high. Quick correction though, CBD extract isn’t weed. unless you are purchasing a product from a medcial cannabis collective, CBD products are extracted from industrial hemp rather than the cannabis sativa plant.
llewelly says
Kevin Kehres:
Ron Paul and Rand Paul have been promoting pot woo for a long, long time.
And the Washington and Colorado pot laws never would have passed if they hadn’t been able to round up conservative support. Once you get outside of a few major metropolitan areas, those states are nowhere near as “liberal” as people prefer to pretend.
Sure, support for pot woo isn’t as strong among conservatives. But it’s been around for decades.
Matt G says
At first reading, I thought somebody had offered you a free pancreas. Which you should accept if this ever happens. Could come in handy.
neuroturtle says
This crap makes it so much harder to teach Drugs and Behavior. I have to work through the misconceptions before we can get to learning about the actual drug.
Though, almost universally, my best students in that class are stoners. They can walk in ready to give a half-hour presentation on the ratios of THC to cannabidiol in various strains of Cannabis sativa versus C. indica and how that affects the subjective experience and medical outcomes… which is nice because it makes it less likely I’ll sound like a weed shill. Oh well. Freud was shilling for cocaine before it was cool, so there’s precedent.