Our guest this week is Dr. Staci Gruber, Director of the Cognitive and Clinical Neuroimaging Core at McLean Hospital’s Brain Imaging Center and an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Gruber has spent decades investigating how both recreational and medical cannabis use affects the brain. In 2014, Dr. Gruber launched Marijuana Investigations for Neuroscientific Discovery (MIND), the first-ever program of its kind designed to clarify the specific effects of medical cannabis use. 



What she and her team have found is that not only do medical cannabis patients tend to perform better on cognitive tests when compared to recreational users, but medical cannabis patients tend to outperform themselves when compared to tests administered before they started treatment. 



Staci and explores why this is the case in the podcast, as well as results from MIND’s double-blind, placebo-controlled CBD clinical trial for anxiety, which used a high-CBD whole-plant extract. Interesting observations from the study include:



Patients' performance on cognitive tests improved after starting treatmentPatients reported using smaller doses of the whole-plant extract than patients in trials using single-compound therapeuticsSome patients still tested positive for THC despite the fact that the hemp-derived extract contained less than .3mg/mL of THC.  



Thanks to our Sponsor: Healer



Healer is a trusted, physician-developed medical cannabis brand founded to address the challenges of helping patients and health providers get the best results with safe, reliably dosable products and education on how to best use them. Healer’s distinctive product formulations and educational material are based on the work of leading cannabis clinician, Dr. Dustin Sulak, D.O.   



Dr. Sulak's Healer Hemp CBD and CBDA products are available nationwide and are accompanied with a step-by-step usage guide and response tracker.  Visit HealerCBD.com and use coupon code CannMed for 20% off your order.



Also check out The Hemp Coffee Exchange and use the promo code “drinkhemp” to get 10% off your purchase.



Additional Resources:



CannMed Community Facebook GroupDrStaciGruber.comIt’s Not Easy Being Green: Assessing the Impact of Medical Marijuana on Cognition, Mood, Brain Function and Related Measures – CannMed 2017 Presentation