How CBD Helps Mitigate COVID-19’s Deadliest Symptom

cbd for covid symptoms

It seems we’re going to have to live with COVID-19 for some time now, as the virus continues to ravage the world. There is no better time than right now to take care of your health in order to reduce the risk of contracting this deadly virus.

While not everyone who gets COVID-19 dies, a majority of those who do, seem to suffer the most when a cytokine storm occurs. This cytokine storm is what many refer to as what happens when the body’s natural immune response “betrays” the body as it ends up killing you, as a result of trying to fight the virus.

But scientists say that cannabidiol (CBD) can actually save lives while reducing damage from the cytokine storm, and the respiratory illnesses that occur because of it. In a normal, healthy human, the body will release a fixed quantity of cytokines to the bloodstream whenever there is an infection or inflammation detected by the immune system. The cytokines converge at the site, then send signals to the white blood cells which of the cells or virus to kill. Once the infected cell has been attacked, the cytokines then disperse.

But in the case of COVID-19, the immune system tends to overeact and release far too many cytokines to the blood. The immune system then begins attacking the body’s healthy cells instead of the coronavirus, causing high fever, fatigue, nausea, and inflammation. This is when the cytokine storm can become life threatening that it attacks too many cells and resulting in organ failure.

“Basically, most of your cells will die because of the cytokine storm. It eats away at the lung. They cannot recover.. it seems to play a role in death in a large number of cases,” explains virologist Mukesh Kumar.

July 2020 Study

A study released in July 2020, conducted by researchers from the Dental College of Georgia and the Medical College of Georgia found that CBD was helpful for COVID-19 patients with respiratory illness. It was found to be effective in helping them avoid serious medical intervention by way of using ventilation, thus avoiding death from acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).

The researchers also discovered that pure CBD was successful in helping the lungs heal from extreme inflammation, which is what leads to a cytokine storm, caused by the virus. It also helped restore normal levels of oxygen within the body. To check how efficient CBD was for the symptoms, the researchers studied the lung function of mice and measured oxygen levels, proinflammatory cytokines and their temperature, which indicates inflammation. When given CBD therapy, their oxygen levels increases while cytokine levels and temperature went down.

Physical and clinical symptoms of lung health due to ARDS were actually reversed once CBD was administered, says the researchers. CBD didn’t just improve the mice’s lung clinical symptoms, but detailed studies found that damage in lung tissue, as well as scarring, overgrowth, and swelling, were also either partially or completely resolved.

According to interim associate dean for research and immunologist Dr. Babak Baban, also a co-author for the study: “ARDS is a major killer in severe cases of some respiratory viral infections, including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and we have an urgent need for better intervention and treatment strategies.”

“It was dramatic in both directions,” Dr. Baban says, talking about the improved apelin levels in the lung tissue and blood.

“CBD almost brought it back to a normal level,” says Dr. Jack Yu, a physician scientist and chief of pediatric plastic surgery at the Medical College of Georgia.

“Ideally with ARDS it would increase in areas of the lungs where it’s needed to improve blood and oxygen flow to compensate and to protect,” explains Baban. Though they need to do more studies to find out if all credit can be given to CBD when it comes to explaining the apelin levels, they say that it indeed played an important role.

It seems like a possibility that the COVID-19 virus reduces something that in turn suppresses the amount of apelin, and the presence of CBD interferes in this mechanism.

“It is an association; we don’t know yet about causative, but it is a very good indicator of the disease,” says Baban.

The coronavirus enters our cells through the ACE2 receptor. “The spike proteins have just the right docking mechanism,” says Yu. And the ACE2 and apelin have a lot of similarities, most especially the fact that many tissues and cells in the body contain both. While ACE2 and apelin join forces to reduce blood pressure and promote a healthy cardiovascular system, the presence of COVID-19 affects this relationship. The virus tends to bind to the ACE2 receptor, decreasing its levels while increasing levels of angiotensin II which is a blood vessel constrictor. “Instead of ACE2 helping blood vessels relax, it helps the virus get into the host where it makes more virus instead of helping the lungs relax and do their job,” Yu explains.

“The apelinergic system is a very, very ubiquitous signaling system,” says Yu. Apelin serves important functions throughout the body, and its levels may increase or decrease depending on the need. However, it is constantly measurable in the lungs, which is why it is a significant biomarker.

The findings are not surprising, considering that CBD’s prowess as a powerful anti-inflammatory is well-known. Studies over the last few years have found the same results over and over again, which is why people of all ages have turned to CBD to treat a number of life-threatening diseases caused by inflammation.

Given this study, scientists are hopeful that CBD can be beneficial in the treatment and reversal of fatal damage in the lungs caused by COVID-19. However, this is only the first study of its kind to show these results, and we do need more studies but it would not hurt to protect yourself as early as now by consuming CBD.