Boob Sweat, Other Uses for CBD, …and Why THIS Blog Does NOT Come With A Picture…

What a great idea to use “boob” as a catch phrase, huh? Whoever comes up with the correct number of “boobs”, gets a 15% discount on their next order!

Ok. Now that I got everybody’s attention, I would like to introduce you to my somewhat unconventional and sometimes downright weird – but totally scientific, of course – methods to test my own CBD products.

As sad as it sounds, in my two years worth of hemp farming, I haven’t sold a pound of biomass to a hemp processing plant yet. The infrastructure just isn’t established yet and it’s a crazy cut-throat world out there, I tell ya. But! That didn’t keep me down for long and I thought: “Ok! I’ll try and make my own products.”

And then I started mixing teas. Science is exciting. Really. It is. Trust me.

It started out easy enough. Pour hot water over hemp bio-mass. – Voila! Hemp tea! I tried it and almost spit it all the way across the kitchen, because it was so bitter. Adding honey – much better…

A week later, armed with the organic rose hip, chamomile, lemon grass and hibiscus, that I had ordered, I tried it again:

Ten cups lined up, containing different mixing formulas as well as different ingredients.

First round: each ingredient individually and then combinations thereof.

THIS needed to be tested over and over… I found that I liked one of the final mixes for a more invigorating result, while another quite literally put me to sleep. After about three weeks of mixing, jotting down notes in a log book, changing ingredients, adding, reducing hemp biomass, changing steeping times and water temperatures, I noticed that I hadn't had a hot flash for a while! Huh. Weird. Or was it not?

Yes. I’m going through menopause and yes, it’s embarrassing to have sweat run down your back and past your boobs down your front, and it also says a lot when you drive down the interstate mid-winter in Wisconsin and have to roll down the window to get some relief... a book on how the amazing menopausal symptoms can test the strength of ANY marriage is in its brainstorming stages.

As great as the tea-realization was, the scientist in me just HAD to figure out this mysterious miracle! Experimentation part three was to figure out, WHICH PART was the hot-flash-slashing Ninja? Could it possibly be the CBD?

More weeks of testing. Each trial-round took about three weeks:

No hemp tea, yes coffee. Yes hot flashes.

No hemp in tea, no coffee. Yes hot flashes.

Yes hemp tea (various concentration changes), no coffee. Gradually decreasing intensity in hot flash, with temperatures ranging from the unbearably hot ‘hell-preview’ to the mildly annoying ‘first sunny day in spring.’

Yes coffee, no tea. Hot flashes THAT SAME DAY with a vengeance!

Hemp ingredient mix change, no coffee. No hot flashes! Again.

No hemp tea, yes coffee. Yes hot flashes.

Yes hemp tea, no coffee. No hot flashes!

WOW! I can’t even start to describe how excited I was. The best tea mixes made it on my website, but I’m still trying to add flavors and would be willing to send anybody a week’s worth of supply at half price to hot flash plagued women, who are like me and think that going through puberty the second time around isn’t any more fun than it was the first time.

The second product that made it to experimenting stage was a series of CBD oils to take sublingually for people, who don’t want to smoke smokable CBD. To be clear, smoking CBD is still the fastest way to get the CBD via your lungs and oxygen exchange into your endocannabinoid system to combat anxiety and depression, but then there are people (like me), who have quit smoking and are not so excited about smoking ANYTHING anymore.

So. Same problem. Crude hemp oil looks like black tar sweat on newly fixed roads and probably tastes like it, too… THIS time, I was prepared with a multitude of essential oil flavors to “take away the bitter”. Test batches of four flavors that I had carefully researched to make sure that they were suitable for ingestion as well as beneficial in their own capacity… adding 10 drops of the flavor essential oil – try a drop – bleahhh! Adding another 10 drops to the mix – bleahhh! Repeat – bleahhh! Repeat – bleahhh! Repeat – huh… getting there. Take notes. Adding more, try. Ok. Repeat. I did this same trial-increase-taste-testing pattern on all four flavors, which took me about three hours altogether until I was somewhat satisfied with the taste of each oil.

Then I was so tired that I went and laid down and slept like a baby! Much, much later, I woke up and tried to guesstimate, how many CBD drops I had subjected the bottom of my tongue to and came up with the mind-blowing approximate number of 40-50 drops, according to my notes. I also realized that the sleepiness had overcome me so intensely and quickly, that HAD I been in a car, I might have been able to pull over to the side of the road safely, but I could have NOT stayed awake. So. There you go. My first experience of ‘overdosing’ with CBD knocked me out and gave me the BEST sleep I had had in years – ***insert evil side glance at menopause here***.

From there on out, I discovered that for me (again testing and THIS time building up the amount of drops slowly and gradually), about 15 drops work great to relax me to sleep awesomely. Other oil testimonials:

- Atlee, Amish, who is one of the hardest workers, I know: “The oil really helps my sore muscles in my body relax at night, so I can fall asleep.”

- Erwin, Amish, was inspired by that and also bought a bottle. He had the same success with it, but also told me the following story: “You’ll be surprised to know that my wife tried your oil on our three month old daughter, who is teething at the moment. She rubbed it along the spine for a few minutes and the baby fell into a restful sleep soon after. We were all happy, because that let the whole family have a good night’s sleep as well.”

- Another Amish bought a bottle to try and see whether the calming effects of the oil would work on his overly nervous horse. (I have to check back with him on the results)

Buster’s right front ankle joint was swollen the other day. It was so bad, the poor chap couldn't even put weight on it, but preferred to limp on three legs instead. Debating whether I should call my trusted vet – but it was already too late that night – I put some CBD oil on it, massaged it in gently. He licked at it, but must have not liked the taste of it and fell asleep soon after. On day three of my treatment, he was running again like nothing had happened.

Since I have an abundance of the oil that doesn’t taste overly amazing, I have been using it as hair serum as well and think that my hair has gotten thicker and curlier… in any case, it hasn't fallen out yet and I could not notice any negative effects.

Next product was my CBD body butter. Since I have been creating my own recipe of body butter since – oh… pfrrrt… the last 12-ish years, loving my mix of butters and beneficial healing herbs, I thought I could possibly get even MORE benefits out of it by adding CBD crude to it. This was also the time, when my husband’s neck, arthritis and other wear and tear from the military flared up frequently. I looked up online, what the USUAL dosage is for CBD ointments and after consultation with my chemist and a physician, I ended up two-and-a-halfing that dosage. Then the moment of truth, trying it out on my husband. The pain in his neck, which is surprisingly NOT being caused by me, even though you will often hear him claim just that, was literally THE first time, to try my potential pain slasher on a body other than my own. I massaged the butter into his skin until ‘the glide’ of the butter was completely absorbed. Then we waited. After about three minutes, he stretched his neck, looked at me and said with surprise in his eyes: “You know, I think it actually helped!”

Out of all of the proud moments in my life, THIS one made it into the top ten, for sure!

Ever since then, we have been using it on his ‘rode-hard-and-put-up-wet’ Army-veteran body for all kinds of pain. Knee. Check. Pain relief. Ankle. Check. Pain relief. Back. Check. Pain relief. He also told his neurologist about it and was surprised that the good man was NOT surprised at all. “CBD is a natural anti-inflammatory. I’m happy for you that you are successful with it! And it doesn’t matter, whether you think it could be some sort of placebo effect, the massaging of your wife, or the actual CBD.”

From there, it pretty much started snow-balling. Three of my “fellow-female-warrior” business owners (HUGE thanks to EmilySue, CJ and Emilia) were willing to put my CBD butter (and other products) to the test and on the shelves of their stores. Some family members and friends were also willing to try it on their ailments. I mostly gave samples of it away to people that I KNEW were hurting. Here are some of the earliest testimonials:

- Jim (Vietnam vet): “I was taking 6 Ibuprofen for my knee pain a day, which attacked my stomach, so I had to take some medication for that as well. Ever since taking your CBD cream twice a day, I was able to drop the Ibuprofen and the stomach meds altogether.”

- Terry (58, cancer patient, treating primarily tumor pain; secondary arthritis/gout pain): “No alternative stuff helped at all except your CBD butter. Got to get my pain levels down. Arthritis/gout has been killing my right foot. Butter helps much there also. CBD is calming both down a lot.”

- ​EmilySue (massage therapist): „Your CBD butter has been a blessing for my patients with peripheral neuropathy caused by diabetes.”

- EmilySue (massage therapist): “My husband’s boss started using the CBD body butter on his feet. He had cancer in his back… Went through radiation, chemo and a stem cell transplant. The body butter is the only thing he has used that’s been able to cut through the nerve pain in his feet.”

- Sandy: “One of the side effects of Lyme disease is arthritis. The knuckles in my right hand are very painful, swollen and stiff. Silvia’s CBD butter is miraculous. I’m able to use my right hand without being aware of any pain. That is a life changer for me. Thanks for helping me out, Silvia!”

- Brigitte (my mom and BIGGEST critic, who still thinks, I’m selling illegal drugs…): “I have used your CBD butter on a cold sore and it actually went away after a week!”

- Stefan (brother): “I’m really surprised that your stuff works! I use it on my hip, where my arthritis flares up with overexertion. And I don’t need to put it on for another two or three days to fight my chronic pain.”

- Margie: “My husband has been using the sample of CBD ointment that you gave him and it seems to be helping. I have also tried it and it worked on my knee pain.”

Wow. With every testimonial, I got close to tears… it was so emotional for me that after much testing, mixing and experimenting, I actually HELPED people! BEST reward ever…!

Then I was inspired to get creative with application ideas. I had noticed, for example, that I had two small spots of melanoma on my belly – the non aggressive type. Usually, I would go to the dermatologist, he’d ice it and scrape it off, done. This year, with Covid, I didn’t feel like going anywhere near a hospital, so I put my butter on it twice a day.

I didn’t even think much about it anymore, but after about two weeks, I took a long soaking bath and noticed that those two spots were loose, like older scabs. A few more days, and both basically fell off! Another few days of body butter and I couldn’t even SEE where those spots had been! I couldn’t believe my eyes…

Which finally brings us again full circle to my body, my belly and its close proximity to my boobs.

I work a lot outside.

I sweat a lot.

But as much as I like my boobs, bra or no bra, sweat collects underneath during work and sometimes causes a rash that will start itching at some point. Here was my chance to see, how anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and beneficial my CBD butter truly was! And then – ***enter angelic “wwwwooooohhhhhAAAAAA!”*** – the heavens opened, I was struck by an enormously bright and warm light and I finally understood, why GOD had graced me with TWO boobs!

…This is how my right breast ended up being the lucky one that would be treated, while my left one was the ‘control study’ and would not get the CBD treatment. It only took two days to see the difference! Again, I could hardly believe it. But how can you be happy and proud about something so embarrassingly intimate that you can’t quite shout out into the public? Coincidentally, my daughter was visiting and I showed her the underside of my glorious twins. First thing she did was erupt in an uncontrollably fierce bout of laughter. Under tears, she asked: “You actually had a control boob? Oh, Mom! Only YOU would think of something like this!” After she had full control over her speech again, though, she had to admit that the difference was quite obvious as well as amazing. But sorry. No pictures. You’ll just HAVE to trust us on this.

***To prevent left-boob-activists from writing poster-boards featuring “BOTH boobs matter!”, I am happy to report that in the meantime, both sides are boob-sweat-rash-free and now have equally soft and beautiful skin being trumped only by a baby’s butt’s.***

A serious word at the end: I know that I’m risking to have this blog sound like an advertisement for my products. And in a way it IS intended to be just that. I’d be lying, if I said that it wouldn’t be great to finally see some monetary satisfaction come back, after investing so much money, time, hard work and (not only boob-) sweat. I’m also convinced that I don’t even know HALF of what this beneficial and miraculous plant can do yet. I am so happy that I got into growing hemp and will definitely continue to experiment and research more applications for my CBD to benefit people, who are willing to try to ease their ailments in a more natural way.

I’m currently working on CBD soap, shampoo bars and conditioner bars, but they are still in beta-testing with only the bravest among my family members and friends. Thank you so much for helping out and being my test-subjects! So much better than testing on animals… LOL!

And thank you all for reading this rather long blog. Don't complain. It was twice as long before…

Love and peace,

Bee hempy,

Silvia