Testimonial about CBD - epilepsy in children

How it all started

My girlfriend is from the poor African country of Mozambique. She studied and now works in Europe but is still in very close contact with her family. She has a 10-year-old brother, Malik, who has epilepsy. As a young five-month-old child, he used to get epileptic seizures, which manifested themselves in strong tremors, as if he were receiving an electric shock. Doctors also found that Malik would have seizures while he slept. The doctors prescribed him to take Sodium Valproate syrup 100 ml in the morning and 100 ml in the evening and since then he has not had any extremely strong seizure. But he often had weaker seizures when he was shaking. He was also later diagnosed with West's syndrome. Today, I can only speculate to what extent the medication affected his brain development and to what extent it was planned by nature. Malik is now totally dependent on his mother's care, and probably will be for the rest of his life. At home, they don't refer to his condition as mental retardation, disability and similar terms, but they consider him a 'special kid'.

I've always been rather passively interested in hemp and its health effects, and fortunately, I've never had a reason to find out more information about a particular problem until now, when I met my girlfriend. I've read about the positive effects of CBD in epilepsy, about people who have been able to get off conventional medications and start living a normal life thanks to CBD. I relayed this information through a girlfriend to Maliki's mom, who finally decided it was worth a try. For Christmas 2019, we went to visit Mozambique and brought along a few bottles of CBD hemp oil 5%. Mr Cermak gave me very detailed information regarding use. Unfortunately, we did not bring supporting products like CBD teas etc. We ourselves don't know how Mozambique actually treats CBD as a hemp product from a legal point of view and we really didn't want to irritate with dried hemp :)

A year of CBD use...

We started applying 5% CBD in February 2020, dosing 1 drop under the tongue in the morning and 1 in the evening. After four days we increased the dose to 2 drops. After two more days, we increased to 3 drops and stayed that way for a full week. At the same time, the syrup dosage was reduced to 80 ml. There were no changes in Maliki's manifestations. For the next weeks, the syrup dose was reduced by 10 ml every 1 to 2 weeks, during which time the CBD dose of 3 drops in the morning and 3 drops in the evening was still maintained. At 50 ml of syrup, Maliki's mom stopped reducing the dose. Mostly out of fear that she would run out of oil with natural CBD content and then have to start the full dose of syrup again.  She kept this up until July 2020, during which time she began to notice a change in Maliki's behaviour. He began to talk much more and respond better to his surroundings. Some words and phrases he had never used before. He now started using a lot more words, answering questions, and responding to stimuli.

As soon as possible, we shipped additional CBD supplies to Mozambique. This time we bought oil with 5% CBD with the expectation that we would eventually reduce the dosage proportionally to the concentration. Subsequently, the dose was increased to 4 drops in the morning and 4 in the evening for the initial 5%. By switching to 10% CBD drops, we started dosing 2 drops in the morning and 2 in the evening. Gradually the syrup dose was reduced too.

In January 2021, the dose of the initial medicine was 30 ml and the dosage of 10% CBD was 2 drops in the morning and 2 in the evening. Today he has the syrup dose reduced to 30ml but only once a day. Maliki had two mild seizures during the time he was taking CBD, which manifested as a mild tremor for about 5 minutes, no others were noticed. In the past, seizures were more frequent and especially longer.

Even from this point of view, there is tremendous progress in the use of CBD. The second aspect is his brain activity and perception of his surroundings. While on the medication, his vocabulary was very small and he was more likely to make sounds and mumble. At times he seemed to have his own language in his head that no one around him understood and he was having a very heated conversation with himself. Since he started using CBD and greatly reduced his syrup doses, his vocabulary has expanded dynamically. He can answer questions, and respond to commands like "Hand me the remote, bring me a glass, etc", and he can even talk back. My girlfriend even taught him to sing different tunes on his last visit. Now she laughs at me that even Malik can sing it better than me.

What's his life like now?

In summary, his life has improved significantly. He hasn't become a political orator and will probably never be a regular kid, he's still a 'special kid'. But his reactions to stimuli in his environment have greatly increased. Except sometimes his mom would joke that sometimes he talked too much and she would probably start giving him syrup again :)

Under our standard conditions, a complete switch to CBD would certainly be possible much faster. Maliki's mom doesn't want to rush anything, and this is mainly for two reasons. 1) A reliable supply of CBD needs to be ensured. At the moment they are testing how reliable the CBD supply from South Africa is in case the supply from Europe runs out. 2) Maliki's mom wants to consult a doctor first for a complete withdrawal. Not so much for his blessing, the results of CBD are quite clear. It's more for the bureaucracy around it, and to prevent any potential problems with withdrawal and subsequent reliance on the meds if they are ever needed again. For us, in Europe, all these reasons are somewhat hard to imagine, but in Africa, it could be that once a person refuses medication they may not get it again.

So this is the summarized story of a little boy with epilepsy who is given a chance for a better life by CBD. I, after this experience, recommend and praise CBD everywhere I can. My grandmother is apparently starting to develop Alzheimer's, for which CBD could also have good effects. And I believe it will, even if it is only taken as a supplement.

Have a nice day, Tomas

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