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Protection, Innovation and Value
Your latest Harborside Health Center benefit: the Member ID Card!
By Goose Duarte, Assistant General Manager, Harborside San Jose
Harborside Health Center establishes itself as an industry leader by repeatedly anticipating regulations and implementing compliant policies that also protect our patients' safe access to their medicine. For example, we operated as a not-for profit collective of patients before the guidelines issued by the attorney general all but require it, and we helped institute laboratory analysis of all medicine as a standard of our industry. Therefore, when we realized how many regulatory bodies are interested in tracking patient purchases, we set out to develop a system that would track patient purchases while maintaining complete patient confidentiality. After months of research and development, we present the Harborside Health Center Member ID Card. read full article
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Harborside's Renovation: Staying Fresh
After five years, it's normal for any facility to show signs of wear and tear. And as the country's largest medical cannabis dispensary, Harborside Health Center is no exception. Director of Facilities and Design, Yoli Felix, felt it was time for a little revamping.
"It has to stay fresh," she says. "That's true of everything!" So she doubled the number of windows, allowing for more natural light, and increased the floor space. Harborside's extensive renovation also includes new bamboo flooring!
For patients' convenience, the clone area has expanded and more sales stations have been implemented, allowing for shorter, faster lines. (Coming soon: remote web ordering with express lane pick-up!) As always, Harborside continues to present itself in a pure light, in a way that reflects the entire community, reinforces diversity and respect, and allows everyone to feel safe. Part of Harborside's renovation includes the introduction of a small, sophisticated, retail boutique. The reverential new shop offers books on cannabis, as well as hemp garments and bags; artisanal accessories utilizing natural materials and medicinal implements like pipes, vaporizers, papers and lighters are also available. Extra care was put into providing objects that showcase the versatility of cannabis, while also being practical, aesthetically pleasing and environmentally sound.
Says Executive Director Steve DeAngelo of the shop:
"I want it to be a temple of cannabis."
About Yoli
Drawing ever since she was old enough to pick up a pencil, Yolanda ("Yoli") Felix studied fashion and design at the London College of Fashion and the American College of Applied Arts. She began her professional career as a costume and set designer for renowned Bay Area theaters, American Conservatory Theater and Berkeley Repertory Theater. In 1991, she launched her own company, Kostoomz, which specialized in design and construction of corporate mascots for clients such as the San Francisco Giants, Home Depot, NRA, Paramount, and Nintendo.
Increasingly drawn to interior design, Yoli joined the team of visionary architect Jonathan Zimmerman, who specialized in the creation of technically demanding, hurricane-proof homes and businesses. In 2005, Yoli then took her first independent commission as designer of Harborside Health Center. As co-founder and Facilities Manager, Yoli has gracefully endowed her dispensary design with both beauty and functionality, culminating in an organic, light-filled, Zen-like space that patients from all walks of life can appreciate.
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JB's product pick of the month:
Analgesic Cannabis Lotion & Topical Cannabis Spray
Used by many who apply cannabis topicals as a pain reliever, this combination of topicals is commonly used by patients with arthritis, fibromyalgia, and other similar ailments. While the lotion can be used alone with its hemp-oil lotion base and cannabis infusion, it's highly encouraged to be used with the coinciding spray that contains cannabis and isopropyl alcohol.
The two topicals together are easy to use and quite effective. As Natural Relief suggests, "Spray twice on centralized points of pain. Follow up the spray by rubbing a dime-sized amount of lotion onto the sprayed area. The cannabis-infused lotion promotes hydration of the sprayed area, along with additional medicine and aiding absorption of the tincture."
I personally use these two products on my hands, wrists and forearms to assist with relief from carpal tunnel syndrome; I also use them sometimes on sore muscles after really hard workouts or long mountain-bike rides. Try both if you would like an alternative to your typical, pharmaceutically medicated topicals. The lotion is $20 and additional spray is $12.
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Yoga for Pain
Here at Harborside, most patients we assist suffer from conditions that may cause pain, sleeplessness and stress. Up until recently, it was thought that patients who suffer from these conditions should avoid physical activity. However, new studies indicate that low intensity exercises, like yoga, can help decrease most pain caused by inflammation.
A study done by the International Journal of Yoga Therapy found that patients suffering from arthritis who attended a yoga class once a week, for six weeks, reported feeling less discomfort than they did prior to weekly yoga. Participants in the study also reported feeling less anxiety or stress, which made sleeping easier. Many other studies support the same types of findings. The conclusions are clear: yoga, combined with drinking plenty of water and eating a healthy diet, can help alleviate pain and increase overall relaxation.
Harborside Oakland offers free yoga classes to all of our patients.
If you are suffering from such symptoms or interested in taking up a low-intensity activity, yoga is a great place to start! Harborside Oakland offers FREE yoga classes to all of our patients. Classes are taught by Jim Stockton of Garuda Healing. Each class is geared toward helping patients develop their own personal yoga practice. Classes are small and therefore more personalized to fit each patient's yoga needs.
Hour-long classes are held on Tuesdays, starting at 11am, with the last one at 2pm-there is also a larger class on Monday evenings from 6:15-7:45pm. If you are interested in
signing up, please see the front desk or give us a call: 510-533-0146.
- Morgan F., Mktg/Web Coordinator, Harborside Oakland |
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'Weed Wars' patient update:
Jason and Jayden
As many of you may know, Jason David and his son Jayden (as seen on "Weed Wars") are using CBD-rich tinctures to treat Dravet's Syndrome. Jason continues to come to Harborside Health Center to get CBD tinctures to treat Jayden's condition. The results of this CBD treatment have varied from excellent to inconsistent. When the results are excellent, Jayden has 90% fewer seizures that are also less severe. When the results are inconsistent, his seizures continue to cause him suffering. The inconsistencies are mainly due to the active ingredient, CBD, being in too short a concentration within the glycerin tincture.
We don't want to use an alcohol-based tincture with young children but the alcohol tinctures test much higher in CBD than the glycerin tincture.
Harborside Health Center is working closely with Jason and our patient vendors to eliminate the inconsistencies and increase the efficacy of CBD tinctures for children. New tinctures are being developed and tested at Steep Hill Labs. Glycerin is being replaced by grapeseed, coconut or olive oils. Sun-infused heating experimentations are occurring. All this is being done by HHC to get more effective products to our patients and to ease the suffering of Jayden and other families. Our collective has also responded to the overwhelming amount of inquiries from "Weed Wars" by starting a support group for parents.
If you are a parent with special needs children who wants to explore treating your kids with medical cannabis, you can join our upcoming support group. This group will meet at Harborside Health Center in Oakland, engage in educational discussions and emotional support, review new lab results and products, and receive discounts for medicine at HHC. Please contact David Wedding Dress or Andrew DeAngelo for more information.
- Andrew DeAngelo, General Manager, Harborside Health Center Oakland
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A patient we love 
Norma Austin
Harborside patient Norma Austin grew up in San Jose, where she began practicing kung fu at an early age. As an adult, she moved to San Francisco and became the second female plasterer in the union (Local 66). In 1985, she fell 26 feet off a faulty scaffold, landing on her upper back and neck onto a cement patio. When she recovered, she switched her kung fu practice to a gentler, tai chi-style. Once she learned tai chi, she found that it really disconnected her pain-and she fell in love with it. For years, she shadowed her teacher at classes all over the Bay Area, eventually becoming her assistant. By 1990, she was instructing students on her own.
"There's a saying that tai chi will give you whatever you need to make you balanced," says Norma. "I've seen people walk in because they're depressed, they've had surgery, chronic pain, hip replacement, vertigo-all of them got what they needed from this class. I have pain every day. But tai chi helps me keep the pain in check. The more you do it, the more you get out of it. It's helped me to see others and what they're dealing with, and want to help them."
Once she became a medical cannabis patient, Norma checked out various dispensaries before she came to Harborside. "I liked how clean it is, how open and friendly-just the atmosphere in general when you walk in, you feel the chi in the room. It's very, very comforting. And then I started using the services -naturopath, acupuncture, reiki and hypnotherapy. And those four ladies helped me so much in the last year and a half, that I said I want to join this team."
Complimentary tai chi classes are now available at Harborside Oakland every Monday at 3pm. (Wheelchairs welcome.)
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News Brief
RE-EVALUATION
An update on the fight for safe access in San Jose Although the political process for workable cannabis regulations in San Jose has been a complicated battle, recent negotiations with the mayor's offi ce give us hope that there is an end in sight to the madness.
Recently, the Citizens Coalition for Patient Care (CCPC) joined forces with us to help win referendums and unite collectives, patients and cultivators for a common cause-sensible medical cannabis regulations in the City of San Jose.
In early December, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed sat down with the CCPC negotiations team (James Anthony, Jerry Strangis, Senator John Vasconsuelos, and selected CCPC members) and began discussing what could be done to avoid having the current faulty ordinance voted on by the public. Mayor Reed knew this would result in a repeal of the ordinance, as we (and CCPC) had just proven that we could mobilize patients by collecting 32,000 signatures and raising $200,000 in under a month.
These negotiations have continued through the holidays and into the New Year, resulting in press releases from the mayor supporting the re-evaluation of the ordinance, and making it viable for both the city and medical cannabis patients in San Jose.
CCPC has met regularly to come up with workable language that the mayor can bring to the city council soon (scheduled for Jan. 31). Then an initial repeal of the current ordinance could be voted on, followed by a proposal for a new ordinance containing more appropriate, workable and sensible language.
All of us in the medical cannabis community in San Jose hope that the city council members are able to make a sensible decision and repeal the ordinance that would effectively ban all collectives, and put cannabis back on the street. It's currently an untenable and dangerous ordinance that would force patients to once again make uninformed choices and put themselves in risky situations.
In any case, we will persevere. And we are confi dent that the public and patients will speak, democracy will have its day, and we will ultimately have a workable, sensible, compassionate medical cannabis ordinance in the City of San Jose. Because the plant is here to heal, and nothing can ever stop that
- Elan Hawtrey, General Manager,
Harborside Health Center San Jose
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