When you tell people that you use marijuana to treat your illness, right away they get this look like “Oh you just like to get high!” fighting? JM: Well, lets make one
thing clear. I have never ingested cannabis. Growing up, my father was against it and I have had asthma my whole life so I wasn’t big on inhaling anything into my lungs. So, I don’t have any type of personal experience to say yes or no. But my personal opinion on marijuana as a Performance Enhancing Drug for fighting is absolutely not!!! I think the problem with marijuana when it comes to fighting is it can reduce your abilities, slow you down, diminish your reflexes, which in essence makes it more dangerous for the fighter ingesting the marijuana.
BS: Even though you have
never been interested in marijuana yourself, your wife Elaine has found medical cannabis to effectively treat the symptoms of lupus. How long has she been using medical cannabis to her benefit?
tahoecannabismag.com
JM: She started using
14
cannabis to help her lupus in 2016, so it has not been a long time, but we can really see how it makes a difference with her headaches and her fatigue. I want to be very clear, my wife doesn’t use cannabis in a recreational form. She has a serious disease and uses cannabis as a medicine to assist her in living as normal a life as possible. That is the thing that is crazy about
this. When you tell people that you use marijuana to treat your illness, right away they get this look like “Oh you just like to get high!” That is the last thing people like my wife are doing. All they are doing is trying to live a normal life and thank God there is something out there that actually helps them do that. BS: Diagnosing lupus is
difficult. How did she figure out what was going on?
JM: It actually took a
long time to get an official diagnosis of lupus from the doctor, probably about a year to a year and a half. She went through a ton of testing, but that was a godsend because during her testing we discovered that she had bladder cancer. Nobody wants to have lupus, but in a way my wife’s lupus helped us in discovering the cancer that she had. I am glad to say that she is cancer free now and our focus is on how to make her lupus less limiting.
BS: When was she diag-
nosed?
JM: She was diagnosed with
lupus in 2014
BS: Damn, she spent the
first two years of her disease, with doctors practicing their pharmaceuticals, and offering nothing but possible side-effects. Is there any information you can offer those who need help identifying the symp-
toms of lupus? JM: Most people don’t truly
understand lupus. Lupus is an autoimmune disease that can damage any part of your body including the skin, joints, organs, the brain, and the eyes. Chronic means the symptoms tend to last longer than six weeks and often years. In lupus, something goes wrong with your immune system, which is what helps fight off viruses, bacteria, and germs. In healthy people the immune system produces proteins called antibodies that protect the body from viruses and bacteria. When a person has lupus, their immune system cannot tell the difference between foreign invaders and their body’s healthy tissues, so they create autoantibodies that attack and destroy healthy tissue. These autoantibodies cause inflammation, pain, and damage in various parts of the body. Lupus is a disease of FLARES. You get a flare up and you feel ill. Then you have remissions where the symptoms improve and you feel better. Lupus can range from mild conditions like a rash, which can be only a small patch on one part of your body to life threatening ailments that shut down your vital organs. With good medical care, most people with lupus can lead a full life. So, if you have been having any of these symptoms please go to a doctor and start the process of see-
ing what you can do to live as normal a life as possible. BS: In addition to using
cannabis and conventional medicine, does Elaine follow a special diet?
JM: Yes, she does have to
be careful with what she eats and now has many food allergies. We figured out that gluten is very bad for her and causes headaches and possibly migraines. The Paleo Diet seems to be the diet that works best for her and her illness because what you are eating is natural or comes from the earth instead of having some company manufacture it or add preservatives to it.
BS: You created COM-
MAND to train and certify referees. How does someone go about becoming an amateur referee, and joining your program?
JM: I started the COM-
MAND program to give people wanting to be officials in MMA a head start. I wanted them to have a place they could go to that answered the questions that I didn’t have answered for me. When I started out there was nobody that I could go to as a mentor to help answer the questions of “What’s the best way to deal with this” or “How can I handle this better”. I had to learn on my own. I had to make a mistake and then figure out how the mistake was made, the proper way to handle the problem and