CBD For Anxiety: What You Should Know
All of us have experienced anxiety over certain situations in life. It’s a perfectly normal and healthy reaction and a part of our mind’s coping mechanism to stressful or adverse situations. It’s the time when this emotion stops being useful, becomes limiting to your personal development and becomes debilitating that anxiety can be considered a disorder. Anxiety disorder has become a prevalent mental health or neurodevelopmental disorder around the world, that a 2017 statistics from the World Health Organization put the estimated number of anxiety disorder sufferers across the globe at a whopping 284 million people. Another cause of concern is that the United States has at least 40 million people suffering from this condition.
That said, there is a pressing need for a long-term and effective solution in treating anxiety disorder. One of the most common traditional treatments for anxiety is use of anxiolytics or medications for anxiety. However, anxiolytics can have numerous unpleasant side effects just like any other psychiatric medications. On that note, health care professionals and anxiety sufferers alike were looking for a natural and effective alternative for treating anxiety, which led them to the compound called cannabidiol or CBD. Before deciding on switching to this option, there should be important information that you need to know about CBD as anxiety treatment.
CBD Has a Calming Effect on The Central Nervous System
CBD is known to positively react to the human body’s endocannabinoid system (ECS), which is a complex set of neurotransmitters that bind to cannabinoid receptors and cannabinoid receptor proteins that are expressed throughout the central nervous system and peripheral nervous system. It is also known that the ECS plays a role in managing anxiety and fear memory processing. CBD has a positive and calming reaction with ECS, which then regulates the receptor signaling to reduce anxiety to manageable and healthy levels. Due to the high prevalence rate of anxiety in the US and across the globe and the emerging trend of using CBD as a possible treatment for anxiety and other neurodevelopmental disorders, the website didCBDwork.com came up with a crowdsourcing project to gather extensive data, reports, user testimonials and scientific studies on the therapeutic and health effects of CBD in treating different medical conditions.
CBD Enhances Serotonin Production
Serotonin is fondly called the “happy chemical” due to its role in contributing to feelings of well-being and happiness. Our body produces serotonin as a reaction to happy and celebratory events. Sometimes, an imbalance in serotonin production can affect our mood and will have negative manifestations such as anxiety, depression and mood swings. CBD binds to the serotonin receptors responsible for the release of serotonin. Thus, in people with anxiety, CBD returns the normal production of serotonin to reverse the feeling of anxiety and replace it with positive feelings and emotions. Even though CBD is an FDA-approved treatment, experts still find it difficult to the right dosage. Nevertheless, manufacturers offer CBD dosage recommendations for anxiety through informative labels in their products, which helps consumers in finding the right dosage. You need to also keep in mind that finding the right dose depends on a wide array of factors, from weight and age to the intensity of the symptoms.
CBD Stabilizes Sleep Patterns
One of the effects of anxiety on the body is the disruption of the sleep pattern that leads to insomnia. Anxiety can affect the balance of other hormones and chemicals in the body, and this often includes melatonin and serotonin – the two hormones responsible for governing the sleep-wake cycle. People with anxiety will oftentimes find it difficult to fall asleep or stay asleep due to the imbalance in the production of sleep hormones and the disruption of sleep-related related brain receptors. CBD interacts directly with these receptors and the sleep hormones to get the body’s regular production of sleep hormones back on track to improve sleep quality and limit insomnia. People with anxiety who are well-rested will find themselves feeling refreshed and calm, which helps improve their mood.
CBD Has Potential Regenerative Effects on Hippocampal Neurons
For those of you who don’t know, the hippocampus is a region in the brain that is responsible for cognition and memory. In the case of people with depression or anxiety, this brain area tends to be smaller, which could explain some of the irrational thinking patterns related to these conditions. A 2013 study conducted on mice revealed that continuous administration of CBD can trigger hippocampal neurogenesis (the regeneration of neurons in the hippocampus). This has yet to be proven on human users, but the prospect of CBD’s regenerative properties in the brain neurons can open up new avenues for research on finding possible treatments for anxiety, depression and many other neuropsychiatric conditions. This possibility and discovery gives a bigger role for CBD as not just a health supplement but also a compound that can impact various brain areas and neurotransmitter receptors.
CBD is showing many health benefits, especially in treating psychological conditions such as anxiety. Scientific studies backing up the therapeutic properties of CBD in anxiety treatment have grown over the years and thus helps to establish its effectiveness as an alternate form of treatment. However, different individuals may have different reactions to the possible side effects of CBD, which is why you should need to consult a medical professional first before using the product. If the benefits of this treatment outweigh the discomforts of the side effects, then this is a product worth trying out for treating anxiety and other health conditions.
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