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Medical Marijuana – Commentary Lesson

Hi, this is Kristin. Welcome back to the commentary for the conversation Medical Marijuana. So medical marijuana, it’s…it’s all about, y’know, a plant that people are starting to realize can be very helpful if someone has an injury or an illness or a disease. So I thought that I would use this commentary to talk about or to start talking about, anyway, other healing aspects of plants in general.

So it actually makes me think about growing up in the state of Georgia, which is in the southeastern part of the United States, and I grew up in an area where there were a lot of woods so there were a lot of trees. And I always loved the spring time and the summer time when the trees would be really green. I just…it just had a very calming effect on me.

And my mom would also always have a lot of plants, house plants. She’d have them inside the house and outside the house and I loved having those plants around, more than I probably realized at the time but looking back I appreciate now growing up in a house that had a lot of plants because, again, all of the greenery just, the greenness of the plants, the aliveness of the plants, it just had a very calming, peaceful effect on me. And that’s very healing.

Y’know, we have 1, 2, 3…I’m just looking around our apartment, we have 4, 5 plants in here.

Unfortunately, I did not inherit my mom’s green thumb. So that means I did not get her wonderful abilities to take care of plants. A green thumb means to…to really be able to do well with plants, to take care of them and let them really grow and be healthy and I tend to unfortunately kill plants, which is not good, because I love them so much.

But anyway, that to me was always very healing growing up in Georgia and it’s so funny because I just spoke to AJ a little while ago on the phone and he happens to be in Georgia, which is where I met him, and he’s there visiting his father with his wife, Tomoe. And he was talking about how green it is and how he’s forgotten how green Georgia is this time of year and how it’s just making him so happy with all of the trees and they’re in full, y’know, all of their leaves out. And I was telling him, I know…I know what you mean. I love that, too, and I’m actually going to be talking about this in my commentary today.

I think it has something to do with the fact that Georgia, being in the southeastern part of the United States, it gets very humid which means there’s a lot of water or moisture in the air. And so in the spring and summer then everything just pops out. It starts growing and it’s so green. It’s very different than where Joe and I live here in California where it’s much more dry and so we don’t have a lot of those…those lush green trees.

Okay, so that was growing up, how I found that really healing, the calming, peaceful effect of trees, many trees and the plants that we had in the house. Plants can also be very healing in the form of oils, y’know, oils that are taken from their leaves or from their stems…the part that comes up out of the ground. Oil that’s taken can be used in many different ways.

For example, one way is I have what’s called a diffuser. It’s something that I plug into the wall and I have some oil that then, this little machine will then pull the oil up out of the bottle that it’s in and spray it out into the room. You can’t even see it but you can smell it then because the particular oils that I use actually, many of them, they come from plants that have a nice smell.

So it, y’know, that in itself is very healing, just smelling something nice or maybe it can help, certain ones can help you if you are sick and you have a cold and you have your diffuser, the little machine, putting the oil out into the air. It can help with keeping the air clean, certain oils can. One oil in particular, lavender, that I like to use is very…has a very calming effect. So that’s another way that plants can be very healing is the use of their oils. And you can use the oils in many different ways, not just with the diffuser machine.

Another way that you can use plants where they’re very helpful, very healing, is with herbs. So it’s actually the dried part of the plant. Maybe it’s the dried leaves or it’s the dried stem. Again, the stem is the part that comes up out of the ground where it’s growing. I’ve used herbs to help me with maybe calming my mind down, if I’m thinking too much. There’s been times when I was using some herbs.

They were particular herbs from India and they had a very calming effect on my mind.

I’ve used herbs to help with my digestion. Digestion means the breaking down of your food when you eat, breaking it into smaller pieces so that it can…your body can then do what it needs to with it to get the nutrition from it that it needs. So I’ve used herbs for that. Herbs can be used for so many different things.

If you’re sick, y’know, you have a cold. What else? So many ways.

Going back to oils, another way that I’ve used oils other than my diffuser machine is I sometimes, over the last year or so, I’ve been getting a rash on my neck. A rash is something red that comes out and it can itch, y’know, it makes me want to scratch it, or it can hurt. I don’t know what’s been causing it but at different times I’ve used avocado oil, so it’s oil that comes from the fruit avocado. And it’s really helped to clear up the rash. Another oil that I used on the rash was it had neem in it. So neem is a plant that is, I think it’s native, meaning it comes from India.

So other ways that plants are, not necessarily healing, but are so important are that we…we need them for, as Joe…I think it was Joe…mentioned in the conversation, for industrial uses. So in order to make rope or to make clothing. So this shirt that I’m wearing right now, it’s made from cotton. It’s made from the cotton plant.

Jewelry can be made from plants. This necklace that I’m wearing right here is made from a plant called hemp, which I’m not certain, it’s very similar to the marijuana plant, if not the same plant. I’m a little unclear about that. But anyway, this is called hemp. You can also make hemp into rope. You can make paper from hemp or from wood, the wood from a tree.

So we need plants for paper, for clothing, we can use it for jewelry. My deodorant, what I put on, has plants in it. What I wash my face with has plants. The soap that I use to wash my body, to clean my body has plants in it. If you wear makeup, makeup can be used, or can be made from plants. I tend…I use products on my body that are very natural so they don’t have synthetic chemicals in them. That was mentioned in the conversation, synthetic chemicals. It means an imitation of a natural plant. I don’t like to use those types of products so I use things that are very natural so they have the real plants in them.

What else? Food, we need plants for food, right? We eat plants. Medicine, as we were talking about in the conversation. Rubber, all around Thailand, I remember I would see rubber trees, mostly in the southern part of Thailand but they would be grown like we need rubber for making tires for our cars.

Furniture, furniture is made from wood, from material which comes from different plants like cotton, maybe hemp.

Construction, so making a house, you might make your house from wood, y’know? So you need the wood from a tree. You might make a boat from wood. So for construction we need it. Spices, we get spices from plants. Toilet paper, toilet paper comes from trees. So I think toilet paper is definitely used widespread now around the world. Maybe many, many years ago it was more in western countries but, y’know, you…I definitely see it in Asian countries now. So toilet paper comes from trees.

Drinks, tea…tea comes from plants. I’m drinking a tea right now. It’s…this is from a plant, I think it’s mostly from South America called yerba mate. So it’s an interesting plant. When you drink it, it doesn’t have caffeine in it like coffee or like black teas, but it does have a natural stimulant in it so it means it kind of brings you up, gives you energy. But, again, like I said, it’s not caffeine so it’s an interesting plant.

Yerba mate.

So as you see, we need plants for so many things. We depend upon them. And, oh my gosh, I almost forgot…the most important thing, oxygen. Y’know, we humans, people, we give off something called carbon dioxide and the plants take that in and from the sun and the carbon dioxide, they then put out into the air oxygen which we need to breathe. If we didn’t have oxygen, we wouldn’t be able to live.

So plants are very, very important. They’re…we are very dependent. It’s amazing if you actually sit down and think about all of the things that we are dependent on for plants. It’s quite amazing. So I would just like to end this commentary by saying how grateful I am for all of the plants that we have on this beautiful planet and all that they give to us.

Alright, this concludes the commentary for this month’s vocabulary, or not vocabulary, for this month’s conversation Medical Marijuana. Have a good month and I’ll see you next time.