How Can CBD Help You Improve Your Sleep?

Stress and anxiety are major causes of Insomnia. Because CBD might help with these causes, it’s thought to improve your sleep. This article talks about CBD, how it can improve your sleep, how much you should take for your Insomnia and different forms of CBD.

CBD has a wide range of health benefits, including pain and inflammation relief and reducing anxiety levels and stress. CBD and THC are claimed to have sedative effects when used together. However, more research is still ongoing to know how CBD can improve your sleep. Stress, Post-traumatic events and a change in sleeping habits are major causes of Insomnia. While there are vast options for improving your sleeping patterns, more people are opting for CBD as a more natural way of dealing with Insomnia.

Introduction to CBD

CBD is one of the main active compounds of the cannabis plant. Although over 100 compounds are re-found in the cannabis plant, including terpenes and flavonoids, the most common compounds are THC and CBD. CBD is usually known to have a wide range of health benefits, which is why several companies have come up with several products such as Oil, vape liquid and edibles such as gummies and cookies that offer a wide range of benefits for CBD.

Research is still underway to know how CBD causes its various benefits. The existing research is mostly done on animals, so more human research is still underway. However, existing research has shown the great possibility of CBD being used for various health problems such as anxiety and depression. One most intriguing benefits of CBD is its ability to affect sleeping patterns.

How can CBD help you improve your sleep?

CBD has been found to have several health benefits, such as reducing anxiety, stress and pain. However, more research is being conducted on how CBD might affect your sleeping cycle.Its ability to help with some of the causes of Insomnia might help improve your sleeping cycle. Here are many ways CBD can help those with Insomnia.

CBD for stress

Stress is one of the major causes of lack of sleep, stress from work, school, or our social life can cause a lot of pressure on us, and in turn, this might cause a lack of sleep. According to Spinella et al. (2021), CBD can help those with chronic stress get relief. It’s thought that the ability of CBD to interact with the endocannabinoid system is how CBD offers these benefits. It interacts with enzymes to affect the levels of the stress-fighting neurotransmitter Anandamide. Because CBD helps in reducing one root cause of insomnia-Stress, it might just help you have an improved sleeping cycle.

CBD for anxiety

Another cause of Insomnia has increased anxiety. The ability of CBD to reduce anxiety levels might help you improve your sleep. However, there is still more research that needs to be done. According to Blessing et al. (2015), CBD has properties that can help you reduce your anxiety levels by interacting with the endocannabinoid system. Because the endocannabinoid system is responsible for your mood, immune system response, memory and the sleeping cycle, CBD's ability to reduce the stress levels in your body might help improve your sleep. For some people having less anxiety might help them sleep more.

CBD for pain

CBD helps relieve chronic pain. Eskander et al. (2020) stated that you might use CBD's properties of pain and inflammatory relief to treat chronic back pain. Chronic pain can cause a lot of discomfort, which might cause you to have trouble sleeping; by getting relief for pain, CBD might help those with trouble sleeping find sleep.

CBD and leg movement syndromes

As stated by Kaul, Zee & Sahni (2021), CBD might have properties that can help offer a solution for rapid leg movement syndromes characterized by a consistent urge to move your leg. This syndrome can affect your sleep quality and cause difficulty in staying asleep; research suggests that CBD can reduce the frequency of abnormal nerve signals that can lead to this involuntary muscle twitching. By helping those with this neurological condition, cannabidiol might help improve sleep quality.

How much CBD should you take for Insomnia?

Knowing the amount of CBD you need for your sleep might not be easy because there is no universally accepted dosage for CBD. However, a simple way of knowing how much CBD you need is by starting with lower doses and moving on to higher doses if you don’t feel the effects of CBD. The concentration of CBD, weight, and metabolism are among the factors that can affect your dosage.

Medium-potent CBD can be used to treat periodic Insomnia, while highly potent CBD can be used for chronic Insomnia. Because CBD is usually considered safe even in higher doses, it’s unlikely that you can take a harmful amount of cannabidiol. However, you must talk to your healthcare adviser before trying CBD products, especially if taking other medications.

Different forms of taking CBD

There are three main forms of CBD, the full spectrum, which normally has all the compounds of the cannabis plant. The broad spectrum, with some but not all compounds and the isolate, which has pure CBD of about 99%. According to Russo (2019), full-spectrum CBD might offer more benefits because all the compounds give a more powerful combined effect known as the entourage effect. Full-spectrum CBD might be the best choice for Insomnia because research suggests that THC and CBD might offer sedative properties when used together.

Conclusion

Research on how CBD might affect your sleep quality directly is still sketchy. However, existing research on how cannabidiol can help with some of the causes of Insomnia might just indirectly help you get better sleep quality. CBD reduces stress levels and anxiety, the major causes of Insomnia. The ability of CBD to interact with the endocannabinoid system is thought to make this possible. It interacts with some of the receptors to influence the production of stress hormones in the body. Although there are other pharmaceutical drugs for Insomnia, CBD is a more natural approach to improving your sleep quality.

References

Blessing, E. M., Steenkamp, M. M., Manzanares, J., & Marmar, C. R. (2015). Cannabidiol is a potential treatment for anxiety disorders. Neurotherapeutics, 12(4), 825-836.

Eskander, J. P., Spall, J., Spall, A., Shah, R. V., & Kaye, A. D. (2020). Cannabidiol (CBD) as a treatment of acute and chronic back pain: A case series and literature review. J Opioid Manag, 16(3), 215-8.

Kaul, M., Zee, P. C., & Sahni, A. S. (2021). Effects of cannabinoids on sleep and their therapeutic potential for sleep disorders. Neurotherapeutics, 18(1), 217-227.

Russo, E. B. (2019). The case for the entourage effect and conventional breeding of clinical cannabis: no “strain,” no gain. Frontiers in plant science, 1969.

Spinella, T. C., Stewart, S. H., Naugler, J., Yakovenko, I., & Barrett, S. P. (2021). Evaluating cannabidiol (CBD) expectancy effects on acute stress and anxiety in healthy adults: a randomized crossover study. Psychopharmacology, 238(7), 1965-1977.