CBD for Mental Health

Three components of mental health; emotional well-being, psychological well-being and social well-being.

• CBD FOR ANXIETY

• CBD FOR PTSD

• CBD FOR OCD

Let’s talk about “Post – traumatic stress disorder”,

 CBD Oil for PTSD is a wonderful life changing idea!

But you know, there’s this concept that the only people who suffer with PTSD are combat veterans, and while many vets do, it’s estimated 70% of American adults have experienced a very stressful event at least once in their lives.

How about the millions who go through heavy amounts of stress and anxiety Monday through Friday as par for the 21st century course?

My Best friend Damien has dealt with PTSD since 2006, not because he went to The Sandbox, but because in college at the time he was a pretty hardcore adrenaline junkie. One day he brought his nervous system too far, and snap, the next morning he woke up to a completely different world.

A world of hourly panic attacks.

An agoraphobic world (fear of wide open spaces) where he basically lived in hoodies (he still looked cute in my eyes).

A world of anxiety, alarm, and hyper-alertness; his mind constantly searching for threats that didn’t exist.

A world without peaceful sleep where you wake up unexpectedly in the middle of the night feeling like you’re being strangled by an invisible foe.

A world of irregular appetite and digestion.

Whatever, you get the idea. It sucked. It took years to subside, but subside it did. Anxiety is a part of all of our lives but Damien has been using hemp CBD oil for PTSD since 2014 and loves it.

Listen, if you deal with anxiety and PTSD you REALLY need to do some serious looking into hemp-based cannabidiol, or CBD extracts. Marijuana’s getting all the press in this department but the hemp plant, also a member of the cannabis family, deserves some attention too!

Whole Plant Hemp CBD Oil and Fear Extinction

In both animal and placebo-controlled human studies CBD has proven to be effective at helping the psyche release stored mental trauma, not create or embellish it. This is known as fear extinction. We’re talking about the endocannabinoid system (ECS) using phytocannabinoids like CBD to essentially “subdue” or “dilute” traumatic memories on the cellular level so they no longer impair us.

Over the last couple years working with and in HempforFitness.com and researching cannabis, nothing has been more astounding to me than the way our ECS utilizes cannabinoids on the neurological level.

And this was first notably theorized on by one of the godfathers of cannabis research Dr. Mechoulam in the mid-60s, namely that our cannabinoid receptor-filled brains, when helped, can adequately repair neural connections (memories) that excessively/irregularly trigger our fight or flight mechanisms.

A very traumatic experience creates memories that have a tremendous influence on us, which in an ideal world helps us survive. And to a degree they’re beneficial. But these mechanisms can go haywire and paralyze us…completely throwing our brain chemistry out of balance. Furthermore, too much stress and anxiety overwhelms the natural system and without supplemental help, for most of us, we eventually we lose homeostasis.

Well CBD, or cannabidiol, is all about restoring homeostasis to our brain chemistry in a safe way without negative side effects. Unlike THC, it’s completely anti-psychotic. THC can exacerbate fear and anxiety. That’s well known. It doesn’t happen to everyone, but it sucks. Damien can only stand very small doses of THC.

Anything more will send him into a panic-stricken tailspin of epic proportions. I’ve seen Damien ingest some cannabis with really high THC and near non-existent CBD levels and effectively become useless for about three hours. It wasn’t pleasant. Even if the ratio of CBD to THC is something like 10:1, if that “1” means 100mg of THC…oh man. It can be rough for people like him who are already naturally high-strung but also predisposed to anxiety because of a traumatic episode(s) in their past or childhood.

With hemp-based CBD extracts that’s impossible because there’s simply too little THC.

Hemp CBD: The Anti-High Approach to PTSD

Here’s a fact, in states with “medical cannabis” painkiller and antidepressant/anxiety pill usage is dropping by roughly 25%. But I couldn’t begin to tell you how many people I’ve read, or listened to, or heard about that see much higher reductions.

And that includes tons of vets who are often using cocktails that mix both.

In reality, despite the fact levels are pretty low, it’s the CBD in modern marijuana strains that are working these wonders. It’s CBD that provides the brunt of anti-psychotic, analgesic (pain relief), neuro-protective, anti-seizure, anti-depressant, and anti-inflammatory benefits.

For example, in the results of Care by Design’s survey of thousands of patients using CBD-rich cannabis medicines, released in Sep 2015, they found:

“THC matters. Patients using the 4:1 CBD-to-THC were the most likely to report a reduction in pain or discomfort, and improvements in mood and energy. Patients using the 2:1 CBD-to-THC ratio reported the greatest improvement in overall wellbeing. This finding is consistent with scientific research indicating that CBD and THC interact synergistically to enhance one another’s therapeutic effect.”

This is misleading. THC doesn’t matter as much as the cannabis industry seems to want people to believe (so they’ll spend now billions on their products in dispensaries) when it comes to treating psychological issues and fear extinction. For that ratios should be much higher in CBD and lower in THC.

These folks weren’t given the option to try a hemp-based CBD extract with much higher CBD to THC ratios. One of our hemp oils offers 25: to less than 1 CBD to THC. It’s amazing…and legal.

And besides, the folks in this survey are lucky enough to have access to medical cannabis in CA. Millions upon millions and millions of people can’t use products with high THC. Hemp is their only viable option for effective cannabinoids and it’s a damn good one that doesn’t get the PR it deserves.

I can speak from direct experience, and based on everything I’ve been exposed to over the last couple years.

All the CBD research is there. There’s endless amounts of anecdotal evidence. CBD is the anti-psychotic, anti-anxiety, and anti-depressant cannabinoid. THC levels can be VERY low, as low as they are in industrial hemp extracts, and people will still see the tremendous PTSD benefits.

So the question for people really is where to get it.

The Three Sources of CBD Today

Here they are in all their modern glory. Consider the current cost of conventional/no anxiety, depression, and PTSD treatment in your life and then figure out what’s important.

1. Marijuana: This is the shorter bushier cannabis plant with all those pungent flowers and buds that almost always contain higher levels of THC. Tons of people don’t want or need this much THC, and it causes a fair amount of legal issues for many folks as well. So even if they have access to marijuana strains with very low THC and high CBD, because it’s “Marijuana” it brings tons of state/federal red tape!

2. Synthetics: As of yet these Big Pharma attempts at copying plant-based cannabinoids or targeting the ECS through synthetics have been failures. We simply do not have the technology yet to do better than Mother Nature and “whole plant” cannabinoids.

3. Industrial Hemp: This is the much taller cannabis plant that’s been used by humans throughout recorded history primarily for rope, fiber, oil, textiles, paper, etc. In modern times however, we’ve figured out how to extract CBD from the plant and concentrate it. And, since industrial hemp naturally has extremely low levels of THC, it’s LEGAL and can’t intoxicate you. Hemp concentrates can have high levels of CBD with fiber-class levels of THC (0.03% or less) and because they’re “hemp” they don’t come with as much red tape.

Make sense?

Either “Marijuana” with higher amounts of THC, synthetic pharmaceutical concoctions, or Industrial “Hemp” with higher levels of CBD and very low THC levels. While we here at HempforFitness.com can’t make any promises, we highly encourage you to give industrial hemp-based whole plant CBD extract, oil, or pastes a try.

Visit our store and see if hemp CBD oil for PTSD is a viable option for you. It’s worth it.

They’re legal. They’re clean and lab certified. They won’t get you high or cause you to feel intoxicated, but they’ll give your body good doses of CBD it can use to provide anxiety, depression, and the PTSD relief.

Have a Hempy Happy Day.

Marjan Mendelsohn