On today’s episode of Period Story, I had the pleasure of speaking to Dr Dani Gordon, an expert in CBD and cannabis medicine and the author of the book, the CBD Bible. Dani is a double board certified medical doctor and integrative medicine physician. She has advised the UN, governments and physician bodies on the use of medical cannabis and also co-founded the UK Medical Cannabis Clinicians Society, trained the UK’s first cannabis medicine specialists and helped set up the UK’s first cannabis medicine clinics.For anyone that’s interested in CBD, especially its use for period pain, this episode is a must-listen!
We talked about Dani’s first period and how she learned to manage her menstrual health as a competitive swimmer. She says she felt really empowered by her first period and really supported by her mom during this time.
We talked about the link between stress and changes in periods and menstrual cycles (something I’m seeing a lot right now!). Dani shared how as she got older, she started to link the heavy periods she was experiencing with stress and what she did to manage this stress. Her doctor told her that her only option was to suppress the hormone imbalances and bad periods with the pill 🥴 Listen to hear how Dani gradually realised there were other things she could do to manage and improve her menstrual health.
Dani talks about how she started out as a conventionally trained medical doctor and told me what inspired her to shift to integrative medicine and to ultimately focus on CBD and cannabis medicine. She shares how her patients opened her eyes to the benefits of cannabis for chronic pain relief and this inspired her to learn more.
Listen to learn the difference between CBD and THC, what the endocannabinoid system is and the wide range of conditions CBD can help with (including period pain!). The world of CBD is rapidly growing in the UK and Dani shares her top tips on how to choose the right type for you, including ways to access medicinal cannabis for severe conditions.
Dani says that CBD and botanical medicine is about empowering yourself about your health and wellness and taking control back. Thank you, Dani!
Get in touch with Dani:
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DANI’S BIO
Dr Dani Gordon is a double board certified medical doctor, integrative medicine physician and world leading expert in CBD, cannabis medicine, brain wellness and stress resilience. She has advised the UN, governments and physician bodies on the use of medical cannabis, and was one of the youngest physicians to become American board certified in Integrative Medicine (the newest US physician sub-specialty). She also co-founded the UK Medical Cannabis Clinicians Society, trained the UK’s first cannabis medicine specialists and helped set up the UK’s first cannabis medicine clinics.
She has studied mindbody medicine at Harvard, yoga and meditation extensively throughout India and south east Asia with traditional teachers, QEEG brain scanning and EEG neurofeedback brainwave training with the top leaders in North America. Dr Gordon is the co-founder of UltraResilience, a wellness company specializing in burnout and stress resilience programs for individuals and organizations.
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Le’Nise: Thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Dani: Thanks for having me, Le’Nise.
Le’Nise: So let’s start off by getting into the story of your first period. Can you tell us what happened?
Dani: So I was trying to think back to my first period when you emailed me and I was thinking, gosh, I don’t have a very, very clear recollection for some of the parts. But certainly I remember that I was 12. I was a competitive swimmer at the time. So it was kind of a big deal because, of course, I was training at quite a high level in the swimming pool and I needed to think about what I was going to do when I had my period. A lot of people on the swim team who were my age were taking days off of training when they had their period. And it was the big decision almost right away: do I use a tampon?
Which is kind of a traumatic decision for a 12 year old. But I was really lucky. My parents are really supportive of just body image stuff in general. And my mom was really supportive. So we talked it out. And I think I think I had a few periods in and then she basically taught me how to use the tampon and it went OK. And I went to swim practice. And I remember feeling pretty empowered because I didn’t have to take practices off when I had my period. So I think that’s the thing I remember most about. My first year was I was with my first friends to use a tampon and then of course, everyone wanted to know about it and it was a big deal.
So I didn’t really have any bad periods per se when I first started menstruating. But definitely when I was a teenager, 15, 16, I did get some heavy periods. I think partly it was due to stress. I was a very driven teenager. I was very academic. I put a lot of pressure on myself. And I think looking back, a lot of it was related to when I was when I was over, overly stressed or kind of stretched too thin with my academics and my sport. And I remember going up the stairs of my high school and we had to wear uniforms, so I had to wear a kilt. And I remember feeling blood trickling down my leg, walking up the stairs and just being mortified. And then I had a big patch of period blood on my, on my, my kilt. And I had to wrap my, my sweater around my waist for the rest of the day.
So I think those are kind of two of the most emblazoned period memories I, I have probably, from being a teenager. So, nothing too dramatic, but certainly that that walking up the stairs worrying about boys seeing me, I think those are things that a lot of women go through and no one really talks about, though. So I often, I often talk about these things when I do talks about women’s health.
Le’Nise: And going back to when you got your first period, you said it was really empowering.
Your mom taught you how to use a tampon and knowing that so swimming is quite intense, you’re in the water. You never had any issues after you learnt how to use a tampon with your swimming, on your period.
Dani: No, I was actually really lucky. I think that part was really easy. It was kind of later on when I started to have some heavy periods that I started to really connect it to, oh maybe this is stress related? What can I do about this really heavy period that I’m having? But the first few years, my periods were quite light and I just was able to use kind of the junior tampon. And I went to swim practice and it was it was almost like it wasn’t a big deal. I remember even having a big race when I had my period, probably when I was about thirteen. And I did a lot of visualisation as part of my training.
So I would visualise myself feeling more powerful because I was having my period and going through this race rather than I think the other way of thinking about it: I’m going to be really tired for this race. Or maybe someone had a heavy period, they would be really tired. So I think generally my, my first experiences were positive. But certainly I think the fact that I remember that walking up the stairs and bleeding, it’s probably probably a bit of a traumatic experience.
Le’Nise: And you said that you linked having a heavy period with stress, which is quite, quite advanced.
When I think about the other guests that I’ve had on the show or other women I’ve spoken to, when they, when they’ve heavy periods, often they’re not sure why they have heavy periods and they just kind of get, get on with it. How did you learn how did you make that connection and how did you learn about what was happening to you?
Dani: I think it was just kind of a thought that I had really when I was a teenager and when I was 16, I finished, I went to university when I was 17 and I already knew I wanted to do medicine, so I was already kind of had a bit of a scientific mind, I think, thinking about these things. But there is not a lot of information out there. Like when I went to my doctor about my heavy periods, he said, “well, you can you can go on the pill if you want.” And that’s what I ended up doing because I also wanted birth control when I was around 16. So I talked it over with my mom. My mom was really supportive and she said, “if you’re going to be sexually active, you want to be safe and you should go on a birth control pill and all these things and then it’ll help your periods.” And I also had some teenage acne. So those three things kind of led me to the pill. But when I went to discuss that with my medical doctor as a teenager, there was not even any discussion of stress and periods, really. That was something I just kind of thought about.
And what did I do about it? Well, nothing really concrete, really, at the time. I guess I was just trying to connect the dots. And really, as I got into university and I had to really manage my stress, I got more into yoga and meditation quite early. I was, I started doing yoga by 18 to help the stress at university. So I think for me it was just a gradual kind of realisation versus the doctor’s opinion at the time. The GP’s opinion was, “OK, you just well, if you have bad periods or if you have hormonal imbalances just suppress it with the pill, that’s the only option.” It wasn’t really ever discussed, anything else that could be a factor. And of course, I’m not against going on the pill either. Some some of my patients say the pills saved them. We’re going on an IUD. So I’m not against the western medical solutions. But I do think when it’s offered as the only conversation for women, that can be a little bit limiting or a lot limiting. I think this idea that you just the only thing to do when you have a bad period is just suppress it rather than digging, as you said, into stress playing a factor. Are hormones playing a factor? I didn’t learn really about the fact that we had hormone cycles until I was in medical school properly about oh, so maybe I feel more energised. I can do more cardio training in the first half of my cycle versus the second half of my cycle. I generally feel maybe not so energised and I need to be more eating different foods, having a more nourishing diet, more nourishing routine, avoiding the caffeine. Those things I didn’t learn about until I learnt about the anatomy and physiology of periods in medical school. And even then they just taught us the kind of medical parts. But they didn’t ever connect it back with saying, oh, this is how you can change your lifestyle or in your period. It was just purely like this is what the hormone levels do at this day. So I felt like I was really disconnected. I had to kind of connect the dots myself.
Le’Nise: And when you were making those connections so, I mean, by the way, everything you’re saying is music to my ears.
But when you are making those connections and when you were putting the pieces together and did it change what you thought about being on the pill? Talk a little bit about your journey coming off the pill.
Dani: Yeah, that’s a really good question. So I was one of the main reasons I really liked the pill because I had this teenage acne. So of course, my mom wanted to help me with my acne. She bought me this. I remember she bought me this expensive infomercial kind of natural system for my acne that it didn’t work but she really wanted to help me. I was really, like, really supportive parents. So when I decided to come off the pill, it was really I guess it was near the end of medical school. So I was 24 at the time. So I’d been on the pill for almost a decade and I didn’t really have any side effects on the pill. I felt fine. My skin looked great. I just I didn’t have bad periods. I had very light periods.
But one of the things that made me consider coming off it actually was is really two things. The first one was I started to study more natural medicine at the same time as I was taking my medical degree. And I got, I got really interested in getting in touch with my cycles and the fact that when you’re on the pill, you have pill periods, you’re not really in touch with the natural cycles. So I really wanted to see what would happen if I had a natural cycle and I got into a natural rhythm. What would happen to to my emotions would I, I don’t know would I have a better sex drive. And I didn’t even know that my sex drive was lower on the pill necessarily. But I wondered if things like, for example, reaching orgasm was was a problem on the pill, because it’s another thing I didn’t really understand fully at the time. Even though I had a boyfriend, I was sexually active, but I didn’t feel like it was easy for me to have an orgasm. And I was like, ‘OK, well, of course there’s a medical school. So I was doing all this research on the pill. I wonder if apparently the pill can cause this.’
So there was all these little things that kind of led me to say, well, I think I just want to try coming off of it. So that’s what I did. And when I stopped the pill, it was a really interesting process for a few reasons. The first thing is when you come off the pill and you’re this and this is like 15, 20 years, 15 years ago, the first reaction to a boyfriend, of course, is, oh, now we have to use condoms. They don’t like it very much. So first of all, you have the male pressure. Second of all, my skin just went crazy. So my skin, it gradually got worse. And then it got my acne really, really came back and my periods did get heavier. So I had that to deal with. And but I decided actually to stay off of it because I did find my sex drive did increase and I really liked it. And I did feel like it was easier for me to reach orgasm in sexual intercourse. And I just thought that that was such a great benefit that I really wanted to see what else I could do naturally. And in that way, that was kind of the beginning of me going down more of a natural route towards kind of managing my cycles, realising that if I wasn’t on the pill, I did some topical treatments for my acne. So I used the benzyl peroxide and I used a few of the vitamin A acids. I was really lucky I didn’t have to do any Accutane or anything, so I kind of managed my skin like that.
I got into really looking at my cycle as kind of a cycle, not me feeling the same way every day. And that really helped. And I really started to look at my stress levels and I added herbals like ashwagandha. And I started taking a lot of supplements. I already had a very healthy diet, but I started adding more healthy oils to my diet and all those things just really helped. So I never went back on the pill. And I think the biggest pressure to go back on the pill over the years has probably been boyfriends and guys, because it’s a pain in the butt when you’re in a long term relationship to not be on the pill. But I decided I was really going to stick with my decision. And for me, it’s been the best decision. And I wouldn’t say that for everybody, of course. But, yeah, that was it was a big it was a big shift for me.
Le’Nise: Can you talk a little bit more about the connection between the pill and libido, because what you said is quite interesting. And you said that you when you were on it, you still were having sex, but you noticed that when you came off that your orgasms were more intense. As a physician, can you talk a little bit more about why that might be?
Dani: So there’s it’s not really a very well studied area, to be honest, but some women find that they have trouble reaching orgasm when they are on the pill. And it’s probably because the way the pill affects our natural hormones, but we don’t know exactly, exactly why. And some women don’t find a difference and some women do. And I think because of the lack of really sexual education to the point of focussing on women’s orgasms, when I was a teenager, I didn’t really know a lot about how to have an orgasm or how to self pleasure and all these things. So for me, when I first started having intercourse with my first serious boyfriend, I was 17, I, I really didn’t know much about it. I just thought having good sex, was feeling pleasure and not feeling pain. And that was kind of it. And we didn’t, I didn’t really talk about what I liked with my partner or how to maybe for him to help me have an orgasm.
So I think it was a lack of, I guess, awareness about women’s orgasm in general that led me to really maybe take a few more years to kind of put the connection together. ‘Oh, I wonder if I’m not having orgasms when I have intercourse with a partner, partly because, well, maybe I don’t know how to pleasure myself properly.’ I went on that journey. And then the other thing is, ‘I wonder if it’s the pills.’ So, yeah, we don’t really know. But a lot of my patients will say the same thing.
They will. And oftentimes, unless I ask them, they will never bring it up. But I often will ask on certain medications as well. “Have how is, how is your your sex is, your libido, how are you able to reach orgasm or are you happy with it.” And women don’t care. And that’s fine too, some women are just not really into sex that much and everyone’s different. But if it bothers them that they’re not having orgasms or if their libido is low, it bothers them, then I think it’s something to do, something to look at definitely as a possible factor.
Le’Nise: I want to talk more about the connection between stress and periods, because it’s certainly something that I’m seeing a lot in my practice where being in a pandemic, being in lockdown, women are coming to me and saying, my period is late, it’s missing or it’s longer or it’s more painful. And you’ve talked about the connection between the changes in your period and stress. For listeners who are putting the pieces together for themselves, can you talk a little bit more about why that connection happens?
Dani: Definitely. So this is something we know a lot about, actually, and I think doctors should talk more about it. So when your, your cortisol, when your stress hormone levels are high chronically over a longer period of time, you tend to crave sweets and carbohydrates because the body thinks that you’re constantly trying to run away from a sabertooth Tiger. So the body gets confused because we’re supposed to have this this rush of stress when we’re in physical danger, so when we were cavemen, we were living our life in the jungle and everything was great, and then we would see a sabertooth tiger and the cortisol would come on, would enable us to run away from the tiger, give us that muscle energy, and then the cortisol will go back down once the tiger was gone. But the modern life, we have all these mental threats. So your boss emails you something stressful, you have a due date at work, you have a fight with your partner. All of these little things build up, build up, build up. And the body treats it the same way as if you were constantly running away from a tiger if you’re not managing your stress. So what happens instead of the cortisol coming back down, that stays high. So, yes, you get those food cravings.
It even affects memory consolidation, so you feel foggy, but kind of wired, so I call it tired, but wired problem, irritable and on edge, but unable to wind down, you don’t make as much sleep hormone at night, naturally. So your body can’t sleep as deeply and then is a vicious cycle and then you need more caffeine, like a little bit of caffeine in the morning. Like I drink a cup of coffee in the morning, but I just limit it to one. And for most people that’s OK. But if you’re needing caffeine more, then I say really a cup or two in the morning every day and you need it to wake up. That’s potentially a sign that your body is feeling quite stressed clinically. So all these things, of course, go back to affect our women’s hormones that balance our cycles, because if we’re not sleeping properly, we’re not eating the right foods, we’re not supporting our women’s hormonal system. Then things start to get out of balance and period problems show up. And then there’s genetics. So some women are blessed with just being, I call it, having a high stress set point. And some people are not. And it’s no one’s fault. It’s just the way it, it’s partially genetics, partially environment, partially what, what we’re conditioned over the years, our life experience, all these factors.
So so. Yeah. So that’s that’s really how stress plays a central role.
Le’Nise: That’s really interesting.
And I think that will be really helpful for listeners who are trying to understand why the changes they’ve been experiencing recently have manifested in their periods. So now I want to talk a little bit more about your journey into becoming an integrated physician. So for listeners who don’t know, can you explain what an integrative physician is?
Dani: Sure.
So like we talked about earlier, so I’m trained as a conventional medical doctor. So I went through the normal training, but throughout my training, And it really did start with me really getting interested in stress myself. And I’ve always been interested. I was a teenager about stress and its effects. But in my third year of medical school, I went through a very challenging period and I had a harassment, a sexual harassment case with a senior physician that I was under his, his tutelage. And it was very, very stressful. And in the end, my school had to be very supportive. I end up reporting him, but it went on for a few months and I reached the point where I felt so stressed I didn’t want to go to work. I felt like I knew what my patients with depression felt like because I was just so underslept and stressed. And it was really a turning point for me. Like I knew I was interested in holistic medicine before that, but after that I got really into meditation and managing stress and really just being connected with myself on a deeper level.
So I decided to start taking courses in natural medicine. So I took a course in Chinese traditional medicine at my university. I was one of about four students. I’d already done some some training in nutrition, some courses, but I did more of that. And then I just kind of continued on doing courses. And then when I graduated and opened my practice in family medicine, I decided because after about six months, a lot of my patients were just having all these chronic conditions that weren’t getting better with the pill alone approach. Although, of course, I’m not anti drug, I wanted to give them more. So I ended up seeking a programme in the United States called the Integrative Medicine Fellowship, which is for conventional medicine doctors to do basically a two year fellowship programme. And what we learn in that programme is basically evidence based natural medicine. So we do mind body medicines o we learn about mindfulness and BSR, mindfulness, stress reduction, meditation, everything from lifestyle, medicine to how exercise affects us, nutritional medicine. And then, of course, the other arm that that was botanical medicine, which really led me into cannabis medicine and CBD. So I went and did that and I brought that back to my practice and I started using botanicals alongside drugs with my patients. I started using dietary, lifestyle approaches ranging from the very, very simple to the more complex and using functional medicine testing, that kind of thing. So that was really my journey. I really added it because I was seeing the need with my patients and it was what I was doing myself, because I always said I would love to offer my patients the same quality of wellness and education about their health as I would want myself and I take supplements myself. I take herbals. I know I try to minimise the use of drugs. I mean, all of these things I wanted to do for myself, I really I really want to share with my patients.
And the unique thing about the integrative medicine programme in the US and now they have it at Harvard, University of Arizona, UCLA. So this is a fully board qualified speciality of conventional medicine in the US. So that was a big deal. That was this is the new speciality basically in the last few few years. When I did it in 2012, I was one of the first I think I was the first, I was one of the first in Canada to do it. And then it became a fully board qualified speciality, just like cardiology or ob gyn in 2017, it’s still not recognised as a special speciality in the UK, it’s just recognised as a special interest. But the cool thing about it is is it’s all evidence based. So I studied, I did a course at Harvard with the father of mind body medicine, Herbert Benson, and I studied with these amazing doctors who were all medical doctors, but they were using their medical expertise to really go beyond the drugs only approach. So everything in integrative medicine has evidence. That’s what’s really unique about it in terms of the natural medicine world, is it’s all really based on research and evidence. And I really like that approach as a scientist.
Le’Nise: You mentioned that you then had been focussing on botanicals, so herbs and you mentioned CBD. So for listeners who aren’t familiar, tell tell us what CBD is.
Dani: So when I first started getting into botanical medicine, I’ve been using botanicals in my practice for about a decade. So it wasn’t the first one that I used, certainly. But what really led me to it was a lot of my patients were in Canada were really bad chronic pain patients, my cancer patients, my palliative care patients, some of them were starting to grow their own cannabis or get cannabis oils from like a local kind of black market at the time, herbalists. And I got really curious about that because I was also, I was prescribing other botanicals alongside drug therapy, but I wasn’t using cannabis because of the stigma.
There was no commercial products at the time to prescribe. And I had a lot of baggage around the word cannabis from my medical training. And they didn’t really even know the difference between CBD and THC as far as medical doctors, that everyone just thought cannabis bad, THC all the same. Of course, it’s not true. So when I started realising my patients were getting, were getting relief from their chronic pain and it’s helping palliate their cancer symptoms, not cure, but just helping with the palliation in their sleep and all these things. And they were coming down off their opioids like some of the other more harmful drugs. I was very, very curious.
So I started doing a lot of my own research. I started reading a lot of research papers which were really in animal models when I first started looking into it. There’s a Canadian who’s actually American but does a lot of work in Canada called Dr Ethan Russo who’s a neurologist who was doing a lot of cannabis publishing. I had a colleague in Colorado, Dr Scott Shannon, who was a psychiatrist, conventionally trained psychiatrist, and he was starting to use CBD and medical cannabis with his patients, mainly CBD. So I got really interested and I just started researching and asking my patients and thinking maybe I should be prescribing this somehow if it’s possible. So then really why I got interested in CBD specifically, it’s just one chemical in the plant, but CBD does not have any, what’s called basically does not make you high. It’s called psycho[…] properties. That’s THC. That can make you feel high or intoxicated, although it also has medicinal properties.
CBD is non intoxicating, so it does not make you feel high or stoned or impair you in any way, but it has a lot of really powerful properties. It’s an anti inflammatory.
It helps with the gut health. And we think it may help kind of tone the endocannabinoid system, which is our natural cannabis producing system we have in our own bodies. I’ve seen it help for everything from topical use, and sometimes people find that helps with their skin conditions to really serious autoimmune disorders and epilepsy and anxiety disorders. So that’s that. I really got interested in very high CBD, low THC, medical cannabis. That was that’s what I prescribe most in my practice.
Le’Nise: For listeners who are going into this world of CBD, so we’re recording from the UK, so THC is illegal here, but I know it’s not, so Canada where I’m from originally, it’s not. So in the UK, if they want to dive into the world of legal cannabis, where would you recommend that they start?
Dani: It’s a really good question. So in the UK, so I’ve moved back. I’m British and Canadian, I think like you as well, right?
Le’Nise:Yeah, yeah.
Dani: So we’re very lucky. We’ve moved back about two years ago and all this cannabis legislation was changing in the UK. So currently here in the UK, if you are interested in trying CBD for a wellness indication. So just for helping with stresser, kind of mild to moderate anxiety, you can buy a CBD product from hemp over the counter and you can buy it at a health food store. So CBD from Hemp is a CBD, but it comes from a variety of the cannabis plant that is, has no very low THC or the THC has been removed. So that’s legal to buy without a prescription. If you have a medical condition, then it’s always safer to do it under the advice in the prescribing of a doctor, of course. So that would be someone who might have endometriosis, for example, or might have really severe PMDD, premenstrual dysmorphic disorder or really severe anxiety disorder or sleep disorder.
And here in the UK, I’ve actually been a lot of my work since I’ve been back, has been in the non-profit sector and the education and government sector. So I have been training a lot of the first doctors in medical cannabis. So medical cannabis, even containing THC is legal, but by prescription. So if you have, if you’re on a lot of medications, for example, if you have epilepsy, if you have endometriosis, then that’s a reason you might want to see a doctor who specialises in this type of medicine. And again, that’s what I’ve been, my focus of my work really in the UK, it’s been training doctors in this and I volunteer a lot of my time for a lot of the non-profits to help train doctors. So you would see a doctor on the GMC specialist register and they would assess you for medical cannabis and they’d probably still prescribe high CBD, low THC. But it probably the oil that they would prescribe for you probably has a little bit more THC than you would get in the shop and for pain conditions, for sleep, for a lot of different medical conditions that are quite severe, that tiny bit or a little bit more of THC actually makes it work a lot better.
Le’Nise: Really interesting. So if you’re in the UK and you have severe, so like stage four endometriosis and you’re really struggling with the pain, so you’re saying, look at the GMC register, general medical council.
Dani: Well, you won’t find it there. So this is where it gets complicated. The best place to go for information if you’re looking for a doctor, I’m not seeing patients at the moment because I’m going on maternity leave in another four weeks. But I’ll be back. But in the meantime, I’ve trained some, I’ve worked with some lovely colleagues over here. And the best way to find them is to go to the non-profit that I vice chair in the UK. It’s called the UKmccs.org. So we’re a non-profit. All of the doctors on our council volunteer their time, including myself and our chair, Professor Mike Barnes.
And we have a list of the clinics that prescribe medical cannabis across the U.K. There’s unfortunately, they’re all private at the moment. There’s no NHS prescriptions being written. We’re doing a lot of campaigning to try to change that. But I think, to be honest, we’re quite a ways away as far as probably a few years. Unfortunately, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes to get it available. But it’s, it’s a slow process, I have to be honest. So sadly, it’s in the private sector right now. So you have to pay privately to get the prescription and to see the doctor.
But that the UK MCSS website has a lot of resources so people can find out who is prescribing, what clinics are in what area, all that kind of stuff. That’s the best place to go if you want medical cannabis, if you have a really severe condition. Otherwise, if you want to try CBD, it’s very safe from hemp for most people unless you’re on certain medications. Again, that would be the medical category. But in general, if you’re not, it’s very safe to try on your own and you can pick up a good quality CBD oil and just give it a shot yourself.
Le’Nise: Actually for listeners, all the links that Dani just mentioned will be in the show notes. In your book, the CBD Bible, you talk about the importance of full spectrum CBD. And that’s something that, if you go to a shop and you want to purchase some CBD, that’s something you should be looking out for. Why is that important?
Dani:It’s a really good question. So full spectrum CBD is basically CBD that’s been extracted from the whole plant and it’s still retains at least some of those other plant chemicals in it. So there’s things called other cannabinoids. So there’s something called CB, CB, CBDV, THCA there’s so many other plant chemicals in the plant that can be beneficial both for a wellness use and for a medical use. And they all work together in the plant because it’s called what’s, what’s called a herbal synergy or some people in cannabis know it as is the entourage effect. So I do find that full spectrum products work work the best. That being said, the the rules and the laws in the UK, around CBD in Europe are changing quite swiftly. And as of next year, it’s probably not going to be the case that you will be able to get full spectrum CBD. It’s going to be just pure CBD, which is still beneficial. But often people find they need a higher dose. So when that does happen, when those laws change, you might find that you need to up your dose or you need to look for a product that’s been kind of teched up a little bit. So there’s kind of some high tech products that are probably becoming. So they’ll probably be trying to add some of those other plant chemicals back in one at a time. So it’s never going to be the same as full spectrum. But that will probably unfortunately, again, this is something that I wasn’t happy to see happening, but it looks like it’s inevitable now. But right now, if you can get a full spectrum product, certainly I think that that does work the best at the lower doses for most people. And again, it’s not universal, this people always say, well, what’s the evidence? Well, there’s not really good big studies to prove this. There’s a few animal model studies that looks at pure CBD versus full spectrum for pain in rats. And they think the full spectrum works better at lower doses. But the evidence is weak, I have to say. But clinically, from what I’ve seen over the years, I do think it works a bit better.
Le’Nise: So a lot of listeners to the podcast will be really interested in everything we’re talking about and they’ll be interested in how they can use CBD for specific conditions that they’re facing, so we’re podcasts about periods, so let’s talk about period problems. So in the book you talk about how we can use CBD if you have period pain. And you mentioned a kind of protocol that you can use. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Dani: Sure, yeah. So there’s a whole chapter in the book about women’s health and periods, and then there’s a whole nother chapter about sex and libido and CBD. So but to distil it down, there’s not a lot of big study, well, there’s no big studies for its use and periods. And this is something that I talk about in the book is being really kind of annoying and frustrating when I was writing this chapter is I realise even for men’s health, there’s more evidence and studies than for women’s health conditions. And unfortunately, this is something that kind of permeates medicine. A lot of women’s health conditions are understudied, although it’s changing, luckily, but it is still a phenomenon we see.
And this is definitely the case with the CBD in women’s health. That being said, CBD has a lot of antiinflammatory properties and it can help lower stress for many people. So, of course, this is definitely related to how bad periods are. It’s not, it’s not going to cure your period pain if you just start using a little bit of CBD. But a lot of people find that it makes a massive, massive difference in order for them to not even really notice their period pain anymore and everything in between. Some people find it helps them 20 percent or 30 percent. Some people find it helps them 70 percent, because everyone is different with response to the dose of CBD, because everyone’s body responds slightly in a unique way. That all being said, if you’re using it purely for period pain, but you don’t have mood issues throughout the throughout the month, it’s just the period pain that you want to target. A reasonable way to start would be starting to use a CBD oil potentially 5 days or 3 days before maybe even 3 days before your menstrual cycle starts. You have to track on an app. For example, there’s one called iPeriod that I that I use personally. And there’s lots, though. And then your period will start probably on this date. So 3 days before you can start taking your CBD and you could start with 10 or 15 milligrams, 2 – 3 times a day with a meal. And then on the days that you have bad period pain, you can really up the dose and you can experiment with that. Of course, the cost goes up when you start really upping the dose. That’s the downside.
And for acute pain, like to stop pain in the moment, THC tends to work better. So that’s why if you have really bad period pain, sometimes adding a little bit of THC from, say, a prescription cannabis medicine is going to be a lot more effective for you because CBD is more, it helps with more of the chronic anti inflammatory anti stress effect. And some people do find that it helps their period pain more acutely. But it’s not the norm, I would say.
Le’Nise: You mentioned it briefly, but I just want to dive into this a little bit more, that CBD is not a cure all. What would you say to someone who’s saying, who would say to I just if I take CBD is going to fix all of my period problems, what would you say to them instead?
Dani: I see CBD as an amazing botanical medicine tool, but unfortunately, just like anything in botanical medicine or anything in medicine in general, either Western medicine or natural medicine, there is no cure all solution. CBD does, however, do a lot of different things in the body because this the system that we have, this endocannabinoid system, basically we make our own cannabis like chemicals. It affects everything from eating, sleeping, relaxing, stress relief, immune function. So because the system does so much stuff, CBD can do a lot of things too, because it works on this system and other related systems in the brain, in the body. So it can do a lot of different jobs in the brain, in the body. But certainly nothing is a quick fix or cure all. I always tell my patients in integrative medicine, run the other way if someone says they’re going to just give you something and all your problems are going to go away the next day from taking this one bottle of anything. It’s just unfortunately not the way we work because we’re really complex. So I use it as alongside other herbals, alongside stress reduction techniques, alongside integrative medicine and oftentimes alongside drugs too. Western medicine, drugs. So that’s how I see it fitting in. And the medical side, of the wellness side, you probably know you might not need any drugs, but you might still need some help and some help with stress reduction.
Le’Nise: OK, that’s really interesting. So you now your book has come out, the CBD Bible. Talk a little bit as we close out the show about what prompted you to write the book and what you want readers to get out of it.
Dani: Sure. So this book is really kind of a labour of love of the last 10 years of my experience as an integrative medicine doctor in botanical medicine and then in cannabis medicine. I’ve treated thousands of patients with CBD and medical cannabis, and then I’ve trained a lot of doctors. So I basically wanted to write this because there’s a lot of academic books out there for kind of scientists about CBD and cannabis. And then there’s a lot of lay books that talk about it kind of on a very kind of superficial level. But I didn’t feel like there was a book out there that someone could pick up and flip to the sleep section or flip to the period section and find out how to actually use that in all the nitty gritty details.
So I just wanted to kind of, I guess, spill my guts with all of my secrets and tips that I have found over the years doing this for years and years and years. So people could feel empowered because I think that’s for me, integrative medicine, that’s what it’s all about, is empowering my patients. I think when you take the drugs only approach in Western medicine alone, people can feel really unempowered and they, they just kind of lose their sense of if they can actually help their body rebalance and their internal sense of hope. And that’s where I see integrative medicine being so powerful because there’s so much we can do. You might not be able to cure chronic disease, but we can improve it so much with these tools. And CBD is one of them. So in the book we talk about CBD, but not just CBD, also medical cannabis and all the other things in the plant to stay that way. If you want to use it on the medical side, you know how to talk to your doctor about it because they might not know. They might be open to prescribing it to you, but you might have to educate them on how. So there’s a whole section on every problem on that side of it, too, and then also in CBD wellness. So things you can pick up from the shop yourself and start today and then just how to monitor what you’re trying to, what you’re trying to alleviate and being kind of your own expert.
Le’Nise: It’s a great book and I would encourage anyone who’s curious about CBD to pick it up. It’s really easy to access and there’s just it’s just packed full of amazing information. So if listeners come away from this podcast with one thought or one piece of information, what would you want that to be?
Dani:Well, I think CBD is not going anywhere. I think it’s a wellness, it’s a wellness trend in some cases. But I think it’s also kind of a revolution in botanical medicine. So I would say if you if you’re having any of these period problems, in addition to managing your stress and looking at your diet and your lifestyle as far as a single botanical that I would consider, including, it would probably be CBD. So you can check it out, you can just go to a reputable company. There’s a whole section of the book on how to pick a CBD oil as well, not by brand, but by what’s actually in it. And just see for yourself and just do what you do with any kind of wellness routine, just track how you’re feeling. I have a whole section there about tracking your symptoms and tracking how you’re feeling. And I think the messages botanical medicine is about empowering yourself, about your health and wellness, taking control back.
And that’s where I see CBD being a part of it.
Le’Nise: What a great message to empower yourself. I love that. And I know listeners will too. Thank you so much for coming on the show. If listeners want to buy the book, where can they grab a copy?
Dani: So it’s in many bookstores, big and small, but because of COVID, that’s not been as possible for many booksellers. So Amazon. So if you go on Amazon, it’s it’s there. If you go to my Instagram, I have a link to it. So should be pretty easy to find.
Le’Nise: And where can listeners find out more about you?
Dani: So Instagram, I’m @drdanigordon and there’s a link there to my blog and I post videos there, educational videos and all the information about upcoming talks I’m doing and all that jazz.
Le’Nise: Brilliant. Thank you so much.
Dani: Thanks so much for having me.
