Rest Without the Risk: With Jon Vought

EP91: Rest Without the Risk 

It’s easy to ignore your own sleep and recovery when your job is a 24-hour mission.

00:00:00 Cinnamon: It's the first responder, the first to get the call, the first on scene, greeted by God knows what, pushed beyond the limits that they don't even set. Then what happens? You're listening to After the Tones Drop. We're your hosts. I'm Cinnamon, a first responder trauma therapist.

00:00:27 Erin: And I'm Erin. I'm a first responder integration coach.

00:00:30 Cinnamon:Our show brings you stories from real first responders, the tools they've learned, the changes they've made, and the lives they now get to live.

00:00:49 Erin: Quick heads up before we start. We want to acknowledge that some of the content we discuss on our show can be triggering for some listeners. Some of our episodes may touch upon themes like traumatic experiences, PTSD, suicide, and line-of-duty deaths. We understand that these topics are sensitive and might evoke difficult emotions. If you are currently struggling with your mental health or have experienced traumatic events recently, listen with caution. Now, if you're ready to proceed, let's begin.

00:01:22 Erin: Welcome to today's episode of After the Tones Drop, where today we are joined by Jon Vought, who's a firefighter and founder of Rescue One CBD, specializing in CBD for wellness and sleep. Today, Jon's gonna share how he balances his intense firefighting career with his passion for helping others through innovative CBD solutions. We're excited for you to join us in this conversation as we explore the world of CBD, tackle common misconceptions, and discuss the critical role of self-care in high stress professions. So we hope you enjoy our chat today with John and you find it engaging and enlightening.

00:02:05 Cinnamon: Hey.

00:02:05 Erin: Hello, kind sir. How are you?

00:02:11 Jon: Good to see you all. Great.

00:02:13 Cinnamon: You too.

00:02:13 Erin: Good to see you.

00:02:14 Jon: How are you guys?

00:02:15 Cinnamon: You now have a new nickname, CBD Jon.

00:02:18 Jon: I have way worse nicknames. I'll take that one. That one's good. CBD Jon works.

00:02:23 Erin: Nice. And it's also exciting to see a guest with a setup and a mic and everything that makes it, but I've seen you on a lot of stuff. So you just gotta be a pro now.

00:02:35 Jon: I don't think so, but I like talking about this stuff. So I figured if I was gonna constantly be in front of it, I might as well throw the sign up. So I got a little backdrop and just gives a little bit of a touch, right? Kind of cool.

00:02:49 Erin: It is too legit to quit. So we are coming into this interview right off the heels of a planning session for a local conference we're doing. So we're just trying to get our brains together. And the cool thing about After the Tones Drop is it's just a bunch of friends talking. So it's super low key, no pressure. The most important thing really is one, what you're doing is incredible. The fact that you've managed to figure out how to balance being a firefighter and in doing, and having your career and also creating this whole realm of helping individuals that are struggling with sleep.

00:03:30 Erin: And I know we touched a little bit on the pain, what that looks like. And we know how hard it is to run a business and the time it takes. So I am just baffled at the fact that you've been able to create this balance in your life to be able to do all these things. So obviously we are looking at mental health, but, and that would probably be one of my biggest questions for you is like, how are you taking care of your mental health while operating in this capacity so that you can be the best version of yourself for your patients and for the individuals that are using your product, you know?

00:04:08 Jon: It's a great question. I don't know if I do that good of a job all the time.

00:04:12 Cinnamon: Fair.

00:04:13 Jon: Yeah, so if I could, if she wasn't working right now, I'd bring my fiance in over here and she'd have a couple of things to say. Because the balance of it is the most difficult part. And right now I'm in administration, so I work like a day job too, you know? I'm not on shift for 24, which means I don't have those off days. There's like 48 off, we have 72 off, but those off days to like do all in on the business and have some time to rest. Typically, what I do is I come home, I set a like hard stop time and I try to make it before 9pm. So I'll try to get like 4 hours in. Really, by the time I get everything, I get like three and a half or four hours in.

00:04:58 Jon: And I just make a hard stop time where I have to dedicate time to stuff other than business. And that means time to May, my fiance, time to spend time cooking together or sitting on the couch and doing nothing but watching TV just for an hour or so, like whatever. But we have to have our coping. I have two dogs. I love hanging out with them. Obviously, they're awesome, but I don't always do that. And it comes out in a lot of different ways when I don't have that balance.

00:05:28 Jon: The most important thing for me, like that word everybody always uses, self-care. I think it means something different for everybody, but for me, it's disconnecting from sitting in front of a computer, packing and shipping orders or being on the phone or whatever else. It's so hard to do because I want my cake and I want to eat it too. I want to have this business grow 10 times over and I also don't want to put an undue burden on, you know, the woman I'm trying to marry, my own mental health and also at the cost of the business or my job. So it's like, I guess I'm winging it. But it's...

00:06:10 Cinnamon: Sounds about right.

00:06:11 Jon: It's going good. I mean, you know, I have days that suck and I've noticed that I've become more resilient, like mentally trying to figure out exactly how to do that. It's been tough. But what I've noticed is like a lot of positive self-talk and trying to look back, be like retrospective and say, what were some times that were really tough that maybe even harder than this and you got through just fine? Or a couple of times you thought this wasn't going to work out and it worked out fine?

00:06:41 Jon: And then it gives me some somewhat of a boost and I, it's kind of like a building block. So like every time I overcome something, maybe the next one doesn't seem so bad. But that was for me, probably the most important thing for that resilience is to try to have that. I guess calibration, right? Like I can have perspective to say in the past, this has really sucked. I got through it. I learned from it and I can actually apply it to something else now.

00:07:10 Jon: Where when it first started happening, I had no foundation and I was like every little problem when I say little like, you know, whatever, relatively little problem, it was like a meltdown. I'm like, holy shit, how am I going to do this? And it's gotten so much better. So I would say my self-care, like being able to disconnect, and then that, I guess, retrospective look and having some positive self-talk in that way. So, you know, they're kind of like buzzwords, but for me, they really, I have tactics behind them. They mean a lot, I can do stuff with it.

00:07:45 Erin: Okay, so we're clinicians, and I feel like those are excellent answers. So that whole story that you just told us about, ah, I don't really do anything. I'm like, that's bullshit because-

00:07:54 Jon: It doesn't feel like it sometimes.

00:07:55 Erin: Well, and that's because our, just because we, the clock says, hey, it's time to stop, doesn't mean our brain stops, you know? Doesn't mean we're actually walking away. We're doing our best to be present and choosing what's in front of us. And I get it, totally. It's something that does take committed action, you know? So I get it. Plus no one's harder on us than us, right?

00:08:17 Jon: Yeah, yeah, seriously.

00:08:20 Cinnamon: Well, and I like how you talk about like, you know, self-care is something different for everyone. And I think when we all first started talking about self-care, no, we would joke and say like, it's not all pedicures and spa days. But I think I've learned and tell me if this resonates with you that most self-care is not enjoyable, right? Like it's not, like if you're ambivalent about two things, it's that you are feel equally invested in them, it's not like, eh, I could take one or leave one.

00:08:54 Cinnamon: It's like, I want to do both. What do I do? So self-care is, I'm making a hard decision in this moment for the bigger picture and perhaps pay off later. I would like to keep this fiance and marry her. So that means as much as I want to finish whatever I'm doing on the computer between 9 and 10 PM, I'm going to do the hard thing and get off.

00:09:21 Cinnamon: As much as I like spending time with her, I have to do that thing that I don't always want to do or can't be like, oh, it's just another hour and justify. So to me, I think the hardest part for us in this whole discussion of self-care is understanding that it's not pleasurable. Like it's not an automatic, like, woo, yeah. Let's do a self-care day. Like, is that called telling people no and setting boundaries?

00:09:57 Jon: Yeah. Preach, you know, just to underscore your point, I've had this conversation with May where I told her, I'm like, you know, what is the best thing for like me to lose stress is to tackle like the time sensitive task, you know? And if we do this thing on Saturday is where we take the dogs for a drive for an hour, you know?

00:10:18 Jon: And she loves bakeries and I live in Delray Beach in Florida and it's like one of the besides Miami and Fort Lauderdale, it's like the food capital of South Florida and we're big foodies. So there's stuff opening up all the time. We try to like take the dogs, go find a bakery, get some breakfast, like do other stuff. And it takes time in the morning and I have to be really diligent about doing that. And I have stuff I got to do for the business.

00:10:44 Jon: So I wake up for her. I don't like waking up super early. I love sleeping in, but I will sacrifice that easily to do that other stuff. And so sometimes like, yeah, I know that if I have those things in the back of my mind, it won't be present. Like, all right, what do I got to do to knock that out? If I can just do 30 or 45 minutes of work or an hour of work in the morning, go for it. And shit, you can apply that to like exercise.

00:11:10 Jon: Some people feel so much better if they just get an hour of workout in, but they hate working out. It's a definitely ambivalent feeling. You know where you go. I don't want to run, but I know if I don't, I'm going to feel like crap. So yeah, self care, I guess it can be painful. I don't love all the tasks of the business. I just love our mission. So it's more of just trying to get the chores done because it's really the passion behind it that I'm, you know, that I want to do, but I'm not really fan of spreadsheets and finance and like all the stupid stuff that comes with the business. It's just, I just want to help people, but that doesn't really happen without all the other stuff.

00:11:53 Erin: Wow. Yeah. I think we can say preach right back at you. We definitely know it's like, I just want to like hang out with people and like, let's like, you know, make people feel better, help people feel better. Don't want to do all the other crap. And Cinnamon ended up closing her group practice. That was one of the reasons, like, I just want to like do this thing. I don't want all this responsibility. And I respect that.

00:12:15 Erin: And, you know, I think that that's kind of what is a great segue into what you're doing now with Rescue 1 is the fact that you have this thing, you've created this product that has helped you be able to be the person that you are to be able to have this life with May, to be able to be this resource for other people and it was all based out of your own pain and experience from an injury, correct?

00:12:42 Jon: Yeah, it wasn't an injury, but I had surgery. I had a really basically deformed foot, and I was walking on my ankle. And I had it since childhood, but really, I don't know, you put some orthotics in, it really didn't bother you, and I ended up getting surgery to correct it when it got too bad. Had my own issues with sleep that I had to correct after taking opiates for a while. And stopping them sucked.

00:13:10 Jon: But besides that, my sleep was just so wrecked after. And so I started Rescue 1 after, just out of frustration. And I was talking to somebody about this yesterday where it was like, it was gonna happen. It wasn't like, I think a lot of people that start businesses, they have like this aha moment. You know, where they go, oh yeah, I'm gonna, I just came up with this idea, I just invented this thing.

00:13:30 Jon: That didn't happen with me. It was a very slow rolling process where I got more and more frustrated, basically angry about our lack of choices as firefighters for solving sleep, anxiety, and inflammation related problems, mostly sleep. And I was like, this is so crazy. So it put me down the path I'm on now, just my own frustration about trying to, you know, find this product, CBD, that was safe for firefighters. And knowing that nobody was making it safe for us is what led me down this path.

00:14:09 Jon: But I'm not like a business man. I don't have any formal education. I don't even have a college degree. I never graduated college. I'm just trying to like learn as I go. But I've taught myself a lot along the way. It's just one of those things that it was like, because of what happened, I was like, it was inevitable. It was absolutely going to happen with me. I just, I didn't have that like idea where I said, I'm going to do this, I'm going to make a bunch of money off of it.

00:14:32 Jon: I'm going to do this and grow it to be a billion dollar company or whatever. It's really just, I saw what it did for me and I'm like, everybody's got to try this. So it kind of just, I don't know. It just like appeared one day, kind of. It was very slow.

00:14:46 Erin: I mean, how, how did you do that? Because obviously the cool thing about your particular product is the fact that it doesn't show up in any kind of testing and what that says to me is like, did you have an experience where you were trying different ways to figure out how to navigate your sleep problems and you did try a product that didn't go so well for you? It's kind of one of those things where it's like, how did that even, how'd you go down that path?

00:15:15 Jon: Yeah, it was first, taking it back to stopping opiates. The first two days, I did not sleep at all. And it was like, I would try to go to bed. I'd roll around for hours and hours and hours fine at like three o'clock in the morning. I'd just go out into the living room. So, I didn't keep Mehgan up and you know, I'm just sitting on the couch. I'd fall asleep for like 20 minutes during the middle of the day sometimes. But it was 48 hours. I was like, man, this really sucked. And I'm like, this is just from opiates. This is wild. So, I got my sleep back, but it was very, very poor quality. And I tried taking, I was like drinking to just fall asleep, you know, so which terrible idea.

00:15:57 Jon: And then I would just wake up hung over in the middle of the night. So then it was like Benadryl, then it was melatonin, didn't really help much melatonin helped a little bit. But I found all these things had these side effects, whether it was grogginess, whether it was high, hangover, whether it was inability to function much the next day. And it was, it just didn't make sense. So speaking to the doctor, they were like, hey, you can just take sleep medication, you could take Xanax to calm me down at night. And then you can take like Ambien or Lunesta or something like that. And by the way, they're extremely addictive, you know?

00:16:30 Jon: And you're like, hang on a second. I got into this mess from an addictive medication, an opiate and what the hell? So, obviously in a perfect world, we can just correct all these things naturally. We wouldn't have to have these counterbalances of things, but that's not the world we live in, you know? I needed an opiate for my foot. It was completely reconstructed. There was no like just toughen it out with Advil. That's just not the way it's going to be sometimes. So, we get put in this spot as firefighters and we're like, what's the way out?

00:17:00 Jon: Well, buddy of mine, at the time he was big into like trying CBD and told me that it helped him a lot with inflammation. And he said it also helped my sleep. So, I was going to look at it. I'm like, well, what do you take? It's like, oh, this stuff, Charlotte's Web. Charlotte's Web is an awesome company. They've done really great things for the whole industry and for people, but they do not guarantee that you can have zero THC, like truly zero.

00:17:25 Jon: So I was like, what do I do here? Do I risk failing a drug test? We get random three times a year. I can't risk it. I ended up trying it while I was off duty, like while I was still at home and it worked great. So I was like, I can't do this long-term. I worked for a company that sold CBD online and I didn't like their product, but I got to learn the ins and outs. So I started a business that sold CBD just generically, not to firefighters. Going through all the manufacturing, I saw how to do it.

00:17:58 Jon: There's a process where you can refine it like crazy, down to zero parts per billion of THC, but it's extremely expensive to do. It's very difficult and nobody wants to do it. So when I asked about the process, couldn't get an answer. Everyone's like, no, thanks. I don't want to do business with you. So I had to basically contract scientists out in the Denver area to do it. And these guys are amazing. They do really, really great work. And they're the only place I know that would work with me to do what I'm asking because it's not really something that people want as far as like outside the fire service.

00:18:34 Jon: Nobody cares about microscopic amounts of THC. You know, it's not really an issue for them. And most of the country doesn't have the drug testing standards that first responders do. So kind of a long story, but it was a trail that basically was trial and error, and then me having to learn the industry from the inside, and then starting my own thing.

00:18:55 Cinnamon: Wow. That's... I mean, thinking about your determination and how many doors probably got closed on you before somebody was willing to say, yeah, let's do this. Because one, we can sell a product without having to worry about this small percentage of the population that are first responders, and you just were diligent. What do you think kept you going? Realistically, I'm sure there's a lot of cutout answers about, it's really important and we want to do it for us.

00:19:37 Cinnamon: But you've got this full-time job, right? You've figured out in some way, shape or form, how to cope with your own pain. How do you keep going when all of these doors are getting shut and you're still getting a paycheck, right? Like you don't have to do this. This is not your own personal survival. So what kept you so determined to pursue this?

00:20:06 Jon: I think it was a combination of two things. One, I have an extremely addictive personality, runs in the family and I can get really, really, really into stuff. So, if I find a topic I like, I just, I go crazy and you know, it gets into like Roman history sometimes and I can't just like watch a YouTube video, I'll end up reading books and go down a whole podcast about you know, the start to finish of the entire Roman Empire and that meme is very real by the way, where they were like, man think about how, when they ask, wives ask their husbands, like, how often do you think about the Roman Empire? And they're like, every day. Every single day, that is totally me. That's not a joke.

00:20:49 Cinnamon: I feel like it could get to be a real dangerous conversation. I'm like, do you have any thoughts on whether or not, all the conspiracies around whether or not it was the Titanic that sank and why?

00:20:59 Jon: Yeah, exactly.

00:21:00 Cinnamon: That was me yesterday and last night.

00:21:03 Jon: Yeah, it can spiral. So I think my personality was already primed for being very driven towards things. And it was going to land on something, you know? It was going to land on something. And I'm a very passionate person. I kind of lead with my heart a lot. I will make very, very quick decisions, you know, even before like I have all the information kind of thing. So, I tried to understand that a little bit and I've kind of had a proclivity for business. I wanted to start something, but I didn't know what I wanted to do.

00:21:38 Jon: And when I went through all this stuff, it changed the way I would sleep. And I was working really busy firehouses at the time and it made my life better because of how I could recover. With those things, and I saw like, this has to get out there for everybody. What really just put fuel in the fire and constantly fuels the fire, which I'm thankful for, although it is a pain in the ass, is the stigma.

00:22:05 Jon: So with my personality and with the fact that this helped me so much, I constantly have people telling me I can't do this or doors do get shut or the illogic of it all where the fact that hemp was even illegal was because some guy was afraid of getting put out of business, like his paper mill was afraid of getting put out of business in the early 1900s.

00:22:31 Cinnamon: Oh yeah, I can see us in a rabbit hole together.

00:22:33 Jon: Yeah, oh yeah.

00:22:35 Cinnamon: Let's talk about why hemp is a problem because it'll run every industry into the ground.

00:22:42 Jon: Yeah, and I mean, all these steps that are really illogical, they get my frustration level a little high and I start to want to tackle them. It's like there's always these goalposts that keep moving around. I'm like, oh, I'm going to go to that one. It's never monetary and it's never superficial. It's always the US Fire Service has this big roadblock for this awesome compound that doesn't make any sense to me. And I'm slowly taking away those boxes. So if it was a really easy road, it's funny. I wish it was sometimes. But if it was, I think my personality would basically just make me bored of it if that makes sense.

00:23:26 Erin: Totally. I'm like, uh-huh. Yeah. I'm like, do you have ADHD by any chance? But it's like everything you're saying, I'm like, yeah, me too, I'm the same exact way. And I think that you're right. And I think that comes along with being the helper, fixer of the world and being used to the certain chemicals that we get dumped into our body every day. And the fact that you're like, yeah, if it doesn't excite me and it's boring, I'm not gonna continue. And so there's gotta be some kind of challenge in all of it to keep me just on the edge of my seat.

00:24:04 Erin: And who, at the end of the day, it's like when you can solve something and there's that whole like, look what I did, you know? I got through that challenge. And it leads me to think about what you were sharing with me when we met you at Beaver Creek, which was that you're continuing to get shut down in various areas on social media, like, and then you're, you know, trying different avenues to make sure that people know that this is an opportunity, an option for them.

00:24:33 Erin: And I'm even watching myself being mindful of the words I choose to use because I'm like, I don't know if we're allowed to say that. Are they gonna cancel us? You know? And so I know that you were sharing that there has been many, many obstacles that you've had to go up against. But even despite all of those obstacles, you have all of these people that are finding relief with your whole vision. And do you know, like, do you have a guess on how many folks you think might be actually using this product now and finding it useful?

00:25:08 Jon: Yeah, it's in the thousands. You know, we've had, we've been in business for four years. And I think our first year when we started in like, actually launched, you know, like fall of 2020. So, you know, that year was obviously small, but you know, the year after and the year after that, we hit our first like thousand people. And after that, I mean, it's grown, it's doubled in size, you know, and we've, the third year and then this year is looking to do the same. So, we've grown a lot. It's in the thousands for sure. I haven't counted our total customers, but about 20% of people that purchase from us become subscribers monthly.

00:25:49 Jon: So it ends up being a recurring thing. And we've had some subscribers that have been with us since 2020.

00:25:57 Cinnamon: Wow.

00:25:58 Jon: I mean, like four years. It's so crazy. I love that. And I think that's like the biggest telling thing. And, you know, a bunch of my coworkers use it. And they've given me this really amazing feedback where very big motivation in my soul where I, you know, when it gets really frustrating sometimes or whatever else you kind of use that as some motivation, you know? Not that people are like relying on us, but people get good news out of it and I feel good about that. So I have to remember like why I'm doing it.

00:26:26 Jon: But the doors getting closed and the obstacles are so, it's strange to me, you know? If there were like really logical rules in place and you know, it's kind of like a A plus B equals C kind of thing where, you know, you look at it and you're like this makes sense. You know, I just have to submit this paperwork or I have to, you know, pay this for this permit or whatever else. But it's like all the random stuff. I'm like, why is this here? You know, we're looking to start us open a storefront next year and I have to buy, I have to lease a building that used to be a restaurant. We can't have a regular retail space. I'm like, why is that?

00:27:08 Jon: And they're like, well, hemp is regulated under the Department of Agriculture. Department of Agriculture says you're so you're selling a food product. You're selling a food product. It needs to be a restaurant. So if you don't buy like a restaurant space, you have to pay impact fees. I'm like, what's the impact fee? You know, like a thousand dollars per square foot. So, yeah. So like you can buy retail space, but then you have to convert it to pay the impact fees to the department of agriculture.

00:27:35 Jon: I'm like, okay. So if I have a hundred square foot building and I have to pay $1,000 per square foot. Okay, you gotta pay like $100,000. I'm like, all right. So yeah, I have to go find a restaurant then. They're like, yeah, what's considered a restaurant? Something with a sink and a counter, that's it. So I'm like, this shit is so weird. If they just said, hey, you just need a hemp license, I'd be like, great, you know? But they do this stuff and I'm like looking around, I'm like, I have to remind myself, I signed up for this. I knew there was gonna be a bunch of red tape.

00:28:08 Jon: I knew that this was an industry that had all the stigma in the world. All the random stuff that comes with it is part of the gig. I'm the only CBD company that caters to firefighters in the US. And CBD really isn't elsewhere in Europe or anything like that, like it is in the US.

00:28:27 Jon: And there's a reason is, for a while, I kept thinking to myself, if this was such a good idea, how come nobody else was doing it? And then I'm realizing this is a really good idea and maybe other people wanted to do it, but they're like, fuck that, this sucks. So, it kind of, that also pushes me in the right direction too, is like, if I don't do it, there is kind of nothing else right now.

00:28:50 Erin: Well, yeah. And the reality of it is, is that people, we'll put that in air quotes, do not want people to get well. Like, at the end of the day, you know, it's like that whole conversation about, well, there's enough brilliant people out there and enough scientists and everything else that could find the cure, that have the cure to cancer, for example. But yet, then people will get well.

00:29:18 Erin: And then how will anybody make money? Pharmaceutical companies and everything. I mean, there's always like that side of things. And so I'm like, yeah, why would somebody, why would they not make it challenging for you to introduce something that can actually work where people aren't on sleep meds anymore, where they're not taking naproxen by the handful or whatever? And it's shitty, but it's like that is the reality of it. People like us that are fighting so hard to help people get well in the most natural ways have all this pushback.

00:29:52 Jon: Yeah, it is very frustrating. Again though, I'm like, that's my field too. So I'm kind of grateful for it.

00:30:00 Cinnamon: So in terms of, you know, I'm listening to this and I'm like, man, yeah, there are so many people that want, that probably want you to fail, right? Or entities, right? Like you're taking money out of their pockets. You are providing side effect free option that isn't being made by, and again, now Erin's got me thinking like what not to say, right? Like some big pharma company and they're like, who the hell does this little guy think he is gonna be, you know, paying, contracting scientists to figure out something that we've tried to make so impossible.

00:30:43 Cinnamon: Like we don't want highly motivated people to be on this. And I've even seen entities and organizations go as far as have an anti, not only just a no THC policy, but a no CBD policy. And I'm like, what the hell is the rationale behind that? There isn't, right? Like there is none that is legit and good that isn't got some kind of underline of sketch of like, I'd rather just say don't do it than get the information about whether or not they should be allowed to do it or not.

00:31:21 Cinnamon: And as much as, you know, we all like a little gasoline, I still have to commend you for, you know, going around and above and beyond and continuing that determination, especially in light of the fact that they're part of what we're talking about is the chronic fatigue. So when we talk about pain management or we talk about getting quality sleep, I think sometimes it can go over our head. And maybe the typical firefighter or the typical first responder doesn't necessarily know that you're talking to them.

00:31:57 Cinnamon: So you're not necessarily like, we hear a lot of times, well, my sleep isn't any worse than the next guy's. And you're not just talking to the guy who tore his rotator cuff and his liver is going bad because of all of the pain alleviating pills that they're taking. You're talking to the guy who had three fires last night and at three o'clock, his kids are going to get off the bus. And somehow between seven and three, he has got to get home, get to sleep, get that quality sleep, and get back up to not be an asshole.

00:32:41 Cinnamon: So, like, it's not, you're not talking to this, you know, little fraction of the population. This is like, hey, first responders, we sleep like shit. This is a solution to help improve the sleep quality. It's not about getting off opiates for everyone. It's not about pain management for everyone. It's just, we're raising the, you don't have to have a really, really, really bad problem. You can just be one of us and still benefit from this to be less symptomatic. And I think that, even for me, I miss that sometimes when you think about what is the problem that you're solving, you're not just solving the problem that you have or had, you're solving the problem that you all have.

00:33:25 Jon: Yeah. And to underscore that point, cause I always try to bring this up. I talk a lot to, and this is more on younger firefighters than older firefighters, but younger firefighters tend to get really defensive when I try to talk about recovering from sleep. And not even younger, maybe even older guys that just, they think that they have an old school mentality and that they want the younger generation to kind of toughen up. I'll preface this by saying I'm 15 years on, I've only worked at busy firehouses. So five calls after midnight is something I'm very familiar with.

00:34:02 Jon: And I don't want to kind of like earn a badge or a trophy here. I'm just trying to say and know where they're coming from. I like being busy. I want to keep being busy. But a lot of times when I say like, hey, our sleep gets screwed up so you should try to handle it when you're off duty. They're like, well, if you can't hack it, quit. You know, and I'm like, you're missing the point here. Okay. So first of all, I used to get like very offended about that.

00:34:30 Jon: I'm like, hey, check your tone. You don't know who you're fucking talking to first of all. I don't like that. But then also I was like, why are they so sad about this? And I'm like, all right, look, you are still tough, okay, if you want to take care of yourself, promise. But what I tried to tell people in the workaround is like, do you like going to fires? Do you like staying busy? Okay, then take care of yourself. Otherwise, you're only gonna be able to do it for like 10 years. And then you're gonna have to retire on disability or an injury.

00:35:03 Jon: So, you know what's really not tough? Having to retire because you got cancer. Having to retire because you hurt your back. You know, you wanna sit around and tell guys half your age how it used to be, or like, you know, you wish you could still get on the truck, or do you want, cause when I'm in my 50s, I'm still gonna be, hopefully, I'm still gonna be healthy and going to fires and enjoying my job.

00:35:24 Jon: And if I, and I can leave on my terms when I want to leave, not when I'm forced to leave. And part of that is, you know, it, I'm not saying if you sleep well at home, you're going to be able to work and live forever. I'm saying it's a contributing factor and also the way we handle inflammation and the way we handle our health off duty. It's like, you know, everybody wants to pop in a Zen and shotgun a Monster and say like, yeah, I'm, you know, I'm tough. I'm like, hey, just calibrate a little bit.

00:35:51 Jon: I'm just saying, you know? I'm at that point where I'm like midway through my career and I know that it's a young man's game essentially. So, I'm trying to paint that picture as well because a lot of times when I say this, they get so defensive over it and say like, it seems like it's like dichotomy. It's like you can either take care of yourself and like care about your own health or you can be good at the job. I'm like, why can't you pay attention to both those things? You can recover from sleep deficits and you can pay attention to chronic inflammation and you can also be at a busy firehouse. Go do both.

00:36:30 Cinnamon: You said something, you said a couple things and I started doing some four, seven, eight breathing over here because there were a couple points that you hit that were like aggravating to me, right? Like that idea that the same negative feedback that you're getting about like taking care of yourself from firefighters are the ones who do it with a damn Monster in their hand,  right? I'm like, so you have no problem tearing yourself down with that, right?

00:36:59 Cinnamon: But you're like, you know, and again, let's call it a crutch, right? Like that's okay. And, but that's a whole other thing. You mentioned about taking care of your sleep when you're off duty. What would you say about using the CBD while you're on duty? Like, is that something that you would or would not recommend? You know, because obviously, you don't, you know if you're in a busy, at a busy firehouse, but at the same time, like, what if, what if we're not getting a guaranteed run after midnight every night?

00:37:37 Cinnamon: Like, is there value in me using that CBD? Because I don't know what's going to come later. And maybe because it doesn't have some of the side effects of some of the other sleep medications where you need a couple hours for it to wear off after you wake up. And so you're just throwing the hose around everywhere. But you actually can use the CBD and still function if you get a run that night. What is your thought on that?

00:38:05 Jon: It's a really good question. You can take CBD for things other than sleep. So there is a bunch of research that shows how CBD has a wake promoting effect when you take low doses. And if you get over 25 milligrams, it has a sleep inducing effect. So if you're trying to take it for sleep, this is my opinion. I would never take it at the firehouse just because I have no idea how many nights it's going to go. The guarantee thing just isn't going to happen.

00:38:33 Jon: I mean, if you're at a slow house and you take it, are you going to be able to wake up and function? Absolutely. Research has shown that you can still operate motor vehicles. It does not affect intoxication whatsoever. Heavy machinery is no problem. It doesn't slow reaction time. It's supposed to promote REM sleep without getting too sciencey because I lose people when I do. I just.

00:38:33 Cinnamon: [inaudible].

00:38:57 Erin: I know. I was about to be like, can we get into the science of this? Sorry.

00:38:59 Jon: Yeah. I guess that's a good time right now, but just for sleep, because I think it's important to know how it works, it does a couple of things. It drops your body temperature slightly, which when your body temperature is up throughout the day, the second it starts to have a drastic mark decrease, you naturally simulate melatonin.

00:39:17 Jon: How does your body know when it's time to go to bed? Well, one is light, which we screw up on the job and with screens like on the phone. So that one isn't a good cue for us anymore. And so decrease in body temperature is a good one. And this is why a lot of sleep experts tell you keep your house at 68 or lower, too much lower, but 68, 67 is like the perfect temperature to sleep in and also take a shower like two hours before you go to bed, an hour or two hours before you go to bed so that you can, your body heats up.

00:39:47 Jon: And then when it cools off, it releases that melatonin. So combining CBD with like that is what helps boost a natural amount of melatonin to signal to your body. It is time to go to bed when a lot of times at night, when we start to relax and the day is over, that's when like our mind starts going crazy. So having that signal melatonin cue kind of helps you start to relax, to get into the sleeping mode.

00:40:12 Jon: But then also CBD has a really cool effect on your anxiety level with serotonin. So it affects the receptors in your brain that degrades serotonin. So it stops serotonin from getting broken down. So it keeps a serotonin level a little bit higher. So people tend to feel really relaxed and very even keel when they're taking CBD at any dose. And so taking it during the day for that is fine. But at night, when you want to shut your brain off a little bit, an increase in natural melatonin and an increase of some serotonin makes you feel kind of relaxed and then your overall sleep time.

00:40:47 Jon: The third thing and probably the most important one is that it was discovered a few years ago that the cannabinoids are the chemicals that set the master clock in your brain. So, how that circadian rhythm is set are set by endocannabinoids. There are two of them and those cannabinoids are at an all-time high when you are, no pun intended, they're at an all-time high when you are sleeping normally and they're at an all-time low when you're in a sleep deprived state.

00:41:16 Jon: So there is a direct correlation to cannabinoids and your circadian rhythm. That's what sets your circadian rhythm. So if you think about how screwed up our sleep schedule gets because of light, when it's dark out, like seeing lights, the iPad screen, the, you know, the computer or working on scenes and our rhythm, it gets disrupted constantly because we don't have more than a couple of days off to recover. We have to reset our master clock. How does it get reset?

00:41:46 Jon: Easy. You can sleep normally seven to nine hours every night for weeks without an eruption, meaning don't go to shift or you have to take cannabinoids. So it's this very interesting supplement that's like, and that all those studies are done in the last few years, but if you think about when you're on shift, if you wanted to take it to relax or to help yourself fall asleep, great.

00:42:14 Jon: With that in mind, it will help whatever little sleep you do get be more restful, but there are a certain percentage of people that feel groggy with it. It's a small percentage, but it is considered a negative side effect. It's just not common. So I'm always like, eh, is it worth it? I don't know. I do know that the intent of it was while you're off duty because we can't reset our circadian rhythm without having perfect sleep for a long time.

00:42:42 Jon: The only way to increase your, you know, naturally occurring cannabinoids to take some. And particularly CBD, because THC is actually bad for sleep architecture. It'll help you fall asleep, but it inhibits deep REM. So when you take it chronically-

00:42:57 Cinnamon: It inhibits what again?

00:42:59 Jon: Deep REM sleep. Yeah, so when you take it chronically, the amount of REM that gets interrupted actually screws up. So people who chronically use THC at night, they'll swear that it helps them fall asleep, but if you talk to people that have used it for a long time, ask them when the last time they had a dream was, you know, like it's, they don't really remember their dreams. They don't really sleep very deeply. This is like a well documented phenomenon with THC use. So CBD is the king of the sleep cannabinoid.

00:43:29 Cinnamon: So you kind of mentioned endocannabinoids in general. When you say CBD is the king of sleep, I know that there's also, is it like CBN that, like there's other ones that don't end in D.

00:43:45 Jon: Yeah, there's a lot.

00:43:46 Cinnamon: And I think CBN is one of them. I can't think of the other one, but what, how did those factor into what your decisions about what goes in and what doesn't and where you put your priorities in your?

00:43:58 Jon: If I could make CBN in the same way I make CBD, I would have a one-to-one mixture of CBD and CBN. We don't know as much about CBN because it's what they call a minor cannabinoid. So if you extract, if you pick a hemp flower off of a stem, 40% of it would be pure CBD. It's very, very high concentrated CBD. 0.3% of it is THC, and then any random number, depending on how it was grown, all the other CBs that you've, like you said, CBA, CBA is not really used, but CBG is a big one.

00:44:33 Cinnamon: CBG's the other one, yeah.

00:44:34 Jon: CBG's the big one, yeah. And then CBN. CBN is being researched in humans to find that it promotes sleepiness. So it makes you feel tired, which is great. And it does by itself when it's isolated without CBD, it does increase overall REM time as well. They don't know why though. I'm sure the mechanism of action is similar because those cannabinoids that they're affecting in our body, there's only a few of them in our body. It's not like we have a ton. So, you know, THC affects some, CBD affects some. So I'm assuming it's a very similar mechanism of action.

00:45:08 Jon: This is the crazy thing is CBN has metabolites. So, when you take CBN, it turns into metabolites of like THC. So, you can fail a drug test with CBN. And it's, again, without getting too sciency, but it's actually unknown if the CBN is causing those metabolites or if it's so close to THC that when like we're making it and we're trying to extract CBN, we pull some THC along with it because it's really hard to tell the difference even under a microscope between the two. So CBN is awesome, but it runs that, there's not enough research to say that you can take it and pass a drug test. So CBD is like the really safe one.

00:45:49 Erin: Wow, well, one thing I will say is that, first of all, you can nerd out with us all day long because we want to understand. And also when we're explaining to people, hey, this is why this works. I mean, that's our whole entire show is about, here's what's going on with your brain and why you're reacting the way that you are. Here's what's going on with your body. And for those out there that are like, well, I don't need sleep, I'm tough, blah, blah, blah, blah. 

00:46:16 Erin: I mean, the truth of it is, is when we are sleeping is when all, is when our machine, our factory is like doing its updates and cleaning the system. Like the, you know, the cleaning ladies come in and all of those things are happening, our brain is saying, is processing, you know, like, okay, I don't want, okay, we don't need to remember that I ate Taco Bell today, so we're gonna put that away, you know, but it's doing all of the things, or we're gonna throw that away.

00:46:45 Jon: Yeah, throw that away. I love Taco Bell.

00:46:47 Erin: But I think that's the biggest, me too, cheesy burrito to crunch, but, ADHD. But yeah, it's kind of like-

00:46:57 Cinnamon: Cholito.

00:46:58 Erin: Everything that folks say, I get it. Like, I don't want to be a pussy, you know? I'm just going to do the thing. But the reality of it is, it's like, cool, cool story, bro. I mean, you can keep up with that mindset. I love that you touched on the fact that, okay, do you want to like retire because your body completely is broken down and you don't have a choice in the matter? And then you're going through deep grief, which is a whole nother thing when it comes to mental health.

00:47:25 Erin: Or do you want to have a say in that matter? Well, it requires you to get adequate sleep so that your body and brain can do what it's meant to do. That we humans have put every freaking derailing system in to stop our bodies and brains from doing the thing we're supposed to do. Whoa, that was... 

00:47:47 Cinnamon: And then we drink a Monster.

00:47:48 Jon: Yeah, yeah. And I think like embracing the fact that we can't help the calls after midnight. That's totally fine. That's where I start the conversation. I go, I'm fine running calls after midnight. In fact, most of the firehouses I want to work at, I'm going to run a lot of calls after midnight. I welcome it. That's part of the job. That's what I signed up for. I'm just saying like, handle it off duty. You know, I'm not saying go try to escape from working at a busy firehouse. If that's where you want to work, go work there because I'm going to go work there.

00:48:17 Jon: But yeah, I want to, I don't, I don't, it's exactly it. I don't think it's very tough when I go, I have to retire early because I didn't take care of myself. That doesn't seem very good. So if that's kind of the conversation and if that's the conversation I have, I think it's getting better and it is getting better. I gauge it kind of like at FDIC every year because I see thousands of people come by the booth, walk by the booth. I talked to hundreds. I wish I talked to thousands, but it's hard to get people to stop when they see CBD sometimes they're like, oh, nope, don't think so. And they walk by.

00:48:50 Jon: That's when I started making the little Cuban coffee shots and everybody stops for those. And then they're like, what do you got here? And then we start talking about CBD. That's like the lure. I'm not even shy about it. I tell people that. So the conversation I have at FDIC gets better every year, gets easier every year. More people are asking about it every year.

00:49:09 Jon: I know that we're in for a positive wave of change here soon just based on in the four years I've been going there. People are way more open to the health and wellness side. There is even a health and wellness section of FDIC now. And it's smaller than the rest of it. You know, people are still there for tactics and buying stuff. And that's where it started. So I understand.

00:49:31 Cinnamon: Ropes and hatchets, ropes and hatchets.

00:49:35 Jon: And so it's still there. But, you know, the the overall acceptance of it is like going up every year. So there's a lot of optimism on my end.

00:49:47 Cinnamon: So I have a question and this may be, yeah. Well, I'll just ask it. So when we, you started out telling us that THC over time will disrupt the REM sleep. You also said that CBN, better for worse with the other stuff, increases your overall REM sleep, which is a good thing, as does the CBD.

00:50:18 Cinnamon: And what we know about REM sleep is, REM sleep is supposed to be, for the average person who's not overwhelmed with trauma on a pretty regular basis, that's like one of the only times in our 24-hour cycle that the body is adrenaline-free and the hippocampus is, if it is not also traumatized and not working properly, is going to sort those memories. So would you say, and is there any research that supports as your extending or expanding your REM sleep time, that it also is helping offset, and I'm not talking about like, sleep is the foundation of our mental health conversation. I'm talking specifically about the impact on our REM sleep.

00:51:01 Cinnamon: Is there any evidence that the benefits to our REM sleep with the CBD and any of the endocannabinoid are actually helping us with post-traumatic stress type symptoms around memory flashbacks, nightmares, the stuff where our hippocampus is at work either underperforming or having a negative impact on us on a day-to-day basis? That was like the longest confusing question ever. You've got it.

00:51:39 Jon: Yeah, it's a really good one. There is a few offhand that I can think of with CBD and PTSD. One that's really interesting is how it deals with memory consolidation. So processing memories, and you guys know better than me, but I understand that they happen during sleep, and lack of sleep means you can't process them well, and I know it's kind of like a cycle. So there's some pretty cool ones with, hang on. I have the bible. I made this.

00:52:15 C You made the Bible? Here and here we just thought we had Jon, CBD Jon on and here we have the Bible author.

00:52:23 Jon: I am the author. You guys didn't hear about this. So this is actually a collection of my favorite research. And-

00:52:31 Erin: Are you and Cinnamon like separated at birth?

00:52:37 Jon: Yeah, maybe.

00:52:37 Cinnamon: I was like, what would it cost to get a photocopy?

00:52:42 Jon: So I have a QR code that I send to people and it's the whole thing. Yeah. And so  I hosted on my website just for a media file, but it's like a free link, but I summarized each one. So just going to show you the beginning, but I went through it so you get the quick, down and dirty of it. But with PTSD, I have a little, I'm just nerding out here, a little PTSD one.

00:53:05 Cinnamon: A little tab.

00:53:07 Jon: Yeah, a little tab.

00:53:08 Cinnamon: Tabity tab tab. We're organizing.

00:53:10 Jon: So, there's a couple. One of my favorites from Israel is it's called, if anybody wants to look it up or I'll give you the link, but cannabinoid receptor activation in basolateral amygdala blocks the effects of the conditioning and extinction of inhibitory avoidance. So, it basically says CBD and its effects on PTSDs. In the past, they've heavily focused on THC and marijuana.

00:53:34 Jon: But it has properties that show it helps people with processing and avoidance. So they have that one, they have a bunch in mice, which are like, eh, they still have value, but they don't really compare dose-wise. And then the rest of them are with sleep and then with controlling the stress. So they were doing double-blind studies as well, but they showed a couple that humans, when they were managing stress better, their symptoms with PTSD weren't as high.

00:54:08 Jon: So it's a combination though. It's like, I don't want people to think you take CBD and all this stuff goes away. All these people that they were testing on, they're like, okay, this is an adjunct to therapy and diet and exercise and keeping a very holistic approach to the whole thing and just saying, please don't replace this with your other crutch.

00:54:31 Jon: And always like I hear this side of it where it's like, okay, I want THC to be legalized so I don't have to drink anymore. I'm like, hey, that's, we can argue whether that's healthy or not. I think like physiologically, it might be healthier than slamming your liver with alcohol every day. However, mentally is that really good? You know, like are you just replacing one crutch with another? So that's the side one.

00:55:00 Cinnamon: Or we could just deal?

00:55:05 Erin: Or we could just walk through it.

00:55:05 Cinnamon: Just address.

00:55:06 Jon: Just address. But yeah, the thing with PTSD is it's so wide ranging. And, you know, the fact that it changes your brain, like the structure of your brain is a really big problem. And so I always say like, yes, there's some research that says with memory consolidation and like these little parts of it that are they're important parts, but they're little parts, it helps with, or at least research has promise to show that it can, because none of this stuff is FDA approved. These are all university studies.

00:55:38 Jon: But there is something there. It's not zero. How big of an impact it has overall remains to be seen. But, and is it short term? You know, I don't know. But if it can help, it seems to be helping as long as people are still continuing with all the other stuff that you have to do with therapy.

00:55:58 Cinnamon: Yeah, you can't stop therapy and exercising and eating right and doing everything else and be like, I'm just going to start using CBD and wipe out everything else. And because there's no possibility of testing positive, because it's a cost effective comparatively, you know, what a 30 day dose bottle or whatever the cost is, it just seems like why not consider that as a complimentary piece to everything else that we're doing.

00:56:33 Cinnamon: If nothing else, you're not gonna be an asshole to your kids when they get off the bus because you're sleep deprived. And then all of a sudden, that problem becomes somebody else's problem because now we don't know who we're gonna get when we get off the bus. Right? And so now I'm gonna be a little gun shy about, who is it gonna be? So I haven't heard you say anything yet about why this is a bad idea. So maybe now would be the good time to ask that question. Like who would this be contraindicated for or who wouldn't do well with this or why wouldn't you want to go this route?

00:57:20 Jon: I always make people aware that there are a percentage of the population that CBD has a bad effect on them with, like most people will take it saying, I want my sleep to get better and it does the opposite. It will ruin your sleep. Most of the time, I try to tell people like you might be taking less than 25 milligrams and that's awake promoting things. So, if we checked that off and I know you're taking the right amount and you're feeling like you're wide awake, this has a, what do they call it? Biphasic? It's like a biphasic effect.

00:57:50 Jon: It's not meant for you. Sorry. You have bad chemistry for it and it's not common. I haven't heard it more than a couple of times, but it's out there. That's trial and error. You just got to try it. I can't tell you if it's going to be you or not. The other one is it does interact with medications. So, if you're taking medication, you have to talk to your doctor because it affects the vast majority of medication and a lot of times it makes it a lot stronger.

00:58:20 Jon: So, where they're really worried about it is with chemotherapy and with blood thinners. So, we had one of our customers, he actually sent me a screenshot of his liver enzymes while he was taking our product and he was undergoing chemo. And his liver enzymes went way up, way up. And his doctor was like, you got to stop. We were giving it a shot. No, don't do it. So, and they normalized after that.

00:58:44 Jon: Now I'll say elevated liver enzymes doesn't mean liver damage from what doctors say. That just means that it's stressing your liver. So, it's up to the doc. The juice has to be worth the squeeze kind of thing. There's a whole host of things that people can take medication for where CBD can interact with it and it's not that big of a deal. But particularly with blood thinners and with chemo, that's like a hard stop. They were like, don't do that.

00:59:14 Jon: Oh, pregnant, nursing mothers. There is zero research on what it does to infants. And THC, we know, inhibits brain development in kids and can affect future fertility in infants as well. So, that's, they kind of linked CBD and THC even though they don't really affect the same receptor sites in the body. It's still the endocannabinoid system. There's just two receptors in the endocannabinoid system. And last week, I had somebody reach out to me who was nursing and she was like, hey, I started taking this. I know I'm not supposed to, I'm nursing, but it's really, really helping my sleep. I did my own research.

00:59:54 Jon: And I'm like, look. I can't tell you what to do. I'm telling you that's not a good idea. I don't know anything about it. And I don't like to tell people to do something I don't know anything about. But if your OB is familiar with this and is fine with it, I can't tell you not to do it. People that make their own decisions, I don't know. But the default is just talk to your doc. But those are like the ones where I tell people do not take it without talking to your doc. If you're on medications and just don't take it if you're nursing.

01:00:21 Jon: There's also a CBD and medication interaction checker on webmd.com. It's really cool. You can type in any medication and you can type in CBD and it'll tell you like low, moderate or high interaction or if there's no interaction. And it has a very, very expansive list of medications on there. It's really helpful. And it's free. Like you just go check it out. But that's what I always refer people to because it's updated by doctors. So, that one's like a really reliable source.

01:00:53 Cinnamon: Erin, do you think we could throw that in the show notes?

01:00:56 Erin: Yeah, I mean, well, luckily we got transcripts and it'll all auto-populate on the page. Oh, man.

01:01:00 Jon: I love Riverside.

01:01:02 Cinnamon: Yeah, I'm just thinking, I'm like, what a great resource before I even think about reaching out to CBD Jon, I can go through my meds and check this out.

01:01:17 Jon: You could always reach out for whatever, but yeah, that's an easy one for people to just have because sometimes medications change or they just forget. You know, they're like, oh, was this one okay? So like SSRIs is one, a lot of people take SSRIs. CBD effects serotonin. So it has like a moderate, but I know for the most part, people take SSRIs with it without an issue. It doesn't really make this like big sweeping change.

01:01:43 Erin: Well, and we, like, obviously we've been talking for over an hour now, which is shocking because you just never know, although we can talk for hours.

01:01:51 Jon: Yeah, me too.

01:01:52 Erin: But I'm listening to you speak and my big issues are, is inflammation, like my hips are jacked. I have like, I'm getting like carpal tunnel or something's going on in my arms, you know, and I know from using the mouse and the computer all the time and we didn't really get to talk much about the inflammation side. And I'm like, yeah, but I want to take it for the inflammation. I don't want to be tired when I'm trying to work, right? So how does it support with inflammation if you can give us like a cliffsnotes? And yeah, is it kind of like, well, you got to pick your poison. You're either going to be tired or you're going to be in pain, you know?

01:02:27 Jon: No, not at all. You can takem so we make an out of service formula that has terpenes in it, which are like plant compounds from cannabis to make you feel tired. Except we didn't get those terpenes from cannabis. We got them from mangoes and hops and random fruits like that, that they're also present in to avoid the THC content. So the out of service is specifically made to make you feel tired. Our other stuff, the daytime formula, does not make you feel tired.

01:02:52 Jon: And the CBD molecule works like prednisone, except it doesn't affect your liver, but it touches the same white blood cells that prednisone does, so it's an anti-inflammatory in that it can suppress some of that chronic immune response, and it's an antioxidant. So for things like an autoimmune problem, or like arthritis, chronic inflammation like that is, CBD is tailor-made for that.

01:03:20 Jon: So, when it's a chronic issue, helping reduce that overstimulation of like the immune response, like what they call, it's ROS, something oxidative species. But I'll have to look that one up. But it basically means like there's too much oxidation and not enough antioxidants and it results in chronic inflammation. And the two ways to combat that are increase antioxidants and reduce the inflammatory response, which is the white blood cells they work on are called cytokines. It's the same thing as a steroid does. It inhibits cytokines.

01:03:58 Jon: So it's like taking prednisone or like sodium medrol. In fact, they were giving it to as there's like research with asthmatics, you know how asthmatics are always on like a steroid, like prednisone inflammation around their lung tissue. They were inhaling CBD and it was working just as good, which is wild because it doesn't have like, prednisone is a great drug, but when you take it for a long time, it messes up a whole bunch of stuff.

01:04:18 Erin: It's got terrible side effects.

01:04:19 Jon: Yeah, it messes up your skin, like makes your skin paper thin, it's a huge weight gain and messes up your liver.

01:04:26 Erin: Messes with your bones. Makes your bones weaker.

01:04:29 Jon: Yeah. So it has that side of it too. The two ways to do that, to deal with that are topically, which will give you like short-term relief and mostly to the local tissue, but if it's like chronic inflammation issue, especially like an immune thing, then you have to take it sublingually so that it's like a systemic and that would be under the tongue like an oil.

01:04:50 Erin: Yeah, my daughter does a steroid inhaler. She's supposed to do it two times a day. She doesn't, but, you know, one time a day. I mean, granted, she's 11, I'm not gonna be like, here. But that's cool to know that it works in the same way. I know Cinnamon looks like she has something on the tip of her tongue, and then we'll let you get on with your life. But yeah.

01:05:15 Cinnamon: Actually, I'm, in all transparency, I just kind of dipped out because when Erin was talking about all of her aches and pains, we are both dealing with a form of gluteal tendinopathy. So I, and I know it's the deterioration of that tendon tissue. And I'm like, will CBD help with this? Because we're old ladies and we're falling apart. And that is, that's at least my biggest complaint. And she's, you know, been dealing with hers for even longer than I have.

01:05:47 Cinnamon: So again, it's just kind of like, if I have, you know, other than, you know, searching it up on Google or whatever, what would be a good way to find out if my most recently acquired condition can be treated with CBD? Like where would you direct me to find out?

01:06:06 Jon: First of all, I don't like the old lady comment. Y'all don't, y'all have a different standard for old as I guess, like old down here. Yeah.

01:06:12 Erin: Oh no, it's our bodies. Our bodies are, like I just started wearing glasses finally I gave in.

01:06:19 Jon: I was like, all the old people you have in Ohio, we have their parents down here, okay? I was like, I don't wanna hear it. So I have to, and we really should underline this a lot, like make it very clear that we're saying in this podcast, CBD is not used to diagnose, treat, or prevent anything. That is the FDA disclaimer. I have to put that on everything, on the website, on a blog, like all that stuff. It's not used to diagnose, treat, or prevent anything. Talk to your doctor about any conditions you have.

01:06:49 Jon: But it's hard to say what CBD has promise for because research is really centered around, funny enough, seizures, which we can talk about why, but inflammation, sleep, and mood. Everything else is kind of just like one doctor at a university was like, man, this would be crazy if it could do this, let's go see what it does. And they try a one off study. So overall, if it's related to inflammation, CBD will have a positive effect on it from what research shows.

01:07:19 Jon: Other than that, you know, when people say like, is it really good for something specific? Like, like when they say, is it good for like plantar fasciitis? Have patients been studied on it? I don't know, but it does reduce inflammation. So, you know, when I tell people, like, best thing to do when you have a local, like a really specific area with it, I'm like, it's just a matter of putting some topical on there and then taking CBD sublingually and doing it consistently. See if it helps.

01:07:46 Jon: But yeah, like there's probably a million studies that are starting to come around now because CBD has only been legal for the last six years. But so funding has been scarce and now it's opened up.

01:07:59 Cinnamon: Yeah.

01:07:59 Erin: Yeah. I mean, I've kind of like resigned to the fact that that this is a karma reaction, like us both having ass pain problems is because we've been such a pain in the ass our whole life. And so we like sourced this, like we're gonna have ass problems.

01:08:15 Jon: I gotcha.

01:08:19 Cinnamon: But at least now we have like a dignified name, like it has a name and we're not just like, we literally have a pain in our ass, it's called gluteal tendinopathy.

01:08:29 Erin: Mine's piriformis syndrome or something.

01:08:32 Jon: Those are deep tendons though. So like topical might not even do anything for it. The piriformis, I think that's a little more shallow, but still it's like, especially like people that have bulging discs. People ask me all the time, does CBD help bulging discs? I'm like, nope, that's a structural problem. I mean, you know, like CBD won't help bone on bone pain. That's a structural problem. Now, is there inflammation around that area and you can maybe take the edge off? Yeah.

01:09:01 Jon: Like, you know, when people have bulging discs, all the muscle tissue around those discs really tenses up and it gets inflamed and it's super painful. So it could help, but it's not going to help the disc at all. So it's really like, sometimes it's the surrounding stuff or the refer to pain that you can also help.

01:09:19 Cinnamon: Again, it can be a complementary component to like, is it going to help the bulging disc? No. Can it help some of the problems that the bulging discs cause potentially? And I did say the word help, right? I want to make sure I didn't say treat, cure, or-

01:09:40 Jon: A lawyer told me to use the word support. That's a good one.

01:09:42 Erin: Support.

01:09:42 Cinnamon: Support.

01:09:44 Jon: Yes, it supports proper sleep.

01:09:44 Cinnamon: Wow, I feel like I'm having an essential oil conversation.

01:09:48 Jon: It supports good sleep. Yeah.

01:09:50 Cinnamon: Don't piss off the FDA. No, but I do like that approach that it's like the research is only what the research has been. When you're looking for specifics, it's more of like a trial and error process. But if you can think bigger picture, it may not help the problem, but it can help the side problems that are a result of the problem.

01:10:15 Jon: Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. So with all the research, you know, I always try to take it with a grain of salt until I see more come out. But I do know that people are very quick. I've seen reaction videos from doctors talking about CBD saying like, Oh, this is very limited research and you know, more needs to be done. These are small studies, you know, and some of these studies are talking about are like 400 people in a double blind controlled study.

01:10:45 Jon: And I'm like, how much research was done on X, Y or Z, which you know, these drugs I want to say, so I'll say like, I can't say the name of it because I was told like saying the names of drugs probably isn't good, but GLP inhibitors, right? Like the big ones that are coming out right now, they do not have nearly the years of research that cannabis has on it, that CBD has on it. And none of it comparatively is even close, but those are out and FDA approved because they went through the three phases of trials.

01:11:17 Jon: So, I mean, it's kind of a pay to play thing where it could be great, but they haven't gone through the three phases of trials through all of it, or there really is some something to it saying, hey, there isn't enough research. But I always counter that and say, okay, quite possibly. Show me the bad research. Where is it showing that it's dangerous? It's addictive? Where it causes damage? Show me the bad stuff. Because in all of these, the worst case scenario is it's like, hey, it doesn't do anything for X or Y. Cool.

01:11:52 Jon: Well, so we know that it helps with inflammation, with sleep and with mood, where are the negatives? Where is this thing saying like, okay, your hair's gonna fall out if you take CBD long-term? And we have long-term studies for liver damage, which doesn't cause liver damage or kidney damage, any of that stuff. Some people get an upset tummy and some people get palpitations. They're like, okay, well, I'm sorry, I don't see the risk here. What's the hurt in saying try it?

01:12:22 Cinnamon: I mean, I certainly wouldn't have known that back in the day, but when we talk about things being FDA approved or not FDA approved, when we talk about research, whether there's been enough done, I don't think that the general population is super informed about the barriers to research and the fact that it really is super expensive to get a study off.

01:12:50 Cinnamon: You can have something that has proven benefits without having a lot of studies behind it and that there's a lot of politics in studies. What gets paid for, what doesn't get paid for, who's paying for it, who's invested in using their money to fund those studies and then the complication of I made a thing and now I'm going to create the study around studying whether or not the thing's legit, you know?

01:13:25 Cinnamon: Like, and so I want to be really clear that there are certain maybe litmus tests that we as consumers have been taught to use as whether or not something is good or bad or safe or unsafe that isn't just a black and white issue. And, man, am I looking for lawyers in all the right places. I'm really trying to say what I'm trying to say without Erin getting a phone call.

01:13:59 Jon: Can I tell you a funny one that just like drives your point home? There's a study that said CDB turns into THC in the stomach, right? Which would be a huge problem. This is five years old. The study is five years old. And I read through this, I'm like, whoa, when I was going down the rabbit hole, this was one of the first ones. I said, oh, I guess we can't ever take it because if you ever ingest it, it's going to turn into THC. So, I was like, wow. So, I go down this thing and I read another article that says that first one is crap. And I'm like, what? Why? What happened?

01:14:35 Jon: And I read this and they go, well, let's talk about it. They took a petri dish and put hydrochloric acid in it and just dropped some CBD into it. And they're like, look turns into THC. First of all, that's not a human and that's not stomach contents. Hydrochloric acid is not stomach contents. Now there is acid in your stomach, but, you know, to do it in the proper proportion and with other gastric juices, like that's not the same thing. And then when you get down to the bottom and you see who paid for the study, you know, what is this?

01:15:06 Jon: And they go, it's a company that sells trans dermal CBD patches. Because at the end of the study, they say if you put the patch on, it won't turn into CBD. It won't turn into THC. So I was like, these people could have upended this entire industry if it wasn't for these other scientists. The peer review process, thank God for it, you know, went through and said like, that's very poor research. And then so this whole slew of research came out after to show that CBD does not turn into THC in stomach contents.

01:15:39 Jon: And we are actually contributing to that as well. I can say it now because, what's today, the 15th? In five days, they're gonna announce this at the conference in Jersey for analytical studies, but Rescue 1 CBD is a part of a study with Arcadia University in Philly and the University of Maryland, and it's showing that firefighters taking our products do not cause failed drug tests, which is really exciting.

01:16:07 Jon: It's not published yet, but they have the result. But that's coming out on the 19th, which I'm assuming is gonna be, by the time this podcast comes out, it'll probably be around then. So, but that's, we're trying to also contribute to that too, just to show like this stuff's safe.

01:16:25 Erin: Well, please let us know when you have yet another box checked.

01:16:28 Jon: Yeah, that'd be really cool.

01:16:29 Erin: Because obviously, like we said to you, when we met you, we're totally about what you're about, whatever resources we can get to our folks. And also selfishly, whatever resources we can get for ourselves to improve-

01:16:42 Cinnamon: For our pain in the ass.

01:16:44 Erin: And our ass pain, yeah. Because, you know, the truth is like, we are no better than in terms of the way that we deal with stress and overworking ourselves and everything else. And we're helper fixers too, who work with you guys, and we take on all the vicarious shit and everything else.

01:17:04 Cinnamon: Takes one to know one.

01:17:05 Erin: Right. I don't want to be a hypocrite and say like, this is for you all and also for us. So thank you so much for, God, your commitment, your determination. I mean, it's like just sheer grit. You're like, I don't got a time to play.

01:17:19 Jon: I'm trying.

01:17:22 Erin: Well, no, you're not, you're doing.

01:17:23 Jon: I'm doing, yeah.

01:17:24 Erin: You're doing it.

01:17:25 Jon: Yeah, slowly but surely.

01:17:26 Cinnamon: You're picking up the pencil. You're not trying to pick up the pencil. Can we get, do you have a wedding date set?

01:17:31 Jon: We actually are looking at venues right now and we're trying to look at next fall sometime because we're probably doing it in Vermont.

01:17:40 Cinnamon: Will you give her our best? And when the going gets tough, just tell her that there are a lot of people out there that are very, very grateful for your struggle and attempt to set boundaries around self care.

01:17:57 Jon: As tough as I am, she's way tougher than me. If you met her, you would immediately agree she's something else.

01:18:06 Cinnamon: We should have a meet and greet.

01:18:08 Jon: Yeah.

01:18:09 Cinnamon: Now, did you say her name was Mehgan or May?

01:18:10 Jon: It's Mehgan, but she goes by May.

01:18:12 Erin: Okay.

01:18:12 Cinnamon: Okay.

01:18:13 Jon: Everybody calls her May. I've known her.

01:18:15 Cinnamon: Are you saying Meg with a G or M-A-E or M-A-Y?

01:18:19 Jon: She goes by M-A-Y like the month.

01:18:20 Cinnamon: M-A-Y. Thank you. Okay. I heard both. I was like, did we hear it wrong? Because yeah. So okay. All right. Go May. We like her already.

01:18:30 Jon: Yeah, if I call her Mehgan, I'm either she, I'm either messing with her or she thinks I'm angry. She's like, Mehgan-

01:18:37 Cinnamon: Or her mother got a hyper masculine voice.

01:18:39 Jon: Exactly.

01:18:42 Cinnamon: Well, thank you for taking some of your business time to talk to us and help us get the word out about what you're creating to our listeners. And we'll include all of the good ways to get a hold of you for, and you said that not only can you just go on and product but you can also subscribe. So for those of us who you know are struggling with that memory consolidation, it can just show up at our house. And it's like, you know, auto pay for my utility bill. Jon shows up in the mailbox.

01:19:22 Jon: Yeah, exactly. We do you can do it like every other month too, if you don't use it that often. But it's, we just launch seasonal flavors. So it's marionberry, pumpkin, creamy pumpkin, candy cane and butterscotch.

01:19:37 Erin: And there's like a mint chocolate chip one, right?

01:19:39 Jon: We have a mint chocolate one. Yeah. That's like always around. That's our, it's like tastes like Andes Chocolate Mints. It's just called mint.

01:19:48 Cinnamon: I remember you saying that, which yeah, that sounds like the one I need.

01:19:51 Jon: Yeah, it's like Andes and he's been but when we hop off, I'm going to get your address and I'm sending you guys a care package for having me on.

01:20:04 Erin: Thank you for joining us for today's episode of After the Tones Drop. Today's show has been brought to you by Whole House Counseling. As a note, After the Tones Drop is for informational purposes only and does not constitute for medical or psychological advice. It is not a substitute for professional healthcare advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

01:20:26 Erin: Please contact a local mental health professional in your area if you are in need of any assistance. You can also visit afterthetonedrops.com and click on our resources tab for an abundance of helpful information. And we would like to give a very special thank you and shout out to Vens Adams, Yeti, and Sanda for our show's music.