I Tried the Strainprint App So I Could Use Cannabis Better
Apps that rate, review or even find cannabis for you are nothing new, Leafly and Weedmaps both recommend strains and tell you where to find them but there is another app available now offering support to medical cannabis patients to help them discover the right strains and dosages they need. Strainprint promises a personalized patient experience by tracking which strains you use, how you use them and how much you use to help take the guesswork out of medicating with cannabis.
The Strainprint Story
Co-Founded by Stephanie Karasick, Strainprint is designed to use your usage data to identify strains, cannabinoid profiles, and ingestion methods that are best for you. Its meant to be a truly personalized medical cannabis experience that will help patients better understand how they are affected by their medicine.
Karasick suffered from anxiety and depression from an early age lasting well into adulthood and worsening once she had children. Like many Canadians, she found that her prescribed medication wasn't working for her.
After learning about vets who use cannabis for PTSD she realized that there might be another way to reclaim the quality of life she missed. She began experimenting with her medical cannabis prescription and discovered that some strains affected her differently than others. She realized that technology could help her better understand her needs if she had an effective way to collect and track data around her usage. Karasick set to work to create Strainprint, an app that is not only beneficial to patients but has evolved into an analytical company that services both the medical community with real-time, anonymous patient data enabling better care and also producers and retailers who can use the information to make better product decisions.
"We are the largest longitudinal cannabis study in all of North America (we are available in the USA with over 30% of our users there). We currently have over 700,000 Tracked medical outcomes and 7 million data points - and growing!" Jessica Moran, Marketing & Communications Director tells us.
Meet Stephanie Karasick and hear about her journey here:
My Experience with Strainprint
The app is easy to navigate and the list of conditions and symptoms is fleshed out well. I found all my conditions easily and noted how many others are listed in the app. Cannabis really can help with so many different things, it's mind-blowing.
Once you've set up a profile and identified your conditions and symptoms you choose the strains you use. These are all strains available legally from Canadian licensed producers and have the cannabinoid profiles pre-loaded. In my case I have a home cultivation license so I chose the strains I grow but knew that my bud might not have the same THC/CBD profiles as listed.
I reached out to Jessica Moran to ask if I was on the right track and how best to accurately track my medications. "If you want to properly assess the Cultivar and Chemovar we would suggest that you submit a sample of your plant material to a Health Canada licensed laboratory for composition analysis." She explained. "Once you have received your CoA (Certificate of Analysis) you will be able to input the THC / CBD data and other information directly into Strainprint. This would be the way to accurately track your treatment progression against your homegrown medicine."
It's nice to know that next year when more Canadians are trying their hand at home growing and recreational use they'll have an option that will allow them to keep track of the effects of their bud easily.
Curious recreational users can use Strainprint too; "The app already has a recreational tab built in and recreational users are welcome to use it - users can currently track any wellness supplements they are using or any cannabis products." Moran points out.
Tracking a Session
When it was time to medicate, I opened the app and selected Track Session. I chose the symptoms I was treating and the severity of those symptoms. I chose the strain I planned to use and then my method of ingestion. Here, the developers have considered so many more consumption methods than I expected. They have everything from transdermal to suppository to "dab bubbler". With the bubbler option selected the next question is "how many puffs did you consume?' I chose 2.
One hour later I got a notification on my phone reminding me to record how I felt. The app asked me to rate how the strain made me feel overall and allowed me to make notes which is a nice feature, letting me record my thoughts in the moment.
The app itself is free to download from the App Store and is an easy way to diarize your cannabis medications, which in turn will help you better understand your needs. There's also a loyalty points system built in that lets users earn swag and product discounts, and who doesn't love a deal or a free t-shirt?