Foria studying marijuana effects on women’s health, menstrual cramps

Foria CEO Mathew
Gerson.
Courtesy
Foria

• Foria, a company that makes marijuana
  products for women, including marijuana suppositories
  designed to target menstrual cramps (nicknamed “weed
  tampons“) is about to see how they work in treating the
  symptoms associated with periods. 
• The study, conducted by Harvard professor Staci Gruber, will
  look at survey responses from 400 women about menstrual cycle
  symptoms while using the suppository. 
• Gruber said she sees this as a first step in researching
  marijuana and women’s health. 

As cannabis products enter the mainstream, two markets remain
largely untapped: Women’s health and sexuality. 

While various compounds in cannabis have long been thought to
alleviate symptoms associated with pain and stress from
menstruation, there hasn’t been a lot of research to back it up.

Foria Wellness, a
Venice Beach-based startup, is seeking to change that. The
startup released a line of products — including lotions, sprays,
vaporizer pens, and marijuana suppositories — designed
to help women with
everything from treating menstrual pain to having orgasms.

While Foria’s “Relief” product has been nicknamed a “weed
tampon,” it’s not exactly that. Rather than a cotton device,
it’s a suppository pill that when inserted into the body quickly
gets absorbed.

“Women have been saying [cannabis] works for 10,000 years,” Foria
CEO Mathew Gerson told Business Insider in a recent interview.
“And I don’t think men have been listening.”

Foria’s suppositories are forming the basis of an observational
study of about 400 women to see how marijuana-based products
impact the symptoms associated with menstrual cramps. 

So far, Foria has raised $2 million in a funding round led by
Gotham Green Partners, a cannabis-focused venture capital firm.
The company’s THC-filled products are available in Colorado and
California, where cannabis is legal for adult use. They will be
available in Canada
once legalization goes into effect later this month. 

Foria’s line of
products.
Courtesy
Foria

Foria’s CBD products, like the new “Flow” vaporizer pen, are
available online and can be shipped worldwide. CBD (or
cannabidiol) is a non-psychoactive compound in cannabis that’s
linked
to a range of health benefits but cannot get you high.

Though the specific legality of CBD is something of a grey area,
products containing CBD are widely available in most states, as
long as they don’t contain THC — which is the psychoactive
component of marijuana responsible for the “high”.  

According to Gerson, Foria’s products are effective due to what’s
known as the “entourage effect” of the active compounds in
marijuana.

“We now know that the minute you
break this plant apart into its component parts, you lose some of
the magic,” Gerson said. “And that sounds like hippie
speak — but this is proven out again and again in study
after study that the entourage effect as we understand it is
real.” 

Putting it to the test

Staci Gruber, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard and the
director of the Cognitive and Clinical Neuroimaging Core and the
Marijuana Investigations for Neuroscientific Discovery (MIND)
program at the McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, is using Foria’s
marijuana suppository as part of the aforementioned 400-person
observational trial. The trial will be funded by Foria and Flow
Kana, which is providing the products that will be used in the
study. 

“What we’re looking to do is take anecdotal information and turn
it into data,” Gruber told Business Insider. 

The observational study will survey participating women over a
few months, recording what their symptoms are like while using
the suppository. 

Gruber said she viewed the study as a first step, with the “holy
grail” being a clinical trial that determines how a product like
Foria’s compares to a placebo group in relieving menstrual
symptoms.

Running a clinical trial, however, can be an expensive and
difficult endeavor, especially because marijuana is considered a

Schedule 1 drug. 

First, researchers must undertake a lengthy application process —
which can take years — to obtain a permit to conduct a study. And
second, all cannabis used for research must be purchased through
the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Many researchers
have pointed out the NIDA’s supply is of poor quality, with low
concentrations of THC. 

Gerson hopes the observational study will ultimately help the
women who purchase Foria’s products. 

“What actually made this
market was empathy,” Gerson said. “We serve the plant, we serve
our clients, and as a result our investment community and the
people that support our brand benefit from that.” 

And, Gerson said, the therapeutic
potential of cannabis is “so profound.”

“If we lose sight of that, it’s
just a race to the lab to break this plant apart into its
component parts so we can synthesize and patent it and put it in
a bottle,” he added.  

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