Extraction & infusion for medicine is my thing

[Semiosis]

Exactly! I live in a tropical area of the US a few miles from the world's largest swamp and my bugs must be super tough because nothing seemed to kill them and most of the solutions offered were bottles of water with a few drops of garlic or rosemary oil which apparently my mites found delicious aaahh!!

Haha! I haven't been sure I was making pot plants or a spider mite nursery. The only thing that's saved me has been large outdoor summer grows. It's great to get some tips, because my strategy of simply making as many as possible and harvesting what survives is not the most effective, and puts me at risk because I have to go above legal limits for flowering plants even though I'm not harvesting above legal limits, if that makes sense. I don't think they give clemency simple because I'm a crappy grower who is reduced to wiping mites off the end of my flowers, which is when they seem to gather to feast. I'm very interested in the predatory mites and grateful I got on the forum.

 

[Southerncough]

At least you can legally grow at all!

 

[Semiosis]

great stuff. i hope you stick around and do a journal. make sure to post up your processes and recipes. we could use more content on that focus.


i've been infusing oils for years for use in pills and topicals. i recently adapted to an instant pot method and love the results and simplicity. i run 1:1 cbd/thc strains and thc focused strains.

i use grapeseed oil for the topicals as it is super low skin barrier and penetrates easily. i build my topicals with palm and shea butters, and add other essential oils. i stabilize it for the shelf with organic beeswax.







if used as a spray in veg it should be ok. it's when it's used as a drench that sensitive folk will have issues.
it's used in hair products / shampoo all the time, so maybe watch for that as well.

it's supposedly safe as a spray up to the second wk of flower. i don't use it in flower though. and try to eradicate any mite issues in veg.

Hey, Bluter. I think you're right about neem, absolutely. I remember hearing that people were freaking out that cannabis was causing vomiting, and everyone was worried, and then the found out it was neem poisoning, but I have to stress that I don't know enough about that to say if it was true. I heard it and that was the end of neem for me, at any stage.

I think anything that is convenient for people and works for making the oil is great. I started out with a double boiler and now I distill, but the result is pretty much the same.

It makes sense about grapeseed oil. I picked this up from an abstract; (PDF) Penetration enhancing effects of selected natural oils utilized in topical dosage forms

"Objective: We investigated possible penetration enhancing properties of selected oils, utilizing flurbiprofen as marker compound in emulgel formulations. The formulations were compared to a liquid paraffin emulgel and a hydrogel to establish any significant penetration enhancing effects...Results: The following rank order for the emulgel flux-values was obtained: Hydrogel >>>> olive oil >> liquid paraffin >> coconut oil > grapeseed oil >> Avocado oil ≥ Crocodile oil >> Emu oil. Discussion: Results suggested that oils containing predominantly mono-unsaturated oleic acid, on average increased the flux of the marker to a larger extent than oils containing an almost even mixture of both mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids."

I'm hesitant to say that I've heard about what some call "driver" essential oils--rosemary peppermint, and eucalyptus are examples--that are supposed to be able to attend heavier oils and increase permeability, but I don't have enough information to say if that is reliably true. Everybody has got an opinion. Ditto Aloe Vera gel. I certainly throw them in there, lol. I've been finding that the place to research transdermal absorption is in cosmetology, which interests me about as much as trigonometry does, or maybe less, but those people have been trying to get crap under our skin for decades. If I find anything, I'll post it.

I'm happy to post recipes and such. I'm with you--you can always splotch the oil into a capsule and down the gullet it goes. I dump it into a carrier and use syringes regularly. But I think I've tried most everything--edibles with oil-base, edibles in water-base with emulsifiers, topicals, and I've even (briefly and mostly unsuccessfully) tried to find a carrier and delivery that would allow me to mist it into someone's nose, lol, since sometimes you have someone who needs it faster for pain or anxiety relief but who can't smoke. (if anyone has done this successfully, I'd love to hear about it--I've contemplated suppositories, even).

After a while, everything's the same--you can put the oil into chocolate or into soda or into honey or into hard candies or butter or anything else you like, but the oil is the oil. Once you have a basic idea how to combine those elements and figure dosing, the field is wide open.

One of the things I do think it's important to note is how cannabis is processed through the liver in edibles. If anyone has knowledge or insight, I'd love to discuss it. For example, I have someone who has epilepsy, and the seizures are deadly. The anti-seizure drugs are awful for the liver, but they're also completely necessary, because the seizures are the tonic-clonic, grand mal, stop-your-breathing kind. On the one hand, I firmly believe that the CBD edibles have aided in the gut health that has allowed him to uptake medications more effectively--anyone who has leaky gut knows what's it's like to use "lose" a medication when it goes straight through you, and his uptake has markedly improved since he has been put on high-dose, daily CBD (about three years now with no seizures). At the same time, people should know that CBD/THC can "bump" a medication in the liver. It wants to go first, in terms of release, so it can make certain medications spotty in delivery. I had to weigh that (with doctors), and we decided the benefits outweighed the risk. This would also be a consideration, for example, with those undergoing chemotherapy, since those drugs are also processed through the liver, and it may be better for nausea sufferers to use a vape method instead of edibles, at least to treat that one symptom. At the same time, they can't "smoke" enough to get cancer benefits. Once again, I believe (just an opinion) that finding a "cannabis friendly" doctor who will work with you and is willing to educate her/himself in the use/benefits of edibles is super helpful.

And haven't I gone on.

-S

 

[Semiosis]

At least you can legally grow at all!

Right? I'm very grateful for that. My son was actually one of the first minors, in 2014, in California, to receive a medical marijuana prescription. I moved to Oregon after that, which is even friendlier, but you can still only have four plants in flower.

 

[bluter]

try your friend on subligual doses of the infused oil. i infuse vegetable glycerin to be taken this way. either is proven effective for seizure episodes. the vg is super easy to take on the system and it's delicious.

i've had parents tell me the cbd infusions are an answer from the heavens. i would not recommend a thc infusion on a minor in any way though.

edit : also going an alcohol extraction and tacking is super effective with adults.


more edit : the grape seed oil is thin enough to penetrate and not leave a lasting 'oily' sensation on the skin. the shea and palm butters are for luxury and prolong the effect

 

[greenjeans]

but you can still only have four plants in flower.

It's the same up here - but it pretty loosely enforced from what I can tell - if you are not going nuts, why bother!!

 

[Semiosis]

try your friend on subligual doses of the infused oil. i infuse vegetable glycerin to be taken this way. either is proven effective for seizure episodes. the vg is super easy to take on the system and it's delicious.

i've had parents tell me the cbd infusions are an answer from the heavens. i would not recommend a thc infusion on a minor in any way though.

edit : also going an alcohol extraction and tacking is super effective with adults.


more edit : the grape seed oil is thin enough to penetrate and not leave a lasting 'oily' sensation on the skin. the shea and palm butters are for luxury and prolong the effect

Thanks. My son does get CBD extract in a carrier oil in a syringe, and I've used glycerin, as well, although I've never heard of oil functioning as a sublingual. Maybe that does work. It certainly would once it had been swallowed. My son is no longer a minor now, but he did get THC extract oil when he was fourteen, and it was a doctor who recommended it. I know that may seem strange to some, but all I can say is that it was better than benzos or haldol for sibs.