Cannabis plants are generally broken down in categories, starting with hemp and marijuana. The chemicals in hemp and marijuana are present in their counterparts just in different quantities and ratios.
CBD and THC are the most important chemicals found and extracted from Cannabis plants, THC gives people feelings of intoxication and CBD supposedly helps with anxiety and sleep and other health and therapeutic benefits. While both THC and CBD are found in both Hemp and Marijuana the difference lies in the quantities.
THC is found in high concentrations in marijuana plants, which can be further broken down into strains and categories such as indica and sativa. This active ingredient is what makes marijuana consumption popular.
Hemp in contrast is typically classified as containing less than 0.3% THC, so only marijuana is generally sourced for THC.
Hemp has its own properties, like a high concentration of CBD. Unlike THC, CBD does not give you the same feelings of intoxication or impairment, but it has many soothing health benefits instead.
Health Benefits and Research
Extracted into oils and made into a large variety of products, CBD products have become increasingly popular over recent years and the CBD market has continued to expand and grow. The most well known benefits of CBD are as sleep aids and for anxiety but there are a variety of uses being tested to study the medicinal benefits.
Additionally, because the CBD chemical is a non psychoactive chemical which means it doesn’t have the same effect of impairment and getting people high, people can use CBD products to take advantage of all the health benefits without getting high or risking impairment in dangerous situations.
As CBD and hemp products are supposed to contain less than 0.3% THC they are generally not supposed to affect drug tests however that can be affected by the quality of the product itself and how refined it is. The best CBD tinctures will have high quality control and will affect drug tests.
The FDA itself finally approved a pure CBD product called Epidiolex which has been designed to help fight the risk of seizures in small kids after seeing successful results from trials and tests.
CBD has been said to help people with various mental and emotional discomforts but putting together accurate tests and measuring results to study the effects on people can be tricky. Some double blind studies reported no changes in emotional state, other studies showed no results when being used as a sleep aid but instead showed a correlation with mitigating anxiety.
Being tested for a variety of therapeutic research purposes, CBD oil and products do seem to be able to help people with Insomnia initially with many different sleeping tinctures or tonics on the market already.
While emotional responses in otherwise healthy people seem to be unaffected by CBD oil, other studies show more promising results in alleviating some of the symptoms of depression.
Unlike the study focused on sleep aids and insomnia that turned inconclusive, when studying the effects of CBD on depression specifically one of the side effects was noted as drowsiness.
Closing thoughts
Studying sleep, depression and other emotional and mental faculties is challenging with many possible disruptions and variables that can affect the studies. Even when using double blinds results can be biased and skewed without effective controls.
While results can be inconclusive at the moment there are many potential benefits and very little risk or harm from CBD which is why it is proving to be a very popular choice for new alternate therapies and treatments.
