Dr. Robert (Rav) Ivker is a holistic healer, family physician, cannabis clinician, health educator, and best-selling author of seven holistic healing books, most notably SINUS SURVIVAL: The Holistic Medical Treatment for Sinusitis, Allergies, and Colds, 4th edition. He is a board-certified integrative holistic physician (ABIHM), a fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians, a past-president and co-founder of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine (ABIHM), past-president of the American Holistic Medical Association (AHMA), and a certified Healing Touch practitioner.

Dr. Rav began practicing medicine in 1972 as a family doctor. During the past six years in his Fully Alive Medicine practice in Boulder, CO, he has evaluated and worked with nearly 7000 patients seeking a license issued by the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment to legally obtain medical marijuana. Well over 90 percent of these patients are suffering with chronic pain. His comprehensive holistic treatment program includes medical marijuana, diet, supplements, exercise, affirmations, visualization, prayer, meditation, counseling, and energy medicine/Healing Touch.

As one of the pioneers and the co-founder of the specialty of Integrative Holistic Medicine (IHM), he regards this book as an introduction to the holistic sub-specialty of Cannabis Medicine, for both the public and the medical community. The book is specifically focused on the application of medical marijuana for relieving chronic pain (its greatest therapeutic benefit), and the use of MMJ as a complement to a holistic treatment program for potentially curing the underlying condition causing the pain. With Cannabis for Chronic Pain, Dr. Rav is helping to establish the standard of care for the safe and effective use of medical marijuana.

The majority of chronic pain patients are suffering from low back pain, arthritis, or migraine headaches; and he has written separate books on the holistic medical treatment for each of these three conditions -- Backache Survival (2003), Arthritis Survival (2001), and Headache Survival (2002). All were published by Tarcher/Penguin, and the essential components of the treatment program presented in these books, appears in their respective chapters in Part II of this book.

For the past forty years, Dr. Rav has lived at the base of the foothills along the Front Range of the Rocky Mts., with his wife of fifty years, Harriet, a psychiatric social worker. He spends much of his free time hiking and cycling, as well as playing with his four grandchildren (Ben, Lily, Maddie, and Sam), and their parents – daughters, Julie and Carin, and sons-in-law, Jeremy and Justin.