Eating raw cannabis for Fibromyalgia

Hello friends!

This is my first post. First of all, let me thank you all for such a great community you created here. Living in a country where the doctors can't help with cannabis related questions, communities like this one are our best chance for learning.
My girlfriend have severe Fibromyalgia. After tons of hours of reading about the endocannabinoid system, cannabis in general and specially, after seeing that cannabis is what seems to work best for her, we decided to go that way all in. We are taking small steps into growing our own product so that we don't have to buy it. Soon (when I can harvest) we will try to make some edibles or cannabis infused coconut oil capsules to see if that way she can get a better sleep through the night.
Several days ago, we discovered that eating fresh raw cannabis is actually a thing and that it can be a whole therapy if one could eat around 600mg of THCA every day. The benefits seem to quick in in 4-8 weeks, and for us, it seems like a light at the end of the tunnel. First of all, THCA is not psychoactive. It won't fit into CB1 receptors, so the effects will not be cerebral, but that does not mean it will not interact with the body. THCA, CBDA and all the rest of canabinoids and terpenes will store in fat cells and regulate the body of someone with ECS deficiency. It sounds encouraging and gives us hope. I wish it would be true! For now, I would like to ask you, people with far more experience and knowledge in that matter what is your idea. Is that true? Could eating raw cannabis every day help regulate the ECS?
I'm trying to understand first if its worth a try because its something that for us is not easy to achieve. If we ever try it, I'm planning of planting one plant every week, for 12 weeks straight. After 12 weeks, I would have 12 plants, where the oldest one is about ready to be consumed, and maintaining that would provide us with one fresh plant for about every week. Easier said than done, but if we come to the conclusion that this is worth it, we will try.
I'm sorry for the long text. I'm just a desperate loving one in search of any kind of advice that could ease her pain. Please, if anyone could help us with something, we would be very thankful.
Thank you in advance.
Peace.

Hey filo, welcome to Rollitup, don't be sorry about long texts it's ridiculous how short people's attention spans and how impatient people are getting these days.
I can't say how much the fresh plant can help your partner but I would absolutely recommend getting a small personal grow underway if you have already found it to be beneficial in some other form, and it will surely help in capsule form anyway so even if the thca route isn't all it's cracked up to be, I'm sure many people can attest to the efficacy of other forms of ingestion to help with fibromyalgia.
Your plan to start a new plant every week sounds good in theory, but I think that sort of thing rarely works out the way we want it to, sometimes a seed will take more time to germinate or won't at all, others will outgrow plants older than them, they will all be likely to have slightly different nutrient and environmental preferences so you'll be likely to run into issues trying to keep them all happy. It could work you'd just have to find a very reliable and stable strain to do it with which is kind of hard to find in the cannabis world. It would probably also be quite costly in terms of seed.

I think what would be best for you is to have two areas, one with the lights set to an 18/6 light schedule (18 hours on, 6 off), this would be your seedling and vegging area, you would keep "mother" plants of your favourite strains in this area, they will give you a constant supply of leaves to juice, and you can periodically take cuttings from them, to put into your second area after growing roots in a clone dome, and vegetating (vegging) in the veg area for a few weeks. The second area will be lit on a 12/12 schedule to force plants to flower, and you could put a new plant in there every 2 weeks or so to give you a constant supply of fresh bud undergrowth to add to your juices/smoothies as well.
This allows you to have more control over a perpetual grow as opposed to using seed, as cuttings are much more uniform and predictable in growth, and over time as you run the same plant over and over again, you can get to know the nutrient and environmental preferences of each particular strain that gives you benefit, so you can get the most out of those plants.
1 small spare bedroom is plenty of space to have all this set up, but if your needs are low and you are good at using space efficiently, you can get away with even less room than that.

How does all that sound?
People here will help you get set up with the right gear to start with so it was a good idea to come here for help before spending money. If you're keen to get something underway maybe just tell us your ideal budget to get through your first grow and how much space you have to work with, whether or not you have seeds already, a plant limit, and if it needs to be stealth or not.. Also if you have any type of handyman or DIY skills including electronics it would pay to say so too because that could save you a bit of cash. Good luck..

Thank you Mitchician! I have a 1,5x1,5m tent, with two mars hydro sp250 in there. Carbon filter. Proper aeration. I have 6 girls, autoflowers, in 25L air pots each. Using Biobizz products. Unfortunately I dont have more room. Will have to manage in that tent alone. Fortunately if running autos, they can grow under the same roof with different timings with no issues.
I know that my idea is... at least to say, a no easy task. Bugs, heat, mold and other issues can and probably will bring me many problems. I also dont think this a realistic idea as doing it forever. At least not with my conditions and equipment. If I could only try it for lets say 4-6 months and see if it works with her, that would be a win. And if it works, it opens a new world for us. Then we will whink how to really put that into practice.

First off I want to say I dont know about Fibromyalgia. But I have 4 herniated discs in my back. I have ate fresh leaves and buds which give my pain relief without the buzz. I've ate raw buds that I've cured, they give me a mild buzz and give me pain relief. Strangely enough smoking it doesn't help my pain much. I've been smoking on and off for over 30 years and I'm just finding this out. Ive told other people about it they have had the same experience. I hope and pray it works for you!! Living in pain is truly a hard thing to face daily!!

lol I totally forgot all about auto's, and it's good to hear you're already well underway, actually just running autos for a while like you are is probably an even better idea because you just plant them and grow the things like a tomato plant or something without having to care about light cycles and no light leaks and all that jive.
You sound like you're doing fine and will develop your own style over time just keep doing what you're doing!

Trout2012 thank you for your response! Cured buds are giving you a light buzz because most of the THCA was converted in THC. It does simply by time passing. Thats why if we want to have THCA, the (almost) only option is to juice or blend fresh cannabis. But your story is encouraging for us, thank for sharing it!

Actually I don't know if storage alone really decarboxylates the thca as much as we think... If you go to a site that shows actual lab results, like this one..


you can see that the 10 latest samples of dried bud all have negligible amounts of thca, under 2%. The 10th one (White Winter) has under 1% thc while having 22% thca, it also has 0.7% cbga, which indicates that it could have been harvested a little early and explains more about why the thc content is so low, as the next one tested after it (White Lavender Kush) also has 22% thca but has 1% thc and 0.27%cbga. You can't really tell how long any of these were cured, but the moisture content is a pretty good indicator, as buds stop curing under a certain moisture content which I think is somewhere around 10% by memory.

That´s very interesting Mitchician! Didnt know about those lab tests and that may change a little the situation in our favor. We may try cured bud to see if it works first. Do you think we can grind the herb very fine and put it into some gel capsules for intake, just the way it is, cured, without any fats? Will it get through the stomach acid barier? I heard (at least for the THC) that in order for the cannabinoids to get to our blood through eating method, they must be covered in fat cells, otherwise they can be deteriorated by the stomach acid.

hmm, I have heard of people filling caps with kief before, but it's interesting you say that about the thc requiring a fat carrier to protect it, it makes sense but I'm sure I've heard accounts of kief capsules giving some benefit. Maybe the capsule itself protects it long enough or something?
I don't know enough about the GI system to comment really..
I think the best way would be for you to do your own trials with kief capsules vs. infused coconut oil or something like that..

Maybe when you do your first harvest, do your trimming dry, on something like this..


Throw all your larfy lower buds on there too and rummage that all around a bit, capsule up all the kief that falls through the mesh, then extract the remaining cannabinoids from the rest with some coconut oil and cap that up too.. That way it'll make you want to trim your buds extra close just to get more to extract.
It's not very scientific but it uses all your material efficiently with minimal processing and gives you some nicely trimmed buds to enjoy, because not all cannabis consumption needs to be medical.