How Cannabis Saved My Son
This week I am talking to Annabelle Manalo-Morgan, Ph.D., Founder, and Chief Scientific Officer for Masaya Medical that is focused on education and the formulation of high-quality, pharmaceutical-grade cannabis products, and author of Mighty Flower: How Cannabis Saved My Son and married to Grammy Award-winning reggae artist Gramps Morgan (If You’re Looking For Me).
Annabelle is a former basketball player and scientist who shares her personal journey of discovery after the birth of her third child, Marcario who developed incontrollable seizures shortly after birth. She originally pursued basketball as her dream, but thanks to Hurricane Katrina disrupting her plans and her interest in human science, medicine, and cell biology ended up pursuing a Ph.D. in research. Her early experience in basketball was helpful later on providing some of the drive and passion necessary to deal with the challenges ahead
After having her third child, Macario, he experienced a stroke and began having uncontrollable seizures. Traditional treatments were ineffective, leading Anabelle to develop a medication for her son. She secretly formulated a CBD-based medication and administered it through a feeding tube. The results were remarkable, with Macario showing improvements in just a few days and ultimately experiencing no developmental deficits. Inspired by her son’s progress, Annabelle wrote a book called “Mighty Flower” to share her story and offer hope to other families.
Along the way, her incremental learning point was to never take no for an answer and to the importance of being open-minded and willing to explore alternative treatments. She recognized the potential of CBD in promoting neuroplasticity and formulated a stable and consistent medication for her son. By using CBD alone and gradually weaning him off other medications, Macario thrived and continues to benefit from the treatment.
Listen in to hear the importance of being open-minded and allowing the power of exploring new possibilities without divisiveness. Annabelle believes that CBD and other plant compounds can help the brain adapt and heal, not only in young patients but also in older age groups, but importantly emphasized the need for more research and data to support the use of plant-based extracts in medical treatments.
You can read more about her personal journey in her book “The Mighty Flower: How Cannabis Saved My Son”
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Raw Transcript
Nick van Terheyden
And this week, I’m delighted to welcome Dr. Annabel Manilow Morgan. She is the Chief Scientific Officer at Messiah medical and also the author of the mighty flower. Annabelle. Thanks for joining me today.
Anabelle Manalo-Morgan
Thank you so much for having me. I’m happy to be here with you.
Nick van Terheyden
So if you would tell us a little bit about your background, it’s unique, very interesting and completely irrelevant to the discussion that we’re going to have. Briefly tell us how you got to this point in your career?
Anabelle Manalo-Morgan
Sure. Well, I am from Canada, and I moved here to the United States, to go to university to be a basketball player, actually, my dream was to go to the WNBA. And always been really good at biology and chemistry. So so the medical school thing was always the backup plan. You know, my senior year in college in New Orleans, was the year of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. And so we all got displaced. And, you know, of course, basketball season never happened. And so when I was wondering what to do with myself, I quickly graduated and thought, Okay, I’ll go and get a medical doctor degree, that’ll be my next step. I never was very fascinated by medical school, or even the idea of, you know, I asked a lot of questions. And so my mentor at the time told me, you know, maybe you should go the research route, maybe you should go after a PhD. And I did, I started at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where I still studied developmental neuroscience. And then went on to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where I finished a PhD in cell and development biology. And my focus, there was cardio oncology, which was a rather new field where we merged, you know, oncology and cardiology, and we were looking at the cellular level, of course, chemo therapies and their effect on heart disease. And that is a project that I worked on for about seven years. Now, still working within that space and looking at hypoxia during heart attack and solutions for that. And I still do work at Vanderbilt University and globally as well on several different projects.
Nick van Terheyden
So, you know, fascinating background, I think the thing that really struck me was the basketball piece, I came out of the side side there, I was just a bit, you know, always interesting to hear people’s background, and obviously, you know, deep dive into cellular mechanisms, you’re looking at hypoxia. But you know, all of this leads up to something a little bit different. And you know, the subject of your book, so if you would, for the benefit of the listeners, tell us the story about that, and the subsequent book, if you would.
Anabelle Manalo-Morgan
Sure. So, in 2016, when I was still working away at the cardiology cardio oncology project, I had my third child, so I’m a mother of five. And I had my third child, his name is Macario. You know, I’ve done this before. So he was born perfectly fine. And, and I was perfectly fine. And here we are, we go home. Well, within two hours of being home. Macario was foaming at the mouth, and he was feeding, which in a baby looks like he’s twitching. And it was uncontrollable. We rushed him to the hospital, of course, and found out that he had a stroke. To this day, I don’t know how when and at what point he had that stroke. But the real problem was that he was seizing uncontrollably. He was having 200 to 500 seizures per day. So of course, I’m not a scientist or a doctor at this point. I’m mom and I’m very concerned and and very helpless. They tried every regimen drug regimen at the hospital to try to slow these seizures down, medically induced coma at two weeks old, and at 28 days old when napping would work there. A surgery was performed where they removed 38% of my son’s brain So just five weeks old, they removed all of his left brain pretty much left occipital lobe left temporal lobe. And, of course, a very difficult time now in our surgery, and the outcome was unknown, because it was the first time this particular surgery had ever been done. And what was even more challenging the thought that, with him missing so much of his left brain, he probably not use the right side of his body, that the area of the brain that he is now missing, is responsible for, you know, the things that we don’t even think about right spatial organization, communication, memory, comprehension, and of course, missing his entire left occipital lobe, he’d never use his his right eye or vision vision processing center. And you deal with that, you take that home, and you’re happy he saved the surgery was fine, and he was no longer having any seizures. But at six months old, I just came home one day and looked at my son who’s feeding out of the G tube. So he’s growing well, but he was no different than a newborn baby. And I had to create a solution for him. I do think, to this day, I think that I became a scientist for this reason to help my son. And you know, we can dive into how but I basically formulated a medication for my child, told nobody but my husband. And about a month later just started pumping it through the G tube, and started immediately seeing results in two days, both eyes were moving around two months, he was crawling, not favoring left over right, using that right side normally, and by 14 months, he was walking, and today he is seven years old. And he is in just finished the first grade. So he’ll be going into the second grade. He has no developmental deficits at all. He’s playing, eating, running, talking, doing all of the things. And that is why I wrote the book, mighty flower with Forbes books is to, of course, tell this story. But of course, provide hope to families and also hope to open some of these medical boxes that that we have in traditional medicine.
Nick van Terheyden
So first of all, let me say, you know, I’m just very grateful for your willingness to share what is extraordinarily personal. And I imagine as a parent myself, such a challenging experience to go through that, particularly with something so small, so delicate, and you know, ultimately, this was not your first so you had other normal I’m Forgive me normal experiences, but traditional experiences of you know what that should look like? I greatly respect your willingness to do so. And I think it’s so important for people to hear these things. And also for the sort of exploration, I can only imagine what you were going through as you tried this process, this is your child, you have nothing but the best interest and you’re essentially going through, I’m going to describe it as experimental because I think that’s essentially what it was. But ultimately successful. And, you know, I call out something else because it ties back to the original comments I made also playing basketball, I believe you’re
Anabelle Manalo-Morgan
right, well, that’s an important that you bring that up, because, you know, what I’ve learned through this process and what I share with my children is that, you know, we can set out to be whatever we dream to be and but when you put in, you know, that drive that determination and the work, you learn a lot of things life lessons throughout, throughout the way, right. So, you know, it was basketball that gave me a lot of courage. It was not basketball alone, of course, but it was basketball that, that allowed me to be a risk taker and to have faith and, and just to be strong through it all. And so we are really, you know, we are really a product of our past experiences and it really matters how you use those past experiences.
Nick van Terheyden
Yeah, it’s it’s impossible to separate those sort of personal experiences and you know, all of that that goes in which is one of the reasons I you know, try very hard whenever I meet people, you know, challenging interactions, whatever you do not know, what they’re going through in the experiences and I think such a, you know, important point In that, you know, Respect for others no matter what’s going on. So thank you for that. So if we could let’s dive into what you did, because you’ve achieved success, and you’re now sort of sharing that. And it isn’t traditional. So I think it’s important to sort of dive into a little bit of the detail if you could, please.
Anabelle Manalo-Morgan
Yeah, of course, you know, very, I’m a very traditional scientist. So, you know, the what came across my desk is what I studied, and you’re always fighting for grants, and the religion that we use is dependent on what’s available to us. And for me, my search became a lot more expanded than what maybe it wasn’t traditional medicine, and what maybe we were was only available to us scientifically. I’m a big, big on history, I grew up around native Indians and my family’s in the Philippines, and I’m big on preventative treatments and, and holistic treatments. And I was desperate, you know, that part came first. And that part definitely expanded my mind. I was desperate to see if there was something else. And I kept seeing cannabis. I mean, I was hearing about it too. But I just kept seeing it and rarely, never, never wants to in my life. Have I used it? Or did I ever think of it as a medical treatment? Honestly, I mean, it’s built schedule one in the United States right now. Right? So it was never anything that I probably would have thought of, but as a desperate mom, and I was open to anything, and I had nothing to lose. And so I dove into the research of it. And even though there was not a lot of research, the very little research gave me confidence that this would not harm him if I did try it. And it did give me confidence. I kept seeing the word, neuroplasticity come up. And of course, you know, starting in neuroscience, I was just fascinated with the brain’s ability to rewire and adapt to changes. And I really thought geez, even in his case, would it be able to adapt to the loss of the brain that he has, I had nothing to lose. And so I was able to get a hold of the compound and was able to ensure that it was stable. And I thought about, you know, I could get super nerdy, but I thought about delivery and how it would would work as a drug. You know, and when I say drug, I mean as something that’s consistent and something that I could, I could evaluate that have that consistency, not the variability that you get out of most plant based extracts, I wanted it to be a drug I wanted to be formulated properly so that when I gave it to him, if it made him sleep all day, I could change it. So I created this for him. I used CBD that we hear about all the time in 2016. It it wasn’t in gummies and, and dog foods, right? But it was there was some research on it. So I created my son, this formula using CBD. I used a formulated base that I felt could help cross the blood brain barrier. The initial thought was that I weaned him off of the several medications that he was on, because that’s the safest thing to do. You know, the mom and me comes back and says no, I’m taking him off of those medications, cold turkey. And that’s what I did. I just gave him the CBD and CBD alone. And he has flourished and is still using it today.
Nick van Terheyden
So just for the benefit of the lessons, I think it’s important to clarify CBD as the I’m going to call it non psychoactive as opposed to the THC and I know, marijuana cannabis multi use misuse terms, but I think that’s correct. Is that true?
Anabelle Manalo-Morgan
Yes. Yeah, that’s right. You know, there’s over, you know, 500 compounds in cannabis that have been defined. I shouldn’t say defined, I should say characterize or discovered, I shouldn’t say define. But, you know, I was interested in CBD because CBD had a lot of research. And when I say a lot, I mean, you know, for cannabis. And I didn’t want to give him something that could hinder development and there was some thought that THC could do that and they definitely didn’t want to put him to sleep. So that is why I chose to use CBD it was for its again ability to hopefully adapt to changes in the brain. And for it to reduce inflammation and to promote homeostasis. So it wasn’t necessarily like our traditional medication where we just are trying to really reduce symptoms or put a bandaid over something. You know, this was really a way to just encourage his his brain to do what it wants to do. It’s a rapidly developing brain, he was a baby. And and I wanted to just enable the brain to do that.
Nick van Terheyden
So for those of you just joining, I’m Dr. Nick the incrementalist today I’m talking to Dr. Annabel Manilow Morgan, she is the founder and chief scientific officer at Messiah medical and also the author of the mighty flower, we were just talking about your son, all of the details, you know, through that very challenging course, the introduction of CBD into his therapy. And I think if I’m correct, removed all other clinical prescribe treatments successfully. And I’m going to, say a trajectory that turned normal. And again, I forgive me for using the term I know, it’s not exactly right. But you know, more more typical of a child of that age and continues to this day. Is that a fair summary of where we are now?
Anabelle Manalo-Morgan
Yes, absolutely. He’s missing 40% of his brain, he has used nothing other than CBD since the day I have formulated that for him. And he’s a perfectly normal seven year old boy. Well,
Nick van Terheyden
so first of all, fantastic to hear that. So delighted for you, as a mother, you know, parent, you know, a real sense of sort of, you know, the importance of that. Obviously, this is, you know, it’s now starting to expand, we’re seeing more research. You know, one of the things that strikes me about this is how he was very young, and we see tremendous capability for healing in, you know, younger age groups. Do you think that played a part in the trajectory of success in this is, is this as applicable in older age groups? What are your sort of thoughts around that? I know, you know, limited experience, but obviously, wide sort of deep research?
Anabelle Manalo-Morgan
Yeah, well, you know, I do think I will say this, I do think my son’s story is a special case. And it was, you know, whether you believe in God, or whatever you think those reasons could be at this miracle. I think it was meant to be me to be the person that would have such a miraculous outcome. So there’s a lot to discover, you know, it’s kind of like, you know, putting the carriage before the horse, there’s a lot to discover here. My son’s brain, obviously, is very young, and very, what we call plastic and that the rapidly developing it wants to do all that stuff. And CBD, you know, CBD is it was a tool, it was a tool to remove the medications that were probably bombarding his development. Were they doing its job and reducing seizures and helping his brain heal? Yeah, probably, but at the same time was probably regarding his development. And so we just, you know, my thought, is it just the tool of CBD allowed for my son’s brain to do what I wanted to do. Could this happen in an older patient, our brain develops until the age of 22. But what it does do even after stop development stops, it does keep that neuroplasticity. And that’s what I love about, you know, CBD and plant compounds in general, is that if we just give a little life to that machinery, it’s incredible the defense mechanisms that we already have. So the answer your question is, absolutely. I do believe that after injury, I do believe after, you know, any neurological degeneration, I do believe that there is mold that not just CBD, but other plant compounds can naturally help the brain to rewire and the brain to adapt to the changes and for the brain to kick into gear and to heal. I do believe so.
Nick van Terheyden
So I think you know, great perspective. You know, one of the things that’s so important from your story is coming at this as a scientist, which you know, there’s a lot of fear, uncertainty doubt around these plant based extracts and You know, the reality of this? And I’m gonna say what potentially pushed you over the edge into this was desperation. You know, what I feel like we need as a scientific community, the medical community, in general is, what is it that they need to hear from you that might push them over? That doesn’t require them to have this desperate circumstance to say, oh, okay, we’ll try now it we need much more data, I think you you cite that that was part of what it’s lacking. We lack it, what do we need to do today?
Anabelle Manalo-Morgan
We need the opportunity to do the data. So it has been quite a journey, you know, learning how to approach this. I am not the advocate that holds a sign outside and says, Hey, legalize this, but I did very unbiased conversations that the real realistic conversations that, yes, we need more research, we need more data, and who better to do the research than those that are scientifically trained? So I started having a lot of those uncomfortable conversations where I knew the minute I would speak to somebody about this, it would be controversial. They’d say, Well, you know, well, what’s the mechanism of this, then how do you know the dose toxicity of that? Well, we need to do that research. And instead of talking to doctors, instead of talking to scientists, who are the ones that allow them to do this research, who are the ones that that pay for them to do this research, those are my conversations. Now, those are the people that I talk with. So you know, I’m global with this. And I’ve been to over 34 countries speaking to leaders speaking at Head of universities to try to train a more openness, just to train a more open mindset. A lot of these compounds that we use in pharmaceuticals today, a majority are from plants, these compounds are in plants and what we do to them, it’s what we do to them scientifically, we synthesize them in and we make them toxic. But a lot of these compounds already come from plants, and they shouldn’t be foreign to us. And so I understand in this journey and with this mission, and this is why I wrote this in this book, it’s you know, not a call to action to legalize cannabis and legalize mushrooms. It’s a call to action to let us do the studies. And did it have funding towards these studies?
Nick van Terheyden
So I’m just going to cite aspirin, digitalis Metformin, all plant based extracts, phenomenal drugs done amazing things. That’s right. I want to give you the opportunity. You’ve published a book, The Mighty flower, how cannabis saved my son. It’s available I think, for the general public, you know, this is an opportunity, not just science, but everybody. What should people learn take away from that?
Anabelle Manalo-Morgan
Oh, they should learn that? No, there is never they never take no as an answer. They should learn to be strong in their intuition. It’s always have hope and to fight for your family and fight fight for what you believe. And they should also learn that, you know, I was given a story not to just try to create a fast change, but to try to see more stories like my son, Makarios. That’s why I wrote this book. What do we need? What is the truth? What is the data and where can we go from here? And with that open mindedness, I think we can get a lot further than where we are today.
Nick van Terheyden
I think a tremendous message to finish on open minded exploration, you know, a lack of I want to call divisiveness through not just science, but in our sort of general world. Obviously, you know, a really inspirational story. And, you know, I appreciate you highlighted as no one, which it was but you know, that doesn’t mean to say that we can’t and shouldn’t learn from that. You’ve clearly sort of explored the boundaries of this space, and thankfully effectively for your son Macario. Just close if you would, what is his name meme.
Anabelle Manalo-Morgan
My carry on me means a blessing in Filipino and so you know, what you put out there in there really does speak it into existence because we named him before all of this happened. And he is just a blessing, not just for us, but but hopefully to do all.
Nick van Terheyden
Unfortunately, as we do each and every week. We’ve run out of time. So it just remains for me to thank you for joining me and in particular for sharing Are you know this fantastic deeply personal story Annabelle thanks for joining me
Anabelle Manalo-Morgan
thank you so much for having me and thank you for helping share sharing the word
