The NFL will spend up to $1 million funding up to five studies that will examine how to better help players ease their pain and find alternatives to opioids.
Among those potential alternatives: marijuana and other cannabis-derived products.
The league announced its call for research proposals Tuesday. The league and the NFL Players Association formed a joint pain management committee in 2019 to help find alternatives to opioids and give players and league medical staffs information on pain management.
Dr. Allen Sills, the NFL's chief medical officer, said there are a lot of great ideas and important research that need to be funded.
“This is really not an NFL issue or a sports issue,” Sills said. "This is a societal issue, which is how can we better understand and treat pain and what are the alternatives that may be out there for treatment in addition to opioids which have long been used.”
Some retired NFL players, including Nate Jackson and Kyle Turley, have spoken out about their use of marijuana during their time in the league and said it's a better way of managing pain than the drugs prescribed by team doctors. The league prohibits marijuana use by players.
Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president overseeing player health and safety, said the league’s policy on substance abuse is not changing, with Tuesday’s announcement focused only on proposals and research.
The pain management committee held two forums in 2020 to learn more about cannabidiol science and manufacturing and now wants more information on how cannabinoids not only affect pain but the performance of NFL players.
Dr. Kevin Hill is co-chairman of the joint pain management committee and wrote a book titled “Marijuana: The Unbiased Truth about the World's Most Popular Weed." He said players have been asking about cannabis and cannabidiol CBD. Hill said they've tried to provide the best information on a controversial topic.
“Unfortunately, the level of interest right now far exceeds the level of evidence supporting the use of medical cannabis for pain,” Hill said.
Hill, also director of addiction psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said there are flaws in each of the controlled trials despite some evidence supporting the use of medical cannabis for pain.
“That’s why we put out this request for proposals so that we can collectively with the PA, the players association, move towards finding better treatments for pain. Those treatments may include cannabis, and they may include CBD,” Hill said.
The NFL opened the application process Tuesday. The league wants initial proposals studying how cannabinoids can help players manage pain daily and after surgery, how cannabis or cannabinoids affect players' athletic performance, and how other non-pharmaceutical treatments can benefit players.
Proposals must be submitted by July 31 with the pain management committee paring down submissions for formal presentations. Those will presented in November with a final decision the week of Dec. 6.
Jurors in the trial against Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes have entered day six of deliberations. Holmes is accused of lying to investors about the functionality of a newly developed blood-testing technology. Andrew George, partner at Baker Botts, joined Cheddar to break down key points in the case and what the jury might be considering during their deliberations. He also noted that the rest of Silicon Valley, including Holmes' business partner, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, who is facing identical charges, is closely watching the outcome of deliberations — as it could set the tone for future regulations and Balwani's own trial.
According to researchers, the state of California's cap-and-trade program is currently being undermined by forest fires caused primarily by climate change. Over the past few years, trees that were set aside for the program have been releasing carbon as they continue to burn in fires. Climate Researcher and Policy Director at CarbonPlan Danny Cullenward, joined Cheddar to discuss more.
The CDC's latest update to its COVID-19 quarantine guidelines reduces the isolation period from ten days to just five for people who test positive but are asymptomatic. Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell, regional clinical director at Carbon Health, spoke to Cheddar's Baker Machado about the new guidance. She noted that while the reduced quarantine time "makes sense," the CDC should also require that a person test negative after their quarantine and before interacting with the public. "There is science behind it. We know that the majority of illness happens, or transmission, one to two days before the onset of symptoms and then two to three days as you have symptoms. So there is science behind the reducement of the actual five days," she said.
Prices at the pump this year reached a seven-year high, and a new forecast from GasBuddy shared with CNN predicts that gas prices will only continue to rise in 2022 and that the national average could even reach $4.00 a gallon; however, analysts at GasBuddy say anything could happen when it comes to gas prices in the future, as the pandemic has made it difficult to make any predictions about the economy. Consumer Energy Alliance federal policy advisor Michael Zehr joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
As the Omicron variant is fueling a surge in COVID-19 cases, parents and schools are faced with tough choices between absences and outbreaks. Matt Barnum, a national reporter at Chalkbeat, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
Ron Gutman, Co-CEO of Intrivo, joins Cheddar News to discuss how the company is creating a test and tech solution for Covid testing called 2Gather, and how it's using data-driven digital diagnostics to make these tests widely available and affordable.
As 2021 winds down, the number of positive COVID-19 cases has surged dramatically with numbers not seen since the heights of the pandemic. Dr. Laolu Fayanju, the regional medical director at primary care provider Oak Street Health, joined Cheddar to discuss the numbers, how the healthcare system is handling the surge this time around, and what it means that the CDC just cut the quarantine time guideline in half for those who are infected. "These are incredibly high numbers because they reflect the transmissibility of the omicron variant," Fayanju said.
