Doctor Explains How CBD Helped a Child with Epilepsy – Learn Liberty

Doctor Explains How CBD Helped a Child with Epilepsy – Learn Liberty

My name is Michael Privitera. I’m a physician and a neurologist. I head the Epilepsy Center
at the University of Cincinnati Neuroscience Institute. I’ve been working in epilepsy for about
30 years, 27 years, I’ve been here in Cincinnati and I did training after
residency and a fellowship in epilepsy. Epilepsy is a disorder of the brain
that results in seizures. What happens during a particular seizure
is that nerve cells in the brain, which are usually firing
in lots of different ways, all get synchronized at once, and
then they produce abnormal symptoms. When you look at people with seizures,
with epilepsy, more than about two-thirds or so can be
completely controlled with medications. So it’s a bad disorder to have, but if
you connect with the right medicine with the right person, you can get them
under really good control, and people can live perfectly normal
lives with epilepsy for decades. However, about a third of people
don’t respond to medications, and so if what the term we use is medication
resistant or intractable epilepsy. Another term is refractory epilepsy. But this is a situation where we’ve
tried multiple different medicines, and they’re the right medicines for
the particular epilepsy syndrome, and those medicines don’t work. And about a million people
in the United States have epilepsy that is not completely
controlled with medication. For people with medication resistance
seizures, and in the case of Sofia where she’s already tried this surgery
of Vagus nerve stimulation, which is a minor surgery, and
then two separate brain surgeries. Where she’s actually had parts of her
brain removed to try to stop the seizures. When those things don’t work, you’re really kind of at the end
of all the standard treatments. Many companies are working, and
many scientists are working on new drugs. Looking at different ways of
affecting these neurons and trying to keep those nerve
cells from firing abnormally. So there’s always new
drugs in the pipeline. There are a large number of people
with medication resistant seizures, or intractable epilepsy,
who are desperate for new treatments, so we’re always really trying to work on it. One of the new things that’s been
in the news quite a bit is CBD, the derivative of marijuana,
the cannabidiol. There have been some
stories in the news about, especially children having
remarkable results in kids that had not been controlled with
bouts of other treatments. I think this is really exciting. I think it’s an opportunity, it’s a
possibility that something that may really work, but
we really need more research in the area. There’s no question at this point
that the DEA scheduling of marijuana as a Schedule I drug makes it almost
impossible to do the kind of research that we need to do to try to look at
the safety and the effectiveness of marijuana and its derivatives,
especially cannabidiol, or CBD. A Schedule 1 listing puts so many restrictions on the kinds of
centers that can do the work, and the kinds of things that
restrict the research. It will clearly slow down
our ability to try and figure out whether CBD is actually
an effective treatment or not. This is a totally different receptor area, a totally different approach
to treating seizures. So, I think maybe some of
us are excited that it would be acting very different than
any other existing antiepileptic drug. And if it was really an effective
treatment for some of these children, or some of the adults, that there may be
other variations that you could make on it that would maybe be less toxic,
or less intoxicating, or maybe have less long-term effects. So, again, it’s a new target,
potential target for treating epilepsy, that’s exciting,
I think, to all of us.

8 Replies to “Doctor Explains How CBD Helped a Child with Epilepsy – Learn Liberty”

  1. The government should stop getting in the way of medical research using marijuana.  It is hurting children.  It is violating our rights to liberty.

  2. Could you set up a lab in Colorado? Or even just a small trial to prove it has at least some validity? I personally have seen the results of canibidol for other things personally, so I would be curious what the effects on seizures is.


  4. How to sensibly buy best quality cbd products for my dog? I've heard how CBD dog treats could benefit your dog; reduce seizures, anxiety, pain etc.

  5. From what I've seen, you would think CBD should be the "go-to" 1st prescription for all forms of epilepsy… Why is it not?

  6. This is an old thread but I just found it. I was diagnosed with epilepsy in 2004. I have had so many seizures I cannot count them. After several different drugs over several years we finally got to Lamictal, which has done a pretty good job. I don't really know about side effects as I have not stopped taking since I started almost 10 years ago. Anyway, my wife is a distributor for a manufacturer of CBD products. I was skeptical. She has tried it topically for pain and said she has had good result. She wants me to try it for epilepsy. I will not stop taking Lamictal because it has worked well. But I have tried it on my face which has been red, irritated, and blotchy for years no matter what I have tried. It has helped with the redness and the sensitivity. I have not taken steps to try and prove it, but the difference is clear. Just coincidence? Anyway, because of that success, I will really start watching for stories about people who have used it. The time between research, testing , and market is way too long in this country and part of that is the frequency of lawsuit, and big pharma. If pharma can't patent something, they will not promote it and will do what they can to limit knowledge and use of it. I have experienced this personally. Sorry to be verbose but being epileptic and having a wife using and distributing CBD for a major manufacturer, I'm both interested and familiar.

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