Exercise, Recovery & Cannabis Moderated by Dr. Michael Hart

Have you ever used cannabis before or after exercise and noticed a big difference in how you felt during or after, and wondered why?

You are not alone

In this panel, moderated by Dr. Mike Hart, speakers Bethany Rae of Flower and Freedom, retired NFL running back Ricky Williams, and professional Muay Thai fighter Angelina Blessed, share their personal experiences and stories about cannabis and how it helped them in their exercise and recovery.

Bethany Rae began hosting cannabis-friendly fitness classes at local dispensary spaces in Vancouver to show people how cannabis can be part of a healthy lifestyle and teach about alternatives to smoking. As a medical cannabis patient herself, she also speaks on how exercise and cannabis helped her with anxiety and depression, and even made her more self aware and helps her deal with the core of her anxiety.

Ricky Williams was first introduced to cannabis by a teammate on the New Orleans Saints in 2001, and when he noticed that he felt better after using it, he started a little experiment. While his team was on a nightly prescription of Toradol or Indocin (which are both strong anti-inflammatory drugs) that they’d take every night for 6 months, he was concerned what that might be doing to his liver and decided to see how long he could go without needing them.

Speaking of anti-inflammatories, did you know that the British Medical Journal released a recent study that addresses the misconception that anti-inflammatories are only detrimental if used chronically? They found that even if you use a common anti-inflammatory such as Advil for one week, you can increase your heart attack risk by 15-20%!

Angelina Blessed talks about her journey with cannabis and how she wanted to avoid Advil and other anti-inflammatories as well, and as she was looking for ways to recover from her workouts and injuries in a healthy way, she was introduced to edibles, particularly cookies. She also speaks on her experiences with sensory deprivation tanks (aka known as float tanks) and the differences between floating on cannabis and without.

They also speak on how yoga, meditation, and exercise can increase your libido because of the inverse relationship between testosterone and cortisol, the potential effect of cannabis on the opioid epidemic, how the paranoia from cannabis can sometimes be beneficial in that it brings underlying issues to the forefront, and so much more.

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