Debra Kimless, M.D. & Steve Goldner, J.D.: Cannabis – the latest science on CBD & THC

**Peter Attia** (0:04)
Hey, everyone, welcome to The Peter Attia Drive. I'm your host, Peter Attia.
The Drive is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking, along with a few other obsessions along the way. I've spent the last several years working with some of the most successful top performing individuals in the world. And this podcast is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality, more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's episode and other topics at peterattiamd.com.
Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode of The Drive. I'd like to take a couple of minutes to talk about why we don't run ads on this podcast, and why instead we've chosen to rely entirely on listener support. If you're listening to this, you probably already know, but the two things I care most about professionally are how to live longer and how to live better.
I have a complete fascination and obsession with this topic. I practice it professionally, and I've seen firsthand how access to information is basically all people need to make better decisions and improve the quality of their lives.
Curating and sharing this knowledge is not easy, and even before starting the podcast, that became clear to me. The sheer volume of material published in this space is overwhelming. I'm fortunate to have a great team that helps me continue learning and sharing this information with you. To take one example, our show notes are in a league of their own. In fact, we now have a full-time person that is dedicated to producing those, and the feedback has mirrored this. So, all of this raises a natural question. How will we continue to fund the work necessary to support this?
As you probably know, the tried and true way to do this is to sell ads, but after a lot of contemplation, that model just doesn't feel right to me for a few reasons. Now, the first and most important of these is trust. I'm not sure how you can trust me if I'm telling you about something when you know I'm being paid by the company that makes it to tell you about it.
Another reason selling ads doesn't feel right to me is because I just know myself. I have a really hard time advocating for something that I'm not absolutely nuts for. So if I don't feel that way about something, I don't know how I can talk about it enthusiastically. So instead of selling ads, I've chosen to do what a handful of others have proved can work over time, and that is to create a subscriber support model for my audience.
This keeps my relationship with you both simple and honest.
If you value what I'm doing, you can become a member and support us at whatever level works for you. In exchange, you'll get the benefits above and beyond what's available for free. It's that simple. It's my goal to ensure that no matter what level you choose to support us at, you will get back more than you give.
So for example, members will receive full access to the exclusive show notes, including other things that we plan to build upon, such as the downloadable transcripts for each episode. These are useful beyond just the podcast, especially given the technical nature of many of our shows. Members also get exclusive access to listen to and participate in the regular Ask Me Anything episodes. That means asking questions directly into the AMA portal, and also getting to hear these podcasts when they come out. Lastly, and this is something I'm really excited about, I want my supporters to get the best deals possible on the products that I love. And as I said, we're not taking ad dollars from anyone, but instead what I'd like to do is work with companies who make the products that I already love and would already talk about for free, and have them pass savings on to you.
Again, the podcast will remain free to all, but my hope is that many of you will find enough value in, one, the podcast itself, and two, the additional content exclusive for members to support us at a level that makes sense for you. I wanna thank you for taking a moment to listen to this. If you learn from and find value in the content I produce, please consider supporting us directly by signing up for a monthly subscription. My guests this week are Dr. Debra Kimless and Steve Goldner. I'm not gonna say much about them by way of background because I opened the interview by asking them to introduce themselves because their backgrounds are so relevant to the discussion we have. I sought out both Deb and Steve because I wanted to have a discussion that would frankly first inform me, but obviously provide the necessary and relevant background information to all of you as listeners on a topic that frankly it confuses me to no end, which is the entire morass of THC, CBD, hemp, cannabis, that whole landscape. And truthfully, I've never fully been able to understand this in part because I think it's just very confusing, in part perhaps because I haven't put enough effort into it. But preparing for this podcast was a great exercise in doing just that. In this episode, we talk about a lot of things, but we start frankly with some of the semantics. What is the difference between THC, CBD? Where do these things work? How do they work in the body? What's the difference between what it's doing in the brain and what it's doing elsewhere? And how do molecules work that aren't neat and clean, like designer drugs where one molecule hits one receptor? As you'll see, cannabis, it works very different from that. We also then get into some of the safety issues. At the time of this recording, which was in late October 2019, there is obviously an epidemic, or at least a perceived epidemic, around the dangers of vaping. We touch on some of the reasons why that may be the case. But really for the past three years, we have been witnessing both a market evolution, a scientific evolution, and certainly a policy evolution, which may be the most important as it pertains to this subject matter. And again, I think as you'll see in the first few minutes, Deb and Steve are really great people to have this discussion with because collectively between them, you have a medical, a pharmacological, and a regulatory expertise that is brought to bear. Now, it's worth pointing out that both Steve and Debra are involved in a company. Steve is the founder and CEO of Pure Green, and Deb is the chief medical officer. And I point that out to say everything must be interpreted with a grain of salt. And obviously, Steve and Deb have a commercial interest in this space. Now, I will tell you that after spending two hours with them or slightly more than two hours during this podcast, also spending another hour with them off mic, getting into stuff that we just weren't comfortable talking about on mic, I come away thinking very highly of them, very highly of their work, and believing that their intentions here go far beyond just the commercial intentions of people involved in this space. This is a confusing topic, and I won't represent that this one podcast is going to answer every possible question you have. The good news is it might not matter if it did, because frankly, this is an area that is evolving so much, and I suspect this is a topic that I will need to go back to probably a year from now. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Steve Goldner and Debra Kimless.