BY NICANOR GORDON
There are few bigger wake-up calls in life than a cancer diagnosis. If losing a job, or a pet is a speed bump, then cancer is going into a tailspin. When cancer comes knocking, no matter who you are or where you are in your life, you have to make a drastic change to your day-to-day to survive.
JENNIFER ARGIE KNEW THIS.
Diagnosed with breast cancer 5 years ago, she remembers being particularly appalled at the prescribed steps and the violent side effects casually listed out.
Chemotherapy, Argie says, damages the body with toxins resulting in hair loss, fatigue, and loss of appetite, and then radiation treatment comes with its litany of complications.
Argie also says she has an aversion to opioids (most painkillers), an affliction so miserable that she’s opted for a natural birth on three separate occasions. There was no way she was going to put herself through that hell, she recalls, there had to be a better way.
For Argie, the answer was CBD.
CBD is one of the 110+ chemical compounds found in the cannabis plant. Studies in Israel dating back 40 years have found it to be useful in treating everything from anxiety and pain to assisting women in labor. At the time of looking, there were next to no papers on the benefits of CBD in the US, at least none that Argie could find. Even now, the FDA prohibits any official recommendations of products containing CBD as a therapeutic medicine.
Argie describes her current lifestyle as a high CBD diet… And make no mistake, IT IS a lifestyle.
“I needed to find ways to not think of it as a medicine,” she says. For her, it had to be easy and routine. So, she started with everyday use through food. “Food was more gentle than swallowing a pill.”
Listening to Argie talk about food, she conjures more the appearance of a mad scientist than a cook. During our call, she rattles off CBD food combinations from the top of her head… From CBD infused coffee beans and CBD with avocado, I could almost hear the sound of gears turning in her brain, thinking of new ways to deliver CBD in an approachable package.
“I already knew if I was giving it to myself, I wanted to give it to the world,” she says.
Argie quickly recognized the potential of CBD. Already an entrepreneur, previously designing children’s furniture, it wasn’t hard for her to pivot to her current business, Jenny’s Baked at Home.
The shift in careers felt natural, as growing up she had never been far from either food or nature. A second generation American, Argie recalls her grandfather, a Greek restaurateur during our call. She also remembers spending holidays on her uncle’s farm in Southern Missouri.
Starting out hosting dinner parties, Argie would create bespoke meals for guests, combining CBD with known natural foods that help alleviate and treat their conditions. She used, and still uses, CBD more like a supplement than an ingredient in its own right. Using the CBD infused coffee beans, as an example, the CBD allows for faster and more efficient absorption of the antioxidants already present in coffee. Through these parties, she has helped people suffering with various illnesses, all reporting back massive improvements to their quality of life.
When asked about the stigma of the cannabis plant and by extension, CBD, Argie shifts gears again.
She’s a staunch defender and lobbyist for the compound, going as far as to even visit senators in their own homes, willing to get her hands dirty to manifest the shift in attitudes she wants to see.
“No one knew what CBD was, THC had the stigma,” she says.
Argie notes that things are easier now, but finds most of her opposition coming from people around her age. She theorizes that growing up during the Reagan era of politics, during the ‘War on Drugs’, may have caused many of the middle-aged to internalize harmful myths about CBD. While CBD is not psychoactive, which means it does not get you high, she’s quick to push back against condemning getting high, making it clear that she incorporates THC where necessary.
Evolving from bespoke dinner parties to being one of the premier boutique CBD operations on the east coast, Jenny’s Baked at Home creates and ships CBD infused products to customers around the country. The company offers CBD infused gluten-free brownie mix, organic full-spectrum CBD coconut oil and a CBD infused ginger tincture, just to name a few.
Today, Argie is as healthy as could be. After surgically removing her tumor, she chose not to do chemotherapy, hormone therapy or radiation. Five years from her initial diagnosis, Argie is cancer-free, and as energetic and lively as a person could be.
