The CBD market is booming, and by 2025, it is expected to be worth a cautious $16 billion in the United States alone. Cheeseburgers, toothpicks, and breath mints are just some of the products that have started incorporating plant extract. For good quality CBD products, you can shop here: https://www.drganja.com/lemon-diesel
According to a poll of 5,000 people performed by the Brightfield Group, a cannabis market research agency, more than 60% of CBD consumers had taken it for anxiety.
Following persistent pain and sadness and sleeplessness. Kim Kardashian West used it while she was “freaking out” over having her fourth child. The golf pro-Bubba Watson uses it to help him relax before bed. And so does Martha Stewart’s French bulldog.
What is CBD?
Cannabidiol (CBD) is one of the many compounds found in the cannabis Sativa plant, but it doesn’t get the same attention as its psychoactive sibling, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Central Asia is the place where this plant originated, and it is thought that it was originally employed for medicinal or religious purposes around 750 B.C.
The cannabis plant contains over a hundred cannabinoids, the most well-known of which are cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). THC is psychoactive, however, the psych activity of CBD is debatable. THC has been shown to induce anxiety, but whether CBD has any effect in the opposite direction is unclear. Researchers are looking at whether or not CBD can help persons in recovery from THC addiction and cravings.
Hemp refers to cannabis strains that contain 0.3% THC or less. The Farm Bill passed last year decriminalized hemp on a federal level but kept the FDA’s authority over cannabis-based goods intact.
Is CBD effective?
James MacKillop, co-director of McMaster University’s Michael G. DeGroote Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research in Hamilton, Ontario, said, “It’s promising in a lot of different therapeutic paths because it’s relatively safe.”
Purified CBD extract Epidiolex was licenced by the Food and Drug Administration last year for use in patients aged 2 and above with certain rare forms of epilepsy. This was based on the results of three randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials involving 516 patients. Studies like these, in which subjects and researchers are randomly assigned to either a placebo or active treatment group, are considered the gold standard in medicine.
Epidiolex is the only CBD-derived medicine currently approved by the FDA, although there is optimism for the treatment of additional illnesses using the plant extract. Cannabidiol’s present popularity has surpassed scientific understanding, and much of the study on it has been conducted on animals. Associate professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Johns Hopkins University, Ryan Vandrey, has commented, “We don’t have the 101 course on CBD exactly figured out yet.”
Does CBD help with anxiety?
A four-minute conversation with little time to prepare might be extremely challenging for children with generalised social anxiety. In contrast, a small study published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology reported that CBD appeared to lessen uneasiness and cognitive impairment in patients with social anxiety during a simulated public speaking assignment.
However, a double-blind study demonstrated that CBD had no effect on healthy volunteers’ emotional response to unpleasant images or phrases, whereas the placebo group showed significant improvement. Co-author and University of Chicago psychiatry and behavioural neuroscience professor Harriet de Wit stated, “If it’s a relaxing medicine, it should affect their responses to the stimuli.” But it didn’t happen.
Many returning service members suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which can cause them to shun anything that reminds them of their time overseas. The VA is supporting the first research to combine CBD with psychotherapy.
“Our top therapies seek to disrupt the relationship between reminders of the trauma and the fear response,” said Mallory Loflin, the study’s primary investigator and an assistant adjunct professor at the University of California, San Diego. We hypothesise that CBD can hasten this procedure, at least in animal models. Psychologists say there isn’t enough information to know if this treatment is effective just yet, despite the fact that large-scale clinical trials are already under way.
Cannabidiol (CBD): Does it Help Sleep and Depression?
Are you awake late at night and unable to stop watching cute puppy videos? Mr. MacKillop, co-author of a paper on cannabinoids and sleep, says that CBD shows promise as a sleep aid, as tiredness was reported as a side effect in the Epidiolex studies for epilepsy. It could be a lead in the search for new sleep therapies, he suggested.
However, he stresses that the children’s other seizure drugs may have contributed to the negative effects. There has not been a gold-standard study (a randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind experiment) on CBD and sleep problems.
Anxiety decreased, but sleep quality did not, in a recent chart study of 72 psychiatric patients treated with CBD. Dr. Scott Shannon, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado Denver and lead author of the review published in The Permanente Journal, stated, “Overall, we did not find that it panned out as a good treatment for sleep.”
Depression is one of many conditions that can cause sleep disruptions. According to a review published in the Journal of Chemical Neuroanatomy, CBD treatment improved stress tolerance and reduced depressive-like behaviour in rodents. In an email interview, SâmiaJoca, a fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies in Denmark and an associate professor at the University of So Paulo in Brazil, said, “Surprisingly, CBD seems to function faster than traditional antidepressants.” Of course, detecting depression in animals is challenging. However, the research that Ms. Joca and her colleagues analysed revealed that mice and rats treated with CBD were more resilient in models of chronic stress exposure.
Psychologists, however, warn that CBD’s effect on depression is still a hypothesis and not an evidence-based treatment until such time as clinical trials are conducted in humans.
Can you tell me about the medical uses of CBD?
CBD’s purported health advantages extend to a wide range of ailments. Common uses include alleviating symptoms of stress, anxiety, inflammation, and sleeplessness.
One study suggested that CBD’s effects on the endocannabinoid system’s receptors could provide pain relief. This system is involved in the regulation of pain, emotion, memory, and many other physiological and cognitive processes.
Not enough human trials have been conducted to make product or dosage recommendations at this time.
Patients suffering from seizure disorders may also benefit from CBD. The first CBD-containing prescription medicine for epilepsy was approved by the FDA in 2018.”It’s not a novel idea to use CBD to treat seizures. This is something we’ve been discussing for years “Apparently, as Dr. Chung explains.
Although cannabidiol (CBD) has shown success in treating certain types of seizures, its applicability to other forms of epilepsy remains unclear.
Additional study is required before conclusive conclusions can be drawn about CBD’s efficacy in treating various medical disorders, as suggested by a 2017 report from the World Health Organization [PDF].
Some patients report improvement while others do not, according to Dr. Janet White, medical director of the Cedars-Sinai Integrative Health Program.
There just isn’t enough data from randomized controlled trials with humans to make any firm recommendations on dosage.
