The medicinal marijuana (MMJ) program was suggested to Dr. Shaffer by his office manager but he was very reluctant to start the program. He felt that this would invite patients who just wanted to use marijuana for recreational usage. After some persistence from his office manager he slowly started to introduce these patients requesting medicinal cannabis into his practice. To Shaffer’s surprise,the patients requesting to participate in the program proved to be some of the most complex patients that he has ever seen; crippling back pain with multiple failed surgeries and opiates not sufficiently treating the pain; war veterans and rape victims with PTSD, anxiety not responding to conventional treatments, crippling pain from herpes zoster, neuropathy and much more.
In a relatively short time of treatment Shaffer started to observe real control of disease that he hasn’t seen in over 20 years of using conventional medication. He then started taking several courses and seminars in cannabis but he realized that at the time the literature was sparse on good clinical data. So Shaffer made spreadsheets of his data collected from his patients and started his own analysis. The results were very impressive for pain reduction, anxiety and PTSD. He then taught himself what specific strains and dosing were the most effective with certain conditions and started getting excellent feedback from his patients. Cannabis has improved some conditions more than 50% with up to 100% pain control of certain diseases (see testimonials).
Now over 6 years later Dr. Shaffer has been successfully treating diseases such as PTSD, uncontrolled migraines, inflammatory bowel disease, failed back syndrome, uncontrolled Rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, peripheral neuropathies, and much more. Many specialists and primary care physicians over the states of New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania have referred their most challenging patients to him when traditional treatments have failed to provide satisfactory relief.
Dr. Shaffer has a SAMHSA (substance abuse and mental health services administration) specialty certification with medicinal cannabis and has published a clinical case study on a cardiac patient. He continues to practice traditional internal medicine and when needed introduces medicinal cannabis.
