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By Jamie Rollins RN, BSN, CYT (she/her)
You’ve heard about CBD. You’ve seen it everywhere at this point. Every mainstream news network has done a story on it. You know friends who are taking it and it’s working for them. You know people who have tried it and they say it doesn’t.
So what’s the deal? How do you determine what product is right for you? How do you know what one will work and what one won’t?
Well you don’t until you try.
But the biggest reasons that CBD typically doesn’t work for people are because of:
- Inconsistent/infrequent dosing
- Wrong dosage size
- Length of time tried too short to determine if it’s effective
- Poor quality product
- Extraction method/entourage effect
So let’s break these down a little further now.
Inconsistent/Infrequent Dosing
If you don’t take CBD pretty routinely, your results are not going to be as good as they would be if you made it part of your daily wellness regimen. I encourage my clients to really stay consistent for at least two months to really see the biggest differences.
For example, if someone starts by taking 5 mg every morning and every afternoon, often they’ll do it for a few days, then forget the afternoon dose then a morning dose and just randomly take a little through the day.
Then, after a week, they’ll tell me that it doesn’t work. Often, it’s the inconsistency that doesn’t work, not the CBD. I’ve found that consistency – even with small amounts of CBD – is the most beneficial way to use this supplement.
You need to take it every day, consistently, and then after a week, evaluate how you feel. If you don’t feel like it’s made a difference, then increase your dose a bit and try that for another week. Which transitions us beautifully to dosing.
Wrong Dosage Size
The old adage with cannabis therapeutics is ‘start low and go slow.” We nurses use this phrase often when we’re educating clients how to start. I often suggest people start at 2.5 milligrams or 5 milligrams and titrate their way up to higher amounts only after evaluating if the current dosage size is providing adequate symptom relief.
The aim is always to use the lowest dose to achieve the desired results. However, I’ve frequently seen people give up on CBD before they’ve experimented with titrating to higher doses which may work better for their specific needs.
The other issue with figuring out what dose to take is understanding that the number of milligrams (mg) displayed on the front of the bottle typically is stating the number of milligrams in the entire bottle.
So now you need to do some math in order to figure out how many milligrams are in that dropper.
And I know how most people just LOVE math!
So, here is what you do:
- Pull out your calculator and record the total amount of milligrams in the bottle.
- Then look at the label to find how many servings are in the whole bottle.
- Divide the total amount of milligrams in the bottle by the number of servings:
For example: 250 mg total bottle/30 servings = 8.3 mg per serving. 8.3 mg is usually an entire dropper full, which means that half a dropper would be about 4 mg of CBD.
Length Of Time Tried
Retoning your endocannabinoid system (ECS) takes a little time. After all, you’ve been unknowingly depleting it for years with stress, chemical exposures, and challenging life circumstances. CBD can help people rebalance the ECS, which will help maintain homeostasis/balance for the ENTIRE body and all its interconnected systems.
But, when people try CBD inconsistently for a week and tell me it doesn’t work for them I encourage them to give it at least a month or two. In my opinion, one week isn’t enough time to determine whether or not CBD can be beneficial for you.
It’s important to note that whether or not you “feel” different, the anti-inflammatory properties of this supplement are worth it.
I’ve also had clients tell me it isn’t working after a month and stop taking their CBD. Then, in a week, they realize how much it actually has been helping. Sometimes we don’t notice the changes brought when using cannabis, as they can be gentle and subtle. But, when we remove this balancing agent, we realize that it WAS working!
Poor Quality Products
A lot of folks are in the market to make money and don’t really care about the quality of their CBD. So, you need to be armed with a bit of knowledge to distinguish good products from garbage.
One important thing to know is that cannabis is an excellent remediator, which means it cleans up the earth by pulling anything that’s in the soil and water into the plant. So, if the soil or inputs are contaminated with heavy metals or pesticides, they’ll be drawn up into the plant and end up in your CBD.
My number one rule is always look for third party full panel lab testing. This is the single easiest way to determine if the product contains the amount of CBD stated on the label and that it has no heavy metals, pesticides, or contaminants.
I always look for organic or Clean Green Certified® products, as well as full spectrum products, not isolates. That’s because isolates only contain the CBD molecules, and don’t include any of the other many beneficial compounds in the plant.
Extraction Method/Entourage Effect
Not all products are made the same. The way CBD is extracted and formulated, and the oil in which it’s carried, all influence the way it works in the body.
The entourage effect is when all the compounds the plant has to offer are kept intact throughout the extraction process, allowing a greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts synergy of therapeutic benefits to work its magic.
Many people who have tried CO2-extracted or isolate-based products have not had the results they hope for, and are pleasantly surprised when they change to an ethanol whole plant extraction method, which boosts the entourage effect, terpenes and overall therapeutic effects.
If you’ve got any further questions, please feel free to reach out to nurse@nursegrown.com. We’re happy to help make your CBD journey a wonderful one!
Photos by Paul Einerhand and CRYSTALWEED cannabis on Unsplash