Studies have demonstrated that CBD can alleviate anxiety and help correct mood disorders. Furthermore, it helps with sleep issues and PTSD symptoms.
According to research at CU Boulder, cannabis products rich in the nonintoxicating compound CBD help alleviate anxiety more effectively than products high in THC without producing paranoia or leading to paranoia.
In the EPM, CBD inhibited escape responses and raised DPAG electrical thresholds; these effects depended upon 5-HT1AR activation and were amplified by prior stress exposure.
Anxiety Disorders
People living with anxiety disorders experience excessive fear or worry in response to certain situations; or in generalized anxiety disorder’s case, everyday situations. They typically avoid anything which triggers their fears while spending a great deal of time worrying about what could go wrong in future encounters.
Chronic stress can contribute to anxiety disorders by altering the balance of neurotransmitters that regulate mood. CBD has been found to effectively mitigate stress responses and treat anxiety disorders.
Preclinical and human experimental studies support CBD’s effectiveness in alleviating anxiety behaviors related to GAD, SAD, PD, OCD and PTSD with no anxiogenic or sedative side effects, yet further investigation on CBD’s long-term effectiveness for clinical anxiety disorders remains necessary.
Mental health professionals can assist in relieving anxiety symptoms by offering treatments such as exposure therapy. This form of psychotherapy creates a safe space to help expose you to what scares you, so that new, more realistic beliefs can be attached to these things.
Chronic Stress
Chronic stress can make people anxious and restless, and lead to physical health problems like headaches, gastrointestinal distress and high blood pressure. CBD may help relieve these symptoms by decreasing the body’s stress response mechanism.
CBD may help alleviate chronic stress by engaging with multiple neurotransmitters and receptors involved in anxiety modulation. CBD also inhibits FAAH enzyme, increasing serotonin levels in the brain – an essential step towards combatting stress-related anxiety disorders.
Multiple studies have demonstrated the efficacy of CBD in mitigating maladaptive stress responses. For one such research project, researchers provided 300 participants with cannabis products containing various concentrations of THC and CBD to use at home; they discovered those using products with higher CBD concentration reported significantly lower stress levels – similar to prescription medication’s effects – than those who didn’t consume such products; additionally the combination of THC and CBD may prove more powerful than either component alone.
Sleep Disorders
Sleep is essential to our overall wellbeing, yet many individuals struggle with various sleep disorders that impede restful slumber and diminish quality of life. Common sleep issues include trouble falling asleep, staying asleep through the night and frequently waking up during the night; night sweats; snoring/gasping during sleep, nightmares/talking in dreams/walking while asleep as well as frequent urination (often indicated by increased night-time urination) can also interfere with restful slumber; frequent night-time urination may indicate hormonal imbalance or illness – both can impact quality of life adversely affecting quality of life and health conditions that affect quality of life significantly.
Although preclinical and clinical research suggest CBD could be useful in improving sleep and anxiety in a range of neuropsychiatric conditions, there have been few clinical studies in the psychiatric arena. This retrospective case series study observed patients at a psychiatric clinic who presented with anxiety or sleep complaints and received CBD treatment; anxiety scores decreased within one month and continued to remain reduced throughout the duration of this research study, while sleep scores saw some improvement within one month but fluctuating results.
PTSD
CBD has been shown to reduce anxiety in animal studies using preclinical animal models through various anxiolytic and antistress actions, including decreased autonomic arousal levels, reductions in fear expression levels, enhancements of fear extinction and reconsolidation blockade, as well as its capacity to block long-term anxiogenic effects of stress. CBD’s anxiolytic properties seem mediated by 5-HT1AR activation and CB1R blockade but may also be affected by hippocampal neurogenesis or TRPV1 receptors.
Existing human experimental data are consistent with these findings, showing that oral CBD doses between 300 to 600 mg/day significantly reduced experimentally induced anxiety without altering baseline levels and enhanced cognitive behavioral therapy anxiolytic effects. Further investigation must take place to assess whether chronic dosing of CBD also has anxiolytic properties in clinical populations – these studies should involve placebo-controlled trials with patients suffering from PTSD and SAD using appropriate dosing strategies and administration routes.
