No, CBD Oil is Not the Modern Day Snake Oil

Stop Saying CBD Oil Is The Modern Day Snake Oil

cbd is snake oil

Cannabidiol (CBD) products are already mainstream, whether you admit it or not.

It can already be found at your neighborhood pharmacies, and soon it’ll be all over. CBD is so mainstream that if you haven’t heard about it until now, then you may as well have been living under a rock.

Because it’s so popular, many people might have the misconception that it’s just a trendy health product. That CBD oil is just like the latest smoothie, kale, or keto trend that went viral for a few months. Or what about traditional Chinese medicine, naturopathy, or homeopathy; “natural” alternatives to conventional medicine that have spawned cults of people claiming them to be the panacea of all time for just about every single thing? Tests have shown that these “methods” are pretty much useless, but neither are they harmless.

Then you have celebrities talking about CBD oil nonstop, and even over a dozen of them involved in their own cannabis business.

CBD oil can be used in a multitude of ways. You’ve got people putting it in their coffee, and even using them in their nighttime creams. It seems like a craze, everyone wants in on it… but there’s still a huge majority of people who are still in denial about the health benefits of CBD, and tout it as the “modern day snake oil”.

Let’s get things straight: snake oil substances are those that have NO REAL medicinal value. Snake oil is a term given to fraudulent health products, or things that have questionable benefits. In other words, it’s pseudo medicine.

Is CBD oil pseudo medicine?

Unlike “Snake Oil Medicine”, CBD Does Not Claim To Be A Cure All

While other forms of alternative medication claim to treat everything, cannabis does not. It does, however, have a long and impressive list of conditions it can help with, as well at least dozens of studies to back it up:

Alzheimer’s Disease

ALH

Cancer

Chronic pain

Diabetes

Epilepsy

Fibromyalgia

Gastrointestinal disorders

Hepatitis C

HIV

Huntington’s Disease

Migraines

Multiple Sclerosis

Parkinson’s Disease

Post-traumatic stress disorder

Rheumatoid arthritis

Sleep problems

Tourette’s

And that’s just some of it.

The FDA Approved A Pharmaceutical CBD-Based Drug

If you haven’t heard by now, the FDA has approved Epidiolex as of last year. Epidiolex is the first and only CBD-based medication that has ever been approved by the FDA; it’s used for treating Lennox-Gestaut Syndrome and Dravet’s Syndrome, two severe forms of epilepsy.

Although epilepsy is one of the most widely documented conditions that CBD can successfully treat, the reason why the FDA hasn’t approved the actual plant is… well… money. They’ve clearly sided with Big Pharma on this one, and that makes everything even more suspicious.

It isn’t rocket science: if the FDA legalized the actual cannabis plant, then Big Pharma wouldn’t be making money off of it.

The FDA is basically saying that there isn’t enough research to prove that CBD can treat epilepsy as well as other conditions and that’s why it’s still illegal. We’re living at a time when the government is turning a blind eye to science, since the only way that we can effectively prove the therapeutic benefits of CBD is by allowing scientists to do the necessary research though scientists themselves still face a lack of funding and several other bureaucratic obstacles to research.

You Have To Understand The Biochemistry Behind How CBD Works

Unlike essential oil peddlers, hardcore homeopathy advocates, and other forms of modern day snake oil medicine, there is actually a scientific explanation to how CBD works in the body. We all have an endocannabinoid system, and so do animals.

Discovering it was a long and tedious process.

It started in 1988, when the first cannabinoid receptor was found in a rat’s brain. The discovery, made by William Devane and Allyn Howlette, was groundbreaking. But it wasn’t until 1993 when a second cannabinoid receptor was discovered, but this time as part of the nervous and immune systems. They were given the names CB1 and CB2, and by 1992 Dr. Raphael Mechoulam found the first endocannabinoid, and from then on his team was responsible for many other revolutionary discoveries that elucidated how cannabis works in the human body.

When you do your research, you’ll also find that it’s important to keep your own endocannabinoid system healthy. Cannabis or CBD isn’t the only way to do so, because you can’t wait until you have cancer to turn to CBD and hope for a miracle. That just isn’t how it works.

Bottom line: when you look at the studies AND the anecdotal evidence, there’s just no compelling reason that a person in his right mind would be able to call CBD or cannabis as some form of modern-day snake oil.