Here at our Downtown Orlando chiropractic office, we get a lot of questions regarding CBD oil and supplements. On today’s blog, we’ll talk about why you should or shouldn’t be taking it and what it does. Why is it important, and why is everyone talking about it?
Let’s start with this: there isn’t enough research yet to fully support it or to say it’s not beneficial. The research has been slow to come out on this. However, we have been carrying CBD products in the office here for over four years, and there’s some value to it that we have seen. I haven’t seen any side effects yet, and in the research, there are very few long-term side effects. Even the short-term side effects are typically pretty minor. The top four conditions that CBD oil helps with are pain, sleep, anxiety, and depression.
So, what does it do to assist with these conditions? CBD is short for cannabidiol. Cannabidiol is a part of marijuana, the non-THC part. The THC part is the euphoric part—the high part. CBD is this other chemical; it talks to different sets of receptors in your body. Would it surprise you that your body already has these endogenous cannabinoids, which means it’s already in there? There’s already CBD in your body working right now to stimulate those receptors, and when we take CBD oil, it’s really to accentuate the effects that come along with stimulating those receptors.
CBD works in two different ways in your body. First, it communicates with CB1 receptors, the cannabidiol or cannabinoid receptors in your central nervous system, which is your brain and your spinal cord. It also communicates directly with the immune system via CB2 receptors. Here at Nightlight, we treat pain every day, so let’s talk just about that and how it coordinates with that for a minute.
Suppose you’re already taking aspirin or some over-the-counter pain medication right now. In that case, it also currently interacts with your immune system and central nervous system or peripheral nervous system. The problem with that is that there are side effects. If you take these medications, these over-the-counter pain relievers every day, we know that there are long-term side effects that are not good for you.
CBD comes into play because it works on a different set of receptors to get the same outcome without the long-term side effects. There are a lot of different places to get CBD oil ever since they introduced the 2018 farm bill, which legalized it in all 50 states. The problem is that there’s probably a lot of variability in the CBD oil that is going around right now. It’s like comparing apples to oranges. Since this farm bill has come out, you’re going to see a lot less variability and a lot more codification. Companies are starting to use similar verbiage to compare similar things so that you can really know what’s best out there.
We carry two different product lines here at Nightlight—the first is by a company called Advanced Modern Medicine. It’s a tincture oil with a thousand milligrams of CBD, it’s CO2 extracted. But the problem with it, in my opinion, is that it has grapeseed oil added for delivery but it does deliver very well. The second product that we carry by Advanced Modern Medicine is a sleep product. It’s the same idea, with a thousand milligrams of CBD oil that you take over 30 days, with the addition of eight natural sleep aid chemicals that help get you to sleep. We also carry a Versea product, which is a delayed-release capsule. The good part about it is if you have a pancreas issue or gastroesophageal reflux disease, is that there are no added oils, so you don’t get that bad side effect. If you haven’t tried CBD for pain or sleep, we hope that this has made you feel a little bit more comfortable with it and know that you’re not going out and doing something illegal or dangerous, but something that could potentially help you.
