I've been researching CHS for several years. I started getting prodromal CHS symptoms after just a few months of smoking .5-1 gram of flower a day. Late at night, and by that I mean early in the morning before I went to bed I'd occasionally get nauseous. Eventually I started to notice that I was getting indigestion, and it started happening more frequently. Then I started to notice the symptoms coming on after I smoked, sooner and sooner until I made the connection and learned about CHS.
This was in mid 2016, and at the time there was no information on the cause of CHS. The only information I could find was from Douglas Curtis. I took his azadirachtin theory seriously and worked on finding some cleanly grown cannabis. It still upset my stomach. Then I read that Doug also had an H. Pylori infection which he treated, as well as eating a bunch of probiotic foods. I decided that Doug didn't have CHS, he just had an infection, and that pesticides had nothing to do with his condition or the CHS he thought he had. I was wrong, and his H. Pylori infection was actually a big clue as to the real cause of CHS.
Now for a few things that I can't verify because I saw them over the years and didn't keep track of them, but there's a common theme among them. In a thread on grasscity, somebody claimed that their CHS symptoms stopped after they removed a bunch of foods from their diet. I saw the same thing in the comments of a NYT article about CHS. In another thread on grasscity somebody with CHS claimed they they went to an allergist and were allergic to lots of things. The allergist told them that when you have food allergies, cannabis makes them worse in some way. They didn't elaborate beyond that. Somebody on reddit said that they had morning sickness after smoking while they were taking zantac, and after they stopped taking zantac it stopped.
Now for something that I can verify but I'm not going to unless somebody really wants me to because I don't want to dig up the thread. In a thread about CHS on a forum called fuckcombustion, somebody claimed to have had pancreatic cancer. They said that smoking made them sick, and after they had the cancerous part of their pancreas removed the problem stopped. Apparently cannabis stimulates your pancreas to release enzymes, maybe the same way it stimulates hunger or just to digest the cannabinoids.
Now we get to the real good information. I saw a post on reddit by u/blackcIoud talking about CHS. He said he'd cured his symptoms by taking a betaine HCl supplement. Betaine HCl is a form of hydrochloride which turns into hydrochloric acid when ingested. Hydrochloric acid is the main component of gastric juices, it is stomach acid. Betaine HCl is used as a supplement for people with hypochlorhydria, or low stomach acid. Cannabis itself lowers stomach acid secretion, but it can't be the predominant factor because I've seen people who say they've developed CHS symptoms within weeks of beginning to smoke. blackcIoud also claims that butane poisoning from BHO leads to hypochlorhydria but I don't have any evidence of that. The low stomach acid is the important part. He posted about it twice, almost a year ago. Check out his profile if you want to see the posts.
Recently I began browsing the subreddit CHSinfo. I saw a thread linking to a video in which someone was claiming to have cured CHS by taking a supplement called Pangrol 20,000. I dunno if links are allowed here but here is the URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JlQ_a74MdE
I googled Pangrol 20,000, turns out it is a pancreatin supplement, which is a combination of 3 pancreatic enzymes which are used in digestion. A couple people on r/CHSinfo were trying it. I knew from my knowledge of digestive health that pancreatic enzymes are released to digest food only when there is a proper level of stomach acid. Food is eaten, stomach acid is produced, then pancreatic enzymes and bile are released during digestion to further digest the food once it reaches the duodenum. If the stomach doesn't produce enough acid for whatever reason, pancreatic enzymes and bile are not released and food is obviously not digested properly. Then I remembered blackcIoud's claims, and I messaged him.
He told me that he started out taking a plain betaine HCl supplement, but then tried something called Super Digestive With Ox Bile & Activated Charcoal by Sunshine Naturals. He said that worked better for him and completely stopped his CHS symptoms. He takes it occasionally for a few days if his stomach starts feeling funny. I looked it up, and besides HCl and the titular ingredients, it also contains pancreatin. Bingo. Low stomach acid leads to low pancreatic enzymes, and somehow this leads to CHS. I started telling people on r/CHSinfo about this and many people have been trying pancreatin and HCl supplements with positive results. One person I talked to is even dabbing 2 grams a day while taking pancreatin, but still having occasional morning sickness and not eating as much as he should. I suspect his recovery would be much faster if he slowed down his intake but it seems he's unwilling.
Personally, I currently have gastritis as a result of whatever this root cause of CHS is, and from continued smoking. I had gastritis before I even knew what CHS was, and it healed while I was taking prilosec so I figured the same would be true a second time. Not so. I started taking a supplement called zinc carnosine and it seems to have helped significantly but I'm still not 100%. I've recently stopped smoking completely, hopefully my gastritis will be healed soon. Until then I can't try betaine HCl myself because I assume the acid would be very irritating to my already inflamed stomach. I've been taking pancreatin for a few days now but I can't really say how it's working because my stomach doesn't get particularly upset unless I eat too much or eat something I'm not supposed to, and I'm not smoking. I will try smoking relatively soon but I have to be careful because it can adversely affect my digestion for a while.
Where does Douglas come in, and how does hyperemesis happen? I thought of Douglas when I remembered his H. Pylori infection. H. Pylori causes low stomach acid. I am certain that this was the cause of his CHS. I also remember him talking about eating lots of probiotic foods, and that brings me to hyperemesis. I have a theory that the hypochlorhydria in CHS leads to a condition called histamine intolerance. I'll give a quick rundown but you can google it if you need more info. It's not actually an intolerance, but an inability to eliminate histamine from the body. Histamine is contained in and produced by tons of foods we eat, and remember the elimination diets curing CHS that I mentioned earlier. We're putting it in our bodies all the time. If we lack enough of the diamine oxidase enzyme (DAO enzyme) we can't break it down and eliminate it. It builds up and makes us sick. Gastrointestinal symptoms are extremely common, with diarrhea being the most common symptom. More severe symptoms are possible as it builds up, including nausea and vomiting. I have heard tons of CHS cases with diarrhea in the prodromal phase.
If you have low stomach acid, your intestinal microbiome will be affected. Things won't be balanced properly. Your enzymes will be all out of wack, including possibly your DAO enzyme. Douglas' intestinal microbiome was definitely inbalanced after years of H. Pylori infection, I believe he said 6 years. He balanced it out with probiotic foods, yogurt and kimchi I think he said. So probiotics are important to treating CHS also.
Remember that an anonymous source told me that an allergist told them that cannabis worsens food allergies. Assuming this is true, I know that cannabis interacts with histamine in some way. And there's one more detail that supports my theory. The hot showers. They relieve the nausea, but why? When your body is exposed to high temperatures, it produces something called heat shock proteins. These proteins perform various functions throughout the body. Some people believe that there are health benefits to increasing your heat shock protein levels, and use saunas to do so. Somebody on reddit even told me recently that they used saunas to treat their CHS, I'll try to find the post if someone wants it.
So here's a bit of information on histamine,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histamine#Storage_and_release
"Most histamine in the body is generated in granules in mast cells and in white blood cells (leukocytes) called basophils."
Histamine is stored in mast cells. When I learned about histamine intolerance, I googled "heat shock proteins histamine" and found this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16038788
"RESULTS:
Using BMMC [bone marrow mast cells], we found that heat shock inhibits degranulation of BMMC without affecting leukotriene production."
Heat shock prevents mast cells from degranulating and releasing histamine. Less histamine means less nausea. Therefore, hot showers treat nausea from CHS.
That's just a theory I have but I think it's pretty promising. I don't have every bit of the picture filled in, but I think with this information, anybody who wants to cure their CHS can do so. As long as they don't have gastritis like me, haha. I want to say that's everything I know about CHS but I'm sure I've forgotten something. I'm sorry for any spelling/grammar errors and I hope everyone finds this interesting or useful.
This was in mid 2016, and at the time there was no information on the cause of CHS. The only information I could find was from Douglas Curtis. I took his azadirachtin theory seriously and worked on finding some cleanly grown cannabis. It still upset my stomach. Then I read that Doug also had an H. Pylori infection which he treated, as well as eating a bunch of probiotic foods. I decided that Doug didn't have CHS, he just had an infection, and that pesticides had nothing to do with his condition or the CHS he thought he had. I was wrong, and his H. Pylori infection was actually a big clue as to the real cause of CHS.
Now for a few things that I can't verify because I saw them over the years and didn't keep track of them, but there's a common theme among them. In a thread on grasscity, somebody claimed that their CHS symptoms stopped after they removed a bunch of foods from their diet. I saw the same thing in the comments of a NYT article about CHS. In another thread on grasscity somebody with CHS claimed they they went to an allergist and were allergic to lots of things. The allergist told them that when you have food allergies, cannabis makes them worse in some way. They didn't elaborate beyond that. Somebody on reddit said that they had morning sickness after smoking while they were taking zantac, and after they stopped taking zantac it stopped.
Now for something that I can verify but I'm not going to unless somebody really wants me to because I don't want to dig up the thread. In a thread about CHS on a forum called fuckcombustion, somebody claimed to have had pancreatic cancer. They said that smoking made them sick, and after they had the cancerous part of their pancreas removed the problem stopped. Apparently cannabis stimulates your pancreas to release enzymes, maybe the same way it stimulates hunger or just to digest the cannabinoids.
Now we get to the real good information. I saw a post on reddit by u/blackcIoud talking about CHS. He said he'd cured his symptoms by taking a betaine HCl supplement. Betaine HCl is a form of hydrochloride which turns into hydrochloric acid when ingested. Hydrochloric acid is the main component of gastric juices, it is stomach acid. Betaine HCl is used as a supplement for people with hypochlorhydria, or low stomach acid. Cannabis itself lowers stomach acid secretion, but it can't be the predominant factor because I've seen people who say they've developed CHS symptoms within weeks of beginning to smoke. blackcIoud also claims that butane poisoning from BHO leads to hypochlorhydria but I don't have any evidence of that. The low stomach acid is the important part. He posted about it twice, almost a year ago. Check out his profile if you want to see the posts.
Recently I began browsing the subreddit CHSinfo. I saw a thread linking to a video in which someone was claiming to have cured CHS by taking a supplement called Pangrol 20,000. I dunno if links are allowed here but here is the URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JlQ_a74MdE
I googled Pangrol 20,000, turns out it is a pancreatin supplement, which is a combination of 3 pancreatic enzymes which are used in digestion. A couple people on r/CHSinfo were trying it. I knew from my knowledge of digestive health that pancreatic enzymes are released to digest food only when there is a proper level of stomach acid. Food is eaten, stomach acid is produced, then pancreatic enzymes and bile are released during digestion to further digest the food once it reaches the duodenum. If the stomach doesn't produce enough acid for whatever reason, pancreatic enzymes and bile are not released and food is obviously not digested properly. Then I remembered blackcIoud's claims, and I messaged him.
He told me that he started out taking a plain betaine HCl supplement, but then tried something called Super Digestive With Ox Bile & Activated Charcoal by Sunshine Naturals. He said that worked better for him and completely stopped his CHS symptoms. He takes it occasionally for a few days if his stomach starts feeling funny. I looked it up, and besides HCl and the titular ingredients, it also contains pancreatin. Bingo. Low stomach acid leads to low pancreatic enzymes, and somehow this leads to CHS. I started telling people on r/CHSinfo about this and many people have been trying pancreatin and HCl supplements with positive results. One person I talked to is even dabbing 2 grams a day while taking pancreatin, but still having occasional morning sickness and not eating as much as he should. I suspect his recovery would be much faster if he slowed down his intake but it seems he's unwilling.
Personally, I currently have gastritis as a result of whatever this root cause of CHS is, and from continued smoking. I had gastritis before I even knew what CHS was, and it healed while I was taking prilosec so I figured the same would be true a second time. Not so. I started taking a supplement called zinc carnosine and it seems to have helped significantly but I'm still not 100%. I've recently stopped smoking completely, hopefully my gastritis will be healed soon. Until then I can't try betaine HCl myself because I assume the acid would be very irritating to my already inflamed stomach. I've been taking pancreatin for a few days now but I can't really say how it's working because my stomach doesn't get particularly upset unless I eat too much or eat something I'm not supposed to, and I'm not smoking. I will try smoking relatively soon but I have to be careful because it can adversely affect my digestion for a while.
Where does Douglas come in, and how does hyperemesis happen? I thought of Douglas when I remembered his H. Pylori infection. H. Pylori causes low stomach acid. I am certain that this was the cause of his CHS. I also remember him talking about eating lots of probiotic foods, and that brings me to hyperemesis. I have a theory that the hypochlorhydria in CHS leads to a condition called histamine intolerance. I'll give a quick rundown but you can google it if you need more info. It's not actually an intolerance, but an inability to eliminate histamine from the body. Histamine is contained in and produced by tons of foods we eat, and remember the elimination diets curing CHS that I mentioned earlier. We're putting it in our bodies all the time. If we lack enough of the diamine oxidase enzyme (DAO enzyme) we can't break it down and eliminate it. It builds up and makes us sick. Gastrointestinal symptoms are extremely common, with diarrhea being the most common symptom. More severe symptoms are possible as it builds up, including nausea and vomiting. I have heard tons of CHS cases with diarrhea in the prodromal phase.
If you have low stomach acid, your intestinal microbiome will be affected. Things won't be balanced properly. Your enzymes will be all out of wack, including possibly your DAO enzyme. Douglas' intestinal microbiome was definitely inbalanced after years of H. Pylori infection, I believe he said 6 years. He balanced it out with probiotic foods, yogurt and kimchi I think he said. So probiotics are important to treating CHS also.
Remember that an anonymous source told me that an allergist told them that cannabis worsens food allergies. Assuming this is true, I know that cannabis interacts with histamine in some way. And there's one more detail that supports my theory. The hot showers. They relieve the nausea, but why? When your body is exposed to high temperatures, it produces something called heat shock proteins. These proteins perform various functions throughout the body. Some people believe that there are health benefits to increasing your heat shock protein levels, and use saunas to do so. Somebody on reddit even told me recently that they used saunas to treat their CHS, I'll try to find the post if someone wants it.
So here's a bit of information on histamine,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histamine#Storage_and_release
"Most histamine in the body is generated in granules in mast cells and in white blood cells (leukocytes) called basophils."
Histamine is stored in mast cells. When I learned about histamine intolerance, I googled "heat shock proteins histamine" and found this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16038788
"RESULTS:
Using BMMC [bone marrow mast cells], we found that heat shock inhibits degranulation of BMMC without affecting leukotriene production."
Heat shock prevents mast cells from degranulating and releasing histamine. Less histamine means less nausea. Therefore, hot showers treat nausea from CHS.
That's just a theory I have but I think it's pretty promising. I don't have every bit of the picture filled in, but I think with this information, anybody who wants to cure their CHS can do so. As long as they don't have gastritis like me, haha. I want to say that's everything I know about CHS but I'm sure I've forgotten something. I'm sorry for any spelling/grammar errors and I hope everyone finds this interesting or useful.
