Our very own Ben Cassiday spoke at CannaCon. Covering the topic “Cannabis Terpenes, Low volume: high impact.
Not a fundamentally new idea but terpenes aren’t new, there’s still plenty to unpack though! Cassiday takes the opportunity to dive a little deeper into one of our favorite topics. Inspired by Ethan Russo’s research into the endocannabinoid system and the compounds that affect our endocannabinoid system. These complex compounds, such as beta-caryophyllene, have a big impact even if they aren’t necessarily easy to say. We’ve already seen Pharmacological effects that tie directly into the olfactory quality of a specific scent. Now we see that these trace elements may not even be the largest portion of the terpene profile and still heavily add to the effect. Simply put, just because there is a lot of a certain terpene in a profile does not mean that it is the main scent or effect component. Even minuscule amounts of a compound such as Ocimene can have a profound effect.
If you open our bottle of Blue Cheese, Isovaleric acid is just 1,000th of the profile but is so pungent it’s the first thing that gets your attention. The plant carries a wide variety of pharmacological compounds.
Terpenes might be as high as 5%, or even 10% in the flower but that is still relatively low as far as essential oil content goes. Even advanced lab results show an incomplete matrix. The compounds we do find, we’re pretty rapidly isolating those compounds. This allows us to standardize with a pharmaceutical approach. For now, most of us are consuming the whole plant. We see the advantages of taking a pharmacological approach and using these individual compounds, often in synergy with others to get the desired effect. The more we can study these “micro compounds” and their effects the better we’ll understand this plant and our relationship to it.
