The Armor Men's Health Show

Bonus Episode: Chronic Pain Nightmare? Find Relief With Medical Marijuana from Green Dreams Health

• Dr. Sandeep Mistry and Donna Lee

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In this episode, Dr. Mistry and Donna Lee are joined by Dr. Mistry's longtime friend and colleague, Dr. Cedric Dupont. In his work as an anesthesiologist, Dr. Dupont helps patients cope with severe and debilitating pain. Today, he explains how his pain management practice Green Dreams Health uses legal medical marijuana to treat chronic pain conditions by tapping into the body's endocannabinoid system. Whether you're curious or skeptical, tune in to learn how Texans can find much needed relief from medical marijuana formulated for their unique pain and prescribed via telehealth consultation. Visit Green Dreams Health online or call (512) 937-2260 to learn more!

Voted top Men's Health Podcast, Sex Therapy Podcast, and Prostate Cancer Podcast by FeedSpot

Dr. Mistry is a board-certified urologist and has been treating patients in the Austin and Greater Williamson County area since he started his private practice in 2007.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Armor Men's Health Show with Dr. Mystery and Donna Lee. Hello and welcome to the Armor Men's Health Show. I'm Dr. Misty , your host, board certified urologist, men's health expert all around . Awesome character. <laugh> quite a character, I guess, and

Speaker 2:

Quite humble.

Speaker 1:

Yes. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> humility is one of my strongest characteristics. Said no one you said. No one. <laugh> . I'm joined always by Donnel Lee , my co-host, partner in crime business development manager, and someone who has helped us grow our wonderful practice from something great to something greater .

Speaker 2:

Oh good. Thank you for that compliment. I was looking for the insult, but thank

Speaker 1:

You. Why don't you tell people about our practice?

Speaker 2:

Our practice is located all over central Texas in Round Rock, north Austin, south Austin, and Dripping Springs, Texas. Our brand new website where you can see our shiny faces is armor men's health.com and um, you can reach out to us during the week at 5 1 2 2 3 8 0 7 6 2. You can also , um, ask for me. I'm there sometimes every

Speaker 1:

So often. Every

Speaker 2:

Monday

Speaker 1:

I'm paying for a full-time position, <laugh> , you know, you get what you get sometimes,

Speaker 2:

Whatever. I work from a butt off over here. We

Speaker 1:

Really pride ourselves in being kind of more of a holistic kind of approach to men's health. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> and all your medical problems. We have physical therapists on staff. We do nutrition and supplementation, and we really want to get to the nitty gritty and the, of what's going on with you. Not just kind of prescribe drugs and, and just keep you in our ecosphere. If we can solve your problem with surgery, if we can find the right doctor for you to take care of you or the right therapy. We're really looking forward to that.

Speaker 2:

Mm-hmm. <affirmative> , I've interviewed lots of doctors around the country and , uh, when I say holistic urology, you can tell they're like, what, what does that mean? That sounds weird . They wanna do surgery. That

Speaker 1:

Sounds weird. They wanna

Speaker 2:

Do surgeries and medications, but we're gonna start you off holistically.

Speaker 1:

I do love to opt . I

Speaker 2:

Know, but still, and I

Speaker 1:

Really love to do this show and today mm-hmm . <affirmative> ,

Speaker 2:

I

Speaker 1:

Get to do something that I've really looked forward,

Speaker 2:

Which is

Speaker 1:

Have a special guest. Oh, welcome . So today we have a special guest. His name is Dr. Cedric DuPont. Cedric, welcome today.

Speaker 2:

Welcome. Thank

Speaker 3:

You for having me, Sonny and

Speaker 1:

Donna . So you are one of my oldest friends. And not just because you're old.

Speaker 2:

He's got all the dirt on there .

Speaker 1:

We've known each other for 25 years. Oh,

Speaker 2:

Wow.

Speaker 1:

Ever since we were both little freshmen in medical school. And it is so awesome to be able to have you on the show today.

Speaker 3:

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1:

Cedric. You are a board certified anesthesiologist. We have never been able to quit each other. We spent, we spent our time, we spent our time. You're

Speaker 2:

Always just a little bit gay.

Speaker 1:

It's broke back , <laugh> broke back , broke back medicine, broke

Speaker 3:

Back or

Speaker 1:

<laugh> . We , we , we were , uh, medical students adjacent to each other, and then we did our residency adjacent to each other. And then you moved to Austin and then I moved to Austin like one, one year later and then we , now we still operate together. I mean, my wife works with you. I mean, it is like we can, we can never like kind of leave each other that . Thank you so much for , thank you so much for joining us today, <laugh> as we start off this conversation, because nobody knows where it's gonna go. Right,

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

One of the things that's fascinating about the human body is how not only is everything interconnected, but there's so much that happens from a signaling standpoint deep in our physiology that we have very little knowledge of. Right. We know that there are hormones that affect our brain, our muscles, you know, we treat testosterone replacement all the time. We know the thyroid effects everything. So I thought maybe you could give us a little insight into a very orally understood system, or at least not as widely understood the endocannabinoid system. Give me some background on that.

Speaker 3:

I'd love to rewind a little bit. As an anesthesiologist, I know a little smattering about a lot of things. A patient comes in, I have to pre-op them , find out their medicines that they take, find out what their pain threshold is, know what the pain they can expect during the procedure, at which points during the procedure are painful and, and sort of augment the central nervous system for that. I would say that it seems kind of boring. It's a lot like being a captain of a , of a plane. It should be boring. Like if you remember the takeoff and landing, that probably was not a good Captain <laugh>. If you had to take out your barf bag, it was not a good , uh, anesthesiology that

Speaker 1:

That wasn't a

Speaker 3:

Good landing. Based on that, I sort of got involved in the endocannabinoid system because I was involved in some recreational , uh, marijuana cultivation facilities in Colorado. I kept reading about the other side of cannabis, not just the getting high, but the getting well portion and the field of anesthesia has sort of exploded in the past couple years with using non-op opiate medications. We w Sonny and I actually, I remember we went to San Antonio once to a pain as the fifth vital sign workshop in San Antonio. You and I went and , uh, it was sponsored by Purdue, who is now, you probably were well-recognized name in the news for flooding. The opioid opiates in the United States largely

Speaker 1:

Blamed for being responsible for addicting a lot of people to opioids that ultimately went on to heroin. Now, huge epidemic in our country,

Speaker 3:

Correct? Mm-hmm . <affirmative> . And it's made even worse by the fact that now it's completely reigned in and the people who were all hooked on it, because 10 years ago it was a C m s, it was a , a government vital sign for, for monitoring how

Speaker 1:

They were so concerned that we didn't care about the patient's pain, that they made us care about the patient's pain. And then so we started giving them lots of pain medicine and then we got them hooked. Correct.

Speaker 3:

And now we

Speaker 1:

Government overreach at its ,

Speaker 3:

And now the government , now the government has taken away the pain medicines and people are turning to the black market, which has fentanyl and these other drugs that people aren't aware of, they're consuming in order to try and mitigate their addiction. That was propagated by a government program. So it's, it's it's unintended

Speaker 1:

Consequences .

Speaker 3:

Unintended consequences. Yes. Exactly. So as far as the endocannabinoid system, it's a, it's a very poorly understood system, largely because it li it was listed as a schedule one drug for over 50 years. And it was listed as a schedule one drug , primarily for political reasons. It was, it was prob it was largely propagated by the Nixon administration who liked law and order. And at that time people were questioning law and order with Woodstock and kind of elevating your mind and expanding your mind, getting into plants and hallucinogenics. And he thought that was gonna destroy the fabric of America. So he made it a schedule one drug. Then it was further propagated by the Reagan administration who received a considerable out of mo uh , money from , uh, the privatization companies for prisons. And so they largely pushed for federal sentencing guidelines where a judge would have to look at a table, see how many infractions you've had with, with marijuana. And there's some people who, there's one , uh, uh, famous guy, Weldon, I can't think of his last name. He's was lobbied Congress last week. Um, and he sold $300 worth of marijuana three times and served 19 years in prison.

Speaker 1:

So, so the , oh goodness. The , the criminalization of marijuana has largely been kind of , uh, purported as you know, not , not only putting a lot of people in jail, but from a scientific standpoint, it has created a situation where we couldn't even do any experiments on. Correct. And I think that what , uh, what you've taught me over these last years is that this endocannabinoid system really affects almost all the organs in the body. And so when people have less kind of tangible problems like chronic fatigue syndrome or, or polymyalgia things that affect us from head to toe, you have to look for a cause or a solution that can hit these poorly understood systems.

Speaker 3:

E exactly . Sonny , that's, that , that was, that was ex perfectly into what I was gonna mention next is a lot of the diseases that are very vague that people find difficult to treat, especially doctors, find frustrating. 'cause you have something like irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia , um, uh, chronic malaise, chronic pain. And I , I'm, I'm by no means condoning the fact that, that that cannabinoids are gonna be the snake oil that fixes everything. But what the, what we do know about the endocannabinoid system is you have more receptors for endo endocannabinoid. You have more endocannabinoid receptors in your body than you do anything else, more than even the, the SST choline that you use for smooth and skeletal muscle. And how we know it functions. We know it functions as a modulator. It does not create the sound like a record player does. It's the amplifier. And so a lot of these drugs that we were using and trying to target, were, were , were , were doing a very poor job in creating side effects because yeah, I mean, it's like a shotgun. It might work a little bit at this, but it might not work on the actual core symptoms. It might work a little bit more on the periphery and it causes these other side effects. And so what we're finding is the endocannabinoid system for even things like, I have a patient with Parkinson's disease. Does it, does it mean he doesn't take his Parkinson's medication? No, but he's told me a 50% reduction in his Parkinson's medicine use has left him with less fatigue. Um , he can stretch his , uh, his, his copay for his pharmaceuticals for , for two months instead of one. And he's greater than 65. So it , you know, the medications prices matter to him. Um, 'cause he's retired and he just says, I overall feel better and have more energy. And we're talking about a drug that we, we measure everything in lethal doses, like how much lethal dose, like lethal dose of rat poison ingested by a 70 kilogram man might be , you know, 0.2 kilograms.

Speaker 1:

I'm a little worried that, you know, that number exactly <laugh> might be 0.2 milligrams. How much, how much, how much rat poison can I put in this <laugh> in the syringe? And so, you know , uh, I I think that the, the notion that , um, uh, cannabis and t H C is not as dangerous as many other drugs that we have for are important. But I think really what, what may be a surprise to many of our listeners is that our physiology in our body has this kind of ability to react to this type of chemical compound all throughout our body. This isn't just something that's just in our brain that gives us this sense of euphoria that there are receptors for this particular chemical all throughout our body, within our muscles, within our stomach, within our gut. And that's why , um, you know, the study for this, the open-mindedness of this , uh, of the use of cannabis in medicine, I think , uh, needs to be stressed to people who may have grown up in this system in which marijuana use has been kind of vilified by so many. 100%. So we're gonna talk about medical marijuana when we get back after this break. Donna, how do people get ahold of us?

Speaker 4:

That's right. You can call us at (512) 238-0762 or visit our website, armor men's health.com. Dr .

Speaker 1:

Mystery wants to hear from you.

Speaker 4:

To submit

Speaker 1:

A question,

Speaker 4:

Visit armor men's

Speaker 1:

Health.com. We'll be right back

Speaker 4:

With the Armor

Speaker 1:

Men's Health Show. Welcome

Speaker 4:

To the Armor Men's Health Show with

Speaker 1:

Dr. Mystery

Speaker 4:

Aunt Donna Lee.

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome back to the Armor Men's Health Show. I'm Dr. Mystery , your Hope board certified urologist men's health expert. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> , I'm joined by my co-host Donna Lee. That's

Speaker 4:

Right. Excuse me while I take a hit off of my little pipe over here. <laugh> , this is

Speaker 1:

Little pot pipe . This is to be a little weird. <laugh>. This is a men's health show. This is brought to you by N a u Urology

Speaker 4:

Specialist.

Speaker 1:

The urology Specialty group that I started in 2007. We really pride ourselves in kind of an, a more open-minded approach to medicine. We are joined again by one of my oldest friends, 25 years old. We , uh, not 25

Speaker 4:

Years . He's not

Speaker 1:

25 . We've known each other for 25 years. One of my best friends, one of , um, the anesthesiologist in Austin, and the medical Director of Green Dreams Health. Cedric , uh, thank you so much for joining us. Why don't you start with telling us how the laws in Texas have changed as it applies to the use of medical marijuana, because we have listeners from all over the country and there are some states in which they're like, there are rules about marijuana use, <laugh> <laugh> , you know , so why don't you tell us what has changed in Texas? Correct.

Speaker 3:

It is a patchwork amongst the states 'cause it's, even though it's federally legal , it's become a state's right issue. And depending on basically the pendulum of how conservative the state is,

Speaker 1:

That's how our founding fathers wanted it. By the way, <laugh> state's rights continue

Speaker 3:

<laugh> and , uh, the state of Texas has expanded this year. Some of the requirements before it was open to a lot of the people with the very vague diseases that were either terminal glycogen processing diseases and some of these metabolism diseases. Then it expanded

Speaker 1:

Things that affected children. Yeah,

Speaker 3:

Mostly, mostly children.

Speaker 1:

And , and it made them very ill. It's

Speaker 3:

Been expanded to, to conditions that we know the endocannabinoid system works well with, which is the central nervous system, largely with seizures, spasticity typical in typical lawmaker fashion. Some of the diseases that have never shown to be therapeutic benefit in terms of cannabis use, which is P T S D that's been opened. However, chronic pain has not any form of cancer qualifies, whether it's , uh, skin cancer, any kind of cancer qualifies. It doesn't have to be a terminal condition.

Speaker 1:

What if you're just a toxic person that people call you a cancer? Did you just point

Speaker 3:

To me, well then you would need your thumb. They're like , they're , they're kind of spastic personality. So maybe that would , so

Speaker 1:

What you're saying is that there's a specific set of diagnoses code that make people eligible to use medical cannabis in Texas. Correct? Correct. And so you mentioned P T S D, you mentioned certain central nervous system disorders, but not chronic pain.

Speaker 3:

That was left out, and I don't understand why P T S D was included in chronic pain was not. However, when you, when we were even talking about spasticity, restless leg syndrome affects a lot of, a lot of people and as well as irritable bowel as a form of , uh, motility dysfunction, some of the bladder spasticity. So there are a lot of conditions that we can treat right now that I can diagnose somebody and get them , uh, prescribed on a , uh, on a cannabinoid regimen. Um ,

Speaker 1:

I think there are a lot of listeners that think that sometimes these kinds of diagnosis codes are being used falsely just to kind of get somebody some drugs, you know, but you're really more interested in actually activating the inherent system in somebody's physiology by use of a medication like T H C or cannabis to help them get better with these medical conditions. If you had to think in your experience, which medical conditions kind of respond the best to , to to , to medical marijuana,

Speaker 3:

What really works best, and it's been shown in other countries, are the diseases that have to do with dysregulation, which is a lot of things, believe it or not, even asthma studies have shown that asthma, because endocannabinoid system regulates and can dilate that smooth muscle that causes your lungs to get tight. Because

Speaker 1:

Asthma is a condition in which you have hyperreactivity correct . Those small blood, correct those airways that, that lead to tightness. So

Speaker 3:

If I had to like, just like give somebody a 10,000 foot view, anything that causes extremes of dysregulation, like a lot of chronic pain that you can't treat with opiates, you know, the answer is not necessarily more opiates and more fentanyl patches. The answer is, can we add another drug to augment it so that way we're not reducing your opiates, but we can get you functional again, where you're using half as much or on the seizure medicines that for most, in non-compliance for seizure medicines are people don't like to be , uh, the fatigue that ensues with it. And also with A D H D that's been proven to work on the, the endocannabinoid resistance has been proven in that market too. And that is the highest rate of , uh, non-compliance of medications is the amphetamines, which is, which is what we primarily use. We use stimulant medications and many patients with A D H D do not like to be on the stimulant medicines.

Speaker 1:

So if you had, so it was a surprise to me to know that medical cannabis was available in Texas until you told me <laugh> . Okay. <laugh> . And so is it the case that everybody's just token up, that you're just like, does it come in a plant form ? I I'm not, I'm not very good at this kinda stuff .

Speaker 3:

That's another very good question.

Speaker 1:

So, so, so tell me, how do people in Texas, how are people supplied medical cannabis ? There's

Speaker 3:

Three licensed cultivators in the state. Of those three lights , of those three, they have to, they have to control the whole process. So they have to cultivate it, they have to process it into its final package form, and then they have , and then they sell it to the customer. So they're the, they're the manufacturer and the pharmacy, the c v s, if you will, what I do is when you qualify, you then get registered on the d p s registry is where I register it, so that way if you ever get pulled over or you ever have it on your persons, they check your driver's license and see that you were prescribed it and you're allowed to have it. It's available in every form, which is lotions, ointments, temperatures, which is usually the little droplet, which is, I'd probably say the easiest beginner form factor or edibles. You can have gummies, chocolate bars , um, but it is not available in a vaporized form.

Speaker 1:

So you can't smoke it and you can't vape it, but you can eat it and you can use tinctures for it. And what you're saying is that the whole manufacturing process is highly and tightly controlled. Now, I, I would imagine that with edibles and which you're like mixing something into a gummy thing, that like having consistency or good regulation of the quality must be a very important aspect of, of what the d p s is considering.

Speaker 3:

100%. The licensing is very stringent in the state of Texas. It was actually written pretty well because of the other states that went quote unquote green earlier. So there was a lot of learning curve mistakes that were fixed by the time Texas made it into the medical , uh, cannabis mindset , um, and legalized it. What you wanna look for versus people who take it illegally in order to try and treat these conditions is the fact that there's something called a C O A , which is a certificate of analysis that every single product has on it. It will tell you exactly how much t h c it has, how much C B , D, how much c b n , how much of the other, what we call these other broad spectrum , uh, uh, chemovars, which have to do with , um, uh, like giving it the smell. Like, like Li Moline , um, pil Tylenol, like, like these are all natural drugs that you will find natural , um,

Speaker 1:

Compounds,

Speaker 3:

Compounds that you find in nature, like in lemon in pine, and it lists everything. And they all have, they all have different effects on, on, on what condition we're trying to treat.

Speaker 1:

So when somebody is out there now, you know, I I I think o over just my, over the last just 20 years, I've seen a lot more openness of people to the, the idea of using cannabis as a, as a pharmacologic agent. Uh , obviously so many states have now legalized it, and so the use of it is just more rampant. So I think there's an openness to it, but there also may be kind of a rebound kind of contraction in some people who just feel like this is not something that anybody should consider, and this is just a harborer of the end of the world, but when it comes to being a good doctor and thinking about what , uh, available avenues do we have to help our patients, I think that the idea that medical cannabis use can help people and if it's not abused, is something that could come to benefit a large number of patients. I think you would agree with that

Speaker 3:

100%. Sonny , that's, that was perfectly said. Which is you, the endocannabinoid system to ignore the largest receptor system in our body for primarily political reasons in the past, is doing, doing human medicine a disservice ,

Speaker 1:

A disservice. And so , um, if somebody was looking for , uh, a doctor that could evaluate them and perhaps prescribe something, someone they could trust , uh, you've started your own organization that does that through a telemedicine kind of service. Would you explain to us what Green Dreams Health does and how it works? Sure.

Speaker 3:

Green Dreams Health is an online telemedicine platform, which prior to Covid might, might seem a little odd, but I think everybody has now used either Zoom , um, or another online video , uh, chatting service. And so what I do is I have you upload a questionnaire. You, we go over that questionnaire, we go over your history. You can gimme any pertinent information you have, like, like if you have something you want me to look at, like your report from your radiologist about, you know, a pinched nerve, I'm happy to look at all that. Then we, then we formulate a plan for how you want, how you want to consume the, the cannabis, whether you want it at work, which would mean a very low T h C profile and a very high C b D profile, as well as some other adjuncts that we can do. Or whether you want something more for sleep and to replace, you know, I need a drink or two to go to sleep at night, I can adjust that as well. I mean, the, the, the dispensaries here have done a very good job of providing a wide array of, of , uh, medications for me to be able, an armament for me to be able to , to choose from.

Speaker 1:

So if people are out there and they're interested in perhaps learning more about it or perhaps even being evaluated, how do they get ahold of you?

Speaker 3:

Perfect. Green Dreams health.com. That's the easiest way. That's the color green dreams and health.com. And, or they can, alternatively they can, they can call our phone number, which is (512) 937-2260 or info@greendreamshealth.com. One word. I can't

Speaker 4:

Thank you enough for joining us and really , uh, exploring this , uh, this, this topic, Donna, how do people reach us? That's

Speaker 2:

Right. You can call us at (512) 238-0762 or check out our website, armor men's health.com.

Speaker 4:

Dr . Mystery wants to hear from you. To submit a question, visit armor men's health.com. We'll be right back with the Armor Men's Health Show.