Fact or Fiction: What Health Issues Can CBD Actually Help You With?

cbd fact or fiction

CBD has exploded in popularity over the past few years. An increased number of people are learning that it is a natural supplement that can be used to treat many different health issues. Unfortunately, because CBD is relatively new, there really isn’t a lot of confirmed research regarding how it works and what it helps with.

One issue that is arising is sellers looking to take advantage of people’s relative ignorance about what is true and what isn’t regarding CBD. You can find yourself getting a lot of low quality or even dangerous CBD products based on false or misleading medical claims. If you want to be able to sort out the facts from the fiction, you can use this quick guide to get a good foundation of knowledge on CBD.

Fact: Pain Relief

One of the longest known discoveries about CBD is how it interacts with the endocannabinoid system (ECS) of your body. Your ECS regulates a few different things, including how you experience pain. CBD specifically binds to the receptors of your ECS so you do not feel pain as intensely as you would otherwise. It also has anti-inflammatory properties, which reduces swelling and pain associated with it.

Fiction: Addiction Treatment

Some addiction recovery centers are starting to use CBD to help treat people looking to overcome addiction. However, there is some confusion about exactly how CBD can help. Withdrawal symptoms is the most dangerous part of any recovery from addiction to hard drugs and long-time alcohol abuse, and CBD is used to help reduce the severity of those.

However, there is no hard evidence that CBD can be used to treat addiction by reducing the dependence or cravings someone has on a drug. There is some small evidence that it might help, but for now this should be considered fiction.

Fact: Stress and Anxiety Relief

Another benefit of CBD confirmed by research is reducing the levels of anxiety and stress that someone has. In fact, one study used it to reduce PTSD symptoms in children including insomnia. More research needs to be done to specifically figure out how CBD helps improve people’s mental health, including what the right dose should be.

In the meantime, people who are very stressed or have chronic mental illness issues can try CBD as a low-risk way to reduce their symptoms. Considering the harsher side effects of stronger prescription medication used to treat anxiety and depression, some people may find they can use something like New Leaf Botanics CBD instead.

Fiction: Acne Treatment

This is a partial fiction, similar to the assertion that CBD can be used for addiction treatment. The issue with acne is that there are several potential reasons why someone may have acne, or experience a breakout. It can be excessive oil, genetics, hormones, bacteria, inflamed skin, and more.

CBD is a known anti-inflammatory, which means for people who have acne due in large part to inflamed skin then CBD may be able to help. Some early findings in research have shown that CBD may also help with some hormone-based acne issues, but this is another area where more research is needed to confirm whether this is true or not.

Fact: Cancer Symptoms

One of the earliest uses for CBD was in helping people undergoing chemotherapy treatments to reduce the severe nausea side effects. Being able to reduce nausea and vomiting and improve a patient's appetite is an important part of treatment recovery. In fact, one study found that a combination of CBD with THC was better at reducing nausea from chemotherapy than standard treatment. There is also some evidence from early studies that CBD can kill cancer cells and may have antitumor properties.

Fiction: Pet Supplement

Another increasingly popular CBD product is pet supplements, either in lower dose forms of CBD oil, or with pet treats that have CBD infused. The general idea is the same as using CBD for humans, to relieve anxiety, and pain in older, sick, and anxious pets.

This is something that people should be extremely cautious with. If there isn’t that much research into how CBD affects humans, there’s even less for how it affects pets. However, some CBD strains have been found to be toxic in dogs and cats. This is especially true for CBD products that contain any THC.

Fact: Seizure Relief

A lot of research has been done into the neuroprotective properties of CBD, specifically in how it helps people with seizures. One study found that people with severe epilepsy were given CBD oil and had their seizures reduced by 36.5%. Another study done on children with a complex form of epilepsy called Dravet syndrome also had their seizures reduced in frequency.

There should be some caution, however. CBD has also been found to cause adverse side effects in some patients who have seizures, and not everyone with epilepsy found that CBD helped at all. Considering there is no single treatment that seems to work on all epileptics, that maybe shouldn’t be a surprise.

Fiction: It Has No Side Effects

The adverse reactions for some epileptics touches on another big myth for CBD, and you should be wary of anyone or any business that claims that CBD has no side effects. While it’s true that CBD’s side effects are minor, especially compared to some stronger prescription medication, there are still some common side effects, such as:

Dizziness

Low blood pressure

Diarrhea

Fatigue

None of these issues are long term, or severe, but you should keep this in mind if you already have these problems and don’t want to have them worsen.

If there is anything that you take from this guide on the facts and fiction surrounding CBD, it is to be careful about what you read when people claim about what it can do. The truth is that even when there are studies to confirm that CBD can help with some issues in general, there is still a lot we do not know about how it works and why it helps. At most, CBD should be viewed as a supplement, and not a miracle cure for anything. If you read a claim about CBD that sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Make sure you ask your doctor or do your own research from independent and reliable sources.