Robin Daly: Hello, and welcome to the Yes to Life show here on the UK Health Radio, I am Robin Daly and I have been hosting the show for over five years introducing you to a huge range of fascinating guests and topics all of them around integrative medicine for cancer, a modern approach to medicine that draws on conventional medicine techniques complimentary in lifestyle medicine, and traditional methods in order to address health needs in a fuller, and more rounded way than would be possible with conventional care alone.

Today I am diving into a topic that never fails to generate a lot of interest. CBD and other kinds of derivatives. I am also doing this with a very special guest who is highly versed in the uses and qualities of cannabinoids as they are called. D Danny Gordon a double board certified medical doctor and describes herself as a CBD cannabis medicine and integrated medicine specialist. She co-founded the UK Medical Cannabis Clinician Society, trained the UK’s first cannabis medicine specialist and help set up the UK is first cannabis medicine centre. The event has prompted me to speak to her today, is the publication of her new book, The CBD Bible. I am speaking to Dr. Gordon over the internet.

Dani it is a pleasure to have you on the show today.

Dr. Dani Gordon: Hi Robin thank you for having me it is a pleasure to be here

Robin Daly: I have not had a paper copy of your new book in my hands, just an electronic one so far, but at about 325 pages, I guess it does earn its title The CBD Bible. How come there is so much to say about one plant?

Dr. Dani Gordon: Well, you hit the nail on the head, it is about the whole plant. So not just about CBD, although the title is The CBD Bible, but it really is about the whole cannabis plant and CBD of course is just one of the chemicals in that plant that people kind of know the most about because of the hemp CBD products that you can buy now without a prescription over the counter for wellness. There is lots to say about this plant because it is used for so many different things. It has medicinal uses, it has wellness uses, of course being a medical doctor, I have used it with thousands of my medical patients as well, including those who are working through a cancer diagnosis and treatment. So we really go through all of the different uses, all the different types of the cannabis plant and there is a chapter really for each kind of area like sleep, anxiety even things like epilepsy, of course not giving medical advice, but just telling people about the different ways that it is used and can be used.

Robin Daly: This is extraordinary, you certainly have a lot to say. Everyone knows that possessing cannabis has been a criminal offence for a long time. However, I have got to say your book is making quite a strong case for it being a crime against humanity, preventing access to all these beneficial properties for such a long time. It is a really spectacularly useful plant that seems, and not just for medicines, as you mentioned.

Dr. Dani Gordon: Exactly, it has been really kind of demonised, for the better part of the last century and a lot of those reasons which I have a chapter in the book about this, about the history of the plant and it was a perfectly legitimate botanical medicine, even in the Victorian era. It was only in the 20th century when it was highly politicised and there was quite a political, quite racist campaign against the plant. That really led to a prohibition for many decades on an international level with the UN and of course here in the UK and only recently have we been able to really bring it back into a medical context and to actually study it.

Robin Daly: I have spent quite a few years talking to people about cancer, about health and particularly about natural medicines and something that is become quite clear to me is it seemed to be two groups of plants with which we have an amazing synergy. They seem to be extraordinarily helpful to humans. The first one I became aware of was the mushroom family, which can help in a multitude of ways particularly if you’ve got cancer. But the second that I have become aware of more recently is cannabis. Can you tell us why it is so extraordinarily helpful to humans?

Dr. Dani Gordon: The cannabis plant really evolved. I like to say it is one of those plants have evolved with humans in that we actually produce our own chemicals in our body called Endocannabinoids. These are a chemical that are made in the brain and in the body that are similar to the plant’s chemical stands in the cannabis plant and because they are so similar that is why we can utilise the cannabis plant chemicals in our own body and they can have a similar effect. So we have just kind of evolved around these plants over millions of years. The poppy plant is another plant that we have evolved with. And of course, it can be abused in situations with unsafe describing of opioids, but actually in a lot of senses, including around surgical procedures and acute pain opioids made from the poppy plant again, because we have are our own system in our body that is meant to use those types of plant chemicals as well are very therapeutic when used correctly and in our bodies. Cannabis is similar in that sense only it has one lower risk of addiction of the opioids, a lower risk of harm and you can use it for a wider variety of conditions and symptoms. In health reasons and the reason why is because this system, this endocannabinoid system that we have that can utilise the cannabis plant chemicals exists in almost every organ in your body. So it exists throughout the brain, in our immune system, in our guts, in the female reproductive tract, in our skin. So it is a very wide ranging, far reaching system which helps us really balance our brain and our body.

Robin Daly: Fantastic, and with this spectacular issue that we have with opioids at the moment, maybe cannabinoids are one of the answers to turning this around.

Dr. Dani Gordon: Well certainly, I have used them in my medical practice to and replaced them completely opioids for chronic pain, and in many other cases where it was not possible to get off of them completely, then in palliative care, these types of things to dramatically reduce the doses of opioids.

So absolutely there has been some preliminary research that is very promising for that use.

Robin Daly: Your book is divided into two sections broadly. Part one is about a hundred pages or so, and introduces us to CBD, and part two is almost twice as long on what it can do for our health and wellbeing or CBD. Should I say CBD and other aspects of cannabis. So my plan for today is not to dwell too long on part one material because I actually wanted to get into the what it can do. But could you just say a little to introduce it and how CBD relates to cannabis and maybe the legalities around it?

Dr. Dani Gordon: Part one is really the history of beginning of this plant, the different parts of the Cannabis plant, and what types of plant chemicals come from each part of the plant CBD is one of those chemicals. We also talk about THC and both the other plant chemicals that I have potentially important health benefits, although we know less about them. We also talk about how this endocannabinoid is natural Cannabis like producing system. We actually have our own bodies really works, so I really get into that, in part one and I also talk about safety issues around cannabis.

I have used it safely, the different types of CBD and cannabis medicines, like topical forms and oils and gummies and inhaled products, any kind you name it and there is a section for those types of products you can kind of get familiar with all the different things that are out there and which one might be more appropriate for them.

Robin Daly: That is kind of important, you are right. It seems to come in so many different forms these days and some of them are much better for some things; do you want to give us a little tour?

Dr. Dani Gordon: Sure, broadly speaking the hemp CBD products that you see over the counter that is what you can buy without a prescription. So a lot of people start with those for wellness uses. Certainly if you have more of a medical condition like chronic pain, for example, or you have really bad insomnia, or you have what is called spasticity, like from a neurological condition, like multiple sclerosis or Parkinson or something like this, where you are having muscle spasm. Those are all areas where medical cannabis with a prescription from a doctor that contains THC can sometimes be more helpful, and the reason why is because THC is more of a pain reliever and anti-muscle spasm medication. So if you want to try for a wellness use for anti-inflammatory effects for arthritis, stress is one of the major things that are used for, mild anxiety even you can start a CBD products from helping. The most common way to use them is in an oil that you take by mouth. So those are kind of the two broad classifications hemp CBD products and cannabis and when it comes to medical cannabis, you can take oil that has some combination of CBD and THC together, depending on what you are using it for in the patient. Within that, you can get the oral oils, or you can also get tablets, or you can even get the flour and you put it in a vaporiser and you actually inhale it kind of like smoking but you do not burn the flower. You don’t burn the plant material and that is another really common medicinal use.

Robin Daly: Interesting. It is important to be clear about the THC containing varieties. Is that right that they are available on prescriptions, some medicines have the THC, but otherwise in this country, it is not legal to buy ones that contain THC. Although that is not true everywhere, it varies from country to country.

Dr. Dani Gordon: That is correct, I know in the UK you cannot legally buy cannabis without a prescription that contains THC, although probably around 1.5 million people in the UK are currently using cannabis on the so called black market for medicinal reasons, not for recreational use. So there is a huge population of people who are using it medicinally. But technically it is not from a legal source currently.

Robin Daly: So this is the one of those situations where the law really needs to catch up with the reality.

Dr. Dani Gordon: Absolutely. I think it is not good for patients in many ways. A lot of my nonprofit work is around cannabis, but also around drug policy reform and harm reduction. Because of course, when you start to create an environment where people are using a plant for medicinal purposes and you are criminalising them, you are forcing them to criminalise themselves. Then you put them at further risk of marginalisation. You put them at further risk of criminal elements, you put them at risk of having an unsafe product and further risk of stigmatisation and kind of making them less inclined to go back to their doctor and receive that medical care that they probably also really need. So, that is really part of my message, we need to really work on getting people legal access for medicinal purposes.

Robin Daly: Do you want to say broadly something about the safety record?

Dr. Dani Gordon: As far as safety of medical cannabis in general, there are certain higher risk situations, for types of people. But in general, cannabis has a very good safety record in terms of if you look at the recreational use especially with lower THC cannabis. So in recent years, there are some forms of cannabis on their recreational market that are very high in THC and those have a higher risk. But generally speaking, this was really only quite a recent thing that we saw this come onto the market but generally speaking, low THC high CBD cannabis is very low risk for most people. So people, both who might be at slightly higher risk for using a product with THC.

Especially because that high CBD cannabis it does not have a lot of CBD to kind of counteract it people at risk of THC side effects include people like with heart conditions, people with a history of psychosis in their family, people the history of bipolar disease. Those are some of the populations you have to be quite careful and of course children. So in adolescents and teenagers. So there are some cautions areas just like with any medication. I always say that many plants, I do conventional medicine, the convention trained medical doctor, and I am also trained in natural and botanical medicine. So I always tell my patients and my colleagues that just because something is natural does not mean it has no side effects and no potential for safety issues although, oftentimes it is lower risk. There are many plants that are toxic in nature in Cannabis it is a power plant. It is quite safe, but certainly there is ways to use it cautiously in a medical context.

Robin Daly: Right, thank you, so onto the main course, what CBD and cannabis products are useful for. You got a big slab, 200 pages here of loads of things it is useful for. The immediate and blindingly obvious thing that jumps out at you is the vast number of issues that can happen with and many of these are key issues that people with cancer face, of course, both from the illness itself and from the treatments for cancer. Can you start off by telling us about the various ways that CBD can help with your state of mind?

Dr. Dani Gordon: Absolutely. CBD is just one of the plant chemicals, so it really depends what you are trying to do with it, with my cancer patients in particular they are usually having trouble with fatigue, anxiety, sleep, pain that could be nerve pain from their treatments that could be pain from their tumour. I mean it is really quite a wide variety. They also have a lot of guts symptoms, oftentimes again, from their treatment or from the cancer itself. So as far as people, state of mind high CBD, low THC, medical cannabis, and sometimes CBD from hemp although there are not really great big studies on that yet. But certainly high CBD medical cannabis can be very helpful with helping reduce anxiety and feelings of stress in certainly even in times when people are having trouble, if they are having really a lot of trouble with sleep or getting to sleep or staying asleep that is where adding a little bit more THC can be helpful.

And everyone is a little bit different. So I really tailor them to the patient and what they are working with but just helping with quality of life is where Cannabis really shines right now when it comes to cancer, hopefully the future we will know more about the individual tumor effects of the thousands of different types of tumor types. But right now that is a really complicated area because some tumors express receptors for different cannabis cannabinoids on their surface. So for example, if you give someone the wrong combination of cannabinoids or the wrong dose, it may actually hurt the tumor versus help the tumor shrink. So we have to be pretty careful with many types of things like that but in most cases we are looking for symptom control and how can people get through their chemotherapy, get through their treatment and then for palliation of symptoms, it offers a lot of that value.

Robin Daly: It seems to be where the evidence is in dealing with all the side effects of having cancer or having cancer treatment. There seems to be no doubt that is enormously helpful. I mean sleep, as you say, can be a big issue for people with cancer, but alongside it comes of course fatigue, which is probably one of the most common things that people suffer from when they have got cancer and it is completely crushingly life destroying symptom to have to deal with. Can you say anything about that does it helps in any way with that?

Dr. Dani Gordon: Yes, it can help enormously with fatigue and I think the thing about cancer fatigue, that a lot of doctors do not talk about, and this is what I find with my patients, is that cancer patients get some support for their fatigue when they are going through chemo, when they are going through treatments, but then after they get discharged or they are in remission, they often get discharged from the specialty clinic and that no one tells them that that fatigue can persist for years in many cases.

There are oftentimes left with this post-cancer fatigue and that is so crushing because they feel like they have no help or resources and no one has warned them about it. So in those cases, especially I find it helpful and even when people are going through chemotherapy, it helps not only with the fatigue, but often with their nausea.

So, normally what we will do is, we will use vaporised cannabis with certain strains that have certain profiles. So certain terpene and certain cannabinoids that is more energising for the morning. Then we use strains that are more calming for the afternoon and the evening because there are so many varieties of medical candidates. So really you really want to tailor it to the person because if you use the wrong type of product, it can actually make a person feel sleepier.

Robin Daly: As with everything in the health there is such an array of possibilities of combinations of people, symptoms, doses, balance between THC and CBD all these things. The amount there is to be found out is sort of mind boggling.

Dr. Dani Gordon: Yes, absolutely true.

Robin Daly: One of the other things that people talk about alongside fatigue is what they call chemo brain, which is a bit like fatigue. I think it is a very particular thing, is that something it can happen?

Dr. Dani Gordon: Certainly, this is very anecdotal meaning case study evidence based on my own experience, based on my colleagues’ experience. So there are no studies, if you go look on the research literature chart, you will not find anything. However, that being said, I do find it can be helpful for patients but again, you have to find the right product because if you find the product where there is too much THC for that particular person, it can make them feel more brain foggy. But if it does not have quite enough, it is the wrong strain that I might not do anything. So yes is the short answer and tweaking the plan for someone who really understands cannabis medicine is really important that I find defining that right fit for the patient, when it comes to that particular use of the brain fog, the chemo brain kind of foggy brain.

Robin Daly: So it is a case of individual trial and error in fact at this point you do your best guess of what is going to work and then see what happens and adjust accordingly.

Dr. Dani Gordon: That is completely correct and that is something I am completely honest with to my patients. I think it is really important to be honest with patients about this particular element of cannabis medicine, I do not think everyone is super honest about it, or maybe they think that it is going to work the same for everyone because there they have not been doing it for a very long time or they might not be trained in botanical medicine.

But I think it is just really important to say that out front to patients “hey we are going to go on a journey together and we are going to experiment data. We are going to start with a very good educated guess but that is what we are doing. We are taking educated guesses and we are being scientific as we possibly can be”, but it is definitely different than giving someone a straight up pharmaceutical pill because it is a botanical medicine.

Robin Daly: It is an interesting period, is it not? Because in a way we are just beginning to move beyond the miracle cure stage which is things always start out there. They are going to cure you of your cancer and all the rest of it and then we start to get a bit real and we started to realise there is an awful lot we do not know basically. There is no smoke without fire. Very often that something that starts off as a miracle cure, turns out to have a lot of things that are useful, but it is a matter of getting much more specific about what they are and who they are going to help and under what circumstances. I have to say that so far cannabis where in a way it is generally finding out more and it helps that we are not knocking this possibility off the list.

Dr. Dani Gordon: Absolutely. I think the research is and evidence is getting much stronger but you are absolutely right it is not a wholly safe oil it is not cure oil, it is not a quick fix but it is definitely a powerful botanical medicine.

Robin Daly: I noticed there was a section about gut health, which is not something I particularly associated talking about new things. I had not really thought about cannabis products in relation to gut health, but you do talk about it being useful there. And of course, gut health is a big issue for people who are having cancer treatments, because they can have a terrible effect on people’s gut and therefore lead to poor absorption of nutrients without immunity, which are both clearly undesirable outcomes with someone suffering from cancer. So what can you do here?

Dr. Dani Gordon: This is a great question. So what I have found both of my cancer patients and my chronic gut health disorder patients is cannabis can be helpful in a number of ways. The first way is this the anti-inflammatory and the gut and that is where CBD can be really helpful. Then you have the pain and the spasm and the gut that some people get with irritable bowel syndrome some people who get irritable bowel syndrome symptoms only have it after they have had chemo.

Some people never had bowel problems and then they end up with this issue so that is where a little bit of THC, containing cannabis like on prescription for example and sometimes vaporize can be very helpful for those kinds of attacks. Then you have the nausea THC specifically is the anti-nausea part the anti-nausea chemical. So the nausea can be really alleviated by a little bit of THC, along with CBD to buffer side effects and the other way that I find this really useful is when people have to go on really high doses of opioids for their pain control when they are going through cancer treatments and after they come out of a big cancer surgery, sometimes the acute medication they needed in the hospital that opioids for their post-surgical pain. Sometimes they have to stay on them because the pain just does not get under control and that causes so many gut problems. It causes constipation, and bloating, and it slows down the gut motility or like how things move through the gut. What we do there is we add medical cannabis in and then we wean down at the same time, it is called a cross taper. So we go up on the cannabis and we go down on the opioids and people’s gut function improves; A because of the cannabis helps anyways and B because they are getting rid of the opioids.

Robin Daly: It is a sort of way out of a jam in a way that is pretty amazing. People take some pretty strong drugs in order to control when they are having chemo to control the nausea and vomiting. Can you actually substitute cannabis products for those drugs and get away with it?

Dr. Dani Gordon: In some cases yes I have certainly done that, people were not able to tolerate even things like ondansetron for example, is one that is used but some people can tolerate ondansetron pretty well but it does not really work all the way. So sometimes we combine the medical cannabis of course with medical supervision with the other anti-nausea drugs and sometimes it works really well.

Robin Daly: Another issue that is in your book is inflammation. So of course that is something that is very broadly now recognised as being at the root of cancer and lots of other chronic conditions. Do you want to say a bit about the ways it can help that?

Dr. Dani Gordon: Certainly, this is a big topic, so it was hard to make of course generalisations in medicine about anything. But there are so many compounds in the cannabis plant chemicals like CBD, actually THC as well THCA that are anti-inflammatory. So inflammation is not all bad we have to remember this. A little bit of inflammation helps activate our immune system to help fight invaders and infections. But where inflammation is bad is when it becomes a chronic kind of overreaction and we think this might contribute to even things like mental health conditions like some forms of depression, potentially.

Certainly a lot of things with gut health, certain cancers, and certain tumour type’s inflammation play a role. But again not all inflammation when it comes to cancer is bad. So it is one of those things where yes, cannabis as a plant has many anti-inflammatory effects. And it is just kind of where you want those effects to go and how you want to use it and for what. But when you are talking about inflammation from arthritis pain, for example, or an auto immune condition where there is inflammation involved certainly that is where medical cannabis, the CBD can be also be very helpful.

Robin Daly: You have strayed off into other territory there and of course most of the questions I have been asking are very specifically about things that might help people with cancer for a good reason but nonetheless of course there is potential in cannabis products for a huge raft of other health issues. Do you want to do a roundup on some of the most important ones, the key ones?

Dr. Dani Gordon: Sure. As far as mental health goes, we have the most research evidence so far for anxiety, and it is kind of more wellness related cousin to stress. Some evidence not as strong, but depending on the preparation or sleep disorders, insomnia, PTSD is another one with pretty strong evidence. Then we have conditions like Bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and psychosis where CBD not THC, but CBD might actually be an anti-psychotic that some preliminary studies are actually showing may actually have a very potent effect at very large doses, similar to an anti-psychotic drug, but with less side effects.

So it is a very promising area for mental health depression. We know less about CBD and depression in humans. I have used it to help the symptoms of depression in my patients. But as far as the published evidence, we only have the rat models so far, so it is early days, but certainly it seems to help with the anxiety and stress component.

Robin Daly: How do you tell when a rat is depressed?

Dr. Dani Gordon: They give them different tasks, and one of them is really awful, actually what we do to them. But one of them is called the forced swim test and they do these things to see if they just give up on life and on tasks basically. It measures how the brain goes into withdrawal and just kind of loses motivation. So there are many ways that you can design this study for an animal as well.

Robin Daly: Interesting I could not imagine how you did it, but I see it is checking if that thing has the will and that sort of thing you are looking at that.

Dr. Dani Gordon: That motivation to exercise, motivation to socialise. There is lots of different ways. I am not an animal researcher, but I do some of that research. Certainly many of my colleagues on the animal side would be better versed in this particular model.
Robin Daly: Okay, anything else that is particularly helpful with or that it shows great promise?

Dr. Dani Gordon: It shows great promise for women’s health, period pain, endometriosis THC for the pain specifically, potentially neurological disorders, but there is a lot of interests and a lot of really exciting research being done in the area of Alzheimer’s and brain age. So I think there are just so many potential uses and we are just really scratching the surface so far.

Robin Daly: It seems to be, and of course the one that has hit the headlines a lot in the UK recently, is around children with epilepsy, and their lives being basically brought back from absolute hell to a normality almost with the use of cannabis products.

Dr. Dani Gordon: Exactly and I know a lot of those families quite well and quite personally as we support them through a lot of our non-profit work, these families. As you said, these children have been in and out of ICU, told they have only a few years to live in some cases. So in some cases it is not only helping with symptoms, but in many cases it has actually been lifesaving for some of these children so epilepsy. Especially the epilepsy types related to immune system dysfunction it is incredibly helpful even when other drugs are not working

Robin Daly: It is unthinkable what these families have been through being up against the law, when it comes to getting a simple medicine like that, a natural product.

Dr. Dani Gordon: Yes it is absolutely true there is quite a few really great non-profit organisations still working on this. There is Alfie’s Hope which is Hannah Deacon, and there is End Our Pain, Peter Carol’s organisation. There are many people who are trying to change this.

Robin Daly: So most of the book is packed full of information. But you pepper it throughout with stories. So I would like to ask you why you chose to include these.

Dr. Dani Gordon: Well, I chose simple stories for a few reasons. I felt that I wanted to write a book that was a bit humanistic and really gave a flavour of my experience as a doctor and also just as a human being with the cannabis plant because there is a lot of really bland manuals out there on many topics. But I think when you can connect with people on a human level and the stories as I try to do with my patients. I kind of wanted to try and put that into a book. So hopefully I can just connect with people a little bit more deeply and yeah, that is it basically.

Robin Daly: Well, it is really nice. I think it does really give people something to connect to in that way. I really like that. It seems that your attitude with some important caveats is very much a sort of give it a go when it comes to cannabis products. It feels rather different from the advice we tend to get regarding natural products which is, keep away from them. What makes you so confident?

Dr. Dani Gordon: So I also have a specialisation in integrated medicine from the US so I am trained, I am double board certified in family medicine and integrative medicine. So I have extensive postdoctoral level of training in nocturnal medicine as well and that I have treated thousands of patients with medical cannabis. I have read thousands of research papers for medical cannabis. I have trained other doctors. So I think it is that plus my patients I will say are really my greatest teacher and it really is true.

Robin Daly: When you are unique in that way I mean, nobody in this country really has had that kind of experience. I think we are a bit out of it really. So it is great to have this very different input. I just like to read a little sentence from your conclusion that I think will resonate with many listeners.

You write that “the golden era of believing, we were very close to her having single pharmaceutical drugs, able to cure every condition is over many modern drugs have failed off of the hope and relief people were anticipating. This is especially true for complicated conditions like chronic pain, mental health, and stress related issues which are reaching epidemic proportions. Our bodies are not machines that can be simply broken down into parts that can easily be fixed with a single drug. Instead, we are complex dynamic things, which is why whole plant medicines seem to work so well with our biochemistry; hundreds of different active ingredients in a single plant medicine interact or work in synergy with our brain and body on many diverse biochemical pathways, a feed that would be impossible for a single drug’.

I think that kind of thing we would like to hear doctors saying a lot more about in this country. It is this reliance on this concept of a pill for all these drugs, again, to fix it. The new wonder drug is, is worn very thin with the public. I think we are finding that the answers are not there for these chronic conditions that so many people now suffer from it.

So I really liked that coming from you, obviously a highly qualified doctor and not any kind of alternative practitioner or anything a very mainstream person with all this confidence about natural medicine. So the very last sentence which is describing a new direction in medicine.

And I find this very inspiring. It is not Eastern, or Western, conventional, or alternative ancient, or modern, but simply good medicine. And that is such a relief to hear. That said I am looking forward to the day where that is how we look at medicine in this country.

Dr. Dani Gordon: I think we are getting there slowly but surely. I am an optimist

Robin Daly: Me too, we are getting there. Well, we need to wrap it up. Thank you very much for talking about your book. I think it is a ground-breaking book. It is so comprehensive and it is a real Bible, but it is also really accessible and it is filled with hype for genuine health without health, something we need in spades right now.

Dr. Dani Gordon: Thank you so much for having me Robin. It was a pleasure.

Robin Daly: All right bye.

Well, I really do hope that The CBD Bible marks a step change in the way that cannabis is viewed and paved the way for its recognition as an unusually versatile and useful medicine. Dr Dani’s book is large and comprehensive and is not in any way intimidating. The language is straightforward and as we discussed, the inclusion of real world patient stories provides a path of root to relating to the significant effects medical cannabis can have on someone’s experience of life.

I want to take this opportunity to remind you of the new Wigwam services and website set up by Yes to Life. Wigwam is all about mutual support and offers a format for people with cancer and their helpers can meet locally and that is less in COVID struck times of course. Also it focuses on exploring the options of integrated medicine and supporting one another through what can be extraordinarily challenging times. In having this focus, they are truly in need.

Wigwam also offers free resources to its members and membership itself is also free. Just go to wigwam.org.uk and sign up. That way you will get to hear about Wigwam upcoming events such as online forums that feature an expert guest exploring topics of relevance to integrative medicine for cancer and regular sessions tailored to those with cancer. The first two starting up are a weekly mindfulness session with Claire McCluskey and regular exercise sessions with exercise for cancer expert Lizzie Davis. So do take a look at what is on offer the website again wigwam.org.uk.

Thanks so much for listening today. I hope you found it informative and interesting, I do hope you will join me again next week for another Yes to Life show here on the UK health radio.

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Radio show transcript edited by Jade Higgins, Literary Transcript Editor