Lucy Stafford - from wheelchair to walking thanks to cannabis

10/02/20 • 48 min

Lucy Stafford is no ordinary 20 year old. She's dynamic, intelligent and passionate science student, but growing up, numbed by the increasingly heavy doses of opiates she had received since the age of 12, Lucy believed otherwise.
Lucy has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome - a debilitating and extreme painful condition caused by a lack of collagen in connective tissues. Before cannabis, Lucy had resigned herself to a future defined by her disease and the inability of her doctors to manage its symptoms.
When Fentanyl, which is fifty times more powerful than heroin, failed to control her pain, Lucy's doctor ran out of options, and in desperation to help his patient attempted to prescribe her Sativex through the NHS. Unfortunately, despite the recent change in the law legalising cannabis based medicines, his request was denied.
However, this sowed the seed for Lucy that cannabis might actually help her and she began her own personal journey navigating the illicit cannabis market, eventually getting a legal prescription through a private cannabis clinic.
Lucy now gets her cannabis medicine prescription through Project Twenty21, the national registry aiming to get 20,000 medical cannabis patients signed up by the end of 2021.
Lucy is also a founding member and patient advocate for PLEA (Patient-led Engagement for Access) and one of the first recipients of the recently launched Cancard - the card scheme started by friend of the show, Carly Barton, that allows to people to verify themselves to police as medicinal cannabis patients.
Oh and during lockdown, Lucy has taught herself to walk again (and is regularly walking 5km). Without cannabis, this would never have been possible.
Useful links:
PLEA
Project Twenty21
Cancard
The CBD Book: The Essential Guide to CBD Oil

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Previous Episode

Tony Bevington - Why growing cannabis for my kidney disease is not a crime

80-year-old Tony Bevington is no ordinary retiree. A paramedic in his youth, Tony spent his 50s and 60s volunteering with the VSO teaching agriculture to communities in Papua New Guinea and Botswana.
Unfortunately in his 70s, ill health caught up with Tony and he developed kidney disease, glaucoma and arthritis. With his experience in self sufficiency and knowledge of agriculture and medicine, Tony decided to explore growing cannabis to manage his health conditions.
Thankfully, since using cannabis medicinally (which he spoke about openly), Tony's kidney disease and glaucoma have both stabilised.
Unfortunately, that openness prompted a tip-off to the police who came on two occasions to confiscate Tony's plants.
On the 16th November, Tony will be attending magistrate court in Truro, where he faces charges of cultivation and production. If found guilty of production, which implies an intention to supply to others, Tony could lose his house and be sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Despite Tony's determination to fight the charge of production, going to court weighs heavily on his shoulders and he is currently experiencing dangerously high levels of stress and anxiety.
Tony needs our support and his story must be shared far and wide so that the government is forced to concede that their current stance is not fit for purpose, causing immense distress for the 1.4 million people in the UK who turn to the black market for their cannabis medicine.
For more information about Tony's campaign, head to his Facebook Page

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Next Episode

Dr Ethan Russo - clinical endocannabinoid deficiency explained

Clinical Endocannabinoid Deficiency is a term regularly used in the medical cannabis world and refers to a collection of illnesses where low levels of endocannabinoids and their receptors contribute to disease development.
So who better to speak to for a deep dive into endocannabinoid deficiency than Dr Ethan Russo, the neurologist and cannabinoid researcher who coined the term and has written three papers on the subject.
Ethan shares how he initially came up with the theory, possible causes, which conditions share the cluster of symptoms associated with endocannabinoid deficiency, we discuss how poor endocannabinoid tone may contribute to the development of endometriosis, and how best we can strengthen our endocannabinoid system supplementing with cannabis, but also through non-cannabis routes such as looking after our gut biome and exercise.
This episode is a must for doctors, patients and indeed anyone with an interest in deepening their understanding of the endocannabinoid system and how its dysregulation may well lie behind a host of pathologies.
References:
Clinical endocannabinoid deficiency (CECD): can this concept explain therapeutic benefits of cannabis in migraine, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome and other treatment-resistant conditions? by Ethan Russo
Clinical Endocannabinoid Deficiency Reconsidered: Current Research Supports the Theory in Migraine, Fibromyalgia, Irritable Bowel, and Other Treatment-Resistant Syndromes by Ethan Russo

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