Kirsten Shepard, LMT, DC, approaches pain care through listening and targeted intervention. This led to exploring options beyond drugs and surgery. She focuses on movement, comfort, and dignity, not just symptom control. Her belief in plant-based methods, combined with hands-on care, inspired TrueStopper and continues to shape its direction. “Healing,” she says, “is a conversation between what the body needs and how we choose to respond.”
TrueStopper
TrueStopper is a wellness company that blends professionally formulated hemp-based products with functional and regenerative medicine to offer non-invasive options for people seeking alternatives to pharmaceuticals or surgery. The company’s portfolio is built around topical and transdermal preparations, a single ingestible format, and supportive recovery items intended to complement hands-on therapies.
“We aim to support the body’s natural balancing systems and design protocols that integrate seamlessly into broader care plans,” Shepard explains. In line with this mission, TrueStopper offers roll-on topicals for fast absorption and targeted relief, warming and cooling creams to ease muscle and joint tension, discreet transdermal patches for sustained support, and aromatic bath blends that promote relaxation and recovery. Each product is meant to complement movement work, manual therapy, or lifestyle changes, helping ensure that relief and function go hand in hand.
This strategy reflects Shepard’s clinical insight and personal experience. Her interest in plant-informed formulations deepened after a family health challenge led her to study cannabinoids and transdermal delivery. “I’ve spent years working across manual therapy, acupuncture, and integrative musculoskeletal care,” Shepard says. “That experience helped me understand how to create blends that offer steady, targeted support.”
Her experimentation evolved into a formal product line and provider resources. Today, TrueStopper prioritizes lab transparency, rigorous manufacturing standards, and third-party testing, measures designed to build trust with both practitioners and consumers.
TrueStopper seeks to address gaps that Shepard has identified in standard pain pathways: a need for options that are not dependent on systemic pharmaceuticals, a desire for non-addictive approaches, and a clearer alignment between product use and clinical protocols. The company’s Practitioner Portal and educational outreach aim to make these connections more practical for clinicians, offering protocols for anxiety, chronic pain, cognitive support, and performance recovery. This helps enable product selection to become part of a structured care plan rather than a standalone choice.
Additionally, TrueStopper emphasizes education as a core priority, explaining the endocannabinoid system, delivery methods, and sourcing considerations to help patients and practitioners make informed choices. “People deserve products that are verifiable and paired with knowledge,” she notes, emphasizing a commitment to transparency and accountability.
This dedication to informed care extends beyond clinical settings. TrueStopper carries a community-minded identity, with Shepard actively participating in conversations around inclusion and representation in the cannabis wellness space. The aim is to reduce stigma and promote regulation and testing standards that protect consumers. TrueStopper’s protocols are used across diverse settings, from clinical practices to athletic recovery, reinforcing its ethos of pairing plant medicine with functional care rather than positioning it as a replacement.
TrueStopper’s impact is reflected in the voices of those who’ve regained mobility, comfort, and confidence after years of pain. From shoveling snow for the first time in four years to reclaiming neck flexibility and strength, users describe meaningful improvements that conventional approaches hadn’t delivered. Testimonials highlight how personalized protocols, grounded in attentive care and plant-informed formulations, have helped individuals with spinal stenosis, fibromyalgia, and chronic back issues experience real relief.
These outcomes align with research showing that cannabinoids offer moderate efficacy in managing conditions like neuropathic pain and fibromyalgia, and are widely perceived by patients as safer alternatives to opioids. For many, TrueStopper represents a turning point in their recovery journey.
In the long term, TrueStopper envisions cannabis-based tools as part of preventive, proactive wellness rather than an emergency last resort. Its outlook emphasizes informed use, practitioner engagement, and continued dialogue about standards and access. She says, “I hope that plant medicine becomes another carefully considered tool in a clinician’s toolbox, used thoughtfully, studied rigorously, and shared equitably.”
