When my mom was first diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, my brother advised her to smoke some pot. He was joking. My mother is about as likely to light up a joint as a stick of dynamite. But marijuana’s ability to relieve the nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy is pretty widely accepted now.
It turns out that pot may have a more proactive therapeutic function: Researchers at the California Pacific Medical Center say a natural compound in marijuana called cannabidiol (CBD) inhibits the Id-1 gene, which allows cancer cells to metastasize.
The findings, published in the November issue of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, don’t advocate smoking as a CBD-delivery method because it’s bad for your lungs. (Not to mention that marijuana happens to get you stoned.)
But the news is promising. “The findings suggest we may create a whole new family of compounds,” Sean D. McAllister, PhD, one of the study’s two lead researchers, told me. “It’s something to add to the arsenal that is not toxic.” By that he meant not as toxic as the body-crushing drugs used in typical anti-cancer chemotherapy.
CBD might one day be taken either orally or through an inhaler, says McAllister. And anything that would slow down the disease that is ravaging my mother would make me high.
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