Anxiety is common in today's world, and managing it shouldn't cause more.
The long term side effects of pharmaceutical anxiety medications are lengthy and intimidating, so what are safe solutions and how should safe and effective anxiety medicating actually work?
The primary challenge of most pharmaceuticals, aside from potentially more severe risks of anxiety medications such as benzodiazepines, is what is often referred to as a 'cascade effect', precipitated by irritation to the digestive lining, resulting in disengagement of the Enteric nervous system, which connects the brain, the heart and the digestive system and influences key nervous system and biological functions.
This disruption can commonly cause a 'cascade' of often serious mental and physical health issues. It could be said that many prescribed antidepressants or anxiety medications 'shut doors' or turn dials down in the mind, but this ultimately leads to a disconnection of other important communication networks in the mind and body, resulting in serious health challenges.
As frustrating as it sounds to those seeking immediate relief (and for you, stay with us- there is a safe solution that's a path forward, not a permanent crutch, further down), as recommended by responsible healthcare professionals, mental health experts and alternative health professionals, it is usually safest and most effective to identify root sources of imbalanced or unhealthy states of being and make a healthy plan to improve them.
The good news is- relative to anxiety- science shows we don't have to 'fix' everything to start feeling better. The mind's anxiety, and fight or flight response, is largely a response to cues and perceived direction in life.
For example, people fighting serious chronic illness who entered therapy to address trauma histories - which likely contributed to their elevated cortisol levels and susceptibility to illness - start getting better once they start therapy. They still have lots of work left, to work through their baggage, the problem isn't 'fixed', they are still traumatized by their pasts, but just by the mind seeing forward momentum, things getting better instead of worse, and it is enough for the body to get back on board and heal. The same goes for the mind's anxiety response.
So, think about the job change, talk with your family about making life smoother, work with a therapist who is helpful, make positive steps in the healthy directions and you will feel better. Anxiety will decrease. Proactive change to grow and interact with life differently is almost always the ultimate solution, but we must change ourselves first.
Possibly the biggest contributor to anxiety we've seen working with hundreds of folks for many years with a huge variety of mental and physical health challenges, is not today's stressful world- it is lack of sleep.
It is quite literally, nearly impossible to maintain healthy brain chemistry without sufficient and quality sleep nightly. Exercise falls in the same category. Its not just the endorphin high, exercise is necessary to clean the brain chemistry to maintain balanced mental health. Check, check- gotta sleep, gotta exercise if we want to feel calm.
If it helps, we are not the first humans in history to find ourselves stressed out all the time. People have figured out safe effective solutions before. Humans have been around for a long time. Plant medicine is ancient.
And humans almost all over the world have been using cannabis as a medicine, and the plant has been adapting to serve us- as that's what medicinal plants do, for a very long time. At least 4800 years across most cultures of our planet, and back 12,000 in some other parts, with a lot of positive patient outcomes and no recorded adverse advents, and without potential of cellular harm.
So, while we may wonder where the Hippocratic oath went with modern pharma and healthcare, it stands solid with real cannabis medicine and a very old symbiosis between the mammalian and human endocannabinoid systems and plant cannabinoids.
So, you don't want to feel dependent, addicted, or gut-destroyed,
and were hoping you might
actually feel normal one again?
We hear you. The SKMS crew worked a long time to create recipes that would help the mind find its way to that healthy calm space naturally. Collecting rare cannabis strains from around the world with stable and predictable performances for decades, and then growing, processing and blending them into a format that is easily consumed, absorbs consistently, provides consistent results, meets state and federal regulations, and all the safety concerns of SKMS production and its many seizure prone and immune compromised patients.
The really amazing performance of this quality and consistency of plant medicine goes beyond the novel and new accessibility of ancient safer better performing medicines by SKMS innovations- it is in the nature of how plant meds work with the body, as opposed to the more recent and conventional approach of manipulating the body's biochemistry to achieve a result through synthetic biochemistry.
That's because if we want results in the mind, its all about the neural pathways. Crafted Cannabinoid profiles in a whole plant format with the help of the endocannabinoid system, can provide a consistent mental health result, enabling rewriting or writing of new neural pathways. In a sense, restoring the minds neural map to its original blueprints.
Once the mind spends time on these healthier neural pathways, it overwrites the previous, and writes its own new neural pathway network. That mental framework becomes its own, a new, in a sense, more healed- not duct taped, self.
And it is not uncommon for people who have worked to quit years of heavy duty benzo or other prescriptions to forget to take their new natural, safer medication a few weeks, months or years down the line, and realize to their surprise, that they feel fine. That's because they are still riding those newer healthier neural pathways that they wrote.
Effective and consistent real Cannabis medicine can be a little like training wheels for a bike you forgot how to ride, and after a while, you may notice you forgot to put them on and are riding fine. This is how medicine is actually supposed to work- to guide the brain and body back to a natural healthier state.
Even heavy duty pharma meds intended to avert severe anxiety or suicide risk, are meant to be temporary prescriptions (under 90 days generally) and directed to be coupled with therapy and other life habits work to avoid a continuing need. This is a less effective attempt at the same- training wheels until you can ride again. Problem is, many people prescribed remain on the pharmaceutical training wheels for many years, with numerous serious adverse health effects, not the least ironic of which is typically the inability to manage anxiety well.
The mechanism or method by which plant medicines work with the endocannabinoid system and how modern pharma work on the mind and body are very different. By activating the endocannabinoid system, the body's own cellular and systemic mechanic system is engaged, and it naturally restores and repairs systems, including brain chemistry.
Sometimes the endocannabinoid system achieves this indirectly, such as by writing new neural pathways over time, but does it effectively and most importantly, using the body's own systems, without artificial manipulation, in a natural and safe manner.
Pharma alternately is a bit like a child in a cockpit throwing levers at times, turning functions off to override imbalanced behaviors, kind of flying the plane sideways to keep it going straight. It is unfortunately an unsafe duct tape solution at best, and not effective or without real health risks, often making the original medicated symptoms worse, especially long term.
Plant meds, and especially cannabis medicine, have been around for a long time, they work and they're safe. Years of work at SKMS and RCM brought formats of this ancient medicine that are readily accessible and often cheaper than the better-living-thru-chemistry equivalents, with thousands of testimonials and millions consumed under two state regulated departments in the ME OMP program.
And now these products can reach the folks who travelled so far for it for years and for those who never had the chance (tho we are still not mailing to Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Belgium, England, South Africa or Canada- for some of you reading this).
There is a safer way, the body is usually not as broken as modern medicine would have us believe, and the endocannabinoid system combined with effective and consistent cannabinoids can provide safe and impressive symptom relief.
Take care of ourselves, and consider safer, more original solutions.
And sleep, and exercise!
Best Wishes on Your Health Journey!!
RCM Staff
Jan 4, 2023
Portland Maine since 2014
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