Cancer-stricken woman’s disease vanished… only to return when 49-year-old stopped taking cannabis oil and magic mushrooms
- Unnamed woman was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer in August 2018
- She took cannabinoid oils and mushrooms alongside traditional chemotherapy
- Her disease vanished in January 2019 and she stopped the normal treatment
A woman who fought off cancer saw her tumours return once she stopped taking cannabis and magic mushrooms, doctors have revealed.
The unidentified 49-year-old, thought to live in Britain, was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer in August 2018. Scans revealed it had spread to her bones, liver and lymph nodes.
She immediately underwent chemo and was given monoclonal antibody drugs — designed to thwart her disease.
But the woman also decided to start taking cannabis oil every day.
And she started ‘intermittent’ micro-dosing of magic mushrooms from November, according to the medics who treated her.
A woman’s advanced cancer disappeared in five months after she started taking cannabis and magic mushrooms, Imperial College London experts claims
By January 2019, scans showed her cancer had completely gone and there was no sign of disease.
Chemo was stopped but she stayed on Herceptin, one of the monoclonal antibody drugs originally doled out.
Follow-up scans that September confirmed her cancer was still in remission.
As a result, she halved her cannabis intake and completely stopped taking shrooms.
The woman remained cancer-free for 18 months.
Tests in June 2020 revealed her disease had returned, experts from Imperial College London wrote in the journal Drug Science.
Following that diagnosis and under medical supervision, she upped her doses again, restarted chemotherapy and began radiotherapy.
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CBD AND THC?
CBD oil is a legal cannabinoid that can be sold in the UK.
THC is the psychoactive chemical in cannabis that causes users to feel ‘high’.
It is an illegal Class B substance that can cause anxiety and psychosis, and cannot be sold in CBD products.
Although CBD has been thought to have some medicinal properties, including relieving inflammation, pain and anxiety, there is no conclusive science.
Suppliers in England and Wales have to obtain a licence to sell CBD as a medicine.
Manufacturers are able to avoid the strict regulation by selling it as a food supplement — ignoring the lengthy process of gaining a medicinal licence.
CBD — short for cannabidiol — is derived from the cannabis sativa plant and has become a booming £690million-a-year industry, outselling all other vitamin supplements combined.
It is sold in virtually every high street pharmacy and health shop and comes in the form of capsules, tablets, creams, sprays and even chewing gum and sweets.
Her disease was stable, as of her last appointment in October. Doctors even claimed there was evidence it was ‘receding’ once more.
Rayyan Zafar and colleagues said it highlighted the ‘possibility’ that both drugs could help maximise traditional cancer treatment.
Writing in the case report, they said: ‘This brings up the possibility that withdrawal of the cannabinoid and psychedelic therapies may have contributed to the return of the cancer.’
Although they remain clueless as to how the psychoactive drugs may have worked, previous research has shown magic mushrooms can starve tumours of the proteins they need to grow.
Cancer Research UK says that the research has been mixed, but some studies have suggested that cannabinoids work in a similar way.
Around 55,000 women in the UK and 264,000 in the US are diagnosed with breast cancer every year.
Stage 4 diagnoses usually only leave people with three years to live. While treatable, it cannot be cured.
Patients are traditionally given a mixture of chemotherapy and targeted drugs — like the woman in her first stage of treatment — as well as radiotherapy.
Cannabis is not currently prescribed for cancer in the UK, although doctors can theoretically dish it out as part of a trial.
Magic mushrooms are technically a Class A drug and the researchers did not explain how they were dished out legally.
The woman in the most recent case went to hospital in August 2018 after noticing changes in her breast tissue, where doctors preformed a mammogram, biopsy, CT-scan and X-ray.
Results in September showed she had metastatic breast cancer that had spread to other parts of her body.
She decided to start taking daily doses of cannabinoid oils from August, before the metastatic diagnosis, alongside standard treatment.
The oils included both CBD — the chemical thought to have some medicinal benefit — and THC — the psychoactive element of cannabis that makes user high.
Under the direction of one of her doctors, she gradually increased the dose until the psychoactive effects felt too much.
Scans taken in October showed the tumour had halved in size and she started micro-dosing mushrooms from that month.
Micro-dosing involves taking around a tenth of the dose required to get high from psychedelic drugs — in her case 10 to 20mg — at regular intervals through the day.
In November, she also had her first sensory deprivation tank session, where she was given 4g of mushrooms under a doctor’s supervision.
Sensory deprivation tanks see users placed in a salt water bath where they float in darkness and no sound, creating a similar effect to zero gravity.
They’re thought to aid relaxation and are often combined with psychedelics to allow users to hallucinate more clearly.
After the session, she was given a psychotherapy ‘reintegration’ session to make her feel reaccustomed with the world.
She said the combination of cannabinoids and mushrooms helped ‘ease the suffering’ and made her feel like she was watching her experience rather than feeling it.
Quoted in the journal, the woman said: ‘When one is diagnosed with cancer, the mental, physical and emotional events which consume and slowly chip away at one’s humanity become a daily routine.
‘Everything changes in a heartbeat, and suddenly death becomes your daily counterpart. It’s dehumanising, demoralising and just plain horrific.
‘Cannabis changes all of this. It will ease the suffering of so many, as it eased mine. Cannabis provides hope. It provides help when you feel you can’t go on.
‘I was able to eat. I was able to sleep. The nausea was almost non-existent. I could function. I could work. I was no longer slave to my disease.’
Products containing THC, including oils, gels and tablets, are class B substances in the UK and possession is punishable by up to five years in prison.
Medical marijuana containing the chemical is legal in 38 US states and DC, while cannabis is entirely legal in 18 states.
Oils containing just CBD are legal in the UK, however, and have become a booming £690million-a-year industry, outselling all other vitamin supplements combined.
Although CBD has been thought to have some medicinal properties, including relieving inflammation, pain and anxiety, critics say there is no conclusive evidence.
Suppliers in England and Wales have to obtain a licence to sell CBD as a medicine.
Manufacturers are able to avoid the strict regulation by selling it as a food supplement — ignoring the lengthy process of gaining a medicinal licence.
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