Our Story
While working as a massage therapist in the small town of Telluride, our founder Dahlia Mertens, began infusing massage oil with cannabis in order to provide a more relaxing massage to her clients.
To Dahlia’s surprise, not only did her clients experience added relaxation, but they also reported that their most troublesome aches and skin irritations were soothed, and their sense of well-being was boosted long after the massage.
Dahlia was VERY excited to discover that the cannabis massage oil she was producing had so many more health benefits than just relaxation. She began poring through the available research to find support and documentation for the results she was seeing, but there was almost no information out there on why it worked. Dahlia believed in the products, though, and knew that they had a great deal of potential to help a lot of people.
She engaged in available research, and began to do her own. Mixing up different formulations of small batches in her kitchen to see what worked best, she was able to develop her line of healing products. She hit the road, knocking on dispensary doors all over Colorado, spreading the word about the efficacy of cannabis topicals. Ten years later, Mary Jane’s Medicinals is an industry leader in topical healing products.
And over the past decade, scientific research has been catching up to what Dahlia was hearing anecdotally from her customers for years—that cannabis topicals can be a very effective way to address many health issues while being gentle on the body and without psychoactive effects.
Dahlia’s passion for holistic wellness is the same today as it was back in 2009. She started by making small batches in her kitchen and the products are still produced with care in small batches today.
Our Team
Dahlia Mertens
CEO/Owner
Dahlia founded Mary Jane's Medicinals in 2009 after being inspired by an infused massage oil she was introduced to in California earlier that year. At the time she was working as a massage therapist but was ready to transition and had often mused about creating a natural body product line of her own. She holds a degree in Theater from the University of Colorado Boulder and is a certified massage therapist. Dahlia combines her creative and theatrical background with her love for natural and holistic healing to her business. She sees a bright future for the potential of cannabis infused topicals to improve the quality of many peoples lives all over the world.
Jonna Piira
CFO
Jonna's finance background started in the medical diagnostics sector after getting her MBA and continued into the hand tool and frozen food industries. Jonna has a passion for finance and operations within B2B and DTC companies. She has worked with several growing start-ups helping with the growth cycle and helping to achieve successful exits.
Marney Prince
Director of Operations
Marney is a highly motivated, problem solver, who loves challenges, creating innovative solutions, organization, strategizing, and natural healing remedies. Her experience growing a startup that she founded to a multi million dollar business contributes to Mary Jane’s Medicinals’ operations and innovation. Marney has enjoyed life in Telluride, Colorado for 25 years, raising two sons and a whole bunch of dogs and cats. She spends her free time playing in the mountains, usually snowboarding or hiking.
Deb Gesmundo
Inventory & Metric Specialist
Deb grew up in Michigan, obtained her degree in Education with a major in mathematics and a minor in physics and chemistry from the University of Michigan, and then served two years with the Peace Corps in Gabon, Africa. Since 1992, she has been a member of the Telluride community and a radio deejay, deb-on-air doing her radio addiction show, on Telluride's local radio station, KOTO. She has also raised two sons in the valley and has volunteered for just about everything possible within the community of events that take place in and around Telluride. Her passions include the French language, sewing, her cat, and baking award winning pies!
The Whole Plant Approach
At Mary Jane’s Medicinals we have a great respect for the cannabis plant, and trust that thousands of years of evolution has created the perfect synergy of beneficial compounds within that plant. As a result, we try to leave it in its most natural state and do not feel the need to break it into its individual components.
Instead of using a concentrate made from extracting just one or two compounds from the cannabis plant, we use an infusion process. This technique involves utilizing the whole plant in a gentle process, which maintains a full spectrum of cannabinoids, terpenes, and other healing compounds naturally occurring in the cannabis plant.
There are a myriad of beneficial phytochemicals contained in the cannabis plant (see below for details) that can get lost in the extraction process. These chemicals all work together in a symbiotic way which is also known as “the entourage effect”— the compounds interact synergistically to increase the medicinal impact.
When all of these chemicals and compounds that naturally occur in the plant are allowed to be present at the same time so that they can work together, they are significantly more effective than when they are isolated and left to work inefficiently on their own.
Produced with care and passion, Mary Jane’s Medicinals cannabis topicals have been conscientiously crafted using the whole plant in order to help your body heal itself.
The Science Behind How Our Products Work
The Endocannabinoid System
Endocannabinoids and their receptors are neurotransmitters found throughout the body — including in your brain and other organs, your glands and connective tissues, and at the cellular level in your immune system. Endocannabinoids control homeostasis, which is the way your body stays balanced and healthy, even when it’s faced with extreme external stresses and changes. The receptors comprise the endocannabinoid system (ECS) located in the central and peripheral nervous system and they are responsible for regulating pain, emotions, motivation and cognition.
Phytocannabinoids
Mary Jane’s Medicinals cannabis topicals contain phytocannabinoids from the cannabis plant which are naturally occurring cannabinoids that are chemically very similar to the endocannabinoids your own body produces. You may already be familiar with some of these phytocannabinoids such as delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) — the main psychoactive ingredient in the cannabis plant — as well as cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabinol (CBN). More than a hundred individual cannabinoids have been isolated in cannabis and it’s estimated that there are at least another hundred yet to be identified.
When you rub our products on an area of discomfort or injury, the phytocannabinoids will bind to the endocannabinoid receptors in your peripheral nervous system, which occur in abundance in the layers of your skin. They then send a message through your nervous system to stimulate your body’s natural healing process.
This helps us humans get to our happy homeostasis place — that physiological place of harmony and healing.
This is why our products
work so well for a wide variety of ailments. The cannabis plant’s phytocannabinoids stimulate balance in a similar way to your body’s own naturally occurring chemicals. Mother Nature sure is fascinating!
There's a lot to learn when it comes to cannabis topicals. If you're interested in reading more, we encourage you to follow along with our blog.
