From Bomb Blast to Hemp Detective:
Our Story
[Read Time: 7 min, 21 sec]
Over 8 years ago, my brother returned from military tour in Afghanistan with epilepsy, seizures, excruciating pain and PTSD. We watched my brother become a shell of who he used to be. Cleaning blood off the floor from his seizures was a weekly event. It'd take 1-2 hours each morning to wake him up out of his medication. He lost his ability to work, to drive, and function. It was incredibly hard to watch someone you love go through that.
During the process, several people had said, “You’ve got to try CBD.” Five years ago I never believed in it because I thought it was just a way to get high. However, after the millionth person said “try it,” we did. We tried a lot of products. THE RESULT: none of them worked. I’ve worked in domestic and international manufacturing as well as agriculture for my entire professional career. I spent the next 2 years looking at the “WHY” behind CBD not working, and why some was even making it worse. Here’s literally in 7 mins of reading the exact list of what we learned ... it was unexpected and semi-shocking.
How CBD and Cars are Similar:
CBD products go through growth, extraction, emulsion, winterization, decarb, manufacturing, and bottling. During any of those processes, you can cut corners or inadvertently mishandle the process. This can decrease or nullify the effects of the entire product. What happens a lot in the industry is you’ll have someone really great at agriculture and growth, but they don’t know anything about extraction. Or they’re great at extraction, but know nothing about growth, etc. You can be just a few degrees over the right temperature (for just a few minutes) and completely kill off a whole set of the beneficial hemp compounds! Here's something interesting:
In hemp, you have 4 categories of beneficial compounds: flavonoids, terpenes, cannabinoids and micronutrients. CBD is just 1 cannabinoid. Inside of hemp, there are roughly 50 compounds, including CBD. After most hemp products go through processing, normally you can count on 1 or 2 hands how many active compounds are left. Which is fine, if you only need those 5-10 compounds, but sometimes you need more. Let me give you a bad example.
If you have a car, do you need the windows? NO. But, if it is raining, then YES you do. Do you need a seatbelt? NO. But, if you crash, then YES you do. Do you need the starter? YES, you can’t drive without it, even though it’s incredibly small compared to the entire size of your car. In the same way, there are compounds from the plant you may not need, but in certain situations ... you do. If you don’t, you will have literally no effect if those compounds aren’t preserved.
Getting Ratioed:
Also, sometimes you need compounds at certain ratios. If you don’t have keys for your car, you can’t use it. But if someone gives you the keys and you say, “Wow, that’s all I needed to start the car? Imagine how much better the car would run with even bigger keys.” Well that doesn’t work either. It won’t work at all unless the keys are the exact size you need. It’s the same thing with CBD oil. If you don’t have the exact compounds, at the exact ratios you need, it may decrease your benefit…and sometimes provide zero benefit. But that wasn’t the worst problem, some problems were dangerous. Let me explain.
Some CBD products were actually making symptoms worse. The next problem we found out about was: solvents and carriers. Because of my background in manufacturing, we had a connection with a diagnostic lab and hired them to run a test on the oils we were trying. What happened next shocked us.
The Chemicals Behind the Curtain:
The lab analysis came back with multiple chemical ingredients (some a few shades away from bleach). None were listed in the bottle’s ingredients. For example, we found Isopropyl Alcohol in the CBD oil. So we called the company and asked why the chemicals weren't listed as an ingredient. Here was their answer. “Because the chemicals were just used as part of the manufacturing process. They weren’t added as an ‘actual ingredient.’” But as a customer, if you’re still eating it, who cares! That brings us to a problem that started with China, but is being adopted in the US, and it’s growing…not shrinking.
The Chinese Fox that came to America:
The last thing that people don’t know about is potentially the worst. In 2016 - 2018 Chinese companies posing as American companies started to flood the market with synthetic CBD. Now many popular American companies and pharmaceutical corporations are using synthetically made CBD...and it’s not going away. Synthetic CBD oil is much cheaper to make. The problem is it can have negative long-term effects. The most famous synthetic cannabinoid compound was the street drug known as K2. It was synthetic THC and hospitalized 1,000’s of people. Pharmaceutical companies are gearing up to flood the market with synthetic CBD that enables them to create patented products. Regulation will not stop this. The truth is, as regulations increase, synthetic CBD will actually increase too.
Regulation brings bigger players to the market. Bigger players want patents, and the only way to patent a product is to have synthetic compounds. This is because you can’t patent plant-sourced compounds. The real money is in patenting a product. There is regulation on tobacco products, fast food, synthetic meat, silicon-infused foods, energy drinks, high fructose corn syrup, food sprayed with pesticides, opioids and so on, but that doesn’t mean it’s healthy for you. Regulation isn’t bad, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it will make things safe or good. Cigarettes are highly regulated, but kill almost a 1/2 million people per year.
On the topic of synthetics, we also found hemp grown in virgin soil makes a difference, and here’s why. Commercial farmland normally has synthetic nutrients in the soil. Synthetic fertilizer is processed through chemical processes, rather than being naturally derived from organic matter. Sometimes, the amount of synthetic nutrients used in soil today is triple what was used 50 years ago. Hemp is very absorbent. In nutrient-dense soil, it’s a good thing. But, in nutrient-deficient soil with synthetic, chemically derived fertilizers, it's a bad thing. This brings me to my last point.
The 6 Solutions:
As time went on I got heavily into the why and the how behind making an effective clean CBD product. We started Emerald Med CBD to make products that are: 1) Completely solvent free. 2) Grown in virgin soil. 3) Keep a wide diversity of hemp compounds. 4) Made from plant-sourced compounds with zero synthetics 5) Grown to have high concentrations of circulation, respiratory and hormone support compounds 6) Lastly, Emerald Med CBD does patient studies to improve the compound ratios to make better and more effective products. At the end of the day, we know we can’t help everyone because CBD isn’t a cure-all. Health issues are complex, and coming from a family with members suffering from multiple complex health issues and severe injuries we know what it’s like to struggle with multi-faceted problems. To me there are other people out there like my brother who are trying CBD as a last-ditch effort looking for hope, and they’re trying products that don’t work.
They’re crossing CBD off the list, thinking it doesn’t work, thinking they’ve already gone down that path … when they haven’t. CBD will NEVER be a silver bullet, but making a good and clean product makes a difference. Maybe we can help you feel better by 30%, 60%, 80%. Maybe it’s enough to take the edge off to help support sleep at night. Maybe it’s enough to have 2 or 4 more hours in the day of feeling better. Maybe it’s enough to be able to do things like you used to. I don’t know, but I know your body will tell you what it can do. If you’d like to try any of our products for you or a family member, go to www.emeraldmedcbd.com/shop today and copy checkout code: relief500 for 40% off on any products (limit 2).
This is a celebration of my brother's birthday today so we’ve made additional stock just for orders with this promo code. After the product is used up this promo code will no longer be active. If you’d like to use the same product I use, it’s the 2,250mg CBD oil (with 0.3% THC) and the 2,200mg PhytoComplex CBD gummies. Also, if for some reason you don't notice a difference, just email us and we'll gladly provide a refund. Thank you and I hope this helps you.