TSC Talks! Trailblazers! Nadia Bodkin, CEO & Vincent Crowley, SVP of Blaze Therapeutics, LLC

Nadia Bodkin, CEO and Vincent Crowley, SVP of Blaze Therapeutics, LLC are an incredible team bringing a rich and relevant background of lived and learned experience across multiple special interest groups, including the rare disease community, military & veteran community, as well as health care community and more.

"Blaze Therapeutics exists to offer plant-based solutions to the rare disease, the US Veteran, and professional medical communities that target the improvement of overall health, wellness, and quality of life. We believe in amplifying the beauty of life through the pursuit of wellness. Blaze Therapeutics is comprised of a team of experts concentrated from the healthcare, patient advocacy, nutraceutical and cannabis industries. Blaze Therapeutics is engaged in supporting the open market through Responsible Distribution of plant-based dietary supplements and the Rx market through the pursuit of FDA approved cannabis-based nutraceuticals."

Nadia is also President at EDSers United for Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, but is also a member of the advocacy movement in regards to Blaze. Nadia is a seasoned rare disease patient advocate, born with three main rare conditions herself. Immediately after graduation, Nadia went straight into advocacy through EDSers United, a foundation she founded as a student. Nadia has held leadership positions at several rare disease advocacy focused organizations assisting in everything between nonprofit corporate management to event planning to therapeutic product development. She is also one of the founding members of New Love Ventures LLC and facilitates the coordination of the Rare Advocacy Movement's activities along with fellow colleagues.

Vincent Crowley, Senior VP, is a medically retired veteran of the United States Army. His past experience in the army was as a dental hygienist. He also studied psychology at the University of Maryland. Vincent is co-founder New Love Ventures, During his years of service, Vincent discovered a heightened awareness for his core values, and beliefs (i.e loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage). Incorporating these core values into his daily life and his passion to help other service members navigate life post military service and transition back into the civilian sector, spurred an interest to earn a degree in Psychology and Mental Health. As a student of the University of Maryland University College, Vincent makes himself available to veterans seeking guidance through social media platforms and in-person meetings. As the Executive Sales Director at Blaze Therapeutics, Vincent is leading the effort to introduce the military community to Blaze Approved nutraceuticals and therapeutics as alternative options to addressing their health concerns."

This episode is rich with information. A few pertinent quotes:

"We both connected over our passion for advocacy work. And his focus has always been on advocating for veterans and helping them transition into civilian life. And after meeting and gaining a better understanding of each other's advocacy work, we learned that both the veteran and rare disease communities are both dealing with very similar socio-economic and healthcare issues."

Discussing the responsible distribution of CBD:

"Responsible distribution model is a model designed specifically for the healthcare industry for cautions taken to protect customers' safety and ultimately protect businesses from potential liability issues. And because the cannabis industry is young and vulnerable, unfortunately, most of the products on the market are contaminated with toxins and labeled inaccurately. So products that are responsibly distributed, come with a certificate of analysis that are unbiased third party tests."

Talking about other products in the holistic industry:

"The overall holistic products industry includes, you know, the spices that we use to season our foods and a lot of our spices have silicone in them. And a lot of our chronic pain is caused by all the different products that have so many toxins that are building up it's increasing our inflammatory system, our bodies are trying to fight all these toxins. It's incredible what we found"

Discussing the role of big pharma and the open CBD market:

"Big Pharma and responsible players from the open market industry can collaborate and work together. When it comes to educating the public and the healthcare industry, doctors need to know what options are available to them and the unfortunate risky realities of the open market so that they can best advise their patients. And consumers need to know that they need to consult with their doctors to identify their personal dosage of CBD, what to ask for and what to avoid when navigating the open market in order to avoid purchasing toxic or fraudulent products"

Regarding the controversy with newly FDA approved CBD isolate medication, Epidiolex:

"And so one of the hot topics that has been circulating the rate of the space currently regarding Epidiolex include sucralose as an inactive ingredient. Because of this, we're seeing some parents and patients with rare epileptic conditions choose to turn to the open market as opposed to taking Epidiolex either on label or off label because of the sucralose, which is an artificial sweetener found in the formulation."..." sucralose significantly decreased beneficial gut bacteria, negative effects have occurred at a sucralose dosage as low as 1.1 milligrams per kilogram, and FDA acceptable daily intake for sucralose is five milligrams per kilogram, so several individuals with GI issues do their best typically stay away from this artificial sweetener"

Continuing this conversation and discussing how doctors can take advantage of what Blaze Therapeutics has to offer:

"So for those practitioners in states with medical marijuana programs, of course, they can manage medical marijuana patients, they can prescribe Epidiolex to patients with certain types of severe epilepsies or they can choose to responsibly distribute CBD by signing up as a wholesaler at Blaze Therapeutics and selling CBD directly to the patients in the office or they sign up under our referral program, the and they receive they receive a percentage of the revenue per order that's made."

On New Love Ventures, LLC:

"So a little plug in there for new love ventures and basically what we're doing with new love ventures. It's a new love culture, it's a social movement to help people bring awareness to themselves and being human, you know, looking out for their, their fellow person, regardless of what they're doing in their lives and what they believe in"

There is a large amount of detailed but well-explained information contained in this episode. A final quote on how we as patients can ask doctors to enter the conversation which is of utmost importance:

"Can you please reach out to blazetherapeutics.com and the people there or just call that company and then we will help educate them in an expedited, then we understand their busy schedules, we will provide them with the materials in order for them to learn what they need to do in order to help their patients. Right now the stigma within the health care community has dwindled. There's enough clinical evidence out there for cannabis. So now doctors are actually learning "

Thanks for listening! For more information, see the following links:

Website: https://www.blazetherapeutics.com/
Website Resources: https://www.blazetherapeutics.com/resources
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blazetherapeutics/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blazetherapeutics/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/blazetherapy
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/blaze-therapeutics/
New Love Ventures: https://www.newloveculture.com/
Nadia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadiabodkin/
Vincent on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-crowley-a87a1a55/
Nadia Bodkin Rare Advocacy Movement: https://www.rareadvocacymovement.com/nadia-bodkin

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