A New Approach to the Science of Health
Reductionism, the idea that a complex system can be understood by reducing it down to it’s simple parts and describing their actions and interactions, has had a profound influence on medicine. Similar to the problem of a broken clock, where each broken part is fixed in order, medical practitioners have attempted to discover causal relationships among the components of an individual. Physicians will treat those components individually in order to treat a disease and prevent death. Unfortunately, in some cases more aggressive treatment has more negative consequences than a more holistic approach. For example, chemotherapy often reduces tumor size initially but also has severe adverse effects leading to other complications, including the promotion of secondary tumors or more treatment resistant tumors. The fact that not treating cancer may not be an option for many people, doesn’t diminish the need to address these negative consequences.
Most medical treatments make sense based on research of single well understood molecule and well characterized molecular pathways related to a clearly understood mechanism of action. This is how we come to expect clear dose response relationships between the medications and their effects. So why do unexpected consequences occur in some case, sometimes after years of treatment? My great uncle used to say that we really don’t know what something does until it’s been out in the market for at least 10 years and won’t fully understand the risks and side effects for a generation. The question is simply, does a treatment that addresses a specific disease-related component harm the individual as a whole? And if it does, how can we overcome this limitation?
The medicinal use of cannabis has historically taken both a holistic and a reductionist approach. However with advancement in analytical testing and assessments in both plants and products, there has been an increased emphasis on the individual components.
According to the reductionist approaches we can explain the effects of Randy’s Remedy entirely in terms of its individual, constituent parts and their interactions. Research on these individual parts has exploded over the past 50 years. There is a wealth of knowledge and published research on cannabis and cannabinoids along with the various mechanism that make up the complex neuromodulatory system we call the endocannabinoid system.
All the “findings” and “mechanism” suggest a complex web of interactions that should explain all that we see and experience when we use products like Randy’s Remedy. But the fact is that it doesn’t. There are still individual differences that resist the reductionist approach.
There is a certain about of chaos inherent in complexity that the reductionist approach can not accommodate. Aristotle says; “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” This suggests that the many various disconnected insights will always fall short of addressing the complex dynamics of all the interacting parts. Too many products aim to narrowly optimize only one aspect of our physiology, only to have unexpected drawbacks and impacts on other aspects.
Randy’s Club is developing a fundamentally new approach. We are looking to develop products that deliver effective natural cannabinoids and essential terpenes by targeting each individual mechanism and modulating the pathway affecting the endocannabinoid system, and integrating them into a whole systems view that optimises the modulation of homeostasis across our entire body.
By analyzing and synthesizing the existing research, we can better understand the complex dynamics and emergent homeostatic relationships within the brain and throughout the body. From these insights we create a truly advanced complex meta-theory of how the natural cannabinoids in hemp promote a healthy inflammatory response and cognitive enhancement. This is the basis for Randy’s Remedy products, the best hemp oil healthy products ever made.
