Dr Ethan Russo, is a board-certified neurologist and researcher in psychopharmacology. Recently in an interview with Project CBD, Dr. Russo believes its possible that many chronic diseases may be caused by clinical endocannabinoid deficiency.
“If you don’t have enough endocannabinoids you have pain where there shouldn’t be pain. You would be sick (nauseated). You would have a lowered seizure threshold. and a whole host of other problems. It occurred to me that a number of very common diseases seem to fit a pattern consistent with endocannabinoid deficiency. Specially these are migraines, IBS and fibromyalgia. They have some things in common. They’re all hyperalgesic syndromes, meaning that there seems to be pain out of proportion to what should be going on, in other words you can look at the tissues they look okay, but there’s biochemically something that’s driving the pain.”
“Something I haven’t mentioned is that in its own right cannabidiol is an endocannabinoid modulator, in other words, when given chronically it actually increases the gain of system, which is, at its core, a homeostatic regulator. Homeostasis is a state of balance. Many diseases interfere with a balance in a given system and if we can bring that balance back to where is should be there’ll be improvement in the overall condition. This is one reason that cannabidiol is such a versatile medicine because so many disorders operate on that kind of level. So, if there’s too much activity in a system homeostasis requires that it be brought back down. If there’s too little it’s got to come up. And that’s what cannabidiol can do as a promoter of endocannabinoid tone.
Clinical Endocannabinoid Deficiency Reconsidered; Cannabis Theraputics and the Future of Neurology.