The "A Gift Worth Giving" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Checking out the bottle of Muscle Rescue that my son bought me for my birthday.  He visits "Roots Country Market & Auction" every Tuesday and stocks up on food items for the week and during one of his visits saw the bottles of topical analgesic lotion and decided to get me a bottle to help all my aches and pains.  

Bottle of Muscle Rescue that my son
bought me for my birthday.

On the side of the bottle is what appears to be a marijuana leaf with the flag of the state of Maryland inside of it.  Upon further inspection I noticed the lotion was manufactured in Frederick, Maryland which is a 15 minute drive from my daughter's home in Urbana.  I gave the lotion a try and noticed a pleasant odor and less pain in my finger joints.  I noticed that one of the ingredients was hempseed oil which was just featured in an article in our local newspaper.  Raising industrial hemp was illegal until 2014.  It originally was banned in 1937 in the United States.  On the far west side of Lancaster County used to be fields and fields of industrial hemp.  So much that the area was called Hempfield Township which still describes the area.  It is now legal to set up research programs to study this ancient crop that's been out of production in America for years and years.  

Click on image to see what the Muscle Rescue
contains.  Hempseed Oil is one of them.

In Pennsylvania there are 35 permit holders who are allowed to grow hemp.  A handful are in Lancaster County.  One man, Lloyd Huyett, an entrepreneur in eastern Lancaster County is growing it in hopes of finding a medicinal cure for a variety of ailments.  He has a family friend whose son was suffering from epilepsy and was scheduled for brain surgery.  The family began to administer cannabidiol, or CBD, to their son and the epilepsy lessened so much that he was able to resume a normal life and go back to school.  His brain surgery was dropped.  That's when the farmer got a permit and began raising hemp since CBD oil is derived from hemp.  Other ailments and conditions that can be treated through CBD are chronic pain, inflammation, dementia, post-tramatic stress disorder and attention deficit hyper-activity disorder.  Some research suggests that CBD may be able to be used to fight cancer.  A local Amish farmer, Daniel Stoltzfus, is partnering with Lloyd by supplying the land to grow the hemp.  Daniel has a niece who has cancer and is being helped by the healing effects of CBD.  Huyett is handling the business and processing side of the partnership while Daniel handles the farming.  After the hemp is harvested it is pressed into oil.  By now you probably are thinking this all is part of raising the illegal marijuana that people smoke.  Not so!  You don't get high from CBD, or hempseed oil.  For years and years that is what people thought, thus the ban on raising hemp.  That has all changed now for the better.  As of now the United States imports close to a billion dollars' worth of hemp.  Hopefully that will all change in the future with more farmers and entrepreneurs farming hemp and using it to help the medical community.  

The hemp leaf and seed that is used to make the oil.

A few of the benefits of hempseed oil are that it is rich in omega-6 and omega-3 polyun- saturated fatty acids and very nutritious.  Hempseed oil is also high in vitamin E.  The cosmetic industry raves of the anti-aging properties of the oil.  What makes CBD so beneficial is that is doesn't contain the THC or any other psychoactive compound which the Cannabis bud does.  That is what is in marijuana.  Here's hoping the fields around western Lancaster County, precisely Hempfield Township, will be filled once again with hemp.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.