Let’s Talk About CBD with Colton Luther
Show Notes:
Cannabidiol widely known as CBD is a substance derived from the hemp plant. CBD is the active ingredient in cannabis that does not cause a high and is not addictive. What a win for concussion and brain injury survivors!
Today we have guest CBD entrepreneur and concussion survivor Colton Luther from Texas. Colton has dedicated himself to spreading awareness about the benefits of cannabis and it's safe uses to others. Listen in to hear about what led Colton to trying CBD as a desperate concussion survivor facing an overwhelming amount of symptoms. Colton digs deep into how addiction is often a path many survivors fall victim too. Finally we discuss the benefits of CBD and the various types available. Make sure you don't miss out on learning about this safe and effective option.
Key Points From This Episode:
[00:01:52] Colton explains his experience with hockey and multiple concussions
[00:03:59] Bella discusses how much has changed in the views of concussions today
[00:04:32] What led Colton to trying CBD
[00:10:34] Bella focuses on how addiction is common amongst concussion survivors
[00:14:21] Colton discusses the various types of CBD available
[00:18:11] Bella emphasizes the importance of not needing to smoke CBD or THC
[00:19:41] Colton shares his final advice and thoughts to trying CBD
Follow Colton on IG @coltonluther20
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Podcast Introduction
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[00:00:00] Bella: Hi everyone. I'm your host Bella Page, and after suffering from post-concussion syndrome for years, it was time to do something about it. So welcome to the Post-concussion podcast where we dig deep into life when it doesn't go back to normal. Be sure to share the podcast and join our support network. Concussion Connect. Let's make this invisible injury become visible.
Disclaimer
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[00:00:29] Bella: The Post-concussion podcast is strictly an information podcast about concussions and post-concussion syndrome. It does not provide nor substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or another qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast. The opinions expressed in this podcast are simply intended to spark discussion about concussions and post-concussion syndrome.
Episode Introduction
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[00:01:06] Bella: Welcome to episode number 93 of the Post-Concussion podcast with my myself Bella page and today's guest, Colton Luther. Colton is a cannabis entrepreneur and pioneer in Texas. He has been working in the industry for several years and has built quite the reputation after scaling several C B D companies. As a former athlete who suffered from many concussions, Colton is now dedicated to spreading awareness about the benefits of cannabis and works to educate people about the safe and responsible use of this versatile plant. Through his business, he provides high quality cannabis products and consulting services, and is constantly exploring new ways to help others improve their wellbeing.
Welcome to the show Colton.
[00:01:49] Colton: Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Colton explains his experience with hockey and multiple concussions
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[00:01:52] Bella: So to start, do you wanna tell us a little bit about your experience with concussions?
[00:01:57] Colton: Yeah. So basically , as a young kid growing up, I started playing ice hockey, right? And we all know ice hockey is one of those sports that's very high contact at an early age. So my history with concussions may have started a lot earlier than I even. but you know, as time went on playing the game and I got older, it got more competitive, it got more serious and more intense. The guys were bigger, oftentimes bigger than me, you know, and, and I didn't have that attitude of being scared or backing down.
So I got into some situations where I got kind of beat up, you know, one way or another. And , my real experience, in hockey , was after I was exposed to concussions and, and to those blunt force, injuries. I started to realize that I was slowly, I guess, accruing effects as time went on. So I had to have had multiple, even though I didn't actually go to a doctor, for quite some time.
But, the little things started to make themselves apparent. The fuzziness, the dizziness, the headaches, the stress and anxiety that comes with it, and not being able to control that. So it all really stemmed from repeat, I think, concussions, over time as a kid. And I'm just fortunate enough to still have all my wits about me from this.
But, I ended up getting into higher levels of hockey, and seeing behind the curtain of kind of like if I continue down this path, How am I gonna be treated? How is my mental health? How is post-concussion protocols? How are all those things for these different leagues actually being handled? And when I looked a little deeper and compared that with my current situation of how I felt, I ended up actually just completely giving up hockey altogether. Just because of, not only the injuries, of course. But because of the lack of, I think, support for me on the post-concussion side. And this was, you know, 10 years ago now, so it's definitely come a long way, but I don't, I still don't think it's there. Really all of my concussions have come through high contact sports.
Bella discusses how much has changed in the views of concussions today
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[00:03:59] Bella: Yeah. It has changed. 10 years ago is when I started all this, and 10 years ago for me, I would tell people I had a concussion and tell them I was still suffering, and they would look at me like I was crazy . Even some of my doctors looked at me like I was crazy. They're like, what do you mean you're still suffering? I was like, they're like, when's the last time you hit your head? I'm like, oh, a few years ago. They're like, A few years. I'm like, yep. So it's definitely changed a lot. Mental health and all those things have changed a lot in just the media and things as well. Definitely not where it needs to be. I do agree, but it's getting there.
What led Colton to trying CBD
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[00:04:32] Bella: And so what we are talking a lot about today is CBD, and so CBD is something you tried after your concussion. So do you wanna kind of explain why and what led you to trying CBD in the first place?
[00:04:46] Colton: Yeah, so I think this , is a great topic to talk about. Basically concussions catapulted me into an actual business opportunity. I started to look for different avenues, right? So I'm dealing with headaches, I'm dealing with irritability. I get overwhelmed in crowds, all these little things that are, that were with me now, that weren't with me before and I was figuring out how to deal with these. I think you've talked about that before, but like medical gaslighting and also people just write you off like, you know, there's no way that was two years ago. A lot of that started to happen to me as well, and I really realized that friends in my circle, friends from hockey that were at a high level, people who had played in the NHL for many years were getting concussions and turning to alcohol and prescription drugs.
And oftentimes we actually, every single time we know that those don't mix. Right? So, I saw that at least very early on that, you know, alcohol and drugs is gonna send me into something to try to cope with my, symptoms from post-concussion syndromes and stuff. And I didn't want to go down that path. I didn't want to take myself down the drugs and alcohol path.
I'd seen that too many times. I had seen that happen, you know, take effect on people that didn't have concussions, they were completely healthy. So I started looking for alternatives and a lot of them were, you know, the spices and the natural remedies, drinking teas, that sort of thing. And I, did a little bit of that still do to this day. But really what I found helped the most was CBD and cannabis. So trying different things from CBD edibles, oils, even smokable to an extent, have helped me for the last 10 years now cope with a lot of these symptoms without having to turn to drugs or alcohol or expensive medical treatments.
Which honing the path of figuring out CBD actually does help my concussion symptoms. I started to uncover that this industry of CBD and hemp and cannabis is the wild, wild west. So there's not that much oversight in a lot of areas and you end up going into stores that maybe don't have a lot of education on the product.
So you kind of are going in blind trying to figure out what works for you. I didn't really like that. And so as I started to dig, I met more and more influential people in this industry, and was able to kind of differentiate between the good and the bad and basically started to start companies, and businesses that were basically gonna push better and higher quality CBD products to the market. And in doing that, we have done innovative things like mixing a CBD tincture with turmeric. We all know there's a lot of health benefits to turmeric, to ginger, to all these other different, spices and herbs. So we've started to work in, a lot more of the health and wellness aspect to CBD and not push it as it's cannabis, it's gonna get you high, you're gonna be stoned, you won't be able to do anything.
You know, we're, we're trying to get away from that because CBD really does have a lot of effect on your body. You have an endocannabinoid system in your body from birth. So when we exist, we have an endocannabinoid system, meaning we can process cannabinoids in our body and they'll have an effect on us.
You don't have an alcohol system, right? Like you don't have an Indo prescription drug system and stuff. Now, yes, those come from plants and this, that, and the other, but there's a lot of changes that go into those before they get to you into their final product. CBD is more or less from the plant and you put it through maybe heat and pressure, in order to get the cannabinoids and the medicine out of it. So it's a lot better alternative to me. It's a lot healthier, and it's more natural in line with our body and, and it really has helped things like headaches, stress, , sleep, that was another thing I would have headaches at night and then I would toss and turn in my sleep, that was a consistent thing over the last few years.
CBD drastically helps with that. And obviously there's mixes of CBD to THC you know, you have to be careful and differentiate between those. CBD doesn't give you a psychoactive effect, so when you use CBD, you shouldn't have a high, you should feel good and relaxed, but you shouldn't have a psychological high.
THC on the other hand, you will have in certain doses a psychological effect, but you're also getting the pain relief, the stress relief, the anxiety as well throughout your entire body. So you just have to be careful with those and find what is right for you. But that's really what we're trying to do now, is, especially myself and others in this, in this little kind of post-concussion niche is really open up people's eyes to the fact that CBD can help you with the exact symptoms that you're suffering from with post concussion syndrome. And we're trying to remove the stigma from it because people really still think it's, you know, dog town every day surfing it up and we're smoking, is really not the case.
If anything, it's actually more of a athletic health and wellness supplement now more than ever. A long story short, we found out too that a lot of CBD users have become lifelong users of CBD and cannabis or hemp. They are first time users, right? So they have this good experience with cannabis or CBD for the first time, and that ends up making them lifelong users. And why that's interesting is because I think a lot of people who have concussions, they came from an athletic background or maybe they were in an accident and they have some sort of job where they have to be conscientious of what they put in their system. CBD definitely is an alternative that I think everyone should look at because just because you haven't had an experience yet doesn't mean that your experience with CBD or cannabis or hemp to h elp your body or your brain and your mind won't be a positive one. But yes, CBD absolutely can help with post-concussion syndrome.
Bella focuses on how addiction is common amongst concussion survivors
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[00:10:34] Bella: I like that you mentioned, the addiction side of it, cause that's actually something that we don't bring up a lot in the concussion world is that you can become addicted to all the alternatives that you try because the emotional side of it, like you can get really depressed. It's really common after concussion, especially when your life starts to change. And a lot of time it's easy to lean in towards alcohol or you're already getting prescribed a lot of meds. Especially in the States, I find you get prescribed pain meds way easier every time I've gone to a hospital in the States versus Canada, the pain med level I get is so different.
I'm like, whoa, you're giving me those for that. They're like, yep. Like I've been on a lot of pain meds. I have, narcotics, in my house right now that are pain meds, but, like I've gotten those because of chronic severe pain. But like I went in for just a headache one day and was easily accessed to very strong meds. And I know depending on personalities in your body, like it's not hard to become addicted and it's definitely not people's fault. You know, all of a sudden they're mentally ill. Then you add something that makes 'em feel a little better and then it becomes a crutch. And so I like the CBD side of it because it kind of takes that side of it out. It's considered a very safe product and not an addictive product in that way cause you're not getting that high like you talked about. So it is really important to realize that.
And the sleep and headache symptoms are huge, especially the sleep I find for a lot of people. Not everyone deals with the headaches, but I haven't met a concussion survivor that sleeps well yet, or isn't sleeping too much, one or the other.
You mentioned the stigma. You know, a lot of the time people are like, oh, if you're gonna try that like you are, yeah, like you said, like a hippie. But it's definitely changing always important like, talk with your doctor and try these things. I'm sure lots of them would be very, encouraging about it.
I know I went to a really big talk on cannabis while I was at a brain injury conference in New York this past fall, and it was like there had to be like hundreds of doctors in the room and so many questions because they're really trying to understand like this is working, but why is it working? So they're getting more into depth about how the cannaboid system works inside your body. And it's really interesting, and I kind of like that it's an alternative to regular pain meds and things like that because we need those. And sometimes a hot pack is not enough and we are gonna get more into all this. But before that, we're gonna take a quick break.
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[00:14:10] Bella: Welcome back to the Post-Concussion podcast with myself, Bella Page and today's guest, Colton Luther. So we were talking about the stigma of CBD and cannabis in general .
Colton discusses the various types of CBD available
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[00:14:21] Bella: Can you talk a little bit more of the types of CBD there is to try.
[00:14:27] Colton: Yeah, this is where the episode might get long.
So these days there are so many options out there. It's, it's honestly crazy. And they're, getting more and more complex and elaborate as they come. Now, there's different alternative cannabinoids where people will take CBD itself and put it through a chemical process and basically, turn it into other cannabinoids.
That's where you see delta 8, delta 10, some of those other ones, those do have psychoactive effects, but I really won't talk about that. CBD basically can come in many forms, whether you're eating it, ingesting it, smoking it, and now we even have things called nano CBD, which is basically we've taken the distilled form of CBD, and we have put it through yet another process.
That basically powderize it into a water soluble, consistency. So now you're talking about you have nano CBDs out there where you can quickly add it to your water or coffee or tea and add it to food and drink and have a very, very easy method that is on the go. It doesn't taste like anything. It's very convenient for people.
So I look for, like we were talking about before the break, I look for the stigma to start to dwindle even more than it has over the last few years.
But I also look for more doctors to step up and be involved to where it becomes that, you know, a absolutely attractive alternative for people that are looking for a natural solution to fighting the post-concussion symptoms. So, you know, there's endless products out there right now, some good, some bad.
You know, I will put this out there on for this recording too, you can find me on Instagram, get ahold of me by email. I'm an open book on this stuff as well as can help you differentiate between the, the good companies and the bad and the good products and the bad and with a little bit of education, I really do think that people can go out and find the exact right CBD hemp or cannabis product for them, so it would take me forever to really go over all of the products available, all of the cannabinoids available.
So as you can see, like this, this industry is rapidly evolving. Some of these cannabinoids come from bad legislation, bad legalization methods, bad government decisions, but also some of these do come from research. My advice always is start low, go slow, you know, so if you get something and you're worried about how it's gonna make you feel or what it's gonna do to you, you know, always start with a lower dose.
People even write off CBD as, oh, I tried CBD, CBG, CBN, well, it didn't do anything. Well, compared to what? Because if you're not using it consistently, how are you ever gonna know the benefits of these cannabinoids and how they work for you? So I would say start low, go slow, but definitely stay consistent.
And if you need advice and guidance on what products or what companies to deal with, you can definitely find me.
[00:17:27] Bella: Yeah, that's great. And I love that you said like the research is growing, so much and I like that idea of it cause I know a lot of people get really turned off from like the western medicine world when it comes to concussions cause they go and they kind of don't get a lot of help or like we talked about before the show, like the medical gaslighting really kind of kicks in and it's like hard to get anybody to understand.
You're just trying to get help and so trying to get help is really difficult when you can't get it from the doctors that you're expecting it from. So it is good that some doctors are getting more into it and doing research and I know lots of the universities around, North America are researching into it For sure.
Bella emphasizes the importance of not needed to smoke CBD or THC
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[00:18:11] Bella: Especially cause it's legal in all of Canada. It makes a big difference. And now the other thing that I really liked is that you have to remember like you don't have to smoke it. I think that's something, if you haven't been around it or you haven't been like into a store like here, it's so different.
Cause you can like walk into a store with both THC and CBD products. The stores are the fanciest thing, you're in like a boutique for purses, but it's all cannabis and there is like ointments and droplets and like you mentioned, drinks, like you don't have to smoke it.
If that's like something that's like, well, I don't wanna be smoking products, which is totally okay, but there is a lot of different alternatives to trying it as well. As you said, there's so many products within CBD that you can try. It's kind of overwhelming It's important to always consider trying things and like I really like, like you said, you know, start slow and see how it goes. And I talk about this a lot with medication. You know, track how you're feeling. Is it helping? Is it not? Give it a little bit, even when you take medication from your doctor, there's a reason why they tell you.
We used to call it the merry-go-round of meds where you get thrown on for three months well you get thrown on for three months cause sometimes it takes that long to realize an effect. But it is important to try that and I really like that. And so is there anything else you really wanna add before we end today's episode about CBD cannabis and trying all that?
Colton shares his final advice and thoughts to trying CBD
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[00:19:41] Colton: Yeah, definitely. I mean, just basically right off what you were saying, definitely speak with your doctor and let them know you're interested in trying it or you are trying it. Um, a lot of your doctors you'll find will not have anything negative to say about it other than what you say, you know, just don't smoke it.
And I don't have anything to say to you. Which is true smoking is the worst way probably to consume CBD. However, it's a wildly preferred method, oddly enough.
You know, there is a ton of ways and you just have to try what you're comfortable with and you have to do research and you have to treat it like a supplement. You know, if you went and got a protein powder and took one scoop and a protein shake for one day, you know, you wouldn't wake up looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger, right?
It takes consistency. That's what I tell everyone with CBD, find what works for you and then give it an honest try.
So I think really the biggest thing to take away from this is, I would love to connect with your audience if anyone wants to message me on Instagram, send me an email. I'm an absolute open book on post-concussion syndromes. We can talk about our experiences, but also, hey, if you want some advice from me, go down to your local store.
Get this brand pack of gummies, or I'll send you some of our gummies. Give it a shot. Try it out for a week, two weeks, a month, and let me know how you feel. Let me know if you're seeing any change because we've had some amazing experiences just helping change people's perspective and change their life, and their daily routine, just by introducing them properly to what CBD, hemp, cannabis, all that can do for you.
So if you just have any questions about cbd, hemp, cannabis, want to get education on it and have an open conversation with someone who has had real experiences and. Experiences the same things as yourself. I think that that is someone that I can, you know, I can help you, I can be a resource for that. And that's my motivation from coming on and talking to you today. So I appreciate this.
[00:21:34] Bella: Yeah, it's great. I like kind of talking about these things and opening up the conversation. I just wanted to thank you so much for sharing some of your concussion experience and then how it led you to trying CBD
[00:21:46] Colton: Anytime.
Need more than just this podcast. Be sure to check out our website, post-concussion inc.com to see how we can help you in your post-concussion life. From a support network to one-on-one coaching, I believe life can get better because I've lived through it. Make sure you take it one day at a time.
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