YPD User Guides

Adjusting THC and CBD dosing based on how you are feeling right now doubles your chance of getting better. The YPD app helps you make sensible adjustments to your cannabis easily and quickly. THC and CBD interact with endocannabinoid receptors in our brains and in our bodies. The science of how THC and CBD affect the functioning of our brains and bodies is fascinating and evolving rapidly. Your YPD suggestions are crafted to apply the latest scientific knowledge to your personal goals.

THC and CBD provide around 90% of cannabis effects. THC is delta-9-tetrahydrocannibinol,the agent that treats pain anxiety and other problems. It attaches directly to endocannabinoid receptors in the brain (EC1 receptors) and in the body (EC2 receptors). Although recreational users can get a buzz from THC, medical users tend not to get buzzed due to the low doses of THC that are useful in treating medical problems as well as simultaneous use of CBD, which cuts the buzz of THC. CBD, cannabidiol, blocks the degradation of any cannabinoids (our own endocannabinoids or THC) at our brain's neuron synapse where THC and our own endocannabinoids have their effect. The net result is to help tune our brain's other chemical signalling systems (like dopamine, serotonin, GABA) to relieve our symptoms. CBD also cuts the buzz from THC, so it can be used to allow higher THC doses without a buzz for relieving symptoms. The YPD app helps you adjust your THC and CBD doses to reach your goals safely.

The YPD app helps you find your personal amount by starting with a low dose of THC and CBD, then adjusting these doses based on how you are feeling. YPD suggestions are based on the YPD algorithm, a machine learning ("AI") system that uses how you are feeling right now to generate the safest and most useful dosage suggestion for you right now. The YPD algorithm is based on experience learned from thousands of patients treated in a medical cannabis practice. It has been shown to double your chances of getting better without getting a buzz. YPD is designed to keep you safe while helping you get better.

You can think of getting a good night’s sleep as two steps   •getting to sleep, just being able to fall asleep easily   •staying asleep, getting some continuous hours of good sleep. Getting to sleep Just be aware of what is happening in those couple of hours before your bedtime. Try to eat lightly, do what relaxes or de-stresses you, and put the screens away for that last hour or so. Small changes here can have big benefits. At bedtime, inhaling a couple of puffs of THC can help you drift off to sleep more easily. The THC effect will kick in over about a half hour and just as you are getting settled in, it can smooth that transition into actual sleep. Staying asleep Tweaking your environment can help you stay asleep.Try to get the room dark, quiet, and a bit cool. A lot of folks have found that if they take maybe 5 or 10 mg of THC by mouth at bedtime, then this THC will start kicking in a couple of hours into the night and help them stay asleep through the middle of the night. In the morning Hopefully you will start waking up feeling more rested and ready for your day. If you notice a THC hangover in the morning, you can minimize this hangover with some CBD: a couple of puffs on a CBD vape or say 25 to 50 mg of CBD by mouth. CBD is great to get rid of any buzz you get with THC. And that’s it. Clinical results have shown us that well over half of folks with mental stress, anxiety, pain, and PTSD also have sleep issues. Sleep is often the quickest issue to fix and has knock on benefits the next day. Better sleep can be an early win along your journey to get better!

As you try and adjust your cannabis dosing with our real time help, your understanding will grow and you will learn what works for you at any moment. YPD understands that you will grow and change, and the YPD algorithm is designed to help you with sensible suggestions that move you forward as safely as we can. What works for you will evolve over time as you gain more experience using all the cannabis tools available to you to meet your needs in any moment. YPD will base its suggestions on what you are actually using and how you are acually doing right now. Clinical data shows that this one step at a time approach helps four out of five people feel significantly better, and helps half of all people feel good to great. No other approach gives you close to this likelihood of getting a lot better (we know, we tried other approaches too). So let us start on this journey, trying and listening and adjusting as we go along. You can reach your goal and we are there to help.

Clinical experience in 4000 medical cannabis patients has shown us that medical use of cannabis is different from recreational use. People who use cannabis to get to their wellness goals just want their issue resolved without any side effects. Your chance of feeling a high with cannabis use is low because of two things:   •the dose of cannabis to help you is usually way less than recreational dosing   •using CBD along with THC boosts cannabis effect and decreases the chance of getting a high. The YPD algorithm is designed to help you handle any side effects that may arise. YPD will suggest adjustments in dosing designed to keep your benefits while decreasing any side effects. We will learn together how to balance cannabis to get you the most of what you want with the least side effects.

THC, aka delta-9-tetracannibinol, interacts directly with endocannabinoid-1 (EC1) receptors in your brain and endocannabinoid-2 (EC2) receptors in your joints, your digestive system, and your blood vessels. If you inhale THC like smoking or vaping it, you get delta-9-tetracannibinol, THC, directly into your blood stream. It takes around 30 minutes for the THC in your bloodstream to get into your brain and have its full effect. This is the reason why people should give inhaled THC a good half hour to have its full effect. The effects of inhaled THC start in minutes and may last up to a couple of hours, so inhaled THC is good for rapid response to a problem. If you take THC by mouth, it goes to your intestines and then to your liver. Here the delta-9-tetrahydrocannibinol, the THC you ate, gets converted to 11-hydroxy-delta-9-tetrahydrocannibinol, "11 hydroxy THC." For around 95% of people, these two versions of THC act exactly the same. It takes around an hour to an hour and a half for the THC you ate to get into your bloodstream and into your brain. This is the reason why people should give THC by mouth a good hour and a half to two hours to have its full effect. The effects of THC by mouth can last several hours, so THC by mouth is good to establish a steady state in your body. THC can give you side effects like feeling high or buzzed. The amount of THC that works to help YPD users get to their goals is usually lower than the amount of THC that recreational cannabis users will take. Also, YPD users can cut any buzz from THC with CBD, which is very effective in decreasing any THC high feelings. In short, THC is a really useful tool to help you get better. You will learn how to use THC to get the most of what you want and the least of what you don't want. Let's get started.

CBD, cannabidiol, works to prolong the effect of anything that is attached to our brain's endocannabinoid-1 (EC1) receptors and our body's endocannabinoid-2 (EC2) receptors. CBD slows down the clearance of THC and our body's own endocannabinoids from around these EC1 and EC2 receptors. And yes, our bodies are making our own endocannabinoids all the time ! If CBD is inhaled like smoking or vaping, it gets into our blood stream rapidly. CBD then slowly gets into our brain from our blood stream over about 30 minutes. This is why you should give CBD a good half hour to see its full effects. The effects of inhaled CBD start in minutes and may last up to a couple of hours, so inhaled CBD is good for rapid response to a problem. If CBD is eaten, then it goes from our digestive system to our liver and then to our blood stream and brain. Like THC timelines, CBD by mouth takes an hour to an hour and a half to have its full effects. The effects of CBD by mouth may last for several hours, so CBD by mouth is nice to establish a steady state in your body. In a clinical practice, we noticed that the full effect of CBD on issues like anxiety and PTSD seemed to increase over a 6-8 week period of time. This time seems to correlate with the half life of endocannabinoid receptors in the brain, which would make sense. So CBD is really useful. It can help you directly, it can cut the buzz of THC for you, and it has no buzz by itself. Enough CBD for long enough usually helps a lot! Let us get started.

TL;DR We like to use both because:   •inhaled cannabis is great to rapidly figure out what dose works for you, also great to get past a flare up of your problem   •cannabis by mouth is great to provide a steady floor of relief that lasts for hours Inhaling If cannabis is inhaled like smoking or vaping, the THC and CBD get into our blood stream within minutes. THC and CBD then slowly cross from our blood into our brain over about 30 minutes. So inhaled cannabis takes a good half hour to have its full effects. After inhaling THC, it is a good idea to wait at least a half hour to let its full effect kick in. Because the effects of inhaled cannabis start in minutes and may last up to a couple of hours, inhaled cannabis is good for getting past a flare up of your problem. Also, when you are adjusting your dosage of cannabis, the rapid onset of effects can help you decide what dosage to use more quickly. Using a vape to inhale cannabis seems to be way safer than smoking it. Vapes from good manufacturers are pretty reliable and do not treat your lungs to all those nasties that smoke contains. So we think that vaping oil cartridges or vaping plant is the way to go for inhaled cannabis. By mouth You can take cannabis by mouth in many forms, like gummies, oils, and chocolate bars. When cannabis is eaten it goes into our digestive system then to our liver and then to our blood stream and brain. Because it has to go from your mouth to your gut to your liver before it gets to your bloodstream, cannabis by mouth takes an hour to an hour and a half to have its full effects. If you take it on a full stomach, it takes longer to absorb from your gut. Some people find that if they take cannabis with a bit of fat (like some peanut butter), it absorbs faster. This may be worth fiddling around with. Because the effects of cannabis by mouth last from four to several hours, cannabis by mouth is great to establish a steady state in your body. Once you have your dosing figured out, you can replace some or all of your inhaled cannabis with cannabis by mouth, which will have a gradual onset and last for hours. It can then be in the background, helping you along while you get on with your life. Use both We like to have both inhaled and by mouth cannabis available, especially when people are beginning their journey with YPD. Each has its advantages:   •inhaled cannabis is great to rapidly figure out what dose works for you, also great to get past a flare up of your problem   •cannabis by mouth is great to provide a steady floor of relief that lasts for hours It is your choice, but we want you to be informed.

If you are starting cannabis or if you are increasing your THC dosing, you may feel a buzz. Although this is concerning, there are a few things to realize about this buzz:   •it will go away on its own in a few hours   •you will keep breathing, cannabis does not work on the brainstem   •laying down in a quiet place helps   •you can take some CBD, like 2-3 puffs inhaled or 50-100 mg by mouth to help decrease the buzz. Once you are feeling less buzzed, take a minute to note down what cannabis you took and what was going on:   •in general: were you rested, tired, hungry, stressed ?   •oral: when did you eat last? what did you eat?   •inhaled: was this a new vape? When you are starting or increasing cannabis, here are some tips:   •start or increase your cannabis on a day when you don't have any obligations   •no activities like cooking, driving, or skydiving   •tell someone and have them check on you in a couple of hours. Although annoying, getting a buzz from medical cannabis is pretty unusual, and it can be minimized with some planning and care.

Problems tend to happen together. For example, pain can cause you to sleep poorly, then poor sleep can increase your pain, and both of them can make your mental state miserable, and so on. In a survey of more than 1000 patients, we found that over 90% of people reported dealing with two or more problems at the same time. YPD tries to treat all the problems bothering you as one big thing that we call "how are you feeling?". If we can work together to get you feeling better overall, then each individual problem tends to quiet itself down.When we helped over 100 PTSD patients, we found that pain, sleep, and PTSD all improved at roughly the same rate, so getting one thing better consistently helps getting other things better. Now if one or another problem is standing out as your main problem right now, please tell us about this specific problem so we can focus on it specifically. If we can both be thinking about your overall well being and overall feeling ok, then we can learn together how to get you where you want to be. Roadblocks to feeling better tend to come in bunches, and we will try to treat the whole bunch all at the same time. We have a lot of clinical experience doing this, and we think this approach can really help.