Former NFL quarterback Jake Plummer has witnessed the medicinal benefits of botanicals since growing up in Idaho. Now, the world wants to take advantage of it to treat pain, inflammation, and anxiety.
The 48-year-old Plummer, better known as “Jake the Snake,” who played in the NFL for the Arizona Cardinals and Denver Broncos, pushed against the league’s cannabis ban and encouraged the NFL to do research on the plant’s benefits. While he was an advocate of CBD, these days his focus has shifted to cultivating mushrooms with his own mushrooms MyCOLove Farm in Colorado. With former Ultimate Fighting Champion (UFC) Rashad Evans, Plummer is also behind UMBO, a mushroom supplement company that sells mushroom bars, capsules, and other products. Dale Jolly is the co-founder and CEO of UMBO. Plummer says his curiosity was piqued as a child with a holistic mom who adopted more natural forms of medication during flu season, like goldenseal and echinacea. If he caught a cold, his mother would give him garlic and honey instead of Tylenol and other over-the-counter medications.
“It taught us that plants, herbs, and teas are all good,” says Plummer. “When I started my playing career way back, I was shocked there was no mention of this with any of the doctors and coaches. A lot of my teammates freaked out when my mom would send a pulp to anyone with a bad sprain. I’d go put it on their toes or their ribs.” In the training room. Every one of my injured teammates would say it felt so good and ask, ‘Can you send me more?’ Every one of them.”
After his playing career, Plummer embraced CBD as a way to deal with pain rather than players taking painkillers, and he said hemp oil helped him and many of his former teammates.
“This was my first botanical medicine play,” says Plummer. “As a soccer player, I knew the benefits of cannabis. I didn’t use it much because you might get caught and miss games. I will use it when I can and after games for its pain-relieving properties and to let me out with my family and friends on a Sunday night, maybe after a huge loss before I get back to the office.” Monday. Chewed my ass to throw a pickaxe.”
Plummer says he only smoked cannabis towards the end of his career. After his retirement, he used them increasingly, especially after he had surgery on his hips in Colorado. He says cannabis has helped manage the pain. Once he used hemp oil, the inflammation and headaches were gone, he slept through the night and his body simply felt better.
“My real introduction to plant medicine happened when I met Dale Jolly, and then Dale and I, along with Rashad Evans, decided to get into the functional mushroom industry, which is a whole kingdom full of fungi,” says Plummer. “It was another opportunity to shed light on nature and its healing methods and what better way to do that than with the UFC Hall of Fame, myself and other accomplished athletes, artists and activists trying to let people believe there are other ways to heal yourself and other ways to find wellness.”
Plummer says he didn’t feel comfortable getting into the cannabis industry: “It’s a plant that many people around the world use to help themselves with any treatment, or any form of income. It just felt wrong to take advantage of a plant that was so good to us. I’m still a fan.” Its. I use it when I need to. I use it with a little sacred thought behind it and a more ceremonial thought than its everyday use.”
However, the stigma attached to cannabis is changing — largely because of the younger generation, according to the former star quarterback.
“More and more people are seeing the benefits,” he says. “You don’t have to step up psychotropics. You can take cannabis. Marijuana is starting to become more popular, and I don’t think people are going to abuse it like some other legal drugs, including alcohol — something that’s used pretty much everywhere in front of kids and at football games.”
The younger generation may be more attuned to Plummer’s view of the power of botanical medicine.
“If you are open to nature as a form of medicine, if you are in touch with Mother Earth and understand that there is a balance to everything—yin and yang, night and day and light and dark—anything we humans experience, that there is something on this planet to help with that. If you think so, I don’t think marijuana is perverted.”
By Plummer’s calculations, the NFL, while it downplays its testing protocol on cannabis, is one of those huge industries that won’t take a stand on anything that will divide its fan base. While the league donated $1 million to study the effect of cannabis and CBD on pain, Plummer calls that a pittance, adding that they should come to the table if executives are serious about saving the mental, physical and spiritual health of players.
Plummer urges the university to invest money in studying the effect of functional mushrooms in helping brains heal as Douri deals with chronic traumatic encephalopathy from repeated blows to the head.
“Let’s do some serious research here if you’re really interested,” he says, “and let’s support it with money.” “The NFL is literally worth billions and billions of dollars.
Plummer says there is “definitely a connection” between cannabinoids and functional mushrooms, and suggests there could be “some nice synergy” between those plants and what they can do for people’s health. After all, they both came from Mother Earth.
“Shouldn’t we see what can help us?” Plummer asks. Very good question actually.
This story was originally published in Issue 47 printed edition of hemp now.
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