What are the Health Benefits of CBD?
How Does CBD Affect Your Health and Performance?
CBD feeds your Endocannabinoid System the exact nutrients it needs to stay healthy and balanced.
Think of the Endocannabinoid System (ECS) like your body’s central control system. It’s a chemical messaging system that helps keep your systems and functions running in sync and working at their best.
Physical processes like your immune system response, metabolic rate, inflammation cycles, cell energy levels, nervous system, and famously, your quality of sleep are regulated by your Endocannabinoid System. It also helps control your mental processes like pain perception, memory, appetite, mood, and mood imbalances like anxiety and depression.
When everything is in balance, your body can stay healthy.
An imbalance in any of your inner processes can be the first domino in a chain reaction that can lead to discomfort and eventually sickness and disease.
Cells with too much energy can hurt you just as much as cells with too little energy. Too little sleep can make you just as miserable and unproductive as staying in bed all day.
It’s all about maintaining balance!
CANNABINOIDS
Your Endocannabinoid System helps your body maintain health and balance by using chemical messengers called cannabinoids (can-na-bi-noids). Cannabinoids act like circuit breakers that can turn specific systems and functions on and off, up or down when they fall out of balance.
Cannabinoids can remove the first domino before the painful chain reaction begins. In chain reactions that have already begun, cannabinoids can even remove the 1,000th domino and protect you from further damage.
The cannabinoid family of molecules includes both endocannabinoids (endo = produced inside your body), and phytocannabinoids (phyto = produced by plants).
CBD is one of over 100 members of the happy family of cannabinoids. It’s the main non-psychoactive cannabinoid extracted from the hemp plant.
CBD won’t get you high, but it will help you maintain a healthy, balanced Endocannabinoid System.
ENDOCANNABINOID DEFICIENCY: THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE
When your body doesn’t produce enough of its own cannabinoids, your inner chemistry falls out of balance. Researchers believe that a deficiency in endocannabinoid levels (called a ‘Clinical Endocannabinoid Deficiency’ or ‘CECD’) may be at the root of many health symptoms and conditions.
Some examples of how health issues can stem from chemical deficiencies in your organ systems include:
- Alzheimer’s patients have low levels of acetylcholine, a chemical signal that helps with memory and learning.
- Parkinson’s develops when dopamine-producing cells in the substantia nigra region of the brain begin to die. This causes a dopamine deficiency, which leads to movement difficulty and muscle tremors.
- Depression seems to develop in the presence of low levels of serotonin and norepinephrine.
When things are out of balance, health deteriorates.
Think of your inner chemistry like pool chemicals.
When pool water is dirty, it needs specific chemicals to bring the levels to the correct balance. Once the correct chemicals have been added to the pool water, in a few hours it’s clean and clear again.
Those chemicals are needed on a regular basis to help your pool stay clean.
CBD has a similar effect on your body.
WHAT DOES IT AFFECT?
Everything!
All cannabinoids work within your Endocannabinoid System, which has receptors all over your body. You can find cannabinoid receptors lathered across your immune system, in your nervous system, and on every single one of your cells. This is why a cannabinoid deficiency can affect such a wide range of symptoms.
When your Endocannabinoid System doesn’t have the nutrients (cannabinoids) it needs to stay healthy, the systems and functions it controls get out of balance and can start to malfunction. It can cause a ripple effect similar to being dehydrated or sleep deprived; you feel the effects in almost every area of your physical and mental performance. Everything from your energy to your mood, appetite, joints, and mental focus can be affected.
The longer you stay out of balance, the more collateral damage it can cause. Imbalance can cause dysfunction.
Dysfunction can cause discomfort, pain, sickness, and disease.
HOW DOES IT FEEL?
If your Endocannabinoid System is deficient, you may not feel like starving receptors in a chemical desert. Maybe you’re constantly feeling low energy and motivation, or your appetite is out of control, or your “happy chemicals” are constantly low. Maybe you have chronic pain, migraines, insomnia, or your immune system is attacking itself.
The symptoms of a deficient Endocannabinoid System can vary depending on the individual and their lifestyle.
By looking at the main areas of the body the ECS affects, it makes sense that a deficient Endocannabinoid function would affect your brain function, immune system, digestion, mood, pain management, and the quality of your sleep. All of these areas and functions are supervised by your Endocannabinoid System and rely on it to stay healthy and balanced so they can perform at their best.
HOW CAN I FIX IT?
Fixing your Endocannabinoid deficiency is easier than you think. Researchers have identified 3 ways a Chronic Endocannabinoid Deficiency may be corrected:
- Supplementing with plant-derived cannabinoids
Cannabinoids like CBD give your Endocannabinoid System the exact nutrients it needs to stay healthy and in balance.
- Increasing your body’s natural production of Endocannabinoids
Live a healthy lifestyle. Good nutrition, quality sleep, regular exercise, meditation, and gratefulness have all been shown to support a healthy mind and body.
- Decreasing your body’s breakdown of Endocannabinoids
Reducing your exposure to toxins, pollulants, processed foods, stress, and unhealthy habits can help your body stay strong so it can keep you healthy.
Your Endocannabinoid System is a delicate regulator that’s attached to many intricate homeostatic processes.
This is why many experts believe it may be better to address Endocannabinoid System imbalances with natural, gentle nudges rather than the pharmacological Hulk Smash of prescriptions. Cannabinoids that are produced naturally by the cannabis plant seem to work better than intervening with a strong dose of synthetic medicine. Research also indicates that high quality extracts of just 1 or 2 plant cannabinoids could be even more effective than using the entire cannabis plant which contains over 100 cannabinoids.
Cannabis extracts like CBD and CBG are known to increase your body’s natural endocannabinoid production. They work like jumper cables, giving your ECS a jolt of cannabinoid voltage to help it run better on its own.
They also block the enzymes in your body that break down your endocannabinoids. This gives you a more lasting, soothing, natural effect.
CONCLUSION
A healthy Endocannabinoid System is vital to your physical and mental health and wellness. Our modern lifestyle can cause the Endocannabinoid System to become deficient, or unable to work properly. This can cause a domino effect of dysfunction throughout your mind and body that leads to discomfort, sickness, and disease.
CBD (cannabinoids) give the Endocannabinoid System (ECS) the exact nutrients it needs to stay healthy and keep all your systems and functions running properly.
CBD and other cannabis extracts can help the ECS find the root cause of the dysfunction, target it, and help bring your systems back into balance. They can turn the volume down on the discomfort and stress and imbalances you don’t need. And they can turn the volume up on the energy, muscle recovery, blood flow, and quality sleep that you want more of.
