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26 Interesting Facts About Hemp

The all so wonderful and controversial “Hemp” deserves a detailed article and a careful read. Legalized and banned over and over, the final verdict on the existence of hemp is still pending. Here are some interesting facts about hemp and its uses and legality.

1. The Infamous Marijuana Family

Hemp belongs to the same Cannabis Sativa family that Marijuana does. The basic difference between useful hemp and recreational marijuana is the THC level. THC is the element that gets you high. It is only 1% in hemp and around 20% in weed. A migraine is all you gonna get if you try smoking hemp to get high!

2.The Old Gold

Hemp was first domesticated 10,000 years ago, when it was spun into usable fiber for the very first time.

3. One hell of a Raw Material

This one plant can be used to produce several products including rope, clothes, food, paper, textiles, plastics, insulation, and bio-fuel! The medicinal properties and uses of hemp are not promoted fairly in the mainstream media. Too good to disclose or maybe too cheap for business!

4. Useful to its last unit!

All the parts of the plant produce different products. In its raw form, it’s good for mulch, animal bedding and litter. The seeds can be used to press hemp oil. On drying the hemp oil, it can be used to manufacture paint, creams (as a moisturizing agent), and plastic. Hemp oil can be used for cooking as well!

5. Eat, grind, drink!

Hemp can be eaten raw as salad, seeds can be taken raw or sprouted and grounded into a meal or dried for sprout powder. The liquid form can be used for baking and also drank as hemp milk or hemp juice. In US, it can be only imported and is available in health stores since 2000.

Hemp Batteries Image, Better Than Lithium And Graphene

Earth Power: Hemp Batteries Better Than Lithium And Graphene

By Barnaby De Hoedt

Henry Ford’s Model T was famously made partly from hemp bioplastic and powered by hemp biofuel. Now, with battery-powered vehicles starting to replace those that use combustion engines, it has been found that hemp batteries perform eight times better than lithium-ion. Is there anything that this criminally-underused plant can’t do?

The comparison has only been proven on a very small scale. (You weren’t expecting a Silicon Valley conglomerate to do something genuinely groundbreaking were you? They mainly just commercialise stuff that’s been invented or at least funded by the state.) But the results are extremely promising.

The experiment was conducted by Robert Murray Smith – who has built up quite a following on his YouTube channel – of FWG Ltd in Kent. He observed a Volts by Amps curve of both the hemp and lithium batteries and found that the power underneath the hemp cell was a value of 31 while that of the lithium cell had a value of just 4. Although he does not claim to have proven anything, he said that the results of his experiment showed that the performance of the hemp cell is “significantly better” than the lithium cell.

It comes as no real surprise, which is presumably why he conducted the experiment. In 2014, scientists in the US found that waste fibers – ‘shiv’ – from hemp crops can be transformed into “ultrafast” supercapacitors that are “better than graphene”. Graphene is a synthetic carbon material lighter than foil yet bulletproof, but it is prohibitively expensive to make. The hemp version isn’t just better, it costs one-thousandth of the price.

The scientists “cooked” leftover bast fibre – the inner bark of the plant that usually ends up in landfill – into carbon nanosheets in a process called hydrothermal synthesis. “People ask me: why hemp? I say, why not?” said Dr David Mitlin of Clarkson University, New York, in an interview with the BBC. “We’re making graphene-like materials for a thousandth of the price – and we’re doing it with waste.”

Dr. Mitlin’s team recycled the fibers into supercapacitors, energy storage devices that are transforming the way electronics are powered. While conventional batteries store large reservoirs of energy and drip-feed it slowly, supercapacitors can rapidly discharge their entire load.

This makes them ideal in machines that require sharp bursts of power. In electric cars, for example, supercapacitors are used for regenerative braking. Releasing this torrent requires electrodes with high surface area, one of graphene’s many phenomenal properties.

Mitlin says that “you can do really interesting things with bio-waste”. With banana peels, for example, “you can turn them into a dense block of carbon – we call it pseudo-graphite – and that’s great for sodium-ion batteries. But if you look at hemp fibre its structure is the opposite – it makes sheets with high surface area – and that’s very conducive to supercapacitors.”

The Benefits Of Using Hemp In The Construction And Textile Industries

Ever since the cannabis legalization process began to gain global momentum, much has been said about its medicinal and therapeutic potential, as well as the huge market that awaits behind the doors of adult-use regulation.

However, the cannabis plant has even greater potential, of which today we’re seeing but the tip of the iceberg. Hemp is a subspecies of the cannabis plant; it lacks most of marijuana’s psychoactive effects but can be used as raw material for several industries -such as textile and construction.

In fact, industrial sales are expected to triple in the next 7 years, rising from $4.71 billion in 2019 to $15.26 billion in 2027.

Reducing The Carbon Footprint

Steve DeAngelo, one of the most recognized cannabis activists of the last decades, says that hemp has the ability to replace virtually any petroleum product.

“Hemp can be grown without pesticides. Captures 22 tons of atmospheric carbon per hectare. It is a powerful phytoremediator that extracts industrial poisons from contaminated soil. And, likewise, it is a powerful tool to control erosion and remedy unproductive or marginally productive lands,” says DeAngelo. And adds: “We are only now harnessing the industrial hemp plant’s potential as a rotating crop with regenerative agriculture qualities.”

The Textile Industry

Hemp fabric has been around for a long time, from Rembrandt’s canvases to the sails in Columbus’s caravels. Now, the textile industry is strongly experiencing hemp’s disruption, especially as a replacement for cotton.

The material can be processed to be lightweight, soft, breathable, and durable, replacing most cotton applications in the textile industry. Considering that cotton represents 43% of all fibers used for clothing and textiles worldwide, hemp has huge possibilities ahead.

For instance, iconic jeans company Levi’s recently announced a pilot project to replace 27% of its denim’s cotton with hemp, as part of an overall sustainability push. Why? Cotton requires much more water, pesticides, and soil to be grown than hemp.

6 Evidence-Based Health Benefits of Hemp Seeds

Hemp seeds are the seeds of the hemp plant, Cannabis sativa.

They are from the same species as cannabis (marijuana) but a different variety.

However, they contain only trace amounts of THC, the psychoactive compound in marijuana.

Hemp seeds are exceptionally nutritious and rich in healthy fats, protein and various minerals.

Here are 6 health benefits of hemp seeds that are backed up by science.

1. Hemp Seeds Are Incredibly Nutritious

Technically a nut, hemp seeds are very nutritious. They have a mild, nutty flavor and are often referred to as hemp hearts.

Hemp seeds contain over 30% fat. They are exceptionally rich in two essential fatty acids, linoleic acid (omega-6) and alpha-linolenic acid (omega-3).

They also contain gamma-linolenic acid, which has been linked to several health benefits.

Hemp seeds are a great protein source, as more than 25% of their total calories are from high-quality protein.

That is considerably more than similar foods like chia seeds and flaxseeds, whose calories are 16–18% protein.

Hemp seeds are also a great source of vitamin E and minerals, such as phosphorus, potassium, sodium, magnesium, sulfur, calcium, iron, and zinc.

Hemp seeds can be consumed raw, cooked, or roasted. Hemp seed oil is also very healthy and has been used as a food and medicine in China for at least 3,000 years.

SUMMARY Hemp seeds are rich in healthy fats and essential fatty acids. They are also a great protein source and contain high amounts of vitamin E, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, magnesium, sulfur, calcium, iron, and zinc.

2. Hemp Seeds May Reduce Your Risk of Heart Disease

Heart disease is the number one cause of death worldwide.

Interestingly, eating hemp seeds may reduce your risk of heart disease.

The seeds contain high amounts of the amino acid arginine, which produces nitric oxide in your body

4 Things to Know About the FDA’s C BD Guidance

When 2019 began, it was expected to be an incredibly “green” year for the cannabis industry. Canada had just commenced recreational weed sales in October 2018; higher-margin derivative products were expected to hit dispensary shelves in Canada soon thereafter; and President Trump had just signed the farm bill into law, thereby legalizing the industrial production of hemp and hemp-derived cannabidiol (CBD).

Arguably, the greatest excitement surrounded CBD, the nonpsychoactive cannabinoid that’s best known for its perceived medical benefits. Since CBD doesn’t get users high, there’s a considerably broader patient pool for infused products than anything marijuana related. And it also doesn’t hurt that the U.S. population is considerably larger than Canada, providing a juicier opportunity for the CBD industry.

Four vials of cannabinoid-rich liquid lined up on a counter.

IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.

Moreover, with President Trump signing the farm bill into law, it allowed general stores, such as pharmacies and grocers, the opportunity to carry hemp-derived CBD products. In other words, no longer are CBD products carried only in cannabis dispensaries. This more encompassing retail presence should provide a boost to industry sales.

According to the Brightfield Group, U.S. CBD product sales are expected to increase from around a pedestrian $600 million in 2018 to $23.7 billion by 2023. For those of you keeping score at home, this is, indeed, a compound annual growth rate of more than 100% per year over a five-year stretch. This makes CBD a much faster-growing niche than cannabis as a whole.

The FDA lays the hammer down on CBD

And yet, this rapidly growing niche is clouded in worry following a Nov. 25 consumer update from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). To quickly summarize the consumer update, the FDA:

Noted that CBD has the potential to harm consumers.
Pointed out that CBD has the potential to cause side effects that might not immediately be noticed by consumers.
Admitted that there are numerous important aspects about CBD that the agency doesn’t know.

A lab researcher in a white coat closely examining a beaker filled with cannabinoid-rich liquid.

IMAGE SOURCE: GW PHARMACEUTICALS.

In particular, the FDA alluded to the only cannabis-derived drug, GW Pharmaceuticals‘ (NASDAQ:GWPH) Epidiolex, as evidence of these bullet points. Despite GW Pharmaceuticals’ lead drug being approved as a treatment for two rare forms of childhood-onset epilepsy in June 2018, Epidiolex was also shown to cause liver injury during clinical studies in some patients. Again, this risk didn’t outweigh the benefits GW Pharmaceuticals’ drug provided in terms of reducing seizure frequency from baseline, but it demonstrates in the eyes of the FDA that CBD doesn’t have a clean bill of health.

This FDA consumer update comes as the agency has been reviewing the compound as an additive to food, beverages, and dietary supplements. The FDA’s findings, based on the update, suggest that the agency is not going to grant companies the ability to add CBD to food, beverages, or dietary supplements at this time. And, as you can imagine, this news wasn’t taken well by Wall Street and investors.

Four things you should know about the FDA’s consumer update on CBD

However, it’s important for investors to understand that this FDA update isn’t as bad as it initially sounds. Here are four important takeaways from the FDA’s CBD guidelines.

1. This move had been telegraphed for months

For starters, the FDA’s consumer update that was critical of CBD’s safety could be seen coming months in advance. Remember, the agency never said it would release concrete guidelines by late summer or early fall. Instead, it only promised to provide an update on the progress it was making in reviewing data and testimony, which it has now done.

Additionally, the FDA hasn’t been shy about cracking down on misleading health claims when it comes to CBD. In July, Curaleaf Holdings (OTC:CURLF), the largest multistate operator in the U.S. by market cap, wound up receiving a warning letter regarding unsubstantiated claims for a variety of CBD products. Even though Curaleaf was quick to respond to these deficiencies, it still wound up costing the company a potentially lucrative distribution deal with CVS Health.