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The rising number of people who exist in a state of extreme stress for long periods of time is becoming something of an epidemic. Many are working multiple jobs, trying to pay off debts, and just fighting to keep their head above water on a day to day basis. It’s no wonder that an estimated 8 in 10 Americans feel stressed on any given day.
At the same time, there has been a growing movement about the potential use of CBD products for a variety of medical conditions. This comes from the repeal of laws against medical marijuana and CBD, a product derived from cannabis or hemp plants that does not contain the psychoactive elements that make you high.
Instead, medical communities are finding that CBD can actually help with a lot of issues, such as pain, nausea, as well as mental health. There have been a number of important studies in recent years that are hinting at the potential of CBD to help reduce and manage stress.
What Is CBD?
CBD, or cannabidiol, is a natural compound that can be extracted from both a marijuana plant or a hemp plant. When extracted from marijuana, it tends to be more potent but also may still fall under marijuana laws and regulations.
Cannabidiol is a naturally occurring compound in our bodies that binds to specific receptors in our brain that affect things such as pain, mood, and seizures. You may have heard that marijuana can be an effective drug to reduce anxiety, stress, depression, and other mental health disorders.
In fact, that is only partially true. When taken in small doses, some studies have found that it can help reduce symptoms of anxiety and stress by a little. However, it can also make the symptoms worse at higher doses. The problem lies in THC, the psychoactive component in cannabis that makes you feel high, which as a side effect can cause anxiety and panic in some people.
That’s where CBD saves the day.
Can CBD Help Relieve My Stress?
In short, yes it can.
Specifically, CBD can be a safe and natural supplement to help treat stress and anxiety in very effective ways. It can also be combined with things like yoga, mindfulness meditation, and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as a highly effective total stress treatment plan. That’s why things like Joy Organics wholesale CBD program are growing in popularity among healthcare professionals who deal with treating stress and anxiety disorders, as well as the health fallout such issues can cause.
In the last 10 years there have been a number of important studies that have shown how CBD can help treat stress disorders.
One study in 2010 tested the effects of CBD on people with generalized social anxiety disorder. The results found that it reduced people’s levels of anxiety when they are in social situations that would normally be stressful for them. Not only that, brain scans actually revealed that CBD altered the flow of blood in areas of your brain that affect your stress levels. This resulted in an alteration for how the test subjects’ brains reacted to their usual sources of anxiety.
Another study in 2015 tested the ability of CBD as a treatment for a variety of mental health issues, such as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The study noted that “stress is an important contributor to anxiety disorders, and traumatic stress exposure is essential to the development of PTSD”, and their experiment concluded that the study “strongly supports the potential for CBD as a treatment for anxiety disorders”.
Finally, in 2016 a study looked at how CBD can help with PTSD and insomnia, with results finding that when consumed CBD did help trial patients with reduced anxiety levels and improved sleep. Considering the impact that stress can have on sleep, and the lack of sleep on stress levels, the ability of CBD to improve the amount of restful sleep you can get is also hugely important.
In the end, there are still many more studies and additional research into the effects that CBD can have on someone’s stress. Whether it is how CBD simply reduces the stress we feel, how we react to stressful situations, or how much restful sleep we can get during stressful periods in our lives, it can be of great help to any of us carrying a large weight on our shoulders.