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Colo. pot aids kids with seizures, worries doctors

POSTED BY: GEEZER
UPDATED: Wednesday, February 19, 2014 09:05
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Tuesday, February 18, 2014 8:07 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up


Quote:

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) -- The doctors were out of ideas to help 5-year-old Charlotte Figi.

Suffering from a rare genetic disorder, she had as many as 300 grand mal seizures a week, used a wheelchair, went into repeated cardiac arrest and could barely speak. As a last resort, her mother began calling medical marijuana shops.

Two years later, Charlotte is largely seizure-free and able to walk, talk and feed herself after taking oil infused with a special pot strain. Her recovery has inspired both a name for the strain of marijuana she takes that is bred not to make users high -- Charlotte's Web -- and an influx of families with seizure-stricken children to Colorado from states that ban the drug.

"She can walk, talk; she ate chili in the car," her mother, Paige Figi, said as her dark-haired daughter strolled through a cavernous greenhouse full of marijuana plants that will later be broken down into their anti-seizure components and mixed with olive oil so patients can consume them. "So I'll fight for whoever wants this."

Doctors warn there is no proof that Charlotte's Web is effective, or even safe.

In the frenzy to find the drug, there have been reports of non-authorized suppliers offering bogus strains of Charlotte's Web. In one case, a doctor said, parents were told they could replicate the strain by cooking marijuana in butter. Their child went into heavy seizures.

"We don't have any peer-reviewed, published literature to support it," Dr. Larry Wolk, the state health department's chief medical officer, said of Charlotte's Web.

Still, more than 100 families have relocated since Charlotte's story first began spreading last summer, according to Figi and her husband and the five brothers who grow the drug and sell it at cost through a nonprofit. The relocated families have formed a close-knit group in Colorado Springs, the law-and-order town where the dispensary selling the drug is located. They meet for lunch, support sessions and hikes.

"It's the most hope lots of us have ever had," said Holli Brown, whose 9-year-old daughter, Sydni, began speaking in sentences and laughing since moving to Colorado from Kansas City and taking the marijuana strain.

Amy Brooks-Kayal, vice president of the American Epilepsy Society, warned that a few miraculous stories may not mean anything -- epileptic seizures come and go for no apparent reason -- and scientists do not know what sort of damage Charlotte's Web could be doing to young brains.

"Until we have that information, as physicians, we can't follow our first creed, which is do no harm," she said, suggesting that parents relocate so their children can get treated at one of the nation's 28 top-tier pediatric epilepsy centers rather than move to Colorado.

However, the society urges more study of pot's possibilities. The families using Charlotte's Web, as well as the brothers who grow it, say they want the drug rigorously tested, and their efforts to ensure its purity have won them praise from skeptics like Wolk.



More at: http://www.wtop.com/209/3564930/Colo-pot-aids-kids-with-seizures-worri
es-doctors

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Tuesday, February 18, 2014 6:45 PM

JONGSSTRAW


It works. I saw an HBO piece recently about a little girl who had violent seizures every few hours. This went on for years. She had to wear a football helmet all the time for protection during her seizures. It was all captured on video and it was heartbreaking and gut wrenching to watch. You have to wonder how the parents and child can endure such misery. Then she started on this pot therapy. The results were immediate and amazing. No more seizures. No more football helmet. A normal life for all of them at last. It was a bona fide miracle! It may not work for every kid in that situation, but it must be tried at the very least.

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Tuesday, February 18, 2014 8:38 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!


Quote:

Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
It works. I saw an HBO piece recently about a little girl who had violent seizures every few hours. This went on for years. She had to wear a football helmet all the time for protection during her seizures. It was all captured on video and it was heartbreaking and gut wrenching to watch. You have to wonder how the parents and child can endure such misery. Then she started on this pot therapy. The results were immediate and amazing. No more seizures. No more football helmet. A normal life for all of them at last. It was a bona fide miracle! It may not work for every kid in that situation, but it must be tried at the very least.



That's just the big marijuana propaganda speak. Please.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

I'm just a red pill guy in a room full of blue pill addicts.

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Tuesday, February 18, 2014 10:21 PM

JONGSSTRAW


Please what?

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Wednesday, February 19, 2014 1:14 AM

JONGSSTRAW


Quote:

I'm not sure that medicinal pot should be given to a child. An adult with an seizure disorder is capable of making up their own mind about it. But a child? I am just not sure.


Not sure about what? Kids don't make decisions, parents do. The parents in this profiled story had tried everything for their child. Nothing worked. So they tried the pot therapy and it worked. And it gave this little girl a life she never had...a normal bright functioning life. It's not like she was stoned all day. It's used a couple of times a day, under the guidance of the family doctor, and she doesn't have violent thrashing excrutiatingly painful seizures anymore. She doesn't have to live her life in terror in a rubber crib wearing a football helmet.

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Wednesday, February 19, 2014 9:05 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up


Quote:

Originally posted by AURaptor:
That's just the big marijuana propaganda speak. Please.



Knew I should have posted more of the story, but hate to run to several pages.

Farther into the story it notes that the pot in question is specifically grown to have very low THC, and more of another compound - CBD - which is effective at preventing seizures. The compound is extracted by a chemist and mixed with olive oil so it can be ingested. So no little stoned kids running around.


"When your heart breaks, you choose what to fill the cracks with. Love or hate. But hate won't ever heal. Only love can do that."

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