Hi! Get a little anxiety from time to time? Who doesn't! Living with it daily, is a problem.
I'm staying outside the spiritual and mindfulness self assessment path on this post - and strictly focusing on the healing benefits of the medicinal plant world that we rely on and share a rich existence with.
General Anxiety an depression is at all ages and ranges, and has put mental health awareness on the rise.
Life events, work stressors to menopause hormonal shifts easily effects our brains activity level - in which holds us back from living life at it's best.
I recently ran across some stressful U.S. statistics:
- 48% of people say stress and anxiety has a negative effect on their life and work.
- 78% experience physical symptoms caused by stress and 73% experience psychological symptoms.
- 48% say stress has increased for them in the last 5 years.
if you’re one of those people, cannabinoid medicine
might be able to help you.
Image: Doen
What Is CBD, and How Does It Work?
CBD, or cannabidiol, is a chemical compound found exclusively in the cannabis plant. Unlike THC, CBD does not cause a high. Because of its increasing evidence of its numerous health benefits. One benefit seen from many of our CBD users, is the experience of less anxiety.
Getting Happy - Go - Lucky.
How tho?
Experts believe that it reduces anxiety by influencing what’s going on in your brain. Your brain is an astoundingly complex system that controls every interaction in your body. Every thought and feeling you have is the result of its billions of nerve cells and chemicals, which are constantly interacting together.
Usually, all these chemical reactions go smoothly and you feel happy and healthy, but sometimes the chemicals cause feelings that you don’t want, like anxiety. Experts believe that when this happens, CBD can be used to change the chemistry in your brain and throughout your body, and get things running smoothly again.
Those who had taken cbd experienced significantly less anxiety and discomfort than those who received the placebo.
Evidence: The anecdotal evidence on CBD is abundant, which has brought many men and women to a fork in the road of choosing CBD a try for their anxiety
Receptor Systems in the Brain
>> The brain contains large numbers of highly specialized cells called neurons.
>> Each neuron connects to many others through structures called synapses.
>> These are sites where one neuron communicates to another by releasing chemical messengers known as neurotransmitters.
A neuron’s sensitivity to a specific neurotransmitter depends on whether or not it contains a receptor that “fits” that transmitter. If a neuron contains receptors that match a particular neurotransmitter, then it can respond directly to that transmitter. All neurons contain multiple neurotransmitter receptors, allowing them to respond to some neurotransmitters but not others.
Plant Medicine & Receptors
Brain receptors are not only sensitive to neurotransmitters produced naturally within the brain, like dopamine or serotonin, but also chemical messengers produced outside the body, such as plant cannabinoids like THC or CBD.
So when you ingest an edible or tonic, the components travel through your bloodstream, and enter your brain. Once they arrive, these plant-derived compounds influence brain activity by interacting with receptors on neurons. But they don’t interact with all neurons, just the ones that have the appropriate receptors.
CBD and the Receptor Systems [and the misconceptions]
Although it is a cannabinoid, CBD does not directly interact with the two classical cannabinoid receptors (CB1 and CB2). Instead, it affects signaling through CB1 and CB2 receptors indirectly. This partly explains why, in contrast to THC, CBD is non-intoxicating. In addition to its indirect influence on the CB1 and CB2 receptors, CBD can increase levels of the body’s own naturally-produced cannabinoids (known as endocannabinoids) by inhibiting the enzymes that break them down.
Even more intriguing: CBD also influences many non-cannabinoid receptor systems in the brain, interacting with receptors sensitive to a variety of drugs and neurotransmitters.
CBD & Opioids
These include opioid receptors, known for their role in pain regulation. Opioid receptors are the key targets of pharmaceutical pain killers and drugs of abuse such as morphine, heroin, and fentanyl.
CBD can also interact with dopamine receptors, which play a crucial role in regulating many aspects of behavior and cognition, including motivation and reward-seeking behavior.
This raises the intriguing possibility that CBD’s ability to influence either opioid or dopamine receptors may underlie its ability to dampen drug cravings and withdrawal symptoms, effects directly relevant to the treatment of addiction.
CBD and a Happy Serotonin System
CBD’s ability to target a specific serotonin receptor, the serotonin 1A receptor, is associated with a remarkable range of therapeutic possibilities.
Professor Roger Pertwee, a pharmacologist from the University of Aberdeen, spoke with Leafly about this aspect of CBD biology.
“It’s apparent ability to enhance the activation of serotonin 1A receptors supports the possibility that it could be used to ameliorate disorders that include: opioid dependence, neuropathic pain, depression and anxiety disorders, nausea and vomiting (e.g. from chemotherapy), and negative symptoms of schizophrenia,” he said. “One big unanswered question is what the human clinical relevance and importance of each of these potential therapeutic uses of CBD, identified solely by examining data from non-human preclinical research, actually is.”
CBD Partnering with Complex Pharmacology
Understanding CBD’s neurological effects is a complicated business, because of the wide variety of receptors with which it interacts. But that complexity may be the key to its promise as a therapeutic agent.
Motivational disorders like addiction and anxiety are themselves highly complex; they arise from incompletely understood causes that span multiple receptor systems and neural networks in the brain. CBD’s complex, multi-target effects may therefore be crucial to its potential for aiding the treatment of such disorders. Over the coming years, researchers will continue to further understand this complexity and uncover the full scope of CBD’s therapeutic potential.
So How Do I Use It?
Unfortunately, since CBD hasn’t been officially approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a treatment for anxiety, there are no official guidelines on how to use it if you decide to do so. Most experts recommend starting with a low dose, and working your way up slowly, taking note of how it makes you feel. Everybody reacts differently to CBD
Studies state 300-600mg per day brings relief.
A lot of people do seem to be finding their own sweet spot. In a 2017 survey of 2,400 people from the medicinal cannabis community, researchers found that the majority use CBD products, and the most common medical condition they are using it for is anxiety.
Most of the CBD-users in this study reported that CBD works very well, with 42 percent saying that they have actually stopped using traditional medications now that they use CBD. Great news!
As noted, research validates that starting with 300-600mg can benefit the user. From my experience, this is good starting place to begin building on your specific needs. Most likely, the body's not just experiencing "anxiety." Theres a root origin that intertwines a myriad of physiological and mental symptoms together. So in conclusion, as an adaptogen like compound, the receptors feed what is most deficient first.
Find our Advanced Terpene Rich + Broad Spectrum 300MG CBD HERE.
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.What About the Risks?
The good news is that despite the lack of FDA approval, people commonly take CBD for anxiety and a wide range of other health and wellness benefits, and negative side effects don’t seem to be too common.
Many people prefer CBD—clinically tested or not—to other common anti-anxiety drugs since these other options can cause some fairly unpleasant side effects; things like confusion, muscle weakness, and vomiting. Anti-anxiety medications can also be very addictive. In one 2017 review researchers conclude that the potential side effects of CBD are generally much more tolerable than those from alternative medications.
Here are eight lifestyle antidotes to be aware of when addressing anxiety and stress:
Keep your relationships strong. You may have 1,000 Facebook Friends and 500 LinkedIn connections, but do you have at least a few close relationships with people who care about you and whom you trust? These are people where you have regular interactions in more than 140 character sound-bites: where you speak about what’s really going on with you and find support and encouragement.
Resolve conflicts quickly. Do you have unresolved relationship tension that’s causing stress? Are you holding a grudge? Maybe it’s time to deal with these and move on. Trying to avoid relationship challenges is usually more draining long-term than having that difficult but needed conversation now.
Don’t worry. Worrying is stressful. It saps energy, life, creativity and resilience. We all worry; the key is not getting stuck there. There are several ways out:
Ask for help. One way out of worry may involve asking a boss, mentor or co-worker for advice or for a hand in getting something done. Or maybe you find yourself taking too long to complete a task because you’re over-analyzing it. If so, collaborate with a “doer” to help you get to decision and action. Delegate. Pray. Or all of the above.
Be thankful. It is amazing how remembering to be grateful can positively shift perspective and reduce worry and stress. How might you develop and maintain an attitude of gratitude?
Stay positive. With bad news, difficult circumstances, Debbie Downers and Doug and Wendy Whiners all around us, focusing intentionally on the good can be like swimming upstream. Get time with positive people. And mix inspirational reading and reflection into your day so your thought life and attitude isn’t governed purely by your intake of news and entertainment.
Do what’s important. Some of us are addicted to busyness; and it’s easy to get busy with stuff that’s not really important. Clarifying what is important and where we really want to say “yes” makes it easier to say “no” to distractions that just wind up creating more stress.
Take care of yourself. Find an exercise routine that works for you. Eat well. Get the rest you need. These habits make a huge difference when it comes to increasing your energy and preventing and coping with stress.
Resource: https://www.leafly.com/news/science-tech/what-does-cbd-do
