Dr. Shivani Amin is a Family Medicine, Pain Specialist and Expert in Medical Cannabis. She began her career at Hoboken University Medical Center in New Jersey. Following a general family practice in Frederick, Maryland, she began to specialize in pain management. As a registered cannabis physician in the state of Maryland, Dr. Shivani has made it her goal to help educate the public on medical marijuana and is dedicated to the compassionate and responsible use of medicinal marijuana as an option for treatment. Dr. Shivani formed a company, Green Health Docs, as a way to educate the public and patients on the medicinal alternatives to opioids and synthetic drugs. Their mission is To combat the nation’s opioid epidemic and give patients back control of their lives with natural medications like medical marijuana. In this episode, we talk about the many many benefits of medical marijuana and CBD oil. I have personally been using CBD oil and have noticed that my appetite and mood is more stable.
How do you use a plant as medical treatment?
The biggest misconception about marijuana is that it can only be used as a drug. However, the plant has over 400 different chemical components and many components in the plant can be effectively filtered out and used for medicinal purpose. A lot of research is being carried out to filter all the components of this plant that can be used for medicinal purpose.
Some of the common components are CBD, PHCBE, PHC, VA.
Can you explain the difference between THC and CBD?
Both THC and CBD are part of marijuana plant. THC stands for tetra hydra cannabinoid. It is a chemical compound that helps patients with chronic pain and inflammation. THC can also produce that feeling of euphoria, cause hallucinations and can get you high. CBD is also part of the plant but it does not produce that psychoactive high. It is extremely anti-inflammatory. It does not have any side-effects either.
Why do you prefer the use of CBD in your practice?
The reason CBD is famously used in reference to medical marijuana is that it does not produce that psychoactive high. It can even be consumed by children. It is known for being extremely anti-inflammatory and has neuroprotective properties. Many believe it can be used to help people with seizures because of its excessive neuroprotective properties. It has also been shown to repair damaged cells and many believe it can be used to treat autism. CBD is also being studied for Alzheimer’s and for treatment against cancer.
Can CBD help reduce weight loss?
CBD is being studied to find if it can help reduce weight loss. It has been shown to reduce a person’s appetite and Dr. Shivani experimented it with herself. She takes a 15-milligram dosage of pure CBD every day and she has noticed it has reduced her appetite. It makes her go to gym and workout. However, Dr. Shivani advises everyone to be cautious with dosage as she herself was the victim of slight over dose sometime ago. She believes an individual should not consume more than 15 milligrams CBD in one day.
Can we use CBD with any other medication?
Dr. Shivani says CBD has not really shown any side-effects with any other medications. She says it is safe even for people who are taking their blood pressure medication and CBD has the ability to mix very well with other medications.
Would you recommend medical marijuana to people with addiction to drugs?
She believes medical marijuana has actually helped people who were addicted to drugs. She encourages such people to consume medical marijuana especially CBD because it does not have that chemical component responsible for producing a psychoactive high.
How did you get into this profession?
Dr. Shivani has always been a huge fan of alternative medicine. It has always been her passion. When she was a house officer she would always question why a patient was prescribed a certain medicine and if there were alternatives to that specific medicine. She always felt there were more than one ways to deal with diseases. She always felt we should put in efforts to reduce consumption of pharmaceutical pills and focus more on natural solutions. She was doing primary care and was seeing close to 30 patients per day. Many of these patients were coming in for pain, depression, and anxiety. She felt pharmaceutical pills were like were not the solution to the problem. She felt like she was not doing enough for these patients prescribing ‘candies’ to them on daily basis. She switched over and started to study alternative medicine for pain management. Once cannabis became legal for medicinal purpose, Shivani knew she had the opportunity to do more research on this plant that has tremendous benefits for health.
Do you believe there are many stigmas to marijuana?
Dr. Shivani completely agrees that there are many stigmas around marijuana. She has been working in medical marijuana for quite some time but even in her own family she has to face this stigma and people in her family are surprised that she recommends marijuana as a medicine for her patients.
Do you feel like you have to break this barrier of stigma around marijuana?
She thinks it is her life purpose to clear all misconceptions about the use of marijuana. This is why she tries to educate people with the proper use of marijuana. Shivani believes there is still a lot we need to learn around how the plant works.
What is the best advice you have ever been given?
The best advice she got was from her dad who asked her to be herself and to do things that make her happy. At the end of the day, you are your best friend.
How can we connect with you?
You can connect with her through her website.
Her website’s URL is