This inaugural episode is really an introduction to the show, the host, hemp, CBD, and the people that use it. Join host Matt Baum and learn about hemp with help from the good folks at CuredByNature.com, CEO of Palm Organix Alex Herrera, and learn about how CBD can help those living with medical conditions like Crohn’s disease when he talks with ministryofhemp.com contributor Annalise Mabe .

We want to hear from you too so please, send us your questions and you might hear them answered on future shows! Send us your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, email us at info@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes or your favorite podcast app.

Below you’ll find the full written transcript of episode #1.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Matt Baum: Hi, my name’s Matt Baum, and I’m excited to welcome you to episode number one of the Ministry of Hemp podcast, brought to you by America’s leading advocate for hemp, ministryofhemp.com. If you’ve been to the site, then you already know how cool it is. It’s full of all kinds of information, recipes, interviews, news, virtually anything that you want to know about hemp is there. It’s curated by my buddy Kit, who is an amazing journalist and does a wonderful job. Kit is going to be a frequent guest on the show. In fact, he is going to talk a little bit about what is hemp in a few minutes here. Before we get to that, with this being episode number one, I thought we should introduce some very basic things, starting with me, the host, and how I came to bring hemp into my life.

Matt’s story

My name is Matt Baum. I’m 43 years old. I’m also the host of the Two-Headed Nerd Comic Book podcast. If you’re a nerd, check that out. You’ll probably dig it. For the last 30 years of my life or so, I’ve been playing drums as a musician, I’ve been working professionally in kitchens as a cook, and taking side gigs as a copywriter and freelance journalist. What do all those things have in common? Repetitive motion, basically.

Now I played in a lot of very loud bands, punk rock bands, hardcore bands. I also played in some much quieter bands, but the point being I was always hitting drums, hitting cymbals, and injuring myself. I never learned how to play. I never took lessons. I sat down at the drums and just started playing one day. And in doing so, some of my favorite musicians were guys like Keith Moon, Tommy Lee, guys that hammered their drums. I just thought they put on an amazing show, so that’s what I did. I beat the hell out of my drums. I put on a show every time. With that, I beat the hell out of my hands, too.

When I wasn’t drumming and touring in bands, I was at home working in kitchens, cooking. The good things about being a musician and a cook is whenever you’re not touring, there’s always cooking jobs available. But with those cooking jobs comes a lot of chopping, a lot of peeling, a lot of hand work, a lot of small, minute, finger work that really wears on you, not to mention the cutting, the burns, and the myriad of other injuries you can sustain while cooking. Needless to say, my hands weren’t getting any better.

And then one day, I got into a car accident. I got hit head-on by a woman that crossed four lanes of traffic. It would turn out that she was a cab driver that had had a stroke behind the wheel while driving. She side-swiped a cop car in front of me which probably saved my life and slowed her down a little bit before plowing into my tiny, little Honda Civic. I was young and I was stupid, so I didn’t have a safety belt on at the time. My head hit the windshield. My right hand went through the dash, and my knee went into the lower part of the dash.

I was supposed to leave and go on tour two weeks later with the band and had to cancel because I couldn’t walk and I had done serious damage to my wrist. Later on, my doctor would tell me that I probably would’ve been better off had I cut my hand off, because then they could’ve just reattached it and tightened up all those pesky carpal tunnel ligaments that were sore from cooking and playing drums. But, instead, I just injured the heck out of them. Even worse. And I would have pain, residual pain, that would last for years, and still lasts to this day.

I went through a period where I took a lot of painkillers. I admit it. I was addicted to pain killers. Not to get high, but because I didn’t want to hurt and I had to play drums or I had to cook or I had to type because I had a couple years of journalism school before I had decided to go to culinary school, so I would take copywriting jobs or jobs writing articles about food or music for local newspapers, which was even more repetitive motion, which caused even more pain, which made me take even more pain pills. You see where this is going. Well I got to a point where I realized that life with a pain pill addiction was not fixing anything and I just had to toughen up and probably live with pain. I did a lot of physical therapy. I did my finger stretches. I spun my wrists in circles. All that kind of stuff. But I just hurt and I hurt all the time.

That’s when I got into smoking weed again. I hadn’t done it since high school, and marijuana made me not care about the pain. It helped me sleep. It cut down my drinking. It seemed like a great answer. The only problem is you can’t be stoned all the time. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I have friends that are. But that wasn’t my style either and I didn’t want to show up at the kitchen stoned, and I don’t like playing drums stoned. It just doesn’t work. Being that shifted was an answer to the pain, but it wasn’t an answer to daily life. That’s when a friend of mine introduced me to hemp-based CBDs.

This friend of mine was working for a very early CBD start-up and was a huge hemp advocate. She’s wonderful. I’ll introduce you to her sometime on this show. You’ll love her. But she set me up with some CBD water. Not just for me, but for the whole crew in my kitchen. One night, we all drank it. We joked, “Ha, ha, we’ll get high or whatever.” None of us really knew what CBDs were. But none of us got high. We just felt better. It’s hard to explain but the pain and the numbness that was in my hands every day from chopping and grinding and peeling and washing dishes, for a little while, it just went away. It was an odd feeling, because I just didn’t hurt.

I’m not going to sit here and tell you I felt amazing, it was miraculous, but I felt baseline again. There was no pain. Now it didn’t last a real long time, and that’s how I came into using a hemp oil, a tincture. This is an oil that you have a little medicine dropper and you squirt it right under your tongue and you let it sit there for about a minute, two minutes, and then you swish it around and you swallow. I found out when I started doing that, I could go an entire shift without any pain. Sometimes I could take a little before bed and I would sleep better. I also noticed that when I sat down to edit my podcast or write an article, I felt a little more focused. I didn’t have that same anxiety that I usually carried around.

Now I’m sure this isn’t news to you, but working in kitchens, working as a musician, it can cause a lot of anxiety. Anxiety that drives people completely nuts, ruins their lives, ruins their families. I carried a lot of anxiety around with me. But I found when I’m using CBD, just like when I was smoking marijuana, that anxiety seemed to fall to the background, but I wasn’t shifted. I wasn’t high and giggling or eating too much. I could focus. I could do my job, and I felt pretty good about doing it. And most importantly, I wasn’t in pain.

Flash-forward to today and I’m now working for a web-hosting company and I really enjoy it. But again, a lot of typing. I still play music with some friends. One of which knew I’d been using CBD, works for a local CBD start-up, and introduced me to the guys that run the Ministry of Hemp website, who turned to me and said, “Hey, you host a podcast. Do you want to host one for us?”

What is hemp?

I realized I’d been using CBD for a long time and I really didn’t know anything about it. Hosting a show seemed like the perfect chance to learn more about hemp, share that information with you guys, and I’ll be honest, get some free stuff on the side. Currently, I’m using a CBD tincture from a company called Palm Organix. It’s run by a guy named Alex Herrera. He’s a smart guy. We’re going to hear from him later on in this very show. But before we get into that, we should probably get a working definition of what is hemp? That’s where Kit O’Connell comes in.

Kit O’Connell: Hi. This is Kit O’Connell, editor in chief at Ministry of Hemp. Here’s the legal definition of hemp, found in the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018, better known as the 2018 Farm Bill.

The term hemp means the plant Cannabis sativa L., and any part of that plant, including the seeds thereof, and all derivatives, extracts, cannabinoids, isomers, acids, salts, and salts of isomers, whether growing or not, with a delta-nine tetrahydrocannabinol concentration of not more than .3% on a dry weight basis.

Matt Baum: Thank you, Kit. So everybody’s got that, right? Tetrahydrum … Yeah. Like all good government definitions, it’s about as clear as mud. But the good news is the government has defined it and said you can grow it and use it for all kinds of different stuff. We’ll get into that later. We’re still kind of trying to figure out what is hemp. So from there, I went to YouTube, and that is where I found this guy.

Hunky Euro Matt: Hi. I’m Matt from Cured by Nature.

Matt Baum: In this video, Matt, not me-Matt, hunky European Matt, goes onto explain the differences between hemp and marijuana and why those differences have caused some confusion.

Hunky Euro Matt: Now the fact is that hemp is cannabis.

Matt Baum: Wait a minute. What?

Hunky Euro Matt: Cannabis is a species of a plant and includes all aspects of the plant, so cannabis plant has different strains. The cannabis strains that get you high are referred to as marijuana. However, most people also use the word cannabis or the word hemp, and that’s where the confusion comes from. You see, cannabis also has strains that are bred for industrial use, and these cannabis strains do not get you high. This is referred to as hemp.

Matt Baum: Okay, it’s been a while since I took biology, but I think I get it. Cannabis is the species of plant. Marijuana and hemps are strains of that species. Sort of like dogs. While both a pug and a husky are a dog, they are definitely different breeds with completely different characteristics. Okay, hunky European Matt. I think I’m following you now.

Hunky Euro Matt: The international definition of hemp, as opposed to marijuana, was really born all the way in 1971. It was developed by a Canadian researcher and scientist named Ernest Small. In 1971, he published a little-known, but very influential book called the species problem in cannabis. Ernest Small acknowledged there was no natural point at which the cannabinoid content could be used to distinguished strains of hemp and marijuana. But despite this, he drew an arbitrary line on the continuum of cannabis types. He decided that 0.3% THC in a sifted batch of cannabis flowers was the difference between hemp and marijuana. So there you go. You got cannabis as a plant species. Then on one hand, you got cannabis strains that have only traces amount of THC called hemp.

Matt Baum: Okay so my brilliant dog metaphor falls apart a little bit here, as a husky and a pug look completely different, whereas cannabis, whether it’s hemp or marijuana, looks very similar. But the difference lies in the THC level. Higher THC, marijuana. Very low THC, hemp.

Hunky Euro Matt: So cannabis versus hemp is a nonsense. If you want to make sense, you have to say marijuana versus hemp. So no more confusion, okay? Let’s recap. Cannabis strains with almost no THC are referred to as hemp, and cannabis strains with high amounts of THC are referred to as marijuana.

Matt Baum: Okay, I think we have a working definition here, thanks to Matt from curedbynature.org. Check out their site. It’s really great, and thanks for letting me use that video.

Learning about CBD with Alex Herrera

So now that we’ve got a definition for hemp, we can talk about its most ubiquitous use right now, which seems to be CBD. CBD is all the rage and people are saying it does all kinds of stuff. We’ll get into that on a later show, but first, let’s talk about what is CBD? Remember that Alex guy that I mentioned earlier?

Alex: My name is Alex. I am the founder and CEO of Palm Organix, a premium line of CBD products including tinctures, soft gels, and salves.

Matt Baum: So you sound like a guy that probably knows a little something about CBDs. Can I ask you, this is a sort of introductory podcast we’re doing here. Can you give us just a working definition of what is CBD?

Alex: Sure. Let me see if I can try to break it down into just a general overview. So CBD is short for cannabidiol, and that is just one of the several different molecules known as cannabinoids that are found in the cannabis plant. CBD acts as a neurotransmitter and is also known to have anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant properties. Now CBD oil is a natural essential oil which is extracted from the flowers and leaves of the cannabis plant and it is used by people all over the world as a dietary supplement and for a variety of therapeutic purposes.

Matt Baum: Okay now check this out. I do exactly with hunky European Matt told me not to do, and I misused the word cannabis. You’ll catch it.

Okay, the CBD that you guys deal with, does it come from cannabis plants or does it come from hemp?

That was it right there.

Alex: Our product is what’s called PCR hemp, which stands for phytocannabinoid-rich, and it comes from hemp plants.

Matt Baum: Okay. I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding there, and I think a lot of people, especially in a red state like Nebraska, people think CBD is just straight-up marijuana. That’s where they go.

Alex: Yeah, yeah, I think, Matt, the biggest confusion is because the plants look so similar, right?

Matt Baum: Right.

Alex: They’re a related plant, and then if you go back into the ’70s, the old joke was hemp was the poor man’s weed that they would smoke forever and never get high, because of the THC levels of 0.3. You could smoke that all day long and nothing would happen to you.

Matt Baum: Fair enough. Now can I ask you how do you guys take the hemp and turn it into balms and tinctures? How does that work?

Alex: Well, it’s got to be extracted, right?

Matt Baum: Right.

Alex: In order to extract cannabis oil, it’s really necessary to start with a CBD-rich plant, and so again, going back to this phytocannabinoid-rich is what we use at Palm Organix, is a heavy, high, much higher dose and levels of CBD than the basic plants used by most. It’s a very, very powerful strain of cannabinoids, terpenes, coming from the basic hemp plant. In order to extract it, I’m just talking industry-wide, generally speaking, there’s two main ways that it is extracted in order to get it into the salves, like you said, and the balms and soft-gels and tinctures.

The first way that’s very popular is called super-critical CO2, or CO2 extraction. That method uses carbon dioxide under extremely high pressure and at the same time under extremely low temperatures that isolates, preserves, and maintains a purity of medicinal oil. This isn’t an easy process. It requires real expensive equipment, there’s a heavy, heavy steep learning curve, but when it’s done right, the end product is safe, potent, and it’s free of chlorophyll, which is very important.

Now the other way that it’s extracted, the very other common way that it’s extracted is with ethanol.

Matt Baum: That’s what I was going to ask. I’ve heard about this, and that sounds scary to me. I don’t know. Is there anything scary going on there? Do we have to worry about that?

Alex: No. So obviously, ethanol is a high-grade alcohol, which is dangerous, and they use it to create high-quality cannabis oils. They use it a lot for vape pen cartridges and other products, but that this process, or this extraction method, it destroys the plant waxes which has a health benefit that are favored by some product makers. Some people prefer to use that method because they’re wiping out the wax at the same time.

Matt Baum: Gotcha. So it’s not so much dangerous as it is it changes the product fundamentally.

Alex: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s dangerous if me and you tried it, but I think it’s-

Matt Baum: Fair enough.

Alex: Exactly.

Matt Baum: So you guys said you do tinctures, you do balms, but you don’t do vaporizers. Is that right?

Alex: Yeah, so, no. We launched, and we launched with nine SKUs and I can talk about the products that we have. The products that we launched with were tinctures, and I’ll talk about each one a little bit if you’d like. We launched some tinctures, capsules, and topical, which is our salve, we call it. It’s like a balm. We didn’t do the vape. We may do the vape. The vape’s got a lot of moving parts to it, Matt. You got the battery, the pen, the refills, so as a launch point, we didn’t develop that product at that time. We also didn’t go with a gummy bear, which I think you can find on every corner, they sell it. We tried to stay away from those two to start, but I think we’ll launch with some other products soon.

Matt Baum: Sure, sure. So let me ask you this. What is the difference in taking it from a tincture to a capsule to a balm that you spread on your skin? What would be the difference there?

Alex: Yeah, it’s a great question. The most common way that the CBD is administer is a tincture-

Matt Baum: That’s what I have been doing.

Alex: Yeah. It’s a really pure application of CBD, mostly because the manufacturers don’t do any separating of the CBD oil, so what you basically have is either a natural flavor or you have like what we do, we add a little bit of a mint or an orange, which makes it a little bit enjoyable for the customer.

Matt Baum: Yeah. The mint’s really nice. I like it a lot, actually.

Alex: Oh, thank you, yeah. And then generally dosing ranges from … You see them really high, but generally speaking, you have 100 milligram bottle to 1,000 milligram is the range where it’s popular. Some people do make 1,500s, 2,000, 3,000, but the common range is 100 milligrams to 1,000. I think it’s important for your viewers, listeners, to hear that you’ve got to do a little bit of research to understand how you should dose.

Matt Baum: Right. That’s typically the little bottle with the squeeze dropper in it.

Alex: Yeah, just to kind of break it down, if you do a 500 milligram bottle of tincture, there’s generally 30 servings. A one-ounce container and there’s 30 servings in that bottle, so you just simply divide 500 milligrams by 30 and you’re getting 16.67 milligrams of CBD per application. That’s kind of what you’re going to get.

Matt Baum: That’s different from the capsules, how?

Alex: I mean, I think capsules, Palm Organix sells a lot of capsules and I think really the main reason I think you’re doing the capsules is because it’s kind of the easiest way to put that in your morning regimen of your vitamins or whatever. You can take them.

Matt Baum: Sure. And it’s oil in the capsule, it’s not dry, right?

Alex: Yeah, it’s in the capsule. You take it like you would … It’s like a soft gel, right?

Matt Baum: Sure.

Alex: The common dosing in that is anywhere from a 10 milligram capsule to a 25 milligram capsule. It’s very easy to keep track, so if you say, “Hey, I’m a 175 pounds and my doctors thinks I should be taking somewhere between 50 and 75 milligrams a day,” it’s really easy to do that brainlessly and administer it. I guess if there was a negative to the capsule, I would say if you’re trying to do a rounded out, that you’re trying to do, say,  60 milligrams a day, it’s a little harder to get there on a 25 milligram capsule.

Matt Baum: Fair enough. That makes sense. The math doesn’t quite bear out.

Alex: Doesn’t quite bear out. Yeah, exactly.

Matt Baum: Is it the same oil that’s in the capsule that’s in the tincture?

Alex: Yes, exactly.

Matt Baum: And does it absorb at the same speed or is it a little slower?

Alex: So the tincture gets absorbed the quickest, because you’re taking it sublingually. But when you take the capsule form, it’s got to go through the stomach and we recommend you take it on an empty stomach, because that’s the best way to get the absorption. Then it tends to stay a little longer in the system and more like a steady deployment of the CBD levels, so it kind of smooths itself out that way.

Matt Baum: Okay. And then the balm. How does that work? You rub it in your skin and it’s  literally absorbs into the skin?

Alex: Exactly right. And then actually the key to that is really to thoroughly rub it into the skin. It’s just like going right through your pores into your body. That’s a great way, Matt, to … We get a lot of people call up and say, “I have arthritis in my hands,” or, “I type and I have carpal tunnel.” It’s a great way to do what I would call targeted relief for arthritis or shoulder, tennis elbow, et cetera.

Matt Baum: Really? So it will actually … I’m a drummer, for instance. I’ve been a musician for a long time, and I have bad hands. If I had an issue like that, say, with carpal tunnel, I would literally rub it straight into my wrist and it’s going to target that area?

Alex: Exactly, and I will tell you that we have tremendous feedback where people say you can feel the relief in literally in minutes.

Matt Baum: That’s amazing. That’s really amazing.

Alex: Yeah.

Matt Baum: Alex, Thanks so much. This has been great, man. You really laid it out and I understand more. I’m hoping our listeners do too. I’m going to talk to you again probably in about a month or two here about your specific product. I just started using it, and I want to do it for about a month and then get back with you and we’ll do an interview. Sound cool?

Alex: Hey Matt, I look forward to it. I always enjoy speaking with you. Just give us a shout and we’re happy to get on with you anytime you’re ready.

Matt Baum: That sounds great, man. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Alex: Hey, we appreciate it. Thank you for taking the time.

Annalise Mabe on using CBD for Crohn’s disease

Matt Baum: Now that we know what CBD is, where it comes from, and how it’s used, it’s probably time to talk to somebody that uses it in their everyday life, like this person.

Annalise Mabe: I’m Annalise Mabe, and I’m from Tampa, Florida. I teach at University of South Florida and I’m also a freelance writer.

Matt Baum: Annalise wrote a really great blog post for the Ministry of Hemp site about living with Crohn’s disease. For those of you who don’t know, Crohn’s is pretty painful, but I’ll let her tell you more about it.

Annalise Mabe: Crohn’s disease is thought to be an autoimmune disease that affects the stomach lining and the small intestine. Pretty much your body attacks this lining and creates ulcers. It’s a biologic thing, it’s genetic, and there isn’t a cure for it. I was diagnosed with it mildly at 17 and it’s progressed to about moderate now, 10 years later. It’s something that I still deal with now. Treatments have improved, but there will never be a total cure.

Matt Baum: Like you said, there’s no cure.

Annalise Mabe: Yeah.

Matt Baum: There’s just treatments.

Annalise Mabe: Yeah.

Matt Baum: And what are the medical treatments like?

Annalise Mabe: Well, the medical treatments have progressed from steroids. We used to be prescribed things, and still are, prescribed steroids like Pentasa, things like that. But now, there are infusions and injections. There’s an infusion called Remicade and an injection that I take called Humira, which you’ve probably heard ads all over. I always hear the-

Matt Baum: Oh yeah, the TV commercials, yeah.

Annalise Mabe: Yeah. Lots of Humira commercials, but that’s a good one. Those are the treatments that are out there right now, treating Crohn’s.

Matt Baum: How did you come to find that CBD was something that would help you?

Annalise Mabe: It’s something that was recommended to me by a friend who also suffers from multiple chronic illnesses. It was recommended like, “This can’t hurt so why don’t you try some CBD products?” I did try CBD capsules and gummies, tinctures and bath bombs. I have found that they definitely help with some of the anxiety that comes with just the day-to-day living with a chronic illness, and-

Matt Baum: I’m sure, I’m sure.

Annalise Mabe: … they help relieve some of that stress as well, and some mild pain.

Matt Baum: You went on to write about CBDs showing some evidence of reducing inflammation. Have you noticed that with your situation?

Annalise Mabe: I can’t say that I can tell a huge difference, because it’s always sort of hard to tell, since Crohn’s is on the inside. Even with the treatments I’m on, like Humira, it’s still sometimes like hit or miss. I still have good days and bad days, so it is really hard to tell when I’m doing really good or, well obviously, it’s easy to tell when I’m doing bad, but-

Matt Baum: Right, of course.

Annalise Mabe: … there are still good days and bad days. Yeah, I think the CBDs definitely help with some of the side-effects of Crohn’s, like the stress and anxiety, and some of that mild pain.

Matt Baum: Let me ask you. You said you tried a bunch of stuff. What did you settle on? What do you think works best for you?

Annalise Mabe: I really enjoyed the bath bombs and the gummies and tinctures. I mean really, all of it. I used to take the capsules too, but it’s just kind of enjoyable to have a few of the CBD gummies or to take a bomb, because that just makes you even more relaxed when you’re doing a bath and it smells like eucalyptus or something really relaxing like that.

Matt Baum: Oh, yeah, definitely. And your doctor is aware that you’re doing this. What does your doctor think?

Annalise Mabe: My GI doctor hasn’t really confirmed anything in terms of studies, because I think they’re usually has a tendency to say that anything more holistic works for sure, since there’s not a lot of cutting-edge, like breaking-new science about it.

Matt Baum: Sure.

Annalise Mabe: I still take things like turmeric capsules as well, which the doctor hasn’t said these are totally, scientifically going to work for you, but it’s still something that I take and something that I think helps as well as the CBDs.

Matt Baum: Fair enough. So it’s more like he or she doesn’t think it’s going to hurt you, so why not?

Annalise Mabe: Yeah, exactly. And I think that they’re coming from such a medical perspective that I don’t think they want to tell patients that, “Oh, yeah, this is totally going to work,” if they’re not sure that it will, since there aren’t really a ton of studies out there on Crohn’s and CBDs yet.

Matt Baum: Absolutely. Can I ask, not a lot of people like to talk about Crohn’s disease. I mean, it seems embarrassing. How did you come to be so comfortable? You speak about it very freely, which I think is great, by the way. It’s not something that should be hidden, but how did you get to that point?

Annalise Mabe: Well, in high school, I definitely was self-conscious about it because, you know what, if you have Crohn’s you’re probably going to be using the bathroom a lot.

Matt Baum: Of course.

Annalise Mabe: When you’re in high school, you don’t want to sneak out to go use the bathroom and have everyone know where you are. It is kind of a thing that’s more stigmatized, but since it’s been about 10 years, I really have started to take it more seriously, especially after I needed a surgery in late 2017. It’s a resection. Some of my small intestine due to damage from Crohn’s.

Sitting in the hospital and just kind of down about it, and I didn’t really want to hide it anymore or not talk about it just for social reasons. That really connected me with other people like on Instagram in the Crohn’s community, and it kind of just let me be sort of an advocate, even in small ways. I think a lot of my friends started to tell me, “I never even heard about Crohn’s,” because I think it is something that people don’t really talk about a lot. It’s all been really positive after I started talking about it with people.

Matt Baum: I mean, that’s all you can really do, right?

Annalise Mabe: Mm-hmm [affirmative].

Matt Baum: Own it and let people know, yes, people have this condition and we have to talk about it and we have to deal with it. I think it’s great that you do. I think it’s pretty amazing.

Annalise Mabe: Thanks.

Matt Baum: Annalise, thank you for your time today. You’ve been great.

Annalise Mabe: Yeah, anytime. Thanks for taking the time to talk with me about it.

Learning about hemp with Matt

Matt Baum: So what have we learned today? We learned who I am and how I got here. We learned a working definition of hemp. It’s related to marijuana but it’s not marijuana. They’re both cannabis plants. Hemp, less than 3% THC, [Editor’s Note: Actually, Matt, that’s 0.3% — Kit] and used to make CBDs. We learned about CBDs too. They come from hemp and they can be taken in all manner of forms, gummies, tinctures, balms, bath bombs. But there is a ton of other things that are made with hemp, and we’ll get into that in another show. We learned that CBDs can help with mild pain and help with anxiety. And people like Annalise use them for serious medical conditions like Crohn’s disease.

Next time on the show is going to be a little bit of a history lesson when we look into the history of hemp.

That’s about it for the first episode for the Ministry of Hemp podcast. I’m super-excited to be here and I hope you guys are super-excited to listen and learn with me. I want to think hunky Euro Matt, Alex, and Annalise for helping me out on today’s episode. I’ll have links to all their sites and articles in the show notes. And speaking of show notes, every episode of our show is going to have a full, written transcript for the hard of hearing or listeners with concentration impairments. This was actually Kit’s idea, and I like it. He’s very involved in disability rights activism, and he’s right. We should be part of the solution. [Editor’s Note: Thanks Matt, shout out to my heroes at ADAPT — Kit]

In the future, I’m picturing the show becoming fully interactive, so I’d like to hear from you. Shoot us your questions. Add us on Twitter @ministryofhemp, or Facebook/ministryofhemp, you guessed it. You can even call us and leave us a message with your question at 402-819-6417. Or if you don’t live in the States, send us an MP3 of your question to info@ministryofhemp.com, and we will play it on the show. And if you like the show, give us a rating on iTunes. It seriously helps more than you know.

Thanks so much for listening to the first episode. Take care of yourself, take care of others, and make good decisions, will you? For now, this is the Ministry of Hemp podcast, signing off.

The post Just The Facts; A Beginner’s Guide to Hemp & CBD appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.