How Does CBD Affect Your Mood?
CBD AND YOUR MOOD
ARTICLE AT A GLANCE:
- The chemical that seems to have the greatest effect on your mood is serotonin.
- CBD helps control your serotonin levels so your mood and overall feeling of wellbeing can maintain a happy balance.
WHAT CAUSES A MOOD?
Your mood is a complex orchestra of causes and effects that involves multiple internal processes and chemicals. It plays an important role in the delicate balance of your mental and physical health.
Your mood can be affected by something as simple as nagging pain, a stressful day, or a restless night.
A bad mood blurs your focus and decision making ability, which can make you lose control and become reactive to situations. It can even throw off your internal balance, hormones, and brain chemistry. Complicated conditions like depression and anxiety can be thought of as mood imbalances.
HOW CBD HELPS YOUR MOOD
CBD helps your body and mind stay balanced. It’s the exact nutrient that keeps your Endocannabinoid System (ECS) healthy - your body’s control system that regulates all your systems and functions. A healthy ECS helps everything work at its best so your body can stay in homeostasis (balance).
Your ECS supports your brain and mental health by keeping your stress, brain fog, and hyperactivity under control. It also helps regulate your mood, hormones, concentration levels, memory retention, and sleep quality.
Improving a bad mood takes more than a change of attitude. Sometimes, our brain chemistry needs to change.
SEROTONIN: THE CHEMICAL MOOD WHISPERER
Serotonin is known as the ‘happy chemical’ because of its ‘mood boosting’ effects. It’s a chemical made by your body that your brain (neurons) uses to send (transmit) important information. That’s why it’s called a ‘neurotransmitter’..
Serotonin influences most of your brain’s processes. This includes your mood, learning, memory, sleep, emotional balance, aggression, appetite, digestion, sexual desire and function, and social behavior. It also affects everything from your bone health and motor skills to your central nervous system.
When your serotonin levels are balanced, you’ll feel happier, less anxious, and more focused and emotionally stable. When your serotonin levels are low, or imbalanced, you may feel irritable or angry (see, it’s not your fault you’re cranky 😉). Serotonin imbalances have also been linked to mental illnesses like depression and anxiety and physical issues like obesity, cancer, and chronic pain.
- There are serotonin receptors on most of the 40 million cells in your brain.
- 90% of serotonin receptors are found in your gut (gastrointestinal tract). The rest are mostly in your central nervous system. This indicates a strong link between your microbiome (gut health) and your brain health and mood.
- Serotonin is basically the boss neurotransmitter. It controls the release of all other neurotransmitters and mood regulating hormones, including dopamine, epinephrine, oxytocin, glutamate, cortisol, and many others.
Synthetic drugs can be used to artificially control serotonin levels. Most come with unwanted side effects, and their effects tend to lessen with time. The great news is, CBD can help regulate your serotonin levels naturally!
CBD AND SEROTONIN
CBD helps your ECS keep your serotonin levels balanced in your brain and gut.
Cannabinoids like CBD are also chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. While cannabinoids are different chemicals than serotonin, they have similar jobs.
CBD works mostly within your Endocannabinoid System (ECS) to help your body stay healthy and balanced. Since the ECS regulates all your systems and functions, it also works with your serotonergic system - the system that controls your serotonin levels.
These two important systems communicate with each other and work together to keep your mood balanced. They also help regulate warning signals like pain, nausea, and fatigue.
- CBD can activate serotonin receptors which helps give you a powerful, long-lasting mood boost. Think of these receptors like tiny locks 🔒 that only chemicals like serotonin and CBD have the key 🔑 to unlock.
- Activating these receptors also helps slow your heart rate and even lower your body temperature, allowing you to literally keep your cool.
- Preliminary research shows this dynamic duo can produce neuroprotective effects (protects and strengthens your brain cells).
- This combination of systems is also in charge of releasing other chemicals that can further affect your mood. These include dopamine, the “feel-good” chemical, and oxytocin, the “cuddle” hormone (CBD and chill? 🙌🏽).
- Researchers believe when both systems work together, they produce stronger effects.
These discoveries are still brand new, and more studies are underway. Here are some exciting possibilities:
WHAT THE RESEARCH SAYS: CBD + SEROTONIN SYNERGY
- CBD shows a strong binding affinity to 5-HT1A and 5-HT2A (serotonin) receptors
- When two separate systems link up to form one functional unit, it produces powerful synergistic effects.
- When CBD activates a 5-HT1A (serotonin) receptor, researchers have observed results like decreased blood pressure, lower body temperature, slower heart rate, and less pain.
- CBD seems to use your serotonergic system to produce a potent combination of physiological calming effects.
In summary: Serotonin is the chemical that seems to have the greatest effect on your mood. CBD activates serotonin receptors, which helps stabilize your mood, slow your heart rate, and even lower your body temperature.
The CBD and serotonin combo is completely natural and has zero harmful side effects. Artificial serotonin stimulators, on the other hand, can cause side effects like nausea, reduced sexual desire, and insomnia. CBD actually protects against these things while helping to safely and naturally stimulate your serotonergic system.
DOPAMINE: THE ‘FEEL GOOD’ CHEMICAL
Another chemical that has a big influence on your mood is dopamine. It works with the section of your brain that regulates pleasure and reward, and it affects your emotions, behavior, motivation, and mental processes.
CBD indirectly affects dopamine levels by blocking GPR6 and GABA activity in the brain. This encourages your body to naturally increase your dopamine levels.
IN SUMMARY:
CBD helps the chemicals that affect your mood to maintain a happy balance.
Having the right chemical balance helps your brain, body, and mood stay happy and healthy.
Additional Resources:
Studies on how serotonin affects your mood
Studies on CBD and serotonin
- CBD acts not only through the endocannabinoid system, but also causes direct or indirect activation of metabotropic receptors for serotonin or adenosine.
- CBD acts not only through the endocannabinoid system, but also causes direct or indirect activation of metabotropic receptors for serotonin.
- Functional CB1 receptor signaling in central serotonergic neurons modulates distinct behaviors in mice.
- This study shows stimulating receptors in the dorsal raphe nucleus (the primary source of serotonin in the forebrain) can lower anxiety/depression in animal models
Studies on CBD and dopamine
- Cannabidiol inhibited the binding of radio-domperidone with dissociation constants of 11 nm at dopamine D2High receptors and 2800 nm at dopamine D2Low receptors, in the same biphasic manner as a dopamine partial agonist antipsychotic drug such as aripiprazole.
- By acting as an “inverse agonist” at the GPR6 receptor, CBD boosts dopamine levels in preclinical studies.
- CBD can attenuate both behavioral and dopaminergic neuronal correlates of mesolimbic dopaminergic sensitization, via a direct interaction with mTOR/p70S6 kinase signaling within the mesolimbic pathway.
- Evidence has demonstrated that CBD strongly modulates the mesolimbic dopamine (DA) system and may possess promising anti-psychotic properties.
- [Endocannabinoids] similarly facilitate behaviors motivated by reward through interaction with the mesolimbic dopamine.
- The endocannabinoid system is manipulated and dopamine activity recorded.
- Endocannabinoids regulate dopamine neuronal activity and its influence on behavioral output.
- The endocannabinoid (eCB) system regulates DA release and is a canonical gatekeeper of goal-directed behavior.
