Thanks for visiting my blog.  This page will tell you why I originally became intereseted in to topic of Cannabidiol (CBD.)  As I’ve studied more about CBD I wanted to have a place to share my learnings and that’s why this blog has come to life.  Here’s our story that sparked my interest in CBD.

My wife and I have a daughter who suffers from a condition called Uveitis.  It’s basically inflammation in the eyes which blurs and clouds her vision.  We had no idea she had this condition until she was in 3rd grade.  She came home one day and complained about seeing spots when she looked at things.  My wife and I figured she just needed glasses so we took her to a local optometrist to get her vision checked.

The first thing the doctor did was have her start reading the letters on the big chart that everyone is familiar with.  He optimistically started with the line for 20/20 vision.  She couldn’t read that so he went to the next line.  She couldn’t read that so he went to the next one, and the next one.  He finally got to the gigantic “E” at the top of the chart.  She strained and moved her head around trying to make it out.  She finally guessed “F”.

At this moment My wife and I looked at each other in disbelief.  They checked the other eye and it was slightly better but still not even close to good vision.  How could our daughter have had such bad vision and we didn’t know it?  She was getting good grades and never really complained about her vision.  She was accomplishing all this while being legally blind in one eye and the other eye was rapidly losing vision.  The vision getting worse in the “good” eye is what caused her to finally come to us and complain about “seeing spots.”

Since that day we’ve been to a lot of doctor visits with really talented Uveitis specialists in Salt Lake City, UT.  He has been able to get her back to 20/20 vision with glasses.  We’re incredibly grateful for this.  She’s been able to live a relatively normal life and has been able to do so many things we didn’t know if she’d ever be able to do.  She’s even able to drive now, which we didn’t think would ever be a possibility when we started down this path.  But it’s been a long journey and it wasn’t easy getting here.

She’s been on several medications to get rid of the inflammation.  She started with steroids which worked pretty fast to improve her vision.  But she was struggling with controlling her emotions with this treatment.  So then she was put on methotrexate which is a chemotherapy drug.  We hated this medication.  She would be sick for days after each treatment.  It broke our hearts to see her like this.  Not to mention all the side effects we were told she could experience beyond the sickness.  She’s even had injections directly into one of her eyes which she said afterward was “not fun.”

Finally, she was put on Humira.  This is a common medication for treating rheumatoid arthritis.  Apparently uveitis and rheumatoid arthritis are related somehow as they are both autoimmune diseases.  In fact, she sees a rheumatologist every three months or so and he says she has juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.  But her uveitis doctor says she doesn’t.  So we don’t really know what she has.  But we do know that the Humira is working.

The problem with Humira is that it costs $2,000 every two weeks.  Luckily we have good insurance so we have access to it.  But I’ve always worried in the back of my mind, “what if we didn’t have access to Humira anymore?”  Then what would we do for our daughter?  Subsequently, I always keep my eyes and ears open for natural anti-inflammatory options that may be of use for my daughter’s condition.

This is why I’ve become so excited about CBD.  In March 2018 I attended a food innovation conference for work and one of the sessions was about the edible marijuana market (which I’m not into by the way.)  The presenter spoke about marijuana for a few minutes but then started talking about CBD, which I had never heard of before.  After hearing how effective this compound was for fighting inflammation, I knew this was something I needed to learn more about.

The more I learn about hemp-derived CBD, the more interested I become, and the more convinced I am that CBD should be legal and available throughout the world.  I hope this blog will provide you with a better understanding of CBD and how versatile and safe it is.  Please reach out to me on the Contact page if you have a specific question or topic you’d like me to research.