Publisher’s Message

Hello Friends! Welcome to the April 2021 issue of Paradise NEWS. Thank YOU for your support! We are thrilled to be celebrating another month together, and a year of pandemic survival, thanks to YOU!

By “YOU” we mean the readers who enthusiastically wait for each copy to show up in their mailbox, and those who pick up Paradise NEWS from one of the 550 racks and stacks in the area. “YOU” also includes our loyal advertisers, both new and longstanding, our account executives, our researchers, writers, editors, photographers, proofreader, printers, mail service, distribution people and each of the location owners that welcome Paradise NEWS to be distributed in their businesses.

For over 26 years Paradise NEWS has added value to the lives of the privileged few lucky enough to live in this special corner of the world, like a sturdy cotton string tying together a quarter century of human experience. That string stretches from these printed pages to the limitless world of www.ParadiseNEWSfl.com where anyone can read Paradise NEWS online, and a repository five years or more worth of articles from past issues and a great deal more.

While we discuss the challenges facing our planet, we try not to dwell on negatives so prevalent in more frequent media outlets. We prefer to focus on what good people are doing to overcome these challenges.

Catch up on events, news and entertainment in social media, on our website, in our Thursday eblast or in the print magazine. We circulate an online newsletter with our top suggestions for enjoying the weekend and late breaking tidbits that we may not have known about when the magazine last went to press. You can subscribe for free online.

Exploring www.ParadiseNEWSfl.com, you can access five years of back issues. Feature stories are capsulized by year and a wealth of local history, pet health, eco, travel, food and cooking columns, recipes and much more are discoverable.

While the magazine typically debuts online on the first of each month, it takes about a week before copies begin to appear in racks and stacks throughout the area. It takes another week for the post office to get it to 25,000 mailboxes. The content is designed to be pertinent at least until the next issue arrives in the mail, so regular print readers miss nothing, even when the issue arrives around the 15th.

Feel free to reach out to us on social media. We are here for you, with you, because of you. Together let’s keep the wonders of the natural world in sight and mind on our journey.

If the magazine just “appeared in the mail” for the first time this month, it was probably just a tease, an introductory sample. We are introducing Paradise NEWS to a new group of locals each month. If you like it and want to keep it coming, a subscription is only $30/year for 10 issues mailed to your home, store or office.

PHOTO BY FLOURISH - VALERIE BOGLE You can send your mailing address along with any form of payment to P.N. Sub., P.O. Box 66385, St Pete Beach, FL 33736 or email info@paradisenewsfl.com for a credit card subscription form.

And to Everybody, Thanks for Everything! Peter & Renee Roos

Volume 27 Number 4 • April 2021 PUBLISHERS Peter Roos | Marketing & Sales sales@paradisenewsfl.com Renee Roos | Creative Director info@paradisenewsfl.com

EDITORIAL Nanette Wiser - Executive Editor wiser86@gmail.com Steve Traiman - Feature Editor traimancreativecopy@gmail.com

ART & PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Janet Nummi

ADVERTISING REPS Gigi Grimshaw Linda Motzenbecker

CONTRIBUTING COLUMNISTS Arts & Leisure | Events - Zelda Traiano Art News - Caron Schwartz

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dr. Dennis Merritt Jones | Sarah Lyons Michael Moses Jr. Ryan Baker, MD | Dr. Scot Trefz, DVM Tom Broderson, ESQ Veronica Champion

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Janet Nummi | @AMGvisual Visit St. Pete-Clearwater | Visit Florida

SUBMISSIONS - WRITERS & PHOTOGRAPHERS

Paradise News welcomes submissions. 727.363.6888 • info@paradisenewsfl.com

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Corey Area Business Association Greater Gulfport Chamber of Commerce 2007 “Business of the Year Award” Recipient Greater Treasure Island Club • Grand Central District Preserve The Burg • Skyway Marina District St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce Entrepreneurial Academy Spring 2019 Tampa Bay Beaches Chamber of Commerce 2008 “Small Business of the Year” Award 2013 “Woman-Owned Business of the Year” Tampa Bay Watch - Corporate Sponsor Treasure Island & Madeira Beach Chamber PUBLISHED BY: Paradise News, LLC

P.O. Box 66385, St. Pete Beach, FL 33736 727.363.6888 • info@paradisenewsfl.com www.ParadiseNewsFL.com | Facebook

The Centre-St. Pete Beach

By Michael Moses

THE CENTRE-ST. PETE BEACH 7525 Blind Pass Road, St. Pete Beach FL 33706

727.258.2001 | www.TheCentreSPB.com

The Centre SPB and Triverde Health is a premier cannabis centric holistic health and education destination offering a full menu of wellness classes, special events, and workshops featuring yoga, medical marijuana recommendations, CBD and Delta 8 products, fitness, nutrition and cooking classes. We even have Natural Pet Herbals line of CBD for pets.The Centre has a partnership with Triverde Health, whose Dr. Luis Ycaza provides medical marijuana recommendations right at The Centre once or twice per week. Our full concierge service will guide you through the process of obtaining your card and medicine every step of the way. If you are new to cannabis, come in and speak with us and we’d be happy to guide you through the best way cannabis can bring relief to your life. CBD is a great non-psychoactive place to start if you’re new to the cannabis world containing many medicinal and anti- inflammatory benefits. Call The Centre at 727-258-2001. What can it help with?

Peter Grinspoon, MD, wrote in the Journal of Harvard Medical School in April 2020, “There are few subjects that can stir up stronger emotions among doctors, scientists, researchers, policy makers, and the public than medical marijuana.

“Medical Marijuana is legal in 29 states, and in Washington, DC. About 85% of Americans support legalizing medical marijuana, and it is estimated that at least several million Americans currently use it. Least controversial is the extract from the hemp plant known as CBD (which stands for cannabidiol) because this component of marijuana has little, if any, intoxicating properties. Marijuana itself has more than 100 active components. THC (which stands for tetrahydrocannabinol) is the chemical that has several purposes, 1) opens up the endocannabinoid system to function effectively, 2) attack pain and 3) causes the ‘high’ that can go along with marijuana consumption. CBD-dominant strains have from ZERO to less than or equal to 00.3% (a pinch as my grandmother used to say in cooking) ‘a pinch of salt’ so patients report very little if any alteration in consciousness. Patients report many benefits of CBD, from relieving insomnia, anxiety, spasticity, and pain to treating potentially life-threatening conditions such as epilepsy and cancer.”

The most common use for medical marijuana in the United States is for pain control. While marijuana isn’t strong enough for severe pain (for example, post-surgical pain or a broken bone), it is quite effective for the chronic pain

that plagues millions of Americans,

especially as they age. Part of its allure is that it is clearly safer than opiates (it is impossible to overdose on) and it can take the place of NSAIDs such as Advil or Aleve, if people can’t take them due to problems with their kidneys or ulcers or GERD.

In particular, marijuana appears to ease

the pain of multiple sclerosis, and nerve

pain in general. This is an area where few other options exist, and those that do, such as Neurontin, Lyrica, or opiates, are highly sedating. Patients claim that marijuana allows them to resume their previous activities without feeling completely out of it and disengaged.

Along these lines, marijuana is said to be

a fantastic muscle relaxant, and people swear by its ability to lessen tremors

in Parkinson’s disease. I have also heard of its use quite successfully for fibromyalgia, endometriosis, interstitial cystitis, and most other conditions where the final common pathway is chronic pain. Marijuana is also used to manage nausea

and weight loss and can be used to treat

glaucoma. A highly promising area of research is its use for PTSD in veterans who are returning from combat zones. Many veterans and their therapists report drastic improvement and clamor for more studies, and for a loosening of governmental restrictions on its study.

A few months, ago we wrote and published a piece about an article in the September 2020 edition of Reader’s Digest entitled The Promise of CBD, in which the four people interviewed felt the same way about that over-the-counter, non-psychoactive, unregulated, cannabidiol component of the hemp plant.

How do you know what you need?

Sage advice is “Start Slowly and Small.” The key is to micro-dose the THC component and take larger dosages of the CBD component. Staff at The Centre and Triverde have experience and can help guide you.

The goal is not to get high, just to provide your system with the minimum stimulus it needs to do its magic. A micro-dose is often enough. For example, some people say “Five drops of CBD oil helps me sleep like a baby” or “A half hour after I eat half a gummy, my fibromyalgia symptoms fade away for hours.”

MuV makes three-day patches with just CBD, just THC and 50:50 that provide a continuous micro-dose ever 30 minutes over three days and range from $12-$15. Many people love those too.

Call The Centre at 727-258-2001 for more information or just stop in. We’re attached to Lenny’s Bike & Surf Shop, sharing a parking lot with Walgreens in St. Pete Beach. Enter from 76th Avenue.