#14 – Show Transcripts – Jake Crossman

Rick Mazur: So good day, everybody. Welcome, Jake. Today, we have Jake with us. Jake is the managing director of USA medical and specializes in the science of holistic health.

Jake Crossman: thanks, Rick. Happy to be here.

Rick Mazur:  I’d like to start with a simple question, a simple one for you probably, but for people who don’t know CBD, give us an overview.

Jake Crossman: Yeah, phenomenal. First question. CBD. People have heard obviously about CBD, but I think its clarification is super important because it comes from two places. It was originally discovered in the cannabis Sativa plant. So it originally was discovered in cannabis and came from cannabis.

And then later was also discovered in the hemp. This is specifically where my company takes CBD from because, with hemp, there’s no THC in that plant. So what CBD is it’s one molecule; it’s one cannabinoid of 113 known cannabinoids. Okay. The other very known one that we talk about is THC being psychoactive.

Cannabinoid, but CBD is not psychoactive and has other properties just like THC binds to the receptors in your brain and has that psychoactive kind of calming almost alcoholic effect to it. CBD does a similar thing in your brain and your endocannabinoid system, where it binds to receptors and helps communication pathways.

So the very simple answer is that CBD helps your body communicate with itself to learn. Within, how to, how your body can reach homeostasis, how your body can be operating at max capacity, and how it can resolve things like pain, anxiety, and stress.

Rick Mazur: Wow. And  CBD has been around actually a long time, if I recall.

Jake Crossman: CBD has been used for thousands of years. We have research from the Ming dynasty that they used hemp and CBD to help with their stress and anxiety. Thousands and thousands of years recently, however, we didn’t even know that our body had the endocannabinoid system discovered in 97, I believe. So this thing dates back.

So that is like crazy news. Even though this molecule has been around, this cannabinoid has been used for thousands of years. We are really on the cutting edge of learning exactly how this and other cannabinoid molecules affect our bodies.

Rick Mazur: And what’s the difference between, because you had mentioned the cannabinoid receptors and the endo endocannabinoid system, your actual endocannabinoid system, what’s the differences there?.

Jake Crossman: Yeah. It’s like I said, it’s so recently discovered that it’s fun talking about it cause it’s an interesting system, And no one has heard about this thing because it’s so new. The endocannabinoid system is much like our central nervous system or our cardiovascular system in the sense that it’s tied into everything.

Okay. The ECS, the endocannabinoid system, is a communication pathway between our all of our systems between our brain, organs, and everything in our body. The way that nerves communicate is through these neural pathways; organs communicate through the endocannabinoid. There’s this communication pathway, and cannabinoids endocannabinoids are what our bodies create to communicate.

Because your body produces endocannabinoids, we can also supplement with phytocannabinoids, cannabinoids that come from plants from the earth. So endo created in your body. Phyto was created from a plant

Rick Mazur: And why are most people taking CBD that you see.

Jake Crossman: So right now, what we know about CBD is that the communication pathways it binds to tend to help your brain realize and figure out how to solve. It’s not like binding to specific um, nerve endings to solve the pain. It’s not like an opioid, lowering your brain processes and solving pain in that way. All it’s doing is it’s helping your body communicate. So when you have something like stress or anxiety or chronic pain or PTSD, which are these very kind of ambiguous ailments, it’s hard to lock down chronic pain.

When someone says they have chronic pain, usually they’re like, I have back pain. Okay, what is that back pain? What does that mean?  Your back is huge. It’s, there are so many different vertebrae and muscles and tendons in your back. What is that? Chronic back pain? CBD helps your body figure out the specifics of what that pain is and hopefully helps your body resolve those communication pathways and release that chronic pain because your body then just learns through that communication.

There’s not really any pain there, or there is, and this is specifically where it is, so the common ailments that I already mentioned are chronic pain is a huge one. Stress, anxiety, and PTSD are all very ambiguous ailments and have hardly even to lockdown.

We are getting into a new space in which there’s not a plethora of data here. Still, we are seeing that it helps with inflammation and cardiovascular health, which could be because of, like I said, those communication pathways opening and helping your cardiovascular system learn how to operate more effectively. Your whole body as a whole operates more effectively.

So those are the common things we’re helping with.

Rick Mazur: Obviously, we’re not making any medical advice here or anything like that. I had read an article about somebody who’s deep into the CBD industry, and she was having all kinds of problems, diabetes, and all kinds of different stuff.

And she had her blood taken, had horrible blood work, all kinds of weird, crazy levels, and decided to take CBD daily. And then she was going to go back, and I think it was every six months or every three months, and have her blood rechecked.

 And again, it’s not going to be that way for everybody, but she claims to the point where she got that way with CBD. And her blood work was cleared up to where she didn’t even have any problems anymore. Like it’s completely off her medications and all that kind of stuff.

I don’t have an explanation for it, but I know that it is helping people.

Jake Crossman: Let’s hit on that real quick where it’s. It is. It’s such a specific and individualized thing that just like any other vitamin or. Mineral we take, it’s not, there’s no cure-all, I can’t just, a doctor can’t just prescribe one thing for all of us to work.

So when I talk to people about CBD and I talk about it, when people ask candidly, do you think this would help with this specific ailment? I try to be as upfront, honest as possible and say it worked in these instances for these people, and this is potentially why it worked, but it might not work for you, or it might work for you.

I’m huge. All you can do is try magnesium every day. I take many vitamins every day, just like magnesium might help reduce stress or, sorry, reduce stress and relieve like cortisol levels. CBD might do these things for you as well. When it comes to, as I said, the cardiovascular system or reducing pain or anxiety, it might do these things for you because sometimes it works for people; other times, it might not.

And that’s just an individual case-by-case thing that you need to figure out for yourself.

Rick Mazur: well, and also, I like to clarify as well that there’s a difference between you thinking it’s not doing anything for you, and it’s not doing anything for you because a lot of people, which is a question I wanted to ask you about, is there a proper way to take CBD, but I also wanted to touch on, cause I’ve heard this a lot where people will say, I tried CBD for seven days, and it didn’t do anything for me.

And so I just quit it because it didn’t do anything. Number one, I don’t know if it did do anything for you or not. You might not have felt anything out outwardly right away, but it could have been doing something. And also, from what I’ve heard, many people just don’t know to take the proper dosing. So they either take a poor-quality product or don’t take the right dose for the right amount of time. And they don’t feel anything, so they quit, and that’s a shame because it could still benefit them if they’re doing it the right way. Can you touch on any of that?

Jake Crossman: Yeah. You hit so many things right on the head there, like one of the biggest issues in the industry right now, and it’s an issue, and it’s like a nice thing, but there are no regulations right now. Why it’s an issue? Because there are no regulations, there’s no lab testing that has to be done.

There are no purity tests that have to be done. You don’t need to follow any rules. You can get help from any farm. There are no rules on that. That isn’t good. That isn’t good when trying to make sure that we have pure and potent products. Why is it good? It allows a free market. It allows the market to decide what the best product is.

There’s no control on a government agency taking in and regulating this like a pharmaceutical, but my company specializes in doing. Lab-tested for organic CBD. We do that because we want to show transparency that our CBD is what it says. It is. Suppose you go on Amazon, right. Now and you search CBD oil or hemp oil or whatever, you will see some products that say they are like 30,000 milligrams of CBD and cost ten bucks.

I don’t know what’s in that bottle. You don’t know what’s in that bottle. Do you know what I mean? It could be a vegetable oil; it could be coconut oil. We have no idea because there are no lab tests, and there are no requirements for that. So one thing. We, I am doing specifically, is every lot we do.

Every batch we make, we send it over to an ISO-certified independent laboratory. All ISO means is that they follow a global standard for testing. We send it over, and they test for everything they test for the cannabinoid profiles. They test for the CBD; specifically, they test for heavy metals because hemp extracts heavy metals.

But believe it or not, they planted hemp over in Ternopil to extract some of the plutonium from the ground. So hemp extracts, heavy metals. So if you plant hemp on non-organic farmland, you’re extracting things like cadmium, arsenic, like lead, things that you don’t want in your body; you’re extracting these metals.

And then you’re refining into this product that still has those metals in it. And if you’re not lab testing and making sure that those metals are not in your product, you could be consuming anything. It’s unregulated, and it’s untested; you don’t know what you’re consuming. My biggest advice here is no matter who you want to try CBD from or buy from; you need to make sure that you know what you’re buying.

And that’s my advice on everything, in general, is make sure you have visibility as to what the company is, what they’re doing, what their practices are, and what their mission is as far as, are they here to help people or are they here just to, turn a profit

Rick Mazur: And is your stuff grown in the United States?

Jake Crossman: it is; yeah, we have organic farmland over in Colorado. We do all fresh air hemp. So it’s not like it’s grown inside indoors. Grow lights. It’s all outside on fresh air, organic farmland

Rick Mazur: And you mentioned the third-party lab testing. Do you also test in-house as well or just third-party

Jake Crossman: So we do have that testing in-house for all of our lots, but then the reason we do the third party is to make sure that there’s an independent source checking all of our numbers. So we always check back and forth between what we tested and what they and make sure that things like.

I want to answer your question about how to take it the best

Rick Mazur: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah go-ahead

Jake Crossman: I think that’s super important as well.  People like easy things. That’s what is key across the board. So things like CBD gummies are super popular, putting CBD in food is super popular. I don’t know how effective things like that are if they’re not done in the right ways.

My company right now Only sells CBD oil and CBD soft gels. And the reason for that is, is because CBD oil across the board, anyone will say, this is the best way to take it because the CBD oil you can put right under your tongue, there’s a very thin membrane under your tongue, that goes right to your bloodstream.

So when you take CBD under your tongue, you’re putting it in your bloodstream, white Rick, right away, you take a soft gel, like we sell soft gels. It’s a different process. If you just took CBD oil and swallowed it, it would die in your stomach. It’s not; the compound’s not strong enough to survive your stomach acid.

So our soft gels undergo a nanoemulsion process. So we have this proprietary technology that we go through. We add emulsifiers to keep the compounds bound in your stomach to allow then them to transfer to your, Intestines and then go through your liver for processing, but that’s a whole different process there.

 There’s so much science going on through that. Those, the taking of a soft gel that across the board, the oil is the easiest and best and most potent way to take it.

Rick Mazur: So this gets into so that people can further understand how it gets into your bloodstream and how it metabolizes through your fat and things like that. So what percentage of the quoted CBD that’s in the bottle makes it into your system? Correct.

Jake Crossman: a fantastic question. Yeah. With the. You are getting above 85%, as long as you keep it under your tongue for the recommended amount of time. So we recommend two minutes. We say one to two minutes, but we recommend two minutes under your tongue. Let that fully saturate; let it get through the membrane and get into your bloodstream.

Levels. And you’re going to see an incredibly high potency from there. When it comes to soft gels, it’s incredibly difficult to test blood CBD. So what we know is that when you take a soft gel or you eat a CBD product, it is getting into your bloodstream, however much later and much less potent. So people will take our soft gels cause not everyone wants to have oil under their mouth.

I understand that oil in your mouth is not the most pleasant experience. We flavor it like orange, and it’s pleasant, and it tries to be a little sweet. So there’s not like a horrible experience, but it’s still oil in your mouth. So the soft gels people like for that reason; however, it’s just a much less potent way to do it.

So when you take 25 milligrams of CBD oil under your tongue, you’re getting very close to 25 milligrams in your bloodstream. When you take a 25-milligram soft gel, many of my customers will be like, I’m not feeling the effects like I do under my tongue. I’m not feeling it. I know. We know we’re trying our best with the emulsions and with keeping it intact, but CBD is not something that was meant to be swallowed and go through your stomach originally; we’re working on it.

We’re trying our best here, but every company will tell you oil is the potent and most effective way to get it across the board.

Rick Mazur: And Then gummies are even less than the soft gels, right? As far as the absorption,

Jake Crossman: It’s so much less. We have been working very hard on a gummy product because gummy sells people like gummies, but we don’t want to release a product until we know it will get that CBD into your bloodstream. So we’ve been working very hard in our labs to get gummies, to work with that same emulsified process.

We’re not going to release it until we know that some amount of CBD is at least getting into your bloodstream.

Rick Mazur: Would a solution be for people to, let’s say they were taking, just, for example, 25 milligrams under their tongue through the oil. And, but they didn’t like the oil and wanted to use the soft gel. Could they double up on the soft gel? Is that recommended or

Jake Crossman: that is what we recommend.

Rick Mazur: It’s more money?

Jake Crossman: exactly. You’re spending. It will cost more. That’s the result here; it’s a convenience. Do you want to pay for convenience, or do you want it to be the most effective, quick, cheapest way to do it?

When I go to the convenience store, my San Pellegrino cost $3 versus that, a dollar at ralph’s or whatever you’re paying for convenience. So soft gels are convenient. They work; you need to pay more and get more of them. And, ultimately, I’m not trying to sell more.

I want to help people with this. So I always recommend the oil because it is cheaper. You can get more of it, and it works just the most effective.

Rick Mazur: Now, I know you don’t sell it, but it isn’t technically the flower. Isn’t that the actual best way to get it into your bloodstream?

Jake Crossman: so that’s a very interesting question. Yes, it is with asterisks on there. If you smoked like a CBD pure cannabis plant, some cannabis plants have been bred to get rid of all the THC and only have CBD in them. Plus the other cannabinoids.

When you smoke it, Yes, that is the most effective way to get into your bloodstream, but you’re generating tar, and other things are happening that will negatively affect your lungs. Now, if you vaporize it, that is like the end all be all best way of getting it into your body.

A dry herb vaporizer is expensive. It’ll run; a good one will run you 500 to a thousand dollars. But if you are crazy about getting. The most potent pure version of this. Yeah. Find a CBD, pure cannabis plant, and get a dry herb vape. So you’re not getting any tar in your lungs, and that’s the way to go.

Rick Mazur: Yeah, I don’t smoke anyway. The oil is fine for me. I like the mint the best, but orange doesn’t feel good for me, but I like the mint,   and the vaping has been getting out of flavor lately as far as with a lot of the companies. Are they pulling back from that?

Jake Crossman: Yeah. So let me clarify what I just said. A dry herb vaporizer is very different than just like a vape pen. A vape pen is like they’re taking CBD oil; they’re emulsifying and putting it into this cartridge and then vaporizing it. At a much higher flash point, the same thing is happening where it’s killing some of those cannabinoids off.

And then, we don’t have research on vape pens on a 20-year horizon. We know that vape pen seems pretty safe right now, as far as a lot of things. People have switched to nicotine vape pens to get off of cigarettes. They switched to vape pens for cannabis

because it seems better than the tar generation, but there is that ambiguous, free, radical generation that we don’t know what that does to our lungs and bodies yet. So, I’m not going to recommend a vape pen to anybody just because I’m not confident enough about what that does to your body.

And we don’t sell vape pens at my shop.

Rick Mazur: And I know what you’re saying too. If you’re talking about pure CBD, In your system, that’s one thing. But when you consider the negative effects, you’re negating one to get the other, and that’s not good. So that’s why the oil is considered the best. One thing that I would like you to address, especially with the current state of things, is the legality of CBD because I’ve talked to many people, by the way, going back to the.

I was holding under your tongue. I inquired with many people, just casually in conversations, and the most common thing I get is 20 seconds. Under the tongue, which is incorrect, but, it’s, it just goes to people not being properly educated and not taking it properly. But to the legality factor, sometimes people are hesitant to purchase because of the whole current state of the legal system.

And depending I know it depends on what state you’re into some level as well. Can you touch on that for a moment?

Jake Crossman: Yeah, I can touch on all of that. Real quick, what you said about the 20 seconds under the tongue thing is so interesting. Interesting to me because obviously, people want speed. People want things to be fast and be done quickly. Two minutes is not that much time in your day.

And you’re going to get so much more out of your purchase if you just go for that full timeline. Of course, you want to do it quicker, and you can do 20 seconds, and you’ll see what happens there. But my CBD oil is, for the top-of-the-line product, it’s 130 bucks per bottle. So I don’t recommend wasting any of that. Use that to the fullest potential.  Now for the legality, the only illegal part of cannabis of all of this is THC. That one cannabinoid that THC Delta nine molecule is what’s illegal federally. Okay. So CBD is legal federally in all 50 states.

No problem. CBD specifically comes from hemp. So there is no issue of THC in there at all. If you get THC derived or, I’m sorry, if you get CBD derived from cannabis, you have to undergo a chemical distillation process to get rid of that THC. So we avoid the chemical distillation process altogether and.

Rick Mazur: And that gets into something else that I want to talk about: the differences between CBD. So there’s a full spectrum. There’s a broad spectrum. There’s an isolate. And does your company sell all or above those? And can you just for people who don’t know, talk about the differences between them,

Jake Crossman: Yeah, right now, we sell specifically and only broad-spectrum CBD.

Rick Mazur: so no, THC.

Jake Crossman: No THC. And that’s what the difference is here. So the full spectrum oil is all cannabinoids, everything that includes THC. that includes CBG. That includes CBN. That includes every other cannabinoid originally found in the broad spectrum plant.

All of those cannabinoids minus THC. So there’s, that’s the only missing cannabinoid in our product is THC to make sure it is a legal product. Federally now CBD isolates, isolated CBD is specifically just CBD. So you’re not getting any of the other things. You’re not getting CBN CBG or any of The other cannabinoids.

Rick Mazur: The good stuff that you want?

Jake Crossman: Exactly. We talk a lot about this. There’s this proposed theory called the entourage effect of CBD. And it’s the theory that CBD tends always to work better when it has its partners in crime. When it has its CBG and CBN and all the other cannabinoids together, they get into your body and know how to work better when they’re a team; when you take isolated, CBD and isolated CBD is way cheaper.

If if you’re looking at different levels of price. You’re going to save a ton of cash buying isolated CBD, but I don’t know how effective it is at actually doing its job. When we were doing our lab tests and research originally, we just saw how much more effective broad-spectrum was.

So it wasn’t a question for us as to why we should do isolated or not. However, we are in the process of creating an isolated product specifically for dogs. Because, when it comes to animal health, we’re trying to be as an above-board across on everything here.

So we’re starting with this isolated product for animals making sure that if the dog has stress and anxiety, we can give it the specific molecule that we know helps with that and not give pets things that we don’t know how they interact with yet. So

Rick Mazur: Wow. So they’re yeah, go ahead, so they’re brought, so they’re broadening out the pet products too, and getting more specific with things. Huh?

Jake Crossman: exactly. Yeah,

Rick Mazur: Interesting.

Now, I want to talk about the price a little bit because at least I know I was when I first started learning about it, people see the full spectrum, and they’re like, oh, you’re getting all the THC, and you’re getting all this stuff.

People would tend to believe that would be more costly. At the same time, the broad spectrum is much more costly. It costs more when you sell it, but it’s; also, I think I heard what twice as costly to produce. And I know that has to do with the fact that they’re stripping out the bad things in there that you don’t want, but can you speak to that a little bit as far as why is the broad-spectrum product that somebody might be looking at going to be more expensive than your full-spectrum?

Jake Crossman: So typically a full-spectrum oil. If it’s done in the same kind of CO2 processing we use, that will cost more than a broad spectrum in general because it’s all about processing. So I don’t want to like, think about it as full spectrum versus broad versus isolated as specific individual products; it’s about how you’ve reached that result.

So if a broad-spectrum product that comes from cannabis is going to cost more than the full spectrum that comes from cannabis because it requires more chemical processing, more distillation than the full spectrum would, would, if you just take a cannabis plant, put it through CO2 processing and have the.

You’re done. That’s the full spectrum product. Whereas if you need to extract the THC and get rid of it, that’s a much more costly process. On the other hand, our process is a little easier, and that’s why our products cost a little less than the other kind of CBD powerhouses in the market right now because we come from hemp.

Conclusion: there’s not that final, as the expensive distillation process of getting rid of the THC, people have you, you have to use a certain chemical process that involves. Gnarly chemicals to get rid of THC when it goes through the cannabis process. So ours is just as easy as it can be. We take this, the hemp does the CO2 distillation, and that’s the result right there.

Rick Mazur: Okay. Okay. That’s great. I know most people, if they don’t know when they’re not properly educated, believe that CBD could make you high the drug effect. And you only sell broad-spectrum,  so let’s touch on some of the misconceptions people have for a little bit because there were a lot of them.

And if especially people who are at work, they could fail their drug test. And that’s where the broad spectrum part comes in because there’s zero THC. So the people need to make sure there’s no THC in it. And also, a lot of people think that CBD is a marketing scam, and it’s not legit.

I don’t know where they get this stuff from, but have you heard that too?

Jake Crossman: Oh, Yeah.

But that’s everything, right. And everything works, and it seems a little in the holistic alternative medicine. Things feel hokey sometimes; like I mentioned magnesium earlier, people are like, I don’t know what magnesium will do for me. It’s like, how’s that going to help me?

It just sounds hokey. It does help. There is the real science behind it. And, just because it doesn’t have the Western-like pharmaceutical backing, it doesn’t have, the FDA does great work to make sure things are real and having standards, but there’s not a single dietary supplement that has FDA approval. There’s no FDA approval on any holistic or alternative, like protein powder or pre-workout or things like that. There’s no FDA approval on this stuff. It’s, I don’t remember what I was ranting on there, but it’s what the question was?

I don’t remember.

Rick Mazur: Just people saying people thinking that it’s a marketing scam.

Jake Crossman: Okay. Yes. My apologies. It does feel hokey because there’s not there. There’s not like this government agency saying this is good. This is correct. So until there’s math adoption and mass approval of anything, it’s going to feel like a marketing scam.

And people just aren’t going to trust it.

Rick Mazur: What about CBDs only for sick people?

Jake Crossman: CBD is not just for sick people. It is for anybody who needs help or just a little bit of help when it comes to stress, anxiety, and sleep. And these kinds of things. If you’re sick, frankly, CBD is not going to cure you. It’s not a cure, all miracle drug.

It’s not a cure. It’s not a; it’s not something that’s going to come in. Save your life. If you have a life-threatening illness, see a doctor and, go, actually get this thing worked on, but CBD will benefit everybody because it just helps with that. As I said, the communication pathways help your body learn how to talk better to itself

Rick Mazur: what about all the consolidation that’s gone on in the CBD industry? It seems like everybody had Yeah, everybody had their brand, all these, what are these people? What’s the one singer John legend had his own CBD. All these guys had their brand, and they’re all over social media and everything like that.

And I don’t know; I don’t see that anymore. It’s like all of a sudden; it’s poof; what happened?

Jake Crossman: Obviously, this is a trader’s life podcast, so let me speak to crypto, Right. Like we saw that in crypto where we get all these celebrities and influencers and whatever. Now talking about crypto, and they’re like, this is the new thing. And then, once the market dries up a little.

They’re all quiet again; it’s, they are where the money is, they like to be part of the money. So there is market saturation when there is money, and then there is much less saturation, and there’s more consolidation when there’s less money. So I would say that CBD probably boomed as far as the new wave of CBD a year ago, and we’re getting into the more, okay.

Who’s serious about this and who was just doing this as a fad,

Rick Mazur: So the gist is that people shouldn’t be worried that  CBD doesn’t work or was just a fad. What ended up happening is that all these companies went to the high profile people in the world and offered them a boatload of money.

And of course, they took it, and now they didn’t see a return on their investment probably from it. So now they’re not there anymore, but then, to the average American looking at Instagram and seeing, I don’t see that CBD ads anymore and everything. It must’ve just been a fad.

It’s just consolidation, and as you said, the new wave of stuff just waned off.  This is great information for people because there are just so many people that I really think could benefit from it but just don’t have the proper information to pull the trigger and go ahead and do it.

But also want to talk about meditation as well. Because many people say meditate, and not everybody understands to be honest. What is meditation?  And I know you’re big into that type of stuff. So maybe just give us a little bit of, where did it come from

what is it, what are the benefits for people?

Jake Crossman: Yeah. Man, when you get into holistic health, it’s just that it’s all tied together. Once you get out of the just day-to-day of, how we grew up, how we were told to live meditation seems weird, right? If you aren’t, if you’ve never really done it or don’t know much about it, I think what comes to mind is like a Buddhist monk sitting in a temple, legs crossed.

That’s kind of what I thought of meditation before I got into it. But what meditation is at its core is just being present. There’s no objective; there’s no goal to it at its core. And now you can set an intention. You can try to do your intention throughout a meditation, but you are just taking it at its core.

For yourself and truly deeply for yourself, when we think of how we relax or how we go on vacation, usually we fill our times with things like I have to be at the beach at two, and then we have a lunch reservation at three, and then I have to do this at four. And that’s how we perceive ourselves; like me, time is like still filling our day with stuff where meditation is just taking 5, 10, 20 minutes.

And I was just here. Would I say that?

Most people I interact with and most people I talk to about meditation have maybe never actually been present in their lives, like never actually taken A moment and just been in the present moment. And meditation is just training your brain to find presence in moments in time, and focus energy and be here.

Rick Mazur: A certain type of meditation that you like.  I have never meditated. I did look into transcendental meditation, which a neighbor of mine is doing and learns and everything, and went through the whole thing. Is there a particular type, are there different types of meditation besides that?

And is there a particular type that you prefer?

Jake Crossman: Yeah. As I said, at its core, it’s about presence. When one, there are all kinds of types of meditation. And when we say types of meditation, usually it’s. Ways to get a present. One of the most simple ways that I get present is to sit, close my eyes, and imagine my hands and my feet, and feel my hands and my feet. And then once you get a present, you can then build and grow on top of that.

And I will think about every individual finger and every individual toe and be. And that process of just imagining your own hands and feet all of a sudden starts to get rid of everything else in your brain. You forget about the trades you’ve made today. You forget about the things that would happen in business.

My brain is moving at a million miles a minute every day. You think you forget about family and friends. You forget about stress and anxiety, and all you think about are your hands. And that’s just a great way to start training your brain in getting rid of the junk and get rid of all the clutter.

I’m thinking about a thousand things constantly, but when you get rid of that and think about one thing,  that energy in your brain on how just to focus and be present, you asked about different kinds of meditation. There are all types of Hindu meditation and Buddhist meditation.

There’s Western meditation, and these are just different methodologies on how to get prayer. Buddhist meditation is, I forget, the actual name in Sanskrit, but it just means noticing it’s just being here and noticing what’s happening in your body. What do you feel? What are your reactions to things?

If you’re sitting present and you hear the dog bark, what’s your reaction? Is there this need to tell it to shut up? Is there this quick, like a jerk, is there and then noticing what that reaction did to your brain and trying to figure out, like more on a deep level, how your systems in your body operate and how they react to the stimuli in the world.

Rick Mazur: Some people say that they have discomfort when they meditate. I don’t know if they’re meditating too long, or is that I don’t know if that’s a common problem.

Jake Crossman: They’re Not meditating long enough.

if you have

Rick Mazur: long enough.

Jake Crossman: If you’ve just comfort, that is because, as you said, you’ve never actually meditated before, so you’ve never started to train your brain on how to be and how to not think about things. So the moment you take a minute, and you’re like, okay, I’m just going to be here.

I’m just going to think about nothing. You start thinking about things, and you start feeling things in your body. Your body takes up way more space than we think it does, as our bodies need to take up the amount of conscious space. So much more than we give it credit for. So you sit down, and you get rid of clutter in your brain.

Suddenly, you start feeling things in your body that you’ve never felt before, and it feels uncomfortable. Still, all That’s happening in your brain is learning that there’s just more space to your body, and there are more feelings, and there are more nerves, and there’s more everything than you ever realized.

Rick Mazur: That’s my problem. I think too much.

Jake Crossman: That’s

Rick Mazur: Yeah, I need to, but what about, because I heard too, when I was looking into this, people say that it makes them too relaxed or too spaced out to carry on with the rest of their day. Is there anything that causes that? Have you ever heard of that?

Jake Crossman: could get too relaxed; I think I would have a great

Rick Mazur: it happens to you? Huh?

Jake Crossman: I don’t know exactly what. It would look like to be too relaxed going into my day. Suppose I had full relaxation and just full presence. In that case, I feel like that would be a much better place to live and like actually be able to be more objective on the decisions that you make versus constantly thinking about past mistakes and future mistakes or future problems or future, whatever, just being right here and being able to analyze what matters right now and how those choices are going to affect the rest of your day.

I think that it’d be great if I could be in that state.

Rick Mazur: it sounds like by your answer that you meditate in the morning

Is there a good time of day to meditate?

Jake Crossman: Honestly, whenever you can take a couple of minutes to yourself is a good time to meditate, but I try to have a routine that doesn’t involve my phone in the morning. It doesn’t involve emails. I try and get up and do a little bit of stretching, maybe a little bit of yoga. Just breathe and be again in the present moment.

And that helps set up my day; as far as presentation goes, I walk to work, and when I walk, I focus on my footsteps and try to be like right there at the walk. And then the moment I walked into the office, all hell breaks loose. It’s a whole different day. But I try to set up my day as a present and more methodic and healthy type.

Rick Mazur: is there a particular type of time that you are supposed to meditate for?

Jake Crossman:  I think it’s interesting. How much you’re trying to lock down, like the specifics on meditation, because that is, that is what we do. That’s what we want. We want to give me the exact numbers and what I need, down to the seconds; that is not what meditation is.

Unfortunately, you have to let go of it. Specifics and numbers and math and science, you get rid of it all. And I’m just going to be here for a minute, take a minute, take 30 seconds, start with anything and just be here and feel what that’s like. And then you can start to decide for yourself, for me; honestly, five minutes during the day, Plenty, three minutes is Plenty, I actually at work in the office sometimes if we are all a high-stress day going on, I’ll pause the office and say worked.

We’re going to take three minutes. Everyone’s just going to meditate. We’re just going to take them, no phones, nothing close your eyes, just be here. So three minutes is a great amount of time for just a quick mid-day get present.

Rick Mazur:  And again, I’m just asking these questions cause it’s what comes to my mind. But it’s also stuff that I’ve read before. It sounds not that you’re making it; it sounds simple. It’s just, I think a lot of people are under the impression you need a teacher, or there’s a certain way you have to do it, or how do I start it?

And then I think a lot of people like the idea, but they don’t. Either a realize the benefits or B; they think that there’s something they got to learn or do, or they have to do it a certain way. So they don’t do anything because they just don’t know. 

Jake Crossman: Rick.

Rick Mazur:  For me anyway.

Jake Crossman: Yeah. There’s no proper way to be alive. There’s no right way to live. There’s no right way to be a human, so you don’t need to learn that you are already human. You already are here. You are already present. So be here, figure out that it is within you and just let it be.

Suppose it feels uncomfortable if it feels like you’re doing something wrong. You’re probably doing it. That’s that point of, oh man, I don’t know if this is working. It is just here like we, we’re all capable of doing it, and it’s just a matter of doing it.

Rick Mazur: Yeah. What about yoga? Do you do yoga too?

Jake Crossman: I do yoga. I also do strength training. There are many important ways to stay healthy, but yoga is interesting because it is about core strength and stays. Yeah. One thing that, so I had a yoga teacher, right? That’s one thing that I’m not going to say that you can go and do on your own quickly because yoga is very. People think of yoga as a very feminine stretching type thing, but it’s a core.

Building. And it’s like learning how to keep your core tight and core centered when you do movements and poses. That’s why, when you see these crazy poses of people in handstands and stuff, they’re very still, and they’re very organized because they’ve started somewhere much more simple learning core strength and learning, how to control your body.

And it’s all tied into that. Like meditation is learning how to control your mind. Yoga is learning how to control your body so you can combine those two and then. You can do breathwork while doing yoga. You can do breathwork while meditating. You can meditate while doing yoga, and I’ll sit together as one.

So it is. Yoga is just a time to learn how to control your body very methodically and not let your body control you.

Rick Mazur:  You mentioned breathwork for people who don’t know; what are the benefits of breathwork and what? Why would I want to do breathwork?

Jake Crossman: Yeah, but believe it or not, you’re probably really bad at breathing. If you don’t do breathwork, we all go through our lives and breathe, and that’s just how it is. But for one, a lot of people breathe through their mouths. And mouth breathing is not how we should be breathing.

We have a nose; we should be using our nose. Our nose has erectile tissue in it. Believe it or not, the same tissue that’s on your nipples. And in other parts of your body and your nose can contract and release based on your body’s needs. So when you breathe through your nose, It allows your subconscious brain to control the flow of oxygen.

When you’re working out, you’ll notice that your nose flares open a little more and allow more oxygen to get into your body. When you’re in a more meditative, calm state, it’ll contract and allow less oxygen in your body than your nose is. So when you breathe through your mouth, you take away control from your body. To do this, and the more you breathe through your mouth, the more your body’s oh, I guess we don’t need our nose anymore. And you start to see things like deviated septums come into play. You start seeing things. People are not able to breathe out of their noses. And then also like the muscle in our face, those are tied into your nose as well.

The less you breathe through your nose, the more the muscles around your nose are weakened, and then things like your jawline will suffer because you’re not using the things in your face that are supposed to be used every day. That makes sense at

Rick Mazur: Yeah, no.  Good stuff. Where can people find you if they want to learn more about CBD and buy the CBD?

Jake Crossman: My company’s website is usamedicalshop.com. We have a blog and resources at the bottom; it says it talks to a real person. And if you click that button, you can book a time, literally, with me to talk. And I’m happy to hop on the phone with anybody and go through and explain more about what CBD is or help and see if someone if CBD is right for them.

Rick Mazur: I recommend that everybody do that because I’ll tell you there’s a lot of information out there, and there’s a lot of marketing stuff. It’s really hard unless you spend hours and hours finding the right product that will work best for you for your particular type of whatever you’re looking for.

 If you can hop on a call with Jake for a few minutes and explain everything, and he can point you in the right direction, that saves you a lot of time. And I assume you’re on social media

Jake Crossman: yep. Every social media, we are a USA medical shop. So on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, yeah, you can find us anywhere.

Rick Mazur: As I always say here, I will link everything in the episode page show notes. So all of his links will be their contact information and everything like that.  Great talking to you. It’s great. Great interview. Yeah. Very informative, and have a great day, and hopefully, we’ll have you on here again.

Jake Crossman: Thanks, man. Sounds great.