CBD works on stress and anxiety; let me teach you how.
The Revolutionary and Evolutionary Endocannabinoid System
We all have an endogenous (“from within”) cannabinoid (“inner cannabis”) ancient signaling network functioning tirelessly inside our brains and our bodies.
Every human, in fact, every creature with a vertebrate makes cannabinoids and has an endocannabinoid system within.
In response to problems in our cells & organs, Our body makes “inner cannabis molecules” called ‘endocannabinoids’ which travel signaling pathways seeking out imbalance. They interact with receptors literally throughout the entire body.
It turns out our endocannabinoid system is a central component to the health and healing of all humans. The funny thing is- it does this with or without adding cannabis!
CBD And The Cannabis Plant
The Cannabis Plant
- The cannabis plant makes cannabinoids, too.
- They are called ‘phytocannabinoids’.
- ‘Phyto’ is the Greek word for “plant”.
- Phytocannabinoids, like CBD and THC and our own cannabinoids work in symphony within this: Ancient Healing Signaling Network, the ECS.
How CBD Helps
- In this blog post, you will learn about the ECS and its primary endocannabinoid, anandamide.
- I talk about CBD’s therapeutic effect on anxiety and depression.
- Finally, I address dosing and other practicalities.
CBD for anxiety or pain
Our Primary Endocannabinoid, Anandamide-The Bliss Molecule!
Anandamide molecules contribute to an overall sense of wellness. Here’s an example: it was recently discovered that a flood of endocannabinoids and not endorphins cross the blood-brain barrier and rewards us with improved mood, decreased pain and less anxiety after a good workout.
This same boost of anandamide occurs during focused “flow” states such as when playing music, surfing or painting. We can thank our ECS for this lovely productive state of creative attention.
Anandamide levels are raised by orgasm, running and dancing. In fact, singing raises anandamide levels by 42%!
It’s fun to know this but it’s also useful to contemplate how the phytocannabinoids copies and improves on many of anandamide’s internal actions.
Exactly how it does this is emerging science and not completely understood yet. (Sulak, 2019) However, we do know this; it is astounding just how many diverse molecular targets endocannabinoids and phytocannabinoids signal to promote both mental and physical balance. (Zou & Kumar, 2018).
A lot of different target activity explains how cannabis can be several medications in one plant. This plant has so much more capabilities than people realize.
A Good Case Scenario to Supplement Your ECS with CBD
So we have these molecules, called endocannabinoids, especially anandamide, that are so good at taming stress and anxiety our body makes them on demand from fatty acids, but they are used up very quickly.
Chronic stress and anxiety cause our ECS to work as hard as it can to make endocannabinoids, but this type of daily strain just burns it out. Then endocannabinoid production really goes into slow mode. And the cannabinoid receptors become harder to target. Once this happens, the body gets a message to stop making endocannabinoids.
This would be a good case scenario to boost your ECS because endocannabinoid deficiency will cause people to feel, at the very least, anxious and stressed.
CBD dosing for stress and anxiety
Cannabis educator and practitioner, Dr. Dustin Sulak, has a nice dosing schedule to treat anxiety with cannabis:
Dr: Sulak Daytime Starting CBD + THC dose: Take morning and afternoon. CBD 4mg + THC 1mg. Increase by CBD 4mg + THC 1mg every 3 days until you achieve satisfactory results or unwanted side effects. If you have unwanted effects, decrease your dose slightly. Max dose is CBD 40mg + THC 10mg.
(Reviewed in: Sulak, D. Strategies For Non-Psychoactive Cannabis Use @healer.com)
Why CBD helps with stress and anxiety
CBD works on stress and anxiety by keeping anandamide around longer providing us with its THC-like magic (remember Anandamide is our inner THC-but it doesn’t get us high. It just makes us feel balanced)
Synergizing CBD with THC advances the onset of action while the CBD makes its way up into the cells by a different pathway to work its own magic on excess stress.
Let’s Talk about Stress, Baby!
The stress reaction will always contain some aspect of what we call the “fight or flight” response because it is a hard-wired tool of evolution. In the wild, the faster we reacted to a threat the better we survived.
Modern day society seems to thrive on fight or flight, yet, it was never meant to be a chronic condition. The stress reaction is practically toxic! It floods the body with potent hormones, like cortisol and adrenaline. Fight or flight gives you high blood sugar since every bit of glucose in the body is released for energy. Then it demands your pancreas secretes extra insulin to deal with the elevated blood glucose level.
Doesn’t this sound hard on the body? Well, it is. When acute stress turns chronic, it causes a slew of health issues, from digestive problems, minor aches, and insomnia to pain. It has been linked to diabetes and increased risk for heart attack.
The ECS is constantly managing stress because it knows (because it’s an ancient healing network!) if you don’t deal with stress you may eventually be coping with the disease.
CBD for Stress at Work
“One Nation Under Stress”
These are hard times, Americans reported feeling stress and anger at the highest levels in a decade, according to a New York Time Gallup poll. This has coincided with a rise in US mortality rate caused by treatable deaths, opioid overdose, suicide and alcoholism. Americans are taking on more stress than before. And this was before the pandemic.
The weird thing about the stress response is that it doesn’t really separate whether you are actually in survival mode or if you just dislike your job. Cortisol, a hormone produced by the adrenal glands that helps improve resilience to stress, is still being released at higher than average levels. Cortisol also elevates blood sugar and blood pressure. Prolonged cortisol elevation is a precursor to multiple lifestyle diseases.
So, how do we tame all this stressful reactivity? Don’t stress it! Y’all don’t know it but you are superheroes; you have your own ancient healing network. You can tone your endocannabinoid system and upregulate your cannabinoids!
But, let’s add cannabis and see what happens!
Credit and Sources.
https://www.uclahealth.org/cannabis/learn-about-cannabis https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4789136/ https://www.uclahealth.org/cannabis/learn-about-cannabis https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/cannabidiol-cbd-what-we-know-and-what-we-dont-2018082414476 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163782717300619 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4285050/ https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00063/full#h4 https://www.projectcbd.org/science/how-cbd-works https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/551a/c70d936f954dd753a57060a99200445b510e.pdf?_ga=2.125378697.246901558.1563384817-1501280331.1560823882 https://www.royalqueenseeds.com/blog-a-look-at-cbd-and-its-effect-on-your-metabolism-n755 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00063/full#h4 https://www.projectcbd.org/science/how-cbd-works https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3079847/
