Colorado Hospital Allows First CBD Treatment For Epileptic Infant
Mon 10:43 pm +00:00, 29 Feb 2016
Baby Amylea Nunez. Via: krqe.com.
For the first time, a hospital in Colorado is allowing parents to give cannabis oil to their epileptic infant while the child is undergoing in-patient care. Two-month-old Amylea Nunez has suffered around 15 seizures a day since she was born, and as the baby fights for her life, her parents have turned to cannabis in an attempt to find relief from the seizures.
A day after she came home from the hospital where she was born in December, Nunez’s seizures started. She’s been in hospitals ever since, and her parents say that her heart even stopped twice, requiring resuscitation. They worry that the medications she is taking are damaging her liver and causing other harmful side effects, so they wanted to try cannabis.
Initially, the doctors at Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora refused to allow Nunez’s parents to give her cannabidiol oil, or CBD, while the infant was checked into the hospital, but eventually they relented. “I sat for a good three weeks fighting with the doctors and trying to talk them into giving me the okay,” Amylea’s mother Nicole Nunez told KRQE Albuquerque. “I’ve been working with the case study team and the neurology team here at Children’s and I’m hopeful this will work.”
Amylea’s parents Nicole and Ernie Nunez outside the Children’s Hospital Colorado. Via: krqe.com.
The family is using an oil known as Charlotte’s Web, which is very low in THC content and therefore doesn’t deliver the high or stoned sensation typically associated with marijuana consumption. Charlotte’s Web is produced by medical cannabis entrepreneurs in Colorado and has earned a reputation as a product that is safe and effective to use with epileptic children.
Studies have found that CBD oil shows immense promise for treating pediatric epilepsy, with one report finding that the cannabis extract can cut the number of seizures experienced by patients with treatment-resistant epilepsy in half. Families with sick children have flocked to Colorado, where they can obtain legal CBD, from other states where the treatment is still illegal. The Nunez family is among them, traveling from their home in Albuquerque, New Mexico in search of healing for their daughter.
“We’re trying to use something different that’s not so bad on her body,” Amylea’s father Ernie Nunez said to the local Denver CBS station. “After researching and month after month reading on it we’re hoping it works because it’s a natural way and it’ll help her out.”
The parents reported that Amylea was already acting more alert and responsive after starting on the CBD oil.
Baby Amylea is already more alert and responsive thanks to the healing power of CBD oil. Via: krqe.com.
Children’s Hospital Colorado released a statement noting that it does not prescribe, recommend or administer cannabis oil to children, but that it is still committed to providing care to patients who are given cannabis oil by their parents. The hospital is participating in an observational study to learn the effects of the oil on epileptic children, although it previously only included patients under out-patient care.
“Most of these families have children with very complex medical needs, and Children’s Colorado wants to continue to see them, help to monitor them and be on the lookout for potential adverse side effects,” the statement reads. Starting now, the program encompasses at least one in-patient child as well.
“For us to get the approval for us to administer it while she’s in the NICU while she’s a patient,” Nicole Nunez said, “it’s kind of like a miracle.”
Source: http://reset.me/story/colorado-hospital-allows-first-cbd-treatment-for-epileptic-infant/
Related:
Medical Marijuana Cultivation Officially Decriminalized In Italy
Photo: Pixabay
The government in Italy recently decriminalized the cultivation of medical marijuana and production of the plant for research purposes. The court system in Italy is one of the most overcrowded and inefficient in Europe, so the government was forced to roll back a few of their laws and regulations to prevent so many people being pushed through the system.
Italy’s legal system is ranked 139th out of 140 countries when it comes to efficiency in settling disputes, and 138th when it comes to the burden of state regulations, according to the latest World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report.
Along with medical marijuana production, the state also rolled back hundreds of other small crimes, including “obscene acts,” driving without a license and deceiving people. When once these were jailable offenses, they now only carry a fine.
“It will free up courts from issues of little relevance,” Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said in a statement.
It is important to note that this new law does not change much for recreational drug users. The decriminalization will only apply to people working in the medical marijuana field and in cannabis research. Cultivation of marijuana for private consumption or distribution is still illegal in Italy.
A new study, published in the journal, ‘Scientific Reports,’ suggests that smoking cannabis is roughly 114 times safer than drinking alcohol. Ironically, out of all the drugs that were researched in the study, alcohol was actually the most dangerous, and it was the only legal drug on the list.
Prohibitions of any kind should be opposed, for the reasons I have laid out in the past. However, marijuana is of a specific immediate importance though, because of its ability to heal sick people and create more environmentally friendly industrial products. It is also one of the safest drugs known to our species.
