524: The Life-Changing Benefits of CBD and THC with Joseph Sheehey

Hal Elrod: Hello, friends! Welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod, and today we are talking about the life-changing benefits of CBD and THC, both components of the cannabis plant with Joe Sheehey. And I will tell you, I am so excited for you to listen to this episode because we address the stigma that cannabis a.k.a marijuana a.k.a weed a.k.a pot, the stigma that it has, why it has that, where that came from, where the propaganda for that began for this plant that’s been serving people medicinally for, I don’t know, centuries, I would imagine. And we talked then about the life-changing benefits of CBD and THC and I tell you how THC specifically and then eventually CBD, but THC changed my life in profound ways. So, there’s a lot to get into today.

And this is my first time talking with Joe Sheehey. I love this person. I love this guy. And I think that you will, too. Now, he is a father, a husband, a former NASA contributing aerospace engineer, nationally distinguished physique competitor, and founder of several leading health and wellness brands, including the groundbreaking cannabis-based nutrition company, CURED Nutrition. During his seven years as a professional engineer for NASA, he contributed to projects that are currently sitting on the surface of Mars orbiting Jupiter and slated to carry the next generation of astronauts to space. Joseph holds extensive experience in human optimization through the design of nutrition, training, and introspective practices. And awakening to a lifelong struggle with depression, he set a fire ablaze to change this world through what is now CURED Nutrition. And today we’re talking, as I said, about the life-changing benefits of CBD and THC as well as CBN and I’m telling you how it changed my life.

Before we dive into this conversation, I want to thank our sponsors for today. First and foremost, yes, CURED Nutrition. I’ve been a customer of theirs for years and then I brought them on as a sponsor similar to all other sponsors. I only have sponsors of products that I use, love, and would recommend to my mom. CURED Nutrition makes some of the highest-quality supplements. And you actually are going to hear today the process that they go through to utilize the entire plant as opposed to extracting using solvents and things. Most of CURED Nutrition’s products use the entire hemp plant, so you get the full spectrum of benefits from all of the different aspects of CBN, CBD, CBG, THC. Again, you’ll hear about all of that today with Joe. And I’ll tell you, I love a few of their products. Rise, I take in the morning. I cycle it off and on. It’s a nootropic for focus. It has CBD. It has lion’s mane. It has a microdose of THC.

During the day, I just started taking today and I love these, they’re Calm Caps. And then at night, the biggest benefit for me of CURED Nutrition has been the sleep. CBD and CBN Oil, I take it every night before bed. I talked about it in the new Miracle Morning book as part of my miracle evening, and it allows me to get a restful night’s sleep. If you want to improve your sleep or any aspect of your life, head over to CUREDNutrition.com/Hal and use the discount code ‘HAL’ as a listener to this podcast, you’ll get 20% off your entire order. And you’re going to love the episode today. I’m telling you, this exceeded my expectations.

And then last but not least, we have one other sponsor today, that is Organifi, making the highest quality whole food organic supplements to help you with I take Protein Powder for Organifi after my workout. I take their Red Juice before my workout. Their most popular product is Green Juice, which helps you get all of your nutrients in one scoop in a quick, frothy beverage in the morning. They’ve got their new sleep supplement as well. What else does Organifi have? They’ve got the chocolate protein powder. Oh, I take their liver formula in the morning. I take their, what’s it called? I’m drawing a blank. Turmeric. So, there’s a ton of products to cover the full spectrum of your health needs, whether it’s weight loss, whether it’s boosting your nutrition, your immune system, you name it. Head over to Organifi.com/Hal and use that same discount code ‘HAL’ my name, H-A-L, to get 20% off your order as a listener of the Achieve Your Goals podcast.

All right. Without further ado, I’m excited. I’m so excited for this conversation. I just finished it and like I love Joe. We had such a great conversation. I think you’re going to love this one. The life-changing benefits of CBD and THC with the one and only, Joseph Sheehey.

[INTERVIEW]

Hal Elrod: Joe, it is good to have you here, brother.

Joe Sheehey: Thank you for having me, Hal. So excited to be here.

Hal Elrod: Now, I would have said Joe followed by your last name but I just realized I do not know how to pronounce your last name. I’m guessing it’s Shi-hey or Shey-hey. How do I say it?

Joe Sheehey: It’s Shi-hee. It’s spelled Sheehey so most people say Shi-hey but it’s Shi-hee.

Hal Elrod: That’s actually easier. Shi-hi is easier to remember because you’re like Shi-hi. Yeah. Okay. Got it. I love it. So, man, I’ve been looking forward to this interview. You are a fascinating individual in terms of what you’ve gone through, what you’ve done from NASA, aerospace engineer to professional bodybuilder to CEO, and other roles in between. But actually, I want to start with something that I related to that a lot of my audience might not actually know. And that is that, in college, you were partying excessively and using illegal drugs. And I’d love to hear about that time in your life and really how that destructive path that you were headed down, and how bodybuilding helped you change the course of your life.

Joe Sheehey: Yeah. I appreciate going there because literally this is why CURED became a thing, which obviously we’ll get to. But in college, I went to CU Boulder and I went to study aerospace engineering. The interesting thing about when you get to college, I think as probably common for most people, is there’s a bunch of 18-year-olds that get to college, they don’t know anything about who they really are, what they really want. And then it’s just a pool of all of us trying to figure that out. And for me, before entering into college, I was an athlete. I was the jock. I was the guy that got good grades.

Hal Elrod: What sports did you play?

Joe Sheehey: I played hockey, I played golf, and I played basketball. I broke my foot before the sophomore tryouts for basketball. So, I stopped playing basketball, heeled through the basketball season, and then kept with hockey. So, it was really hockey and golf through most of high school.

Hal Elrod: Got it. Okay.

Joe Sheehey: Yeah. And so, playing sports and taking care of myself, working out, it was always a big part of my life. And I was also somebody who had a vision of becoming an aerospace engineer. My dad was a pilot. I, unfortunately, at a young age failed a vision test. And when I failed the vision test, it kind of destroyed my dreams to become the fighter pilot. So, I said, “Well, if I’m not going to be the fighter pilot, I want to figure out how to fly or how to build the planes that design and build the planes, rather.” And that ended up leading me down the path to wanting to be an engineer. But I got to college. And how I typically tell the story is, I say, there was this person that I wanted to be, the person that I really wanted society to see, the person that I wanted to say I was, and then there was the person that I actually was.

And the person that I actually was was a great distance from the person that I really wanted to be, so lack of integrity, girls, making decisions based off of what everybody else was doing, just completely losing myself. And that gap between those two people created this massive cognitive dissonance. Like, I wanted to be this person but my actions and behaviors and everything that I did were not in alignment with that person. Then I realized later down the road, it was coming from a lot of internal pain. But what I found myself doing in college was numbing myself, showing up in social situations, and the only way that I could actually show up and not feel anxious was under the influence. And so, it got to the point where my third and fourth year of college, five out of seven nights a week, I found myself partying, doing drugs, and making decisions based off of who I was surrounding myself with.

And the people that I surrounded myself with weren’t bad people but what was happening was a lot of internal pain, a lot of anxiety that ultimately led to depression. And the drinking and the drugs led me to a place where I felt like I could function until I couldn’t. And one Tuesday morning, early morning, 2:30 a.m. in 2012, April 2012, I found myself climbing out of a blackout. And I can remember walking down this path, stumbling off the path, coming back on the path, and like my memory is very spotted, but it brought me to a bridge. And when I got to the bridge, I climbed over the guardrail, and when I climbed over the guardrail, that was when I remember starting to come out of the blackout. And I looked around. I looked at the rocks down below me, and I recognized that I was at a point where I was ready to end my life. I was ready to just end all of the pain that I was feeling.

And thankfully, somebody who I call Ben, the Angel, Ben was sitting underneath the bridge at 2:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning writing poetry. He was looking for inspiration, so he was sitting down by the river but he stopped me. He said, “Can I come up there? Can I pull you over the guardrail?” And he did. And that night, I ended up making it back to my house. I took a handful of Xanax, and my girlfriend at the time just sat next to me all night, making sure that I continued to breathe. The next morning, I was taken to the hospital and then I was put under 24-hour watch. My parents ended up coming to the hospital and that was when the question was asked that really displayed everything that was going on in my life. And the doctors go, “Hey, Joe, we’re going to run some tests. Is there anything that we’re going to find in your system?” And I just started listing off all the drugs that I was doing.

And I remember laying there in the bed and seeing my parents standing there. And as I shared everything that I had been doing, I just saw the life get sucked out of my parents because not only did my parents recognize that their son had completely lost himself. They almost lost their son as well. And the weeks and months afterward lots of therapy. I was put on antidepressants very quickly, and I was still making bad choices because I still lived in Boulder and I didn’t know what I was really running from. I’ve done a lot of work around this to figure out what was I running from, what was the pain that I was trying to avoid. But that was my life. And it got to the point where I continued to drink, and I was taking the antidepressants. And you mix those and anti-anxiety medication, and it’s not a good recipe. My parents ended up pulling me out of Boulder and I finished.

I ended up taking five years to finish school but I moved back home and I would drive every day. I would drive an hour and a half to school, and then I would drive back. And I was actually starting an internship at Lockheed Martin that year and would work several hours at Lockheed Martin, and then I would go home and I would just do that every day, my fifth year of school, driving for an hour and a half, two hours every day, going to Lockheed, going to school. And I was very lucky.

Hal Elrod: When you went back home or near home, did academics become a priority? Did your grades get brought up, that kind of thing?

Joe Sheehey: The crazy part about all of this is my grades were great the whole time.

Hal Elrod: You were a functional partyer.

Joe Sheehey: Very much so. And that was what was so hard was when I tried to end my life, I didn’t tell anybody afterwards and I was in so much pain but I was in so much embarrassment as well that I didn’t want anybody to know. My parents were seeing what was happening so they pulled me out of school. And what happened more than anything versus grades or anything changing was I just became so lonely because I was a fifth-year college student that didn’t tell any of his friends so completely left his friend group. It was kind of like, “Where is Joe?” I wouldn’t answer phone calls. I wouldn’t show up to times where people are getting together because I just didn’t want to share with everybody what I was going through. I think the conversations obviously changed over the years but I ended up getting to this point where I was so lonely. I was like, “I need to pour my energy into a different direction to do something with this noise in my head and this lack of connection.”

And I found running first and I ended up running a bunch that first year. I ended up running a half marathon and then eventually found the Instagram bodybuilding world. And that was where I could actually move all of my pain into metal. Like, I’m going to go lift weights. And that was like the catalyst to me really pursuing a health and fitness journey and then ultimately landed me to starting my company. But it was years and years of just climbing out of this really dark place and going to the gym to move through the pain, but not really understand what I was actually working through. And over that whole journey, that was when I started exploring holistic alternatives. That was really the catalyst to creating CURED.

I became very resistant to anti-anxiety medication and antidepressants. One was my own fault because I was still making destructive decisions when I first started taking them but, two, when I grew up, there was alcoholism running in my family, my whole mom’s side of the family. My mom was able to escape the alcoholism but what I recognized with my mom and we’ve talked about this a little bit, but as I grew up, every time I opened up the cabinets, I would see orange bottles with white caps, orange bottles with white caps. And so, I had this like internal resistance to pharmaceutical drugs. And then as I started to have to use them myself and noticed I was really dull and not having emotions, I was just walking through this world with the cloud over our head, I just wanted to find an alternative route. And that was when my mom introduced me to Dr. Andrew Weil. I’m not sure if you know who he is.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, absolutely.

Joe Sheehey: He has the book, Spontaneous Healing, The Natural Mind. He runs integrative medicine.

Hal Elrod: Living Well for Optimal Health I think is the book of his that I read. Yeah.

Joe Sheehey: Yeah. And he’s one of the founders of True Food. So, everybody has been to True Food Kitchen or knows of True Food Kitchen, but I started reading his work and he talked a lot about traditional Chinese medicine, herbalism, food, nutrition, and how powerful and healing nutrition could be and that was the catalyst. That and bodybuilding really helped me climb out of this dark place that I was living in and then ended up eventually leading to me starting CURED. But I spent about seven years in aerospace engineering, between the two, graduated from college, worked for Lockheed Martin on NASA contributing projects, and then ultimately got to the point where I became the entrepreneur that I am today.

Hal Elrod: Gotcha. Okay. I love that, man. What a story. And like most, purpose is typically or very often born out of pain. You went through a lot of pain. You saw the negative effects of pharmaceutical drugs, both on your mom and on you, and then looked for health or natural holistic alternatives, which I still relate to so much of that story myself, having gone through a cancer journey, and really being told by even the best holistic oncologist in the country that my best option was chemotherapy. And then I did 700 hours of chemotherapy, along with extraordinary doses of prednisone and just a lot of drugs that, I mean, to this day now, my liver, my bones, it’s like there are so much damage that’s been done to my body through what is what you call medicine, Western medicine. And I’m grateful that I’m alive and I’m sure it, obviously, played a part. Right?

But anyway, so here’s where I want to go with today. Your CURED Nutrition, the expertise there, its products infused with CBD Oil, microdosing of THC, CBN Oil, which I’m a big fan of. We’ll talk about that. And I want to know the difference between the two from your perspective, CBD and CBN, but here’s where I want to start. And I want to start with addressing the stigma that people have with marijuana, pot, THC, right? I want to talk about that stigma and I want to hear you address it. And I’m going to share a personal story of how THC changed my life. So, I want to share my story but I want you because this is your world. And I’m sure this is a stigma, a narrative that you’re addressing every day, and thinking about. So, I would love to hear you address what is this stigma that people have, why do they have it, and what’s maybe a better or more empowering perspective to take.

Joe Sheehey: Yeah. I appreciate the question. And we at CURED, internally, we say our mission is to change how 1 million people think about cannabis. That’s what we want to do but we are a product of stories. We’re a product of narrative. And where the narrative around cannabis and marijuana really started was back in the early 1900s. William Randolph Hearst and when paper mills were becoming a thing, hemp as an alternative to create paper, textile building material was an alternative. And that was when the propaganda machine really started to have a narrative around hemp specifically. But hemp and marijuana and cannabis all got lumped in together. And so, I’ll talk about differentiation between the three of those, how they’re all related. But the truth is, it’s like there’s a story that we’ve all been told about marijuana.

And I grew up in the DARE program and marijuana was included in the DARE program. And I’m not saying that the whole DARE program was a bad thing. I also am not saying all pharmaceuticals are a bad thing, just like you said, but that was the story that we all grew up in. And for me, when I was in college, I was using marijuana but I was also using it with all the other party drugs and specifically alcohol excessively. And so, as I left college, I actually was sober for about four years from everything, and marijuana was included in that. But what’s wild was, as I started to see marijuana legalized recreationally and medicinally in Colorado, I could start to see how the narrative was created in so many people’s minds. I was in my office at Lockheed Martin when marijuana was legalized in Colorado. And I remember there were corporate communications sent out.

It said, “We are a federally funded company. Just because it is now legal in Colorado does not mean that you, as an employee, can partake,” for lack of better terms. But it was so interesting to watch reactions as everybody around me read that email and me as being somebody who had used it previously but had started to gain interest around it again because Dr. Weil actually talks about it as well. He was one of the original people doing studies around cannabis. But I could see how the story was ingrained in so many people’s heads with my colleagues. They would say hippie, stoner, Cheech and Chong like “Oh, yeah, we would all be on the couch eating potato chips. We couldn’t get any work done.” And so, it was very clear to me that there was a narrative, and I was like, I wanted to stand up and say something but I also was too scared to say something. And that was when I was like, “Oh, somebody needs to do something about this.”

Because if I’m too scared to say something because I’m worried about what people are going to think about me, maybe I could no longer have my job at Lockheed Martin. Maybe my colleagues will think differently about me. I was like, “This is actually a problem,” because I heard all the stories. And the other part about it was as marijuana was legalized in Colorado and you would go to the dispensaries, the stigma was actually sometimes true. Like, you would walk into a dispensary and there would be a budtender and they would be a stereotypical stoner.

Hal Elrod: Totally.

Joe Sheehey: And I was like, “Oh, man, well, what about people that actually wanted relief or support with sleep or just the calming effects, which I know cannabis can have? And they walk into a place like this and they’re not greeted by somebody that is, not saying that they have to be extremely clean cut, but what I am saying is like somebody that may be able to address overall health and wellness and communicate with them from a way that’s like actually seeing them for who they are and the relief that they’re looking for versus actually getting high? And that’s our whole mission is that when you use it intentionally and correctly at the proper doses, it’s about the relief, not about the high or the escape. And that was how, as I reintroduced it into my life, approached it. Absent of the other drugs and alcohol and in a very intentional way. And I saw how it was so different from the story that so many people, including myself, grew up in.

And I said, I actually want to be somebody that can help change this at a larger scale because I had seen interest from friends in the bodybuilding world, friends in the health and fitness world. Even people at Lockheed Martin, I saw some respond like, “It’s not what they say it is or it’s not actually that bad.” And I was like, “Oh, like I actually want to contribute to that conversation and help support people in a different way,” because I know that I felt a certain way using it. I needed to differentiate it from all the other things that I was doing at the time in college, but that was my whole mission was to change the narrative to help people. As I ran away from alcohol and the traps of addiction in my family and pharmaceuticals, there was another option, and I wanted to be part of changing that.

So, it’s a story that we all grew up in but it’s a long story. It started in the 1900s with early propaganda, and it’s kind of evolved. But we as health and fitness professionals, as people are focused on personal development, optimizing our life, showing up as our best self, being responsible, relatable, trustworthy, and cannabis users, that’s how we change the narrative. So, that’s how I got to where I was. And really that was the fuel behind creating CURED Nutrition.

Hal Elrod: Amazing. Yeah. I love that plant medicine is now a term, right? That’s a new part of a narrative that didn’t used to be really spoken about. And that is one thing that I often say is I go, “You can’t classify something that is made in a lab with synthetic compounds that you might call drugs like MDM, ecstasy, or cocaine.” And I know those are all derived from plants but with a plant that grows in the ground. Like, to me, those are very different classes. For example, many people would categorize marijuana with meth that’s made in a bathtub with bleach and rat poison. And it’s like, “Dude, very different. One’s a plant that could be organic from the ground. And one is a harsh set of chemicals.” I’m going to share with you my story real quick, and I may have shared this with my audience before but I don’t share it a lot.

And so, I was diagnosed with cancer when I was 37 years old, a very rare, aggressive form of cancer. I reached out to the best holistic oncologists in the country, a couple of them. They both said, “Your best bet is chemo. Your organs are already failing, and you have one to three weeks to live. If you don’t do chemotherapy, there’s nothing any holistic practitioner has time to help you with. This is a rare cancer that is very aggressive.” And I was like, “God, I don’t want to,” in my mind, my narrative is I don’t want to poison my body with this toxic chemotherapy, right? But I guess if that’s what I have to do, that’s what I have to do but I will support it with the best holistic protocols available. So, I did three coffee enemas a week. I took 70 supplements a day. I juiced organic vegetables. I did lymphatic massage, ozone sauna, on and on and on.

So, at that time of my life, I was not doing marijuana, which I did recreationally in my 20s, to get high, to party, to have fun, right? And then once I started to have kids, I’m like, “All right. I don’t want to party and get high anymore so I’m going to shape up a little bit.” So, I hadn’t done it in a long time. And a friend of mine who has been on her own healing journey actually gave me some marijuana, some flower, the plant. For anyone that does not what flower is, it’s the actual plant. And she said, “Hey, in case this helps me with my pain. It helps me with sleep. It helps me with a lot of things.” And I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Okay.” So, like it was under the bathroom counter. And one day I’d been injected. I was supposed to be injected in my spine with chemotherapy, which that alone, I was like, “Oh, this is horrible,” but the nurse missed my spine and injected the chemotherapy in my nerve next to my spine.

And within a few hours, I had the most horrific migraines I’ve ever had in my life, like unbelievable pain. And it went on for I think it was seven consecutive days just around the clock, these migraines. And they gave me, I mean, they tried everything. It started the oxycodone. That didn’t work. They gave me I.V. morphine. That didn’t work. Nothing worked. And I was in so much pain and I just kept taking like sleep. I was just trying to sleep, just not face it. So, finally, they go, “Hey, we need your hospital bed. Your chemo is done. Like, you need to go home.” And this is the point where I’m like I’ve got an eye mask on. I’ve got earplugs in for all seven days. I’m not eating anything. I’m wasting away. I’ve lost 40 pounds. And my dad’s like, “Hal, I’m sorry.” He’s my caretaker at this time. He goes, “We have to leave.” I’m like, “Oh God, I can’t imagine getting up and seeing lights.” You know what a migraine by the way? It’s just you can’t even imagine the pain of just every sound, every light.

So, we go back to this apartment that we’re living at next to the hospital, and I’m there for a couple more days. And my wife, she’s three hours away taking care of our kids. And so, long story short, my dad is like trying everything to help me. He feels helpless. His poor son is not eating. I’m in pain. I’m in the bed. And it just occurs to him. He’s offering me everything. And I’m like, “Dad, don’t talk to me. I’m sorry, but I can’t talk. I can’t hear you.” And one day, a couple of days into it, he goes, “What about that marijuana that your friend left you? Do you want to try that?” And I’m like, “Yeah. At this point, I’ll try anything. And being high doesn’t sound too bad right now.” So, the funny part is my dad’s never done marijuana, so he brings out this little glass pipe and he goes, “Hal, how do I do this? How much do you want? Do I put it in here?”

And I’ve like got one eye open laying on the bed and I’m trying to coach him. So, I take two hits off of this pipe of this marijuana flower. And so, I want you to imagine this point. I’m either 7 or 11 days at this point. I think I’m 11 days into this just horrible pain, unable to communicate, unable to eat, unable to open my eyes. Five minutes after taking two hits, and my dad had walked back to the living room of the apartment, I sit up in bed. I go, “I feel amazing and I’m starving.” And I go out and I’m like, “Hey, dad,” and he goes, “What the hell?” I go, “Hey, can you make me some food? I’m really hungry.” And I call my wife. I’m like, “Hey, sweetie.” And she goes, “What? What’s happening?” Because she’s heard me like, “Oh, I can’t talk,” for the last 11 days.

And so, anyway, at that moment, I’m both, “Wow. Thank you, God. What a miracle that grows in the ground that was able to do what none of these pharmaceutical drugs that are damaging my kidneys and my liver and who knows what else, right? Simultaneously, I was relieved, grateful, and angry that our medical system keeps this plant, right? You can sense the anger like I’m getting heated, but I was, “Damn, like this is bullsh*t.” Pardon my French. This is bullsh*t. Eleven days ago, this could have solved my problems. I could have not lost the extra 15 pounds that I lost. I could have been eating and functioning, but I wasn’t because you can’t really profit off the thing that you can grow in the ground in your backyard. So, that’s my story. I’m a huge advocate for cannabis because of that. And since then, by the way, instead of taking pharmaceutical drugs like Ambien for sleep, I take THC and CBD or CBD and CBN now that I have CURED Nutrition and I sleep like a baby and it doesn’t have the negative side effects.

Joe Sheehey: I love that, Hal. Thank you for sharing that with me. But that exactly what you feel is exactly what I feel every single day and why our mission is so important and why it’s so hard because we have to tiptoe around all of the regulations. We have to tiptoe around. Like, just starting my business, it was hard to get a bank account, hard to get a credit card processor, I can’t run Facebook ads. In every possible way, the powers that be don’t want the power that this plant really has to get out into where it can without them having some type of hand on it, without them creating some type of synthetic version of it. It’s really frustrating, and I really appreciate you sharing that story because that story is one of millions. There are so many people experiencing that, and we’re just in this weird place where I think it’s a control thing. I think it’s really a control thing, to be completely honest, but that’s the truth. We live in this world where we don’t go there first.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. And I think when you say control, I think it’s a money thing. And let me explain this. And this isn’t my area of expertise. Yeah. This isn’t my area of expertise but think of it this way. You can only patent a synthetic compound, right, that has a patented formula so they cannot patent the marijuana plant. To your point, the pharmaceutical companies can patent a synthetic version where they utilize the plant but they mix it with other chemicals to create their own patent, which, by the way, they have. It’s very difficult to get. When I was going through chemo, my oncologist said, “Hey, there is actually this. You can get this synthetic pharmaceutical grade,” right, which is some badge of honor, “marijuana. We can but it’s really hard to get. We have to make a request,” but it’s like they did find a way to patent it.

But like would you rather take the natural organic version that CURED Nutrition puts in their products? Or the patented, genetically modified, and engineered version that a pharmaceutical company is going to make? So, talk about the difference between CBD derived from marijuana versus hemp and what is known as the entourage effect. Can you talk about that?

Joe Sheehey: Yeah. Great question. So, I said earlier that I would talk about the three. So, just think of cannabis as like the parent or the mother of the three. So, if we were doing like a flow chart, cannabis is at the top. Hemp and marijuana are both cannabis. So, the difference between hemp and marijuana is quite literally the THC concentration. So, with the 2018 farm bill, you could look it up. In the US, the classification of hemp is basically cannabis with less than 0.3% by dry weight of THC. So, the THC concentration in hemp is much lower than in marijuana. Hemp is typically used for industrial purposes. So, you can do clothing, textile. You can do building materials. But the line between the two, hemp and marijuana, has actually gotten a little bit blurred because there’s been a lot of breeding of the plant over the years to express the other cannabinoids. And those cannabinoids are typically present in the flower, like you were talking about earlier.

So, if anybody’s seen a marijuana plant, it’s the big flowers and buds. Whereas a hemp plant is like really tall, thin, and stocky. So, the main difference between the two is the THC concentration. And if you were looking at a hemp plant that we were extracting full spectrum cannabinoids from, it would almost look like a marijuana plant, but the THC concentration would just be less. So, you asked about the entourage effect. The entourage effect is when I say full spectrum extract, what I mean is I talked about the difference between hemp and marijuana. The cannabis plant has over 100 known cannabinoids in it. THC, CBN, CBD are three of over 100 cannabinoids. The entourage effect is speaking to when we extract the cannabinoids from the plant, there’s an array of cannabinoids showing up in that extract. CBD may be the most prominent, but there can be low concentrations of CBN, CBD, or sorry if CBD is the greatest, it’s CBN, THC, CBN, and an array of other cannabinoids that have their own benefits.

When all of those cannabinoids are working together with the flavonoids or the terpenes, so the terpenes are like the aromatic parts. So, if you think like essential oils, those have benefits as well. The flavonoids and terpenes in combination with the cannabinoids create the entourage effect. So, all of those work together synergistically to give a therapeutic effect. So, when you hear people talk about entourage, what they’re saying is a full spectrum, least refined extract. The more you refine it, the more you’re going to get rid of the other cannabinoids, the more you’re going to get rid of the terpenes. The more you refine it, the less of an entourage effect you’re going to get. But what we’re really talking about is the most potent, least refined extract in an array of terpenes and flavonoids in it, an array of cannabinoids that all have some type of therapeutic effect, and they work in combination with each other. So, that’s what the entourage effect is.

Hal Elrod: I love that, and I would say, yeah, the way that nature intended, right? Rather than take one part of the plant. Like, no, all of these are synergistic compounds that work together. And let me relate that back to CURED Nutrition and your products. Is that something that you’re combining these different benefits from the different aspects of the plant?

Joe Sheehey: Yeah. So, about 50% of our products are full spectrum least refined extract as possible. There are some people that want THC-free products because they might have to take drug tests or whatever it may be. About 50, actually, it’s like 40% of our products now are THC-free. So, that’s a more refined version. But half of CURED Nutrition’s products are full spectrum extract. They have all the flavonoids and terpenes. So, if you have like the CBN Oil I know if you take it underneath your tongue versus in capsule form, you’ll actually like taste the plant, those are the terpenes. Those are the flavonoids. So, about half of our products are the least refined extract. You can refine it more. You can go through a distillation process and then you can put in solvents which make the CBD in its isolated form fall out but most of our products are full spectrum. Some people want THC-free, so we do refine other products further. But for the most part, yes.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. And right now, your Calm Caps, it’s funny, I actually took these today for the first time. I was going through all my CURED Nutrition products. When we first started working together, I was a customer, I had ordered the products, and then you sent me some stuff I hadn’t tried. And I didn’t realize, I think I thought these looked so similar to the Night Caps that I think I set them aside thinking they were just Night Caps. And then anyway, I was like, “Oh, I got to try these.” So, I will say I feel really nice right now. I feel really calm, taking the Calm Caps. And I wanted to ask you about that. So, for me, when I talk about CURED Nutrition. So, there’s really three products of yours that I take. I take Rise and I cycle that on and off throughout the week, first thing in the morning, which is really a nootropic to help you focus cognitive function. And then I take Night Caps and Night Oil, and I alternate those back and forth.

And for me, the biggest benefit that I get is sleep. And I will tell you, so actually I have a neighbor that I let, you know, I always am sharing anything that helps me. I’m always sharing it with my friends and my neighbors and my audience, everyone I can, which is why I brought CURED on as a sponsor. But my neighbor, she was over one day and she’s like, “Oh my gosh, Hal, do you have anything for sleep?” And she’s a mother of five. She runs a business and she’s like, “I am a mess. For the last 18 nights, I don’t know why, I can’t fall asleep. I wake up after a few hours. I don’t know what to do.” And so, I gave her Serenity Gummies from CURED Nutrition that had just been sent to me, which I can’t take because I’m allergic to ashwagandha and it have the opposite effect on me, sadly, which frustrates me. Yeah, instead of getting calm, I get anxious and irritable when I take any ashwagandha product.

Anyway, so I gave her the gummies and then I gave her a thing of Night Caps. And a few days later, I checked in and she said, “Hal, it’s working three nights in a row.” And then it’s been one month, and I just checked in with her today. I said, “Hey, do you need any more of that? I’ve got some extra that I keep on hand for friends.” And she said, “You’re a psychic. I took my last Night Cap last night,” and she literally said, “It’s been a lifesaver.” And so, I want people to understand, right? These products, it can be life-changing for you. So, here’s what I want to ask you though. So, I want to know about your morning routine, since I’m the Miracle Morning guy, right?

Joe Sheehey: Yeah.

Hal Elrod: And I want to know how you recommend dosing CBD throughout the day. So, like I’m big on the night time stuff. I do take the morning Rise, but you talk about dosing it throughout the day. So, I want to hear your morning routine and then your thoughts on continuing CBD throughout the day.

Joe Sheehey: Yeah. My morning routine, so I’m married, I have a daughter. She’s three years old. Typically, I try to get up before my daughter. And first thing I do is, we have a cold plunge, I go into the cold plunge. I get outside and then we have a Belgian Malinois. And if you don’t know what a Belgian Malinois is, it’s an amazing, brilliant, smart dog with more energy than you could ever do anything with. They’re typically police dogs, and if we don’t take him on multiple walks a day, he’s tearing apart the house. So, I always get in the cold plunge and I go on a walk. I used to do a lot more in my morning routine but I really realized that for me, I got to get into a place where I do something hard and then I go move my body and my morning walk is my walking. It’s meditation. I have to meditate kind of in the cold plunge as well because I got to control my breathing.

But for me, running a business as a father, as a husband, I am highly anxious. I’m prone to anxiety. And for me, that cold plunge and walk and you get the sun exposure, you get the breathing and I get home. And that for me is like, okay, I get home, my daughter is waking up, I start my day. That’s the way I start my day. CBD throughout the day, it’s interesting because at very low dosages, probably around like the five-milligram range, which is where we have it in Rise, 5 to 10mg, CBD can almost be stimulating. It has this weird bell curve of efficacy. So, at very, very low dosage, it can almost be stimulating. That’s why we combined it with Rise and all the other nootropics. So, I take Rise every day. And then throughout the day depending on if I need it, I’ll go to a different version of one of our products.

The oil form, so you were talking about oil form versus capsule form. Oil form underneath your tongue for most people seems to have a quicker onset. Typically, it can get into your bloodstream quicker. But I don’t think you’re getting as high of a dosage as compared to swallowing a capsule, but I take CBD throughout the day in oil form if before a podcast, if before I’m speaking to my team, before I’m having a hard conversation to get the quicker calming effects. And then later in the day is when I’ll do either the Serenity Gummies or the Night Caps. I typically take the capsule form later in the day. It’s a higher concentration but it has a longer onset time. So, I’ll take it with my dinner or right after my dinner and you typically want about 60 to 90 minutes for the capsule form to come into effect whereas the oil form you’ll typically see 30 to 45 minutes. But later in the day, I only take CBN, which is in combination with CBD and our Night Oil and Night Cap products.

Because CBN has more of a heavy effect on the body. I typically tell people it’s like a weighted blanket type effect. So, it calms your body and it really helps you get into that deep sleep. So, later in the day, CBN in combination with CBD and the Microdose THC which is in Serenity and Night Caps, also in the Calm Caps that you just took. And then throughout the day, I’ll just do lower dosages of an oil underneath the tongue, which really helps me just find calm, find my center any time I need it.

Hal Elrod: Beautiful. Oh, it does. I didn’t realize the Calm Caps do have the 0.3% THC. Nice. Okay.

Joe Sheehey: So, very low dose. Yeah.

Hal Elrod: Very low. Yeah. Just enough to just make you feel nice and calm. So, are there any negative side effects from taking CBD?

Joe Sheehey: So, overall, what we’re trying to do is build a therapeutic level in your system. So, CBD, it interacts with your CB1 and CB2 receptors. So, those are your receptors that are part of your endocannabinoid system.

Hal Elrod: Yeah.

Joe Sheehey: And what we’ve noticed is that there’s a point where taking more actually doesn’t make it more effective. So, it’s not a negative side effect but it’s not just like taking more actually will help. It gets to this point where it’s like the bell curve of efficacy and then it completely drops off. What I will say is that we have very infrequently had people say that at all dosages, they feel a stimulating effect. It’s very rare that that happens. So, I wouldn’t call that a negative side effect as well but it’s not what people are looking for. So, some people, they’ll say they’re increasing their dosage but they’re almost still feeling a stimulating effect. And it’s interesting, similar to your response to ashwagandha.

Hal Elrod: Yes, like my ashwagandha situation. Yeah. It’s rare.

Joe Sheehey: Yeah. It’s very rare. Like, we’ve served over 300,000 customers now. And at this point, we’ve probably heard it on like you could count on your hand how many times we’ve heard that over the years. Now, there are some contraindications with specific medications. I can’t really dive deep into that. But at the end of the day, what we’ve noticed, it’s very safe. It’s not going to get you high unless you were taking an overwhelming amount because there is that microdose THC in it. And overall, we get this question a lot as well. Some people ask, can I take it if I’m pregnant or breastfeeding? And we just say, “If that is you, ask your physician. That’s not something that we can actually answer.” But overall, there haven’t been any negative like drastically negative reported side effects but it is something that you should be aware of. Some people have said that they just have noticed stimulating effects.

Hal Elrod: That makes sense. Well, I’ll tell you, man, obviously you heard from my impassioned rant earlier that like this to me, it’s a miracle plant. Like, that’s how I would define it. It’s a miracle plant that has extraordinary health benefits from relieving pain when nothing else would for me and for a lot of other people. In fact, my friend, that is the one that gave it to me, she has a chronic illness, and she used to be on all these heavy pain meds when she was a teenager. And then as she got older and wiser, she’s like, “I don’t want to take all this. This stuff’s terrible for me.” And then she started researching, similar to you, similar to me, and then she came up with and now she’s been on for big pharma meds for probably almost a decade now and just uses all-natural and a big part of that is cannabis. So, thanks for the work that you’re doing, Joe. You are a hero, brother. I mean that.

Joe Sheehey: Thank you, Hal. I really appreciate that. And I really appreciate you having me on to share our story, our mission. And I love your passion, man. Like, thank you for that because you and individuals like you are going to help us actually change this narrative at large. And I envision a future where more people are turning to cannabis. The narratives change. We’re not living in the Cheech and Chong, DARE program world, and it’s actually, hey, we can be highly respectful, responsible experts, well-revered in many aspects, trustworthy, and be cannabis users as well.

Hal Elrod: Totally. Plant medicine. Well, goal achievers, thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Joe as much as I did. And if you haven’t yet tried CURED Nutrition’s products, you can get 20% off as a listener of this podcast on all the products, the Night Caps, the Night Oil, the Rise in the morning, the Calm Caps, you name it, head over to CuredNutrition.com/Hal and then use the discount code ‘Hal’ for 20% off your entire order as a listener of the Achieve Your Goals podcast. All right. Joe, appreciate you, man. Looking forward to connecting again soon.

Joe Sheehey: Likewise, brother. Thank you.