064 - CBD DURING PREGNANCY: SAFE? Or AVOID it? With scientist Karli Swenson - Hey Shayla - Judgement Free Motherhood 😅😭😍

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We're also seeing all of these metabolic effects.
The cannabis full cannabis, thcand CBD exposed kids had higher
adiposity and higher BMI andhigher fasting blood glucose
than the non-exposed kids.
I had this moment where Irealized during fetal
development, when you're beingexposed to CBD and your brain's

(00:22):
like soaking it all indevelopment, when you're being
exposed to CBD and your brain'slike soaking it all in.
I kind of forgot that like sois the liver and so is the
pancreas and so is everythingelse in the body, and I was like
, oh yeah, those organs couldalso be affected.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hey guys, my name is Shayla.
Welcome to the hey Shaylapodcast.
I went from full-time travel tofull-time new COVID mom and now
I'm a mom of two, and holy wowis motherhood and adulting a
learning curve.
There are so many decisions weneed to make and a million ways
to do it right.
I created this podcast tointerview some of my gurus, to

(01:00):
share their knowledge andempower you on your journey.
Let me be your guinea pig andask the questions you think
everyone else knows.
Here.
We're a little hippie.
We try to do things asnaturally as possible, we're
open-minded and we don't takeourselves too seriously, but
above all, we support oneanother and work to find what
works.
If you're into it, you're ourpeople.
Let's get started.
Hey guys, welcome back to thehey Shayla podcast.

(01:24):
Today I've got an interestingone.
Today I'm interviewing CarlySwenson.
She has her PhD in physiologyand her master's in maternal and
child public health.
She studies how differentsubstances affect fetal
development.
In her work, she wanted tounderstand if CBD was safe to
consume during pregnancy,because many pregnant people
take it to decrease nausea andvomiting and morning sickness.

(01:45):
Since CBD was only legalized in2018, the research was super
sparse at the time.
Over the last four years,they've learned an incredible
amount about the potential risks, potential benefits of using
CBD to decrease morning sickness.
Today, carly's going to tell usabout what she's learned.
We'll learn about what CBD is,how it affects fetal development

(02:06):
, any risks and benefits, andI'm really interested to talk to
her and learn more about this.
Okay, I have so many questionsbefore we even get into the mean
potatoes of what you found.
So, okay, welcome.
Thank you so much for coming onand chatting with me about this
.
First, just tell me about youand how you.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yeah, your PhD in physiology, your master's in
maternal and public health, like, yeah, let's hear it.
Okay.
So I, um, when I went intocollege, I knew I liked science.
It was kind of unspecified.
I was like, you know, I'll,I'll dilly dally, I'll figure it
out.
And I fell in love with thisembryology class, which is kind
of the study of how fetuses andembryos form and develop.

(02:58):
And I took it as an electiveand I was like, wait a minute,
this is the coolest thing I'veever learned.
And I know, like all of the theI don't have kids of my own,
but like I know all the moms whoare listening have that same
moment of like I just went fromtwo cells to a whole human in a
relatively really short periodof time, like really quickly,

(03:21):
and I just think that that isthe coolest thing that any body
can do and it makes no sense tome.
And so I just I don't know.
I really was fascinated by it.
And so when I got close tograduation and I was having that
, you know, what career do Iwant?
What are you going to do aftercollege?

(03:42):
Yeah, the most stressfulquestion to get when you're like
21.
I was like I don't know I thinkpregnancy is cool, and everyone
was like, okay, that's good.
And so I ended up deciding togo to grad school.
So I went to college in Wyomingand then moved down to Denver.
I went to the University ofColorado at the Anschutz Medical

(04:02):
Campus, which is an awesomeacademic medical center.
You really have access toanything that you need in the
science world.
And so I got into a PhD programin physiology and most people
have no clue what PhDs are.
I learned partway through thatbecause I also didn't totally
understand it until I was in it.

(04:23):
So a PhD is a research doctoraldegree.
So we have our doctorates butwe're not medical providers.
And so we do all sorts ofresearch, all the way on the
super, super preclinical level,working with cells and animals,
to clinical research, workingwith patients, like clinical

(04:45):
trials, and then all the way upto like population based studies
where you have thousands andthousands of people that are
totally de-identified and you'rejust working with numbers,
basically Interesting.
And so I was in the physiologyprogram and I knew I wanted to
study something fetaldevelopment and fetal

(05:06):
development in itself is so cool, but also studying what can go
wrong in fetal development Ithought was really interesting
because things do go wrong andyou want to be able to have the
literature on how they go wrong,how you could potentially
intervene when they go wrong,like how we can help patients

(05:27):
when things do go wrong.
And so I ended up finding kindof my home in the lab that I was
in and my boss at the time waspretty flexible and she was kind
of like you know, if you findsomething you really want to
study and we can get it funded,let's tackle it.
And I was like, okay, cool, andthat was in 2019.

(05:50):
So it was right after CBD wasfederally legalized and was
officially made available at,like, gas stations, grocery
stores, whole Foods, pet storesis a big one and because it was
then so widely available, it waslike essentially kind of
started gaining traction as thiswonder drug where it was

(06:13):
gaining research expertise.
So CBD at that time wasstarting to get traction in like
pediatric seizures.
So Epidiolex is FDA approvedfor kids with very severe
pediatric seizures.
It's the first CBD product tobe FDA approved for medication.

(06:35):
That's wild, yeah, and it'sincredibly useful.
And so then it started gainingtraction in chemotherapy.
So there's been a ton of workin how CBD and THC, which is the
other component of cannabis,that kind of gives you the high
that's associated with cannabisor marijuana or whatever we want

(06:56):
to call it.
And so people were studying itfor people who have cancer and
were in chemotherapy how itdecreases their pain and
decreases the nausea andvomiting from their chemotherapy
drugs and how it can reallyimprove quality of life, which
is awesome and it's so, soimportant for those patients,

(07:17):
like it was.
It's such a breakthrough inthat scenario and in many other
scenarios.
But there was kind of this ideathat now that it was becoming a
medicine and you could buy itat Whole Foods, everyone was
like this is the wonder drug.
Yeah, this can.
This poses no risk, this istotally safe.

(07:38):
And we were kind of like whoa,we don't know that, like we, we
don't't have any data.
There's no data to show safetyor harm like.
It's not that it's not safe ornot harmful, we just don't know
right.
It's such a weird spot totallywhen you're trying to talk like
actively pregnant patients.
At the time my boss waspregnant and she had really

(08:01):
severe um morning sickness.
She had something calledhyperemesis, which is when you
have morning sickness likealways horrible.
And she had people.
Literally she would get sick atthe grocery store.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
Oh man.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
People would be literally handing her CBD
products.
I mean, like you should do that, like this will help, this will
help, this will help and, ofcourse, like any rational human
being, in that moment you'relike, will this help me?

Speaker 2 (08:28):
Like I feel 100%, yeah, okay, wait, before we go
further, will you discuss, causeI feel like it's two sided.
So first, I think when it, whenit was legalized, yes, wonder
drug, but also like it was awhole food.
So you're like oh, this is likea vitamin.
It's super chill Like no bigdeal.
Literally deal, literally in thesupplement aisle yes, but on

(08:49):
the other hand, I remember mydad because I think he had like
back pain or something and thatwas me.
I was like, dad, you should trycbd.
See what happened.
Or people were recommending itand he was like hila, where can
I get some cbd?
He was like I don't know yeah,literally you could order it on
Amazon.
And he's like well, you do knowanyone that like give me some
CBD.
I'm like it's not it's not adrug dad.

(09:11):
It's not like marijuana, likehe was trying to get me to be
his dealer or something.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
Yeah, that was such a pervasive belief for a while
there because also, like all ofthe cannabinoids have really
similar names and so a lot ofpeople so there's.
So to give a little like yeah,give us the very layman term or
layman understanding of yes, socannabis, which is the plant
also called marijuana, okay hasmany, many compounds in it and

(09:42):
they're all called cannabinoids.
It's just a compound that's inthe cannabis plant, basically
something like that name, um,and they have a whole bunch of
different acronyms, and the onesthat most people are familiar
with are thc, which, when youingest it, however you ingest it
, it crosses this thing calledthe blood-brain barrier and it

(10:02):
can get into your brain andthat's how it causes the high
that's associated with gettinghigh from marijuana or cannabis.
And then there's othercompounds like CBD.
You might have heard of CBG orCBN.
Some of those are like startingto gain traction right now, but
there are all these other minorcannabinoids.
They've been in the plant formany, many years.

(10:24):
It's part of the plant, um, anda lot of people who are familiar
with cannabis have been toldabout, like, the different
strains of cannabis and how someget you really high and some
give you a body high and someare brain high and all of that.
Yeah, um, there's that scienceis a little iffy because the
plant has been inbred for likethousands of years.

(10:47):
So there's, the strains aredebated, but basically it's the
different levels of like, howmuch thc to how much cbd.
Oh, interesting, okay, and sothc like the actual compound of
thc is the one that's federallyillegal but legal legalized in
many states.
And then CBD in 2018, I stillhave some beef with this and

(11:12):
it's because so the federalgovernment in 2018, released
something called the Farm Billand that basically regulates,
like, production and sales ofall of these different plants,
essentially um, and so theyde-scheduled cbd.
It used to be schedule one, thehighest tier, just like thc is,

(11:34):
along with, like, I believe,methamphetamine is like it's up
there, yeah, right, literally ashigh up the list as you can get
, um, and so they de-scheduledit, but there was a a hook on it
where they said they won't.
They specifically theirverbiage was that they
descheduled hemp derived cbd,which does not include synthetic

(11:54):
cbd, which is what a lot ofcompanies sell and also what you
can get from the government.
So that was very frustrating.
There were some legal loopholeswe ended up having to jump
through, but I don't evenunderstand what that means you
can synthetically make yeah,okay, so you can synthetically
make cbd.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Is that?
Are there cbd plants that arewithout thc, or do you need to
do some sort of?

Speaker 1 (12:16):
so you can extract it from plants that have other
compounds in it.
It's very like a verypharmaceutical approach so you
can extract it and purify CBDfrom plants that have all sorts
of other things, but you canalso make the compound of CBD
just like how you would make thecompound of Adderall or

(12:37):
whatever pharmaceutical you'retaking in a bottle.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
And you can also just have a CBD plant.
I, I think so.
Okay, we don't know for sure.
Okay, but typically it'ssynthetic or it's extracted,
derived, yeah, from the plant.
It's hemp.
Derived is hemp.
The same thing is hemp's.
The plant.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
So if you hear like cannabis, marijuana all the same
, okay, yeah, like you can buyhemp bags a lot of people are
really into the hemp lotion,hemp balm, that kind of stuff,
yeah, but you can extract CBDfrom all those things.
Okay, which was annoying whenwe were trying to source CBD for
our research, when it was likeyou can legally have hemp

(13:16):
derived but we couldn't sourcehemp derived.
So we actually spent 16 monthsgetting a schedule, one drug
license from the federalgovernment to study cbd and I
was like I can go to 7-eleven oncampus, I can go to 7-eleven,
buy it and take it, but I cannotstudy it because it's illegal

(13:37):
federally oh yeah, that was themost annoying 16 months ever.
Yeah, and you can't get fundeduntil you like have the license
to have the drug.
So we were basically sittingthere like twiddling our thumbs,
just waiting, just waiting.
Okay, and it was covid, so likeit took forever.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Oh my gosh yeah, but so so what made you say I want
to see if cb, what?
Just the timing of like CBDcoming up and you looking at
fetal development?

Speaker 1 (14:07):
It was mostly because so I wanted to study something
related to pregnancy, and one ofthe most common debilitating
symptoms is morning sickness andpeople.
I haven't had them myself, butI do have so much empathy for
people.
I like that they call itmorning sickness, even though

(14:27):
it's like such a misnomer, likethat is an all day yeah thing,
and I just have so much sympathyfor the person who's like
laying on their bathroom floorat two in the morning, hugging a
toilet for like the fourth weekin a row, yeah, yeah, just
miserable.
And at that point, like I feellike there's a point of
desperation that you hit whereyou're just like googling, like

(14:50):
can I do this, can I do this?
Will this help me?
Will that help me?
Yeah.
And at the time there was thisbig influx, partially on social
media, partially on like therest of the internet, like on
Facebook and TikTok and all thatstuff, but also on like google.
Um, that was saying, like nope,cannabis is totally safe, 100

(15:12):
safe.
Um, like I'm these are allanonymous accounts, obviously,
but it'd be like I'm a nurse,you're totally fine, there's no
legal repercussions like yeah,my doctor told me to do this.
This is how you can avoid likeprosecution Because it's a
federal one.
Cannabis as a whole is still afederal one, federal schedule

(15:32):
one drug.
If you test positive at laborand delivery units, depending on
your state, that's an automaticCPS referral for cannabis or
for CBD.
No for cannabis, oh, got it.
So at the time I was wanting tostudy cannabis yeah, and in
Colorado I was like it's legal,yeah, I should be able, like
this should be easy.

(15:53):
And then it turned out itwasn't easy, so I was like I'll
do CBD Like CBD is new, got it.
It's hip, it's like lessstigmatized.
Yeah stigmatized.
Yeah, and it's now at wholefoods, so like this is gonna be
so easy and then, and then ittook the 16 months right and I
was like it's not easy.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
So then, once you decided that you were gonna do
it, then how did you do it?

Speaker 1 (16:17):
yeah, um, I work in pre-clinical research, which
means I work with cells andanimals instead of people, so
with people in general andespecially with a pregnant
population.
There's so many ethicalconsiderations like it's totally
unethical to have this drug and, no, there could potentially be

(16:37):
risk, I'm going to randomizepregnant patients to take it,
like no board is going toapprove that without the
possibility of extreme benefitlike right that's not gonna
happen.
So, um, all of my work waspre-clinical, which means
basically, we had all of thesecolonies of mice and we would

(16:58):
set them up with males and theywould get pregnant and we would
it's called plug checking.
You have to, like, set themouse up with a male mouse and
then leave them overnight andthen go look in their hoo-ha in
the morning and see if there'ssperm in it.
Oh my gosh, yeah, it was.
That was.
That was fun, love it likehundreds of mice.

(17:22):
Yeah, oh.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
Oh my gosh, that's amazing.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah, and then you take the male out.
So now you have this littlefemale pregnant early, early,
early pregnancy.
Mouse and mouse pregnancies arepretty similar to humans
translationally, but they'rereally quick.
So mice are only pregnant forthree weeks.
Oh, wow.
And then they pop out theirpups, and they usually have
about eight pups.
Oh, wow.
I know Yikes, and what we woulddo is so CBD.

(17:52):
There's a lot of a lot of theprior literature was doing like
injections and things like thatand we're like well, no human is
out here injecting CBDinjecting CBD.
That's not something that'sgoing to happen, right, and so
we wanted to.
And the way that the drug ismetabolized is super different,
so similar to like other drugs.
You're gonna feel verydifferent if you orally ingest

(18:17):
it, if you snort it, if youinject it like it can be the
same thing, but it's gonna makeyou feel really differently.
And with cannabis, a lot ofpeople are familiar with the
difference between like smokingcannabis and taking an edible.
Like smoking will get you highreally quickly and then it
peters off very quickly, butedibles take a lot longer to set

(18:37):
up and then they come down.
Very similar with cbd just theway it's metabolized in the body
right, but you're not feelinglike yeah, and so I was like
injections aren't the way.
Also, I like don't feel likeinjecting mice every day.
Yeah, we decided to dosomething called an oral gavage,
which is like a little kind oflike a little feeding tube that

(19:00):
you give the mouse, and so wetook the CBD.
It finally came from thefederal government, in all of
its lockboxes.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
It's really fun, and we dissolved it in sunflower oil
.
We just Googled, like CBDproducts and found that a lot of
the oral solutions were insunflower oil and we're like,
okay, we'll do that one.
And so we dissolved it.
And then every day I would godown and I would weigh the mouse
because she gains weight duringpregnancy and I would give her

(19:28):
this one standard dose of CBDwith the little feeding tube.
So it's kind of like if she hadhad an edible.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Comparatively, Right Metabolizing.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
And then you do that all the way through their
pregnancy and then they givebirth and you let the pups you
know they they breastfeed fornormal, and then we separate
them from their moms oncethey're like weaning age.
But you didn't do.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
CBD during breastfeeding.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
They do not do CBD during breastfeeding.
However, a very interestinglittle caveat that not a lot of
people know is so CBD and allthe other cannabinoids those
molecules are all, based ontheir structure, really fat
soluble.
They're not water soluble.
So when you think about likealcohol, you pee out alcohol
because it's water soluble.
But cannabinoids are fatsoluble, which means when you

(20:20):
consume them they store in fattytissues and breast milk happens
to be like the best fattytissue that's ever existed.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
So all we the only studies I've seen have looked at
THC and CBD, but both of themhave shown that actually, when
you're consuming THC or CBDwhile either breastfeeding or
right before delivery, whenyou're starting to build those
breast milk stores, it actuallyit not only goes into your
breast milk, but it actuallyaccumulates in breast milk

(20:54):
because it's like this is thebest fatty storage place, like
we're all gonna go yeah, andthere was some weird issues.
This is like such a caveat, butI find it really interesting.
There was a lot of issues where, at some of the breast milk
banks, you know how people whohave like overspent donate.
They test all the breast milkfor for everything right yeah

(21:17):
it's clean and they were gettingalmost no cannabis positive
breast milk and they're likecannabis consumption rates are
very high.
Yeah, this doesn't make anysense.
And it turned out that theywere using the same test you
would use on a urine drug screenon the milk, but urine gets the

(21:37):
water soluble metabolites andnot the milk soluble metabolites
.
So then they went back andstarted retesting the milk and
like a ton of it yeah withcannabis positive, and they're
like, oh god, we need, oh mygosh, they just changed, like
all their protocols yeah, I'mglad they figured it out.
Yeah right, no kidding, but itwas kind of a funny moment where

(21:59):
we were like we need to keep inmind how this drug works.
But interesting, there's aconcern like if you're consuming
all the way during yourpregnancy, when you're putting
on all that fat as you have tocarry a pregnancy, totally
you're storing cannabinoids inthat fat buildup and then you
have the baby and you'rebreastfeeding and you're burning

(22:21):
all of that fat.
There's this hypothesis thatyou're actually liberating a lot
of those cannabinoids back intoyour bloodstream as you're
burning that fat and then itgoes through the breast milk and
can be detected in baby'sbloodstream.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
Which who?
But that's what your researchis Like.
Is that a bad thing, Like Iguess, like, oh my gosh, that's
exactly.
Is it better, Right?
Okay, so let's keep going.
So you do it to them allthrough their pregnancy, but not
during breastfeeding, not notduring breastfeeding and not

(22:57):
before pregnancy.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
Um, and so then the pups are born and you let them
grow up a little bit and then werun them through, like you know
the stereotypical science thingwhere it's like a mouse in a
maze.
That's the cheese part cheeseis fake, there's no cheese
involved but there are mazes,lots and lots of mazes that lots
and lots of researchers havefigured out, like this maze
specifically tests cognition,and this maze specifically tests
anxiety and this memory.

(23:20):
Yeah, there's like a bajillionmazes.
That's bizarre kind of that.
You run the mice through and sowhat?
I went into this.
So what the literature showedbefore I started was that the
effect of cannabis like fullcannabis, thc all of it from
clinical studies, retrospectiveclinical studies, which means
people consumed cannabis duringtheir pregnancies as much as

(23:42):
they wanted, whenever theywanted, like there was no
standardization, but they justreported that they were taking
it.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
Which gets rid of the ethical problem right, which
gets rid of the ethical?

Speaker 1 (23:51):
problem right, which gets rid of the ethical problem,
but there's no controls, right,so you're like so they might be
taking it once a week, one timeduring their pregnancy, every
day exactly, and you only, soyou have to go on what they say.
But there's even though, even ifyou're a researcher and you're
like I am not a doctor, I cannotreport you to anybody like I am
simply a doctor, I cannotreport you to anybody like I am

(24:13):
simply a researcher there'sstill that bias of like.
But what if you do sort ofthing?
So even then it wasunderreported compared to when
we took blood and urine, andpeople who said that they
weren't clearly were so, butthose studies they kids for.
For I think those kids are likeeight or nine now, but the most

(24:33):
recent published data was fromwhen they were five, okay, and
that was showing that in utero,cannabis exposure was causing
anxiety in these kids and ADHDcan even sometimes compared to
their non-exposed siblings.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
Yeah, um, but the mechanism wasn't figured out yet
.
We were just seeing all thesecorrelations between the kids
that were exposed compared.
Oh, wow, yeah, but themechanism wasn't figured out yet
.
We were just seeing all thesecorrelations between the kids
that were exposed compared tokids that weren't.
But we didn't know.
Is that THC?
Is that CBD, like?
Is it the dose?
Is it the timing?
Was there a critical windowduring pregnancy?

Speaker 2 (25:07):
Oh, my gosh.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
We're not sure, yeah, and so that's also so hard when
these patients are pregnant andthey're coming in saying like
is this okay?
And the doctors are like yeahno, no yeah I don't think so,
like this is all the data wehave, so like tbd, and so what
we wanted to see was if cbd wascausing a lot of those

(25:28):
behavioral effects.
So we were doing the tests foranxiety and memory and cognition
and all sorts of other stuffRight, so the sorry real quick
just to summarize what you'vejust said.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
So the studies were for full cannabis, like somebody
just smoking weed somebodysmoking weed and and yeah, and
just reporting that they'redoing it, but it's very
uncontrolled, which then led toanxiety, add, but you're like
but what was that exactly?
So you pulled the one compoundof CBD to be like, maybe it's

(26:00):
this let's check this out, seeif this has anything to do with
it when you could have pulledTHC.
Or you could have started doingthe dosage or checking, like
you said, the critical periods.
The first trimester is thesecond.
Okay, all right, we're going totake a brief break to talk
about the viral frownies thatyou see all over Instagram.
It's supposed to be thenon-toxic version of Botox and
essentially what it is is it isa cast that you put on.

(26:20):
I put it on my forehead and soit just like makes your muscles
not move, and it's supposed totrain your muscles not to move.
I wear it at night.
Sometimes I wear it when I'mworking.
Anytime I'm in a scowl.
I don't really care too muchabout like the crow's feet or
the lines across my forehead.
I have this butt crack right inbetween my.
Some people call it the 11s.
It's probably more appropriate.

(26:41):
Mine's just one, though, so Ijust don't want to call it the
one, so I call it the butt crack.
I would recommend.
I say it's like working out.
So if you're consistent with it, it will work.
If you're not consistent withit, it won't work.
And I know that because I'vebeen not consistent with it and
I noticed that my butt crackcomes back full fledged.
So I'm back on the train ofbeing consistent with it.

(27:02):
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can go to HeyShaylacom slashbrownies POD and you can use
HeyShayla as a discount code.
Let's get back to the show.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
So the first study we did was high dose.
It's 50 mg per kg, which isjust like way higher than a
normal human would take.
But we wanted to go high andsee what we find, Because if you
go too low and then you don'tfind anything're like I don't
know if there actually was there.
So we started with a high dosejust to see um and we ran them

(27:36):
through these tests and I wasreally excited that there wasn't
any changes in anxiety or adhd.
We didn't specifically look atadhd but, um, there was no
changes in anxiety compulsivity,which is like one of the
factors of like OCD.
Okay.
Help compulsive my SAR and wedidn't see any changes in memory

(27:58):
and I was like, oh my God, isthis a wonder drug?
This is the miracle drug.
Is this going to be perfect,like I was.
I was, so it was kind of hardbecause it was negative data
which is really hard to publish.
But I was like this is awesome,oh my God, we're doing so well.
And then we ran this test ofcognition and unfortunately,

(28:19):
weirdly, there was a big sexdifference.
So the males were totally fine.
We were like, okay, that's fine.
But the females had reallydifficult times completing this
cognitive challenge repeatedly,like different mice, multiple
times the females were notmeeting these cognitive markers

(28:39):
compared to the mice, and we Iforgot to mention we had this
whole doubled group of controlmice where they had the same
handling every day by theresearch team.
We were totally blinded towhich group was which.
So they were getting justsunflower oil as I can during
this time.
We had no, like me as aresearcher, I had no idea which

(29:00):
group was which to decrease bias.
Right, the females that werecbd exposed were having all of
these problems and we're like'sreally interesting.
We hadn't looked at cognitionin the clinical population.
So I was kind of like maybeit's a fluke, like maybe we'll
see where it goes.
And so we partnered with thisother lab on campus that's a

(29:22):
neurodevelopment lab and whatthey wanted to do was look at a
part of the brain it's calledthe prefrontal cortex.
It's like right here behindyour forehead and that's where
personality and thinking, likethat's really what makes you you
kind of, is the prefrontalcortex and that's also where
cognition kind of lays.

(29:42):
And so they wanted to look atthe brains of these mice and see
what was going on in theprefrontal cortex.
And they looked at the malesand the females that were CBD
exposed and vehicle exposedVehicle is just the sunflower
oil and they were also blinded.
They didn't know which groupwas which.
And the males, just like in thecognitive studies, had no
differences.

(30:02):
The males were chilling Likethey were totally fine, but the
females they saw that theneurons in the prefrontal cortex
from the CBD exposed mice hadmuch more difficulty
communicating with each other.
So in your brain when you haveone neuron it has to talk to
another neuron by sending thisthing called an action potential
and then that kind of tricklesdown to get to where you need to

(30:25):
go.
Basically, and these mice ittook a lot more to get them to
elicit an action potential, liketo get one started or to
respond to an action potential.
They had a really difficulttime doing that and the it was
funny because my friends whowere running those experiments
were like I'm blinded, but Ihave a theory as to which one's

(30:46):
which, and I was like, yeah, dothey know your outcome, did they
?

Speaker 2 (30:52):
know when they started studying?
Did they know that you foundthat the female cbd?

Speaker 1 (30:58):
they did okay, so they were kind of why we started
partnering with them and then,when one group was lower, they
were like and they finishedtheir data collection.
They're like so is this one thecbd group?

Speaker 2 (31:06):
and I was like yeah, yeah, cbd group okay, so what
does that look like like slowcognitive function?
I understand like my electiveclass in college was
neuroscience and I was just likelike I loved it.
I didn't do well.
I think I got a c in the classbut I could give I care less
about the c, I was so fascinated.

(31:27):
But okay, so you're saying theneurons and the extra potential,
but what does that look like ina human to have low cognitive
function?

Speaker 1 (31:36):
So it's hard because we can't do a direct comparison
with humans, because we can'tlike slice a human's brain and
then watch it, if that makessense.
But when your neurons arecommunicating less to each other
you have less overall action,potential activity.
So there's this thing called anMRI or an fMRI.

(31:57):
It's a functional MRI that youcan go in and it can look at the
activity of a human brain.
Like have you ever seen thosepictures where it's like, when
you see this image, this area ofyour brain lights up that kind
of stuff?
That's kind of as close to wecan get as humans, that like
what we're doing in these mice.
And it would basically say thatwhen, in a normal situation

(32:19):
when you'd have this muchactivity going on in the
prefrontal cortex, if you werecbd exposed, you have dampened
that activity, you don't have asmuch.
But I mean, does that?

Speaker 2 (32:28):
look like you are tripping more.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
You can't think of words fast enough, like, like
kind of yeah, so most of thecognitive, and so in mice we
have the brain stuff.
The cognitive skill is like achallenge.
So you repeatedly show thesemice to a challenge and once
they've seen it once and thenthey see it again, they should
know how to okay.
This is what I'm asking yeahtheir and they don't.
Their time stays the same tocomplete the task.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
Got it that they've already seen, so they have a
harder time like learning.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
They have a harder time learning.
And so there's a bunch ofdifferent ways you can look at
that.
In humans, a lot of them aresurveys, a lot of them in kids,
it's like braid the rope, canyou braid the rope?
You've braided the rope, canyou braid it again?
Okay, like that kind of is themost translationally relevant.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
Okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
Yeah, so that was kind of one of the biggest
findings that we had was thischange in cognition in the
females that were exposed, andthat it wasn't kind of a fluke
and that actually their, theirbrain is signaling differently,
and so what we did um after that, what we were looking at, so

(33:40):
that was a high dose cbd everyday during pregnancy, right then
we did something called a doseresponse.
so instead of giving 50 mgs perkick per day in this next big
cohort we did three differentdoses.
We did 50 mgs per kg per day,just like we had 25 mgs per kg
per day, and then 5 mgs per kgper day, and 5 is like a very

(34:01):
translationally relevant dose,like something you could easily
consume if you were buying CBDat Whole Foods.
Oh, 5 would be what, like atypical person would 5 is much
more relevant to what a humanwould consume and the data is
not published yet, but we sawessentially the same thing in
those mice.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
So then, what would be the next step?

Speaker 1 (34:24):
Then what we did.
So those mice are all growingup and I defended in September
so I haven't been back in thelab but the people are.
The rest of the people in thelab are like still actively
doing these studies as the miceget older.
So we did the dose response andwe really liked that five meg
per keg dose because we're likewe're still seeing effects.

Speaker 2 (34:42):
Yeah, and is it still just with the females?

Speaker 1 (34:47):
That one was.
And then I have this whole.
I'll tell you about like kindof the whole other side of the
story, which is hard becauseit's not published yet, so it's
like it hasn't gone through peerreview.
We're still collecting some ofthe data, but we're also seeing
all of these metabolic effects,which is basically like the mice
that came out at this high dose, the 50 makes per kick.

(35:09):
We to give you like the briefstory of how we even started
looking at that we had looked atthis part of the brain and we
thought we were going to see alot of changes in the genes, so
like the things that code foreverything that goes on in all
of your cells.
We were looking at all thesepathways of all of these genes
and we thought we were going tosee all of these

(35:30):
neurodevelopmental genes come upand the most changed.
And we didn't.
We actually saw a lot ofchanges in metabolic pathways,
which is like how you useglucose, how you respond to
insulin, like everything youthink of when you think of like
diabetes.
Yeah, those genes were superdifferent and we were like, okay

(35:50):
, that's weird unexpected ideawhy, why, and we went back to
the literature and, right as wewere doing that a new study had
been published from thatclinical group of those kids
that were growing up, that werefive years old, and it showed
that the cannabis full cannabis,thc and cbd exposed kids had
higher adiposity and higher BMIand higher fasting blood glucose

(36:14):
than the non-exposed kids.
And we're like, huh, is there ametabolic effect here?
Like what, what's going on?
And we're like, well, we havethe mice, let's test it, like,
let's rule this out, and so youknow when you have to do your
glucola drink, like the that wedid that on the mice.

(36:36):
Okay, okay, you give themglucose and you see how well
they respond.
Yeah, and they failed it.
They all failed it.
The CBD mice were super glucoseresistant and were like glucose
intolerant and we're likethat's weird, glucose intolerant
and we're like that's weird andwe're like maybe, maybe, what
if?
What if we give them insulinand see if they respond to that?

(37:00):
Are they?
Are they resistant to insulin?
So we gave them insulin andthey were resistant to insulin
and we were like what in theworld is going on here?
But they had the same bodycomposition, so they weighed the
same and they had the same bodycomposition.
So they weighed the same andthey had the same amount of fat
and the same amount of muscleand no difference in gender no
difference in gender, just um.
all all of the cbd mice wereshowing this stuff and we put

(37:23):
them in this thing called acalorimeter which measures, like
how much they breathe and howmany calories they're burning.
It's like this weird littleenclosed box, wow.
And it showed that the micewere acting totally the same.
And I'm a I'm a brain behaviorperson.
So I was like, if these miceare glucose intolerant, insulin
resistant, like they're probablyeating more and moving less,

(37:44):
like that would make sense.
But we measured it and theyweren't, and we're like okay, so
they're not acting anydifferently, like they're acting
the same.
Why, what's going on?
And then I had this momentwhere I realized that I'm such a
brain person but during fetaldevelopment, when you're being
exposed to CBD and your brain'slike soaking it all in, I kind

(38:07):
of forgot that, like so is theliver, and so is the pancreas,
and so is everything else in thebody.
That's also a fatty tissue thathe loves to go into.
And I was like, oh yeah, thoseorgans could also be affected.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
Right, Just looking at the brain here but yeah, and
so we ended up.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
We, those studies, are like finally wrapping up.
We're trying to get itpublished, hopefully here
shortly, but classifying theglucose intolerance and insulin
resistance that follow the highdose.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
So then does that mean diabetes?

Speaker 1 (38:42):
Kind of it's like diabetes is hard to measure in a
mouse.
Okay, because it's kind of likea clinical phenotype.
Diabetes is hard to measure ina mouse because it's kind of
like a clinical phenotype, butit's.
It's kind of like as close asyou can get to this mouse being
like a diabetic mouse.
Okay, yeah, but the same likehigh blood sugar, like all of
that is the same in the mice asit is in like a diabetic human.

(39:06):
And so when we did that doseresponse so that was at the 50
megs per gig and then we did the25 and the five, and the five
actually showed worse effect onthe metabolic outcomes.
Right, yeah, that's the face Imade, where I was like what,
what is going on?
And when you think aboutexposures you're like more is

(39:27):
worse, obviously, like that'show, how drugs work.
And then I, as I was going backinto the literature, I actually
think it's more of kind of likea Goldilocks situation where if
you give too much of the drug,maybe you're shutting down a
whole pathway, maybe you're liketelling these receptors that

(39:48):
there's way too much going on.
They're downregulatingthemselves, who knows.
But maybe at this low doseyou're at that perfect window of
like activating the receptorsenough to cause a change without
shutting them down.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
Right Interesting.

Speaker 1 (40:04):
So we were like that's bizarre.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
Okay.
So we kept going with this fivemg per kg dose.
So we went from high dose allthe way through pregnancy.
We repeated it with the lowdose and we're like, okay, this
low dose is where we want tostick.
And then the most recentstudies that these mice are like
they're young now they'reprobably only a couple of months
old at this point.
But then we wanted to do awindows of exposure.

(40:29):
So we were looking at that lowdose of five mg per kg of early
pregnancy or of late pregnancyand then run the same tests and
see if there's any changes.
And unfortunately I don't havethat data because we're still
collecting it.
So, interesting To see if it'slike what if you do low dose
during late pregnancy?

(40:50):
What if we don't see it there?
We're not sure because we'restill collecting it Right, but
I'm still approaching it withthis like I want to.
I want to be able to rule outsomething to be like maybe it's
safe during this.
I would love to be able to saythat because it's totally
accessible.
And like, the hardest thingwith CBD is that it works really

(41:13):
well.
It's a very effectiveanti-emetic which sucks, yeah,
right right like it's hardbecause it's like that cost
benefit analysis, if it'ssomething that's not helping you
, that poses risk.
It's really easy to stop, butwhen you have a really severe
morning sickness and this worksit's the the barrier is much

(41:36):
higher.
Totally potential risk only inmice, but also we can't test it
in humans so we have to go withthe mice, so it's very much so
like a person-to-person decisionand and one of the reasons I
actually so, I was in the phdprogram, um, and I was really

(41:57):
enjoying it.
That was all the mouse stuff,um.
But during that time, a lot ofmy colleagues that I would
interact with, who are verybasic science people, I would be
presenting this data and theywould ask me a question at the
end and they'd be like so youshowed that this drug, at this
dose, causes harm.
Ergo, anyone who's using thisis like clearly a bad person.

(42:20):
And I had some people who werelike this is why this should be
illegal again, and I was likewhoa, whoa, yeah, so not what I
said.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
Yeah right.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
Well, I go back through my slides like I never
once yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
Well, that's like, what, is that Ibuprofen?
I'm not allowed to takeibuprofen, but like that doesn't
mean that we should make itillegal for the general
population to not be able totake ibuprofen.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
Yeah, yeah, and it was like this moral assignment
that they were giving and I waslike, hang on, this is new
research that at that timewasn't published yet.
So how would they know?
Yeah right, there's probablyfive other labs that I could
name that are also studying.

Speaker 2 (43:04):
I was going to ask you that it's?
A small world, and are theyfinding similar things?

Speaker 1 (43:12):
They are finding really similar things, which is
nice, but it's like repetitiveConsistent yeah, but there was
in Europe.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
I remember learning this in college.
There was like an anti-nalearning this in college.
There was like a anti-nauseadrug that was causing yeah, like
babies do not have limbs.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
Yeah, right, thalidomide was a tragedy, right
, but it's, there was people.
I actually did have peoplecompare it to thalidomide and I
was like, okay, well, but I feellike it's the unknown of
exactly what you're saying.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
This is helping me so much and the cost benefit, and
you just don't know yet, right,until you know.
And then, clearly, once youknow, you're not going to do
that and so your whole thing islet's figure that out.
All right, we are going to takea brief break to talk about
expecting and empowered.
If you follow me at all, you'relike Shayla, stop talking about

(44:03):
them.
I can't, I won't, I will never.
If you are pregnant or you're apostpartum and you want to work
out and you need a guide, thisis your guide.
These women are women's healthphysical therapists, a nurse.
They give you a step-by-stepguide through your entire
pregnancy for what is safe to do.
So you don't have to wonder,you don't have to worry about

(44:25):
you're doing the wrong thing.
There's an app.
It does pelvic floor work,which I had no idea that that
was even important.
It's crucial for preparing forlabor and repairing from labor.
And then your workout, and thencore work.
And core work when you're'repregnant is not crunches, so it
just teaches you the way to dothings.
They have a running program,they have yoga, they have all

(44:45):
sorts of stuff on their app andthey have postpartum, so I've
been using this since I waspregnant with my first in 2019.
I am just a huge advocate ofthem, highly recommend.
Hey Sheila will give you adiscount on their, on their app.
Uh, and you can go toHeyShaylacom slash expecting an
empowered pod.
You're welcome.

Speaker 1 (45:05):
Like we have to.
For people to make an informeddecision with their pregnancy,
they have to know the risks andthe benefits, and to do that,
not only do we have to study itto know the risks and the
benefits but also in science wesuck.
We suck at talking to otherpeople like academics are really

(45:27):
good at writing up all theirdata in a very academic manner
and then publishing it in ajournal.
That's a very academic that isbehind a paywall, so normal
people right, can't access it,yeah, and then talking to all of
their colleagues in a reallyacademic manner and being like
we did it right me crazy.

(45:49):
I was like who, frankly, who?
Cares if we, if this mouse didthis one thing, if we never talk
to our ob-gyn colleagues, likeif we never talk to the public,
if we never talk to publichealth people, if we never talk
to clinicians who cares, like?

Speaker 2 (46:07):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
It drove me crazy and so that's when I started
picking up the um maternal,child, public health stuff and
all of my work in that was wasless so cannabis focused and
more so like perinatal substanceuse in general.
Um, but it was so refreshingwhen I was like we are talking
to actual people who are makingactual decisions with the
information.

Speaker 2 (46:28):
And recommendations.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
One of the things that it's also not published,
but it's just kind of like aside project that I'm working on
.
I'm looking at how perinatalcannabis use, or cannabis use
during pregnancy, is portrayedonline like trying to quantify
it.
So if you were say well, Iguess you're what 18 weeks now.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
Congratulations.
Hopefully the morning sicknesshas faded.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
I didn't really get that much this time, but I'll
tell you a story later.

Speaker 1 (46:59):
Say you're like 10 weeks pregnant and just having
an awful, awful time Like thelaying on the bathroom floor
situation and you go online.
I was like I want to know whatI would find if I was that
person and so I went through.

Speaker 2 (47:13):
Girl, you are good.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
It's fun.
There's this whole thing calledCanamami TikTok, canamami
Reddit, canamami Instagram.
There's Facebook, there's awhole app for like Canamami
tiktok, canamami reddit,canamami instagram.
There's facebook.
There's a whole app for likecanamami stuff and everyone
unanimously was saying this istotally safe, there's no effects
, you are totally fine.
Here's how you avoid a drugtest, like don't worry about it.
But then these patients arelike okay, the it's a, it's a.

(47:39):
You know, when you're miserableand you want to find something
validation with what you want.
Yeah, a hundred percentvalidation there's the like the
entire internet is yourvalidation, but the thing that
will not blow up on tiktok isthe cdc being like hey, there
are potential risks.
Weigh the risks and benefitswith your provider.

(48:00):
Like that's not gonna be anyaction no and so they like that.
Information is just notfindable and all of the
published literature is behindthese paywalls, so they can't
access it.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
That's what I was gonna ask you.

Speaker 1 (48:12):
If somebody wants to do learn more about this yeah,
thankfully, a lot of thejournals are moving towards
something called open access,which means basically the
researchers.
This is such a messed up system.
You think when you do researchand you submit a paper that you
like, get paid for the work thatyou did?
Researchers pay journals topublish their research.

(48:33):
Yeah, it's really well.
It has to go through peer reviewand get accepted yeah to pay
fees like upwards in thethousands of dollars, depending
on the journal, and to publishopen access, like one of the the
recent papers we published.
That was on the cognition stuff.
I think it costs like over fivegrand to make it open access so

(48:56):
people who google it can readit.
Yeah, isn't that fun.
Isn't that just like so fun?

Speaker 2 (49:04):
my brain is melting yeah, it hurts.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Um, I don't want to like reference myself, but I did
write a good um.
It's a review paper that isopen access.
It's online.
It's through the, the umjournal of cannabis research
that I can send you a link totoo, okay.
But it basically compiles allthe literature and it's written

(49:26):
in a pretty understandable wayand then has the links to all of
the papers.
So, instead of when people arelike I do my own research and
researchers are kind of like youknow, like we do that, um, but
for people who are doing theirown research, I think it's so
valuable to be like here's theact, like here's the literature.

(49:49):
Right, if you want to peruse it?
Like right, here it is.
It's.
Some of them are written in alevel that not a lot of people
are going to understand.
People with language barriers,like that's a whole other right
loophole that things are nottranslated into other languages.
But I do have a paper that kindof goes through the like why

(50:09):
people are consuming, why obgynsare kind of scared to talk
about it, because they're not.
They're not trained yeah right,they don't know, really they
don't know, unless they'respending all their time like
like searching all of thesepotential articles.
It's not like they're notifiedthat a new yeah right Put out
and it kind of goes through likewhat the clinical data shows,

(50:31):
what the preclinical data shows,and it's very much so written
in a way that's like here's yourinformation, this is your
pregnancy.
Yeah is your information.
This is your pregnancy.
Yeah, if you read these risksand the zofran isn't working and
the unisom isn't working andall the stuff isn't working and
you want to use cbd, go for itlike that's your decision, right

(50:53):
?
Be careful with cannabis,because if you test positive,
cps can be called and it's likea whole thing.
I'm less supportive of cannabisuse as a whole.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
Just the risk of CPS.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
Well, the cannabis use seems to have a lot more
effects than the.
CPS stuff, like the studies ofTHC alone, are kind of more same
effects but more severe.
Okay, so it's not not somethingI wouldn't like recommend
cannabis use during pregnancy,but you know, some people it's
the same thing where, like,people are desperate to do what

(51:30):
they need to do.
So if it's like a recreationaluse, I'd I'd highly recommend
trying to cut it, just likedrinking.
If just like drinking, andthere's people, a lot of people,
argue like, well, cannabisisn't addictive, you can't be
addicted to cannabis, it justlike drinking, it's just like
drinking.
And there's people, a lot ofpeople, argue like, well,
cannabis isn't addictive, youcan't be addicted to cannabis.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
It's like you can be addicted to anything sugar like
well, I think even, notnecessarily even like the drug
of cannabis, but the act ofsmoking and like the habits of
waking up and doing it and likethe spots in the day and
whatever, and the people you'rewith.
Yeah right, there's.

Speaker 1 (52:05):
a huge amount of people who are not in the safest
of relationships and theirpartner is very pressuring.
Or even if they're notexplicitly pressuring, they're
kind of implicitly pressuring.

Speaker 2 (52:18):
What about?
Is there such thing assecondhand?
Absolutely Okay.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
It's just like secondhand nicotine exposure,
wild Secondhand cannabisexposure, yeah, which is also
for people.
So some of the public healthwork I do is in harm reduction
for people who are usingsubstances who are not at a
point where they can stop.
So there's people withsubstance use disorders,
including cannabis use disorder,where it's like an actual

(52:43):
dependency on cannabis use, justlike how an alcoholic would go
into withdraw from alcohol.

Speaker 2 (52:51):
Wow.
Really I didn't know that thatcould happen with cannabis.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
Yeah, it can happen with anything.
So many things Caffeine.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
Do you know anything about caffeine during pregnancy?
Because this wasn't full, thisfull mason jar.

Speaker 1 (53:05):
Hey, the research has shown that the limit is
actually pretty high to consumecoffee.
So see, that's why we need todo the study, but a lot of the
work we're doing right now.
So, for the people who can cutuse, highly recommend cutting it
.
People who can cut use, highlyrecommend cutting it.
Like, providing thealternatives for nausea that

(53:27):
have been rigorously studied tonot have negative effects the,
the zofran, the, the unison, thevitamin b6, like all of that
stuff, has been very rigorouslystudied, whereas the cannabis
stuff is so new and it's poppingup with these risks that we're
like, please go to the ones.

(53:50):
But for people who can't stop orchoose not to stop, or whatever
it may be trying to educatethem on harm reduction.
So not smoking with the baby inthe room.
Not smoking or doing ediblesright before breastfeeding,
right before it goes into yourmilk supply, to um like
consuming it after breastfeedingif you're breastfeeding.

Speaker 2 (54:04):
Okay, so that's interesting, because with
alcohol they and by no, they andI don't even know that I say
they and I don't think I meanscientists they, as in the
internet, probably recommenddrinking like as you're doing it
.

Speaker 1 (54:19):
Yes, I've heard that.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
because, because it doesn't go it's like your blood
doing it.
Yes, I've heard that, because,because it doesn't go, it's like
your blood, like it takes alittle while for it to get in
the water soluble.
Okay, there you go.
Okay, so that's what I wasgonna ask you.
This is me thinking that I'm ascientist.
Are you ready?

Speaker 1 (54:33):
you are.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
You're everyone's a scientist in whatever do female
mice have more fat than malemice?

Speaker 1 (54:47):
while pregnant and while breastfeeding.
No babies, they put on fat,they build fat while pregnant.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
Okay, no, no, I'd have to check like baseline to
baseline, because I wouldn't besurprised well, I feel like that
would be the fat storing in thefemales versus the fat storing
in the males, because adult,like humans, we are supposed to
have like a higher fatpercentage right right, but I'm

(55:18):
what I'm just thinking as yourresearch companion here.
I'm like, maybe because thesebaby females, maybe females have
more fat, right, I don't know.
Maybe Bring it to your team andcredit me, I will.
I will Put me in your research.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
No, it's really interesting Because the weird
thing with research is that youkind of just like pick rabbit
holes to go down and you're likethis is my rabbit hole.
So, like, my rabbit hole is CBDin pregnancy.
And then there's other peoplewhose rabbit holes are like the
caffeine, like we have peoplewhose entire careers are
dedicated to understandingcaffeine in pregnancy.
Wild, which is crazy, but soimportant, so annoyed when you
go on the internet and there'speople who are like no, no, no,

(56:04):
it's fine.
And you're like yeah, yeah no,but yeah.
So like some of the major harmreduction stuff for cannabis use
, at least it's like washingyour hands after using, so
you're it's not on your hand,your little baby interesting
yeah, we're reducing as much aswe can like, even people who

(56:27):
want to continue consumingduring their pregnancies.
Trying to decrease the potencyof the cannabis, like if they
can switch from a really highthc strain to a low thc strain,
like they're still consuming,but it's less THC at least, so
that's a win.
Trying to consume a little lessoften.

(56:48):
You can still consume, butreduce if possible.
And then for those that arekind of postnatally, it's a lot
of the please wash your hands,please be aware of secondhand
smoke exposure, please becognizant of breastfeeding,
please be cognizant of having asober caregiver and a lot of
right.

(57:09):
Explain to.
That is like a lot of peoplethat I've worked with in the
substance use world are likewell, it doesn't matter if I'm
high while I'm at home.
And I'm like would you, wouldyou be okay if you hired a
babysitter?
And they were high while takingcare of your kid?
And they're usually like no,and I'm like I love your like

(57:31):
realistic approach.

Speaker 2 (57:33):
You're like, I've done the research.
There's negative effects, right, there's risks, but also I'm
not blind to the fact thatpeople are addicted, that people
are in relationships withpeople that are doing that, that
people are just going to chooseto continue to do this, and so
if that's your, if that's yourchoice, here are other options,

(57:53):
like, like what you're sayingwash your hands, go in a
different room, make sure thatyou're, you have a sober
caregiver, like.
I appreciate that so much ofjust not being like.
You need to stop, and if youdon't, you're a terrible person.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
Right.
Have you ever told someone witha substance use disorder to
just like can you just like,quit?
You should stop that.
No, and also like with and likeeven compared to kind of a lot
of people when they viewsubstance use, Even compared to

(58:28):
kind of a lot of people.
When they view substance use,they view this like 25 to 45
year old male is like everyone'sidea of like who has substance
use disorders, but everyonecompletely neglects the history
of moms having hidden substanceuse disorders whether it's when
we're prescribed benzos for likemultiple decades.
To like get through being astay-at-home mom, basically, or
the the wine moms right arguably, probably, are verging on the

(58:49):
the boundary of alcoholismtotally, but it's like
normalized, normal.

Speaker 2 (58:54):
Yes, totally normalized.

Speaker 1 (58:55):
And then there's also the whole physiologic component
of like.
There is morning sickness, yourhormones are changing, your
moods are changing.
A lot of people are using umcan't.
In the surveys that are asking,like pregnant people, why
they're using cannabis ingeneral, yeah, vast majority up
in like the 70 to 80 percent aresaying nausea and vomiting

(59:15):
makes sense, but also anxiety itdoes.
It can in some people.
Some people it increasesanxiety, but a lot.
Some people it increases anxiety, but a lot of people use it to
decrease anxiety, are using itas an anti-anxiety med and they
get so much flack for that andI'm like they're about to have a
baby.
Yeah, you'll be anxious.
Normal response right, growingand developing an entire human

(59:41):
and then just having anotherhuman in your life you have to
be responsible for and like payfor right.
That makes sense to me.
That people are anxious, yes,and there's a lot of people,
some that are very rightfully soand some that are a little more
like propaganda-y, but that arefearful of the pharmaceutical

(01:00:04):
system and they don't likepharmaceuticals and they want
something that's natural andthey do, even though it's
probably produced in like thesame factories but it's bottled
with like the green, the cutelittle like green logo and like
healthy yeah and you buy it atwhole foods and they're like
this is safe and natural becauseit's a plant.

(01:00:24):
And you're like it comes from aplant.
Opioids come from a plant.
Like lots of stuff comes fromplants hmm, totally doesn't
guarantee safety.
But, right, I understand thatpeople are like I don't want to
take zofran.
It's made in a pharmacy likethis is a plant and I want the
plant.
And I'm like, okay, that's yourchoice, right, do what you need

(01:00:46):
to do.
Like I don't recommend it, butI'm not going to be like you're
a, you're an unfit.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
I'm not going to judge you.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
You're doing what you need to do with the information
that you have available, whichis usually not very much, to try
to not throw up all day.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Yeah, and like I, I get it totally so, in the most
concise, what would you the useof from what you found in your
research the use of cbd cancause?
What are the?
What are the negative?
I mean I know we've talkedabout this this whole time, but

(01:01:22):
I want like a brief summary.

Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
From the research that we have done, consumption
of CBD during pregnancy canaffect the cognition of
offspring, the neurodevelopmentof offspring and also the
metabolism in offspring.
Metabolism in offspring so thatglucose and insulin regulation,

(01:01:46):
which can have lasting effectson how these offspring that are
mice take that with a grain ofsalt perform cognitively, how
they respond to food and theiractivity later in life.

Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
And would you blanket that for male and female, are
you saying?

Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
the metabolism stuff.
Yes, the cognitive stuff is.
We only saw it in females, andthen other researchers have seen
other things.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
Oh, really Okay, and males.
And then what would you say?
I guess could you say could youdo a summary on I feel like
it's kind of loaded, but eithercannabis or THC, like can you do
a similar thing from whatyou've seen from other people's
research on?

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
Yeah, absolutely so.
From the cannabis research,which is a little more robust
because it is both preclinicaland clinical retrospective human
studies, we see changes inanxiety of offspring, both males
and females, in higher ADHDrates, and we're seeing changes
also in metabolism, when itcomes to how much fat they put

(01:02:51):
on their bodies, what theirblood sugar is and also their
activity levels when they'reexposed to cannabis.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
They have more, higher or lower activities
levels when they're exposed tocannabis, they have more, higher
, lower activities, loweractivities.
Okay, and then is it the sorry.
What'd you say?

Speaker 1 (01:03:06):
that's in that metabolic world, when they have
higher body fat, the restingblood, glucose, all of that and
then is that the same answer forthc specific?
That the clinical data is fullcannabis product.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
The thc specific literature is very similar okay
so your scientificrecommendation was to try to cut
cannabis and and cbd, but cbdyou feel a little more
comfortable with.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
I think I would try to cut all of it if possible,
but the risks of THC appear tobe worse than the risks of CBD.
It's the same thing but just toa bit of a higher scale.
So if people are really adamantabout not stopping use or
transitioning to one of theother alternatives for their

(01:04:02):
nausea, vomiting or anxiety,getting off of that high potency
THC is a big one.
Decreasing the amount ofconsumption, like the volume of
consumption or the timing ofconsumption, if they can cut it
from twice a day to once a day,if you can cut it from every day
to every other day, like that'sbig Um.

(01:04:23):
And if you can cut, like, fromTHC to CBD, that's harm
reduction.
If you can cut from CBD to theUnisom and B6, like that's harm
reduction, um.
And also just really ensuringthat harm, that harm reduction
of trying to expose the baby aslittle as possible.

(01:04:44):
So, like the baby's alreadyhere for people who have already
delivered, let's avoid secondhits.
Let's avoid smoking in the sameroom.
Let's make sure we wash ourhands after consuming.
Let's make sure we have a sobercaregiver and getting help when
you need help.
There are huge support networksfor people who have cannabis use
disorders or for people whowant to stop or who want to be

(01:05:06):
in an environment that supportsthem when they're conflicted and
they're like I don't know how Ifeel, like I'd love to stop,
but I feel very dependent onthis.
It makes me feel comfortable.
So being able to talk tosomebody in that situation
without fear is a really big one, and there's large networks,
like what.
So in Colorado I work with thisone organization called Hard

(01:05:31):
Beauty.
It's a group of people I thinkother states have this as well
but they are women who hadsubstance use disorders in their
own prior pregnancies who arenow in recovery and not using,
and they work as peer support.
So when pregnant patients comein and they report substance use
in a hospital, we can refer,refer, refer them out to hard

(01:05:54):
beauty and they can talk andthey do like support groups and
yoga classes and all of that.
That just gives these new momssome social support that can
actually help them.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
Because if you, you know, have your baby and then
are left with no social supports, that's not gonna deter you
from using totally and I feellike, instead of people who are
like, well, I've never used, butI know that it is bad for you,
versus somebody who's like, yeah, I get it, I was there, yeah,
yeah, okay, so that's great, butother do you would like.

(01:06:29):
What would you even google ifyou were in this, if you were in
Minnesota and you didn't knowabout hard beauty Colorado
probably hmm, there's probably afew different ones.

Speaker 1 (01:06:41):
It could be like cannabis use support groups.
It could be like peer.
Peer support recovery is a bigone.
That's what they kind ofadvertise themselves under.
Peer support is kind of likethe general term for um.
It's almost like comparative todoulas.
I know that's a weirdcomparator to make, but it's

(01:07:02):
like you just bring someone inwho's been in the same situation
at one point or another andthey're not a medical
professional.
They're not there to medicallyguide you, but they're there to
just be like.
I've been here, yeah, reallyhard.
This is what I did call me whenyou're struggling and I'll be
there.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
Sweet, yeah, awesome support recovery services, which
is so I would never google peersupport yeah, well, like to
your point of like what's on theinternet?
If I was struggling and I thinkI would yeah, I don't even know
support group for cannabis momsor something you know, I don't
know yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:40):
And then you'll get the ones that are like, yes,
this is the healthiest thingwe've ever done.
Come to our group and you'relike but also like in the grand
scheme of things, also likegiving the kids who might be at
risk for these cognitive delays,like early intervention that's
a big one.
Like getting them the supportthey need as they go into school
, making sure if maybe they'reat risk maybe you're finding

(01:08:02):
this out and you're three kidsdown the line and you've been
actively consuming cannabis thisentire time and you're like, oh
dear God, I didn't know any ofthis.
Like, none of this is meant toshame those moms.
It's more so.
Just like your kids are at ahigher risk for this, this and
this, let's make sure they'vegot really healthy diets on
board to see if we can decreasesome of those metabolic effects.

(01:08:25):
Let's make sure that they'regetting the early support
intervention so that they canexceed in school.
There's a lot of things that wecan do to mitigate prenatal
exposures.
The best, obviously, isavoiding the prenatal exposures,
but it's not to say that youknow, someone hears this and I,
like the intention is never tomake them feel like guilty or

(01:08:47):
remorseful or anything.
It's like okay, we're nowempowered with the information
that my kid might be at a higherrisk for this, this and this.
Let's try to mitigate that.
Yeah, right as much as we can.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
Right, yeah, you don't know what you don't know
Until you know it, until youknow.
Okay, fascinating.
I'm so, so grateful that youtook the time to chat with me.
I love your approach toeverything, I love the
presentation and I just yes,thank you so much for coming on
and chatting with me about this.

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
All right, I will talk to you soon, all right,
thank you guys so much forlistening.
If you enjoyed it, please sharewith somebody you think would
love, and I would be so honoredif you would subscribe to the
podcast and leave a comment andrating below so I can know what
you guys are digging, what youwant more of, just connect with
you a little better.

(01:09:42):
Thank you so much for listeningand I'll see you next time.

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064 - CBD DURING PREGNANCY: SAFE? Or AVOID it? With scientist Karli Swenson

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}064 - CBD DURING PREGNANCY: SAFE? Or AVOID it? With scientist Karli Swenson