Sera & Rani — Thyroid disease and quitting smoking age and occupation
Sera, a 33-year-old NGO in sustainable development that suffers from thyroid disease, and her husband, Rani, a 32-year-old architect who wants to quit smoking, both realised after researching online that CBD could potentially be an answer to some of their problems. Wanting to learn more, they found Alphagreen’s customer consultation service and were impressed by the knowledge from the staff in comparison to other outlets. Sera and Rani both decided to purchase some products from the Alphagreen team’s personalised recommendations. While Sera is still experimenting with different strengths to find her optimal dosage, Rani has made significant steps forward in quitting smoking by vaping CBD.
They insist that Alphagreen were the ‘baseline for understanding the [CBD] industry’ and will continue to consult with the team for the foreseeable future.
When did you decide to start using CBD and for what reasons?
The first reason I was interested in CBD was 5 years ago when I kept hearing the good benefits of CBD. The more I kept hearing it, the more my interests piqued, and both me and my husband decided that we wanted to start using CBD as part of a healthy lifestyle. Initially, I wanted to take CBD regularly for helping with sleep, anxiety and daily stresses. I was also diagnosed with a chronic autoimmune disease and I had seen that CBD has anti-inflammatory properties, so I thought that I could keep the condition at bay if I was consistent with taking CBD.
My husband also wanted to quit his smoking habit, and we thought that vaping CBD might be a good way to gradually stop smoking.
Can you describe what struggling with thyroid disease (Sera) and smoking (Rani) feels like?
Sera: Because the thyroid impacts your entire body, the symptoms of thyroid disease — whether autoimmune or not — are so overwhelmingly vast. From brain fatigue, loss of concentration, exhausting fatigue, difficulty sleeping, indigestion and food intolerances, mood swings, irregular periods…it honestly goes on and on. My most frustrating symptom was extreme fatigue and feeling like I could never sleep enough hours to compensate and have enough energy to get me through the day. This exhaustion alongside my brain fog and lack of concentration was particularly difficult to navigate through my professional career but I always fought through it with the assumption that this is just my normal. I am grateful for being my own health advocate and finally getting my diagnosis three years ago as I tackled it head-on through natural means, mainly a modified Paleo diet, and am happily medication free and feeling like a completely new person!
Rani: Ultimately what bothers me the most is its affect on my mood and how I feel intense anger when I do not have a cigarette. I do not like its impact on my mood.
I also hate the burning feeling in the back of my throat, especially in the morning when I first wake up. I am proud of myself for how much I have cut down since last year, but I still struggle with quitting completely and hope to quit by the end of the year.
Have the CBD products you have purchased from Alphagreen helped with your condition?
Sera: I started with the VAAY diffuser pen for my husband to help him quit smoking, and because you recommended this brand, I thought I would also try out their CBD oil. This was my first try, and after we noticed that it actually had a good impact on us — it made us feel good, it also made him decrease his smoking — that’s when we started thinking about how we can make an affordable solution for him moving forward with the vape pen. As you know disposable vape pens can be expensive each time to purchase over the long run. So we extended our research to find the ideal vape products and found PASO, and now we have found Amphora.
To be honest, I hadn’t been taking CBD regularly due to my lifestyle. I am so busy at the moment and I haven’t committed to one brand that I am 100% comfortable taking. As you [Rob, Alphagreen’s customer success associate] will know, I’m super thorough with my research and I haven’t really reached a comfort level where I’m like, okay, I’m going to take this every day like I take vitamin C. But the early signs are really good, I just need to find the best brand that suits me.
Rani: I just wanted to jump into the conversation now you are talking about the pros and cons of CBD. I am not a medical doctor at all and I am a big smoker, but the moment I took my first drag of CBD I understood immediately that I need to recommend this to my friends who are in Arabic countries that don’t have this stuff like Kuwait and Qatar and places like that. I’m letting them know because they’re on that side of the world smoking is trying to change. They’re all really trying to quit like I am — you wake up in the morning with this glaring kind of feeling in your throat.
But now with CBD, I never have that horrible feeling in the throat that you get from smoking the night before. I know that if I use the CBD pen consistently I am safe. I am not talking from a medical perspective, but honestly, I don’t know what to say — I can feel it in my spine! I was so surprised the first time I tried CBD as I come from a family of medical doctors, and when I bring this subject up to them you can only imagine the opinions that come from somebody trying to advise medical doctors to smoke CBD to get off cigarettes. To them the mentality is you smoke or you don’t smoke. It’s unhealthy versus healthy, and there is no in-between. But CBD is most definitely that in between.
So my father has Parkinson’s disease and I’m telling him to put CBD drops in his drink now I have experienced what CBD has to offer. I just want you to know that overall CBD has overall given me very positive outcomes with my smoking. I was smoking 13 cigarettes a day and now I smoke 0. This is 20 years later as I am 33 next month and started smoking when I was 14. So in the 20 years of smoking tobacco — within the first week of using CBD — it convinced me I could quit.
What would you say to other people who are sceptical to take CBD?
Sera: It is a very personal thing for me because of my diagnosis and due to me being a medical graduate. I went to medical school in Ireland and I did my masters in the UK in International Health Management. So my background is very medical and science-based. The interesting thing is that even after this foundation that was given to me in medical school, it was only until I became the patient that I realised the unfortunate bureaucracy and also the incorrect way of dealing with patients.
In medicine, it is very symptom-based and the goal is the suppression of these symptoms. So if you have a cough they will give you some medicine or treatment to suppress the cough — they don’t try to identify the root causes of the problem. When I became a patient, this became evident to me and my entire viewpoint changed. My proactivity then changed and I started to become the voice of health for my family members and my friends. I would ask questions — are you sleeping properly and are you exercising regularly? How do you eat? What do you eat? Are you managing your stress properly? So instead of just trying to suppress these symptoms, I wanted to get to the bottom of them.
When it comes to CBD in particular, I think it can be implemented in anybody’s lifestyle. But it is important to know that everyone’s biochemistry is unbelievably different, so for some people to see good effects they will have to take it for longer, some people may not see any effects and others might see great effects from the get-go. When we talk about CBD, this should be taken into account with CBD, as it could work great for one person, but not work at all for someone else. It’s not a benefits all kind of thing, and I would urge anyone to be cautious with their expectations.
I know it is a safe thing to try so people should definitely give it a go, but I wouldn’t be discouraged if you don’t see the results you were hoping for. It might be that your particular biochemical makeup needs something else. With me I am still experimenting with CBD — I wouldn’t really call it scepticism, it’s just hyper-awareness that it may not work out. But I will keep trying because the risk is very low. So overall, I think it is something to try for everyone and you should at least try it consistently for a period, but healing is nonlinear and is just like life — a roller coaster up and down.
Would you recommend Alphagreen marketplace and its service?
Sera: It’s you (Rob) to be honest, I can’t speak for other representatives on your team and I don’t want to be too biased, but your knowledge is my baseline for understanding the industry. I have applied your knowledge and have tested it against other websites, other CBD shops and their customer service — I will immediately ask them some preliminary questions to see if this matches your customer service and I will judge whether or not I will continue off the website. And almost 100% of the time the answer is incorrect, unfortunately. As you know, I have to come back to you and send their answers to see if I am correct in thinking they are incorrect, and you have supported me by basically saying this person has no idea what they are talking about and they are marketing their products incorrectly.
Perhaps these other customer service consultants would have been great at answering regular questions, but when it came to the knowledge of product and CBD, these consultants didn’t have the right answers for me.
