John Hopkins has done research on the Endogenous Cannabinoid System. As their cafeteria launches 'Meatless Mondays,' marijuana advocates will have a large percentage of dietary and nutritional experts to talk to about juicing cannabis, and other forms of medical marijuana healing.
John Hopkins University began a campaign called ‘Meatless Mondays’ to encourage people to get a bit healthier by reducing their amount of meat on their menu.
How can this help medical marijuana?
Easily.
Through the reduction of meat in one’s diet, we have an opportunity to create a conversation about cannabis that is contrary to what the Schedule I classification suggests: that marijuana has no medicinal value.
John Hopkins has taken the first step by taking the conversation towards a healthier society.
“The national campaign was launched in 2003 in association with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. The effort’s primary focus is to reduce the consumption of saturated fat by 15 percent, following the recommendations of the Healthy People 2010 report issued by then U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher,” as the university’s site states.
John Hopkins Center for a Livable Future also hope that Meatless Monday will help “raise awareness of the environmental and public health impact of industrial meat production linked to water use, climate change and pollution.”
“While eating meat a few days a week can be a healthy part of your diet, most Americans eat much more than the USDA recommends,” says Robert Lawrence, M.D., director of the Center for a Livable Future (CLF). According to CLF, the latest U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics show that men in the United States consume as much as 190 percent of their recommended daily allowance of protein while women eat as much as 160 percent. Americans derive the majority of their protein from meat and other animal sources.
According to their website, “the 2005 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, appointed by the Departments of Health and Agriculture, stated that people who eat more fruits and vegetables, as part of a healthful diet are likely to have reduced risk of chronic diseases, including stroke and perhaps other cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and cancers in certain sites.”
Science suggests that many of these conditions can be improved through cannabinoid-based medicine, and while diet and exercise are the two most important aspects of healthy living, a reduction of drugs that are prescribed to a patient is also essential.
Medical marijuana can mitigate the amount of pills one may take but only if they are comfortable experimenting with medical marijuana like they experiment with the prescriptions, that many doctors attribute to a poor diet in the first place.
As Dr. William Courtney’s research has shown, juicing cannabis allows our endocannabinoid system to receive it’s daily dose of cannabinoids, and without experiencing any psychoactivity.
This campaign has to opportunity to become a community-driven campaign, and in many ways already has, as Los Angeles based community radio KPFK, along with their sister stations in the Pacifica family, have endorsed this effort.
Reaching out to some of these groups, like independent media station, gives medical marijuana a voice while we build coalitions with like-minded groups who see the industrialization of meat as a parallel threat to the corporatization of medical cannabis.
If advocates for medical marijuana can join forces with advocates for animal rights and the environment, we can open up our conversations of industrial hemp, cannabis research, and the medical marijuana movement with these larger groups.
If successful, we will have enough supporters of the John Hopkins ‘Meatless Monday’ program to use our ongoing support and spread it to their cannabinoid research teams.
Keeping that conversation alive with and healthy, and at the forefront of the medical community, allows the medical cannabis community and the medical community to have a healthy life of it’s own.
If a healthy body starts with our choice and quality of food, then a healthy mind begins with healthy food for thought.