CBD Oil for Sleep: Can it Help?

The Effects of CBD Oil On Our Sleep

What I’m trying to do is help you, the reader, understand a little bit more about what CBD oil is and understand that it’s not really what’s traditionally marketed, so first off a quick walkthrough, so cannabidiol is not cannabis.

So What Is CBD Oil

CBD or Cannabidiol is essentially oil that acts on a different pathway in the body you see when we consume any kind of cannabis or anything like that. It’s affecting what is known as CBD1 and CBD2 receptors in the body.

Cannabidiol does not affect that; it doesn’t affect them in the way that some other compounds would.  What cannabidiol does is it triggers the body to utilize and release more of what are called endocannabinoids are what give us the sensation of bliss.

If you’ve heard of anandamide before that’s a perfect example of an endocannabinoid, You know that feeling when you eat dark chocolate, you feel pretty darned good and it’s not just because of the sugar, you get an endorphin rush and that’s anandamide, which is a very common, probably the most popular endocannabinoid.

CBD encourages your body to produce and utilize more endocannabinoids. But we have dozens of different endocannabinoids that do different things within the body, so in this particular case we’re talking about cannabidiol oil and its effect on the body’s production of endocannabinoids.

CBD oil may be an effective help for lack of sleep caused by any of the following conditions:

• Insomnia
• Daytime sleepiness/fatigue
• Restless leg syndrome
• Anxiety/Panic
• Chronic pain (caused migraines, arthritis, back pain, etc.)
• Menopause

 How CBD affects our sleep

In the last article that I did on CBD, I talked about anxiety and how it works on the 5-HT1A receptor when it comes to CBD. Well, guess what, sleep and anxiety go kind of hand-in-hand you think about it.

If you’re anxious, you’re not going to sleep very well and if you’re relaxed, you might sleep a little bit better. So the first part of this article does coincide with the last article that I did so I’m going to resurface a little bit from that one.

We have something known as a 5-HT1A receptor on neurons in your body, specifically in our brain. Okay, these 5-HT1A receptors trigger the release of serotonin, but they also trigger the uptake of serotonin, also known as serotonin reuptake.

So, our bodies can recognize when Serotonin is in between neurons and not being used, and it grabs it and re-utilizes it. What this particular process does is it allows those extra molecules of serotonin to get used better.

All it means is that 5-HT1A gets triggered by CBD, meaning your body becomes much more sensitive to serotonin and I’ll explain a little bit more about serotonin in just a second.

But through this process, our bodies become more efficient and effective at utilizing serotonin, which means that they get relaxed a lot quicker and we have a lot more control over whether we get relaxed or whether we get a little bit more anxious. It almost puts us in the driver’s seat a little bit more because we’re not at the mercy of other neurotransmitters

What is Serotonin in the first place?

Serotonin is what is known as an inhibitory neurotransmitter. That means that it stops things. People think that serotonin is a neurotransmitter that triggers us to feel good. It’s kind of the opposite. It’s more like a filter, you see it’s a filter that filters messages that would normally get to the neuron.

If we have excitatory messages that are causing us to be super anxious, causing us to fire up and feel like. We couldn’t sleep or overthinking all that stuff. Serotonin comes in and filters those messages so that only the positive thoughts and only the critical thoughts get through

If we had too much serotonin all the time, quite frankly, we probably wouldn’t get much done, and, quite frankly, we probably wouldn’t ever have much success. We don’t want to be constantly flooded with serotonin.

We just want it at the right time so that we do have legitimate downtime. So serotonin is a good thing, but we don’t want it constantly, have it elevated. So what CBD does it is by acting on this 5-HT1A receptor is? It gives our bodies the ability to utilize more when it needs more or utilize less when it needs less

It’s pretty fascinating, but when it comes to sleep, this is where it’s cool. Serotonin is a precursor to what is known as melatonin and maybe you’ve heard of melatonin before because melatonin is something that you might take one or three or even a five-milligram tab of to help.

You fall asleep, but serotonin helps create that. Naturally, in your body And that melatonin regulates your sleep-wake cycle, Studies have even shown that melatonin, when naturally increased, could help regulate when you fall asleep and when you wake up Since serotonin is now more prevalent in the body.

It means that melatonin can be more prevalent, all at the mercy of your body wanting to do it at the right time. So it’s not like you just take CBD and you’re just going to fall asleep flat on your face. It’s like you, take CBD and you might be in a situation where you can say ”I feel like going to bed. Okay, it’s time.” and your body is going to respond a lot better.

But don’t take my word for it. I want to take a look at a study because this is the way I operate, I’m just some guy on the internet right. I want to make sure that some peer-reviewed studies back this stuff up.

There is one particular study that I found that was exceptionally interesting. This study was published in the Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. It was a two-part study. The first part of the study looked at the overall efficacy and safety of cannabidiol oil.

It took a look at acute doses, ranging from 10 to 600 milligrams over 10 years very long-tail study, that’s kind of the nice thing about studying, endocannabinoids and CBD – is that the studies go back pretty darned far.

It has been researched for a long time. It may seem like a new fangled thing, but scientists and researchers and doctors have been looking at it for years and years and years what they were overall looking at was specific volunteers that were participating in the study, Healthy volunteers, insomniacs and those that were epileptic. Why epileptic? Because they usually had overactive nervous systems and neurotransmitters that were a little bit wacky

It was a perfect study. What they found is that there was no psychiatric or psychological effect coming from the CBD over 10 years, so nothing like cannabis and there was no hepatoxic effect.

There was no liver, toxicity or no overall blood toxicity showing that it was a pretty darned safe compound. So that’s test number one. This next study that was an umbrella under this same research took a look at CBD versus placebo versus benzodiazepines.

When it comes down to anxiety and sleep, they took a look at 40, 80 and 160-milligram servings of cannabidiol. Okay. What they found was that versus placebo and versus literal benzodiazepines, we’re talking things like Xanax things like Valium things like that things that are heavily abused and shouldn’t be used in abundance and what they found was that CBD ended up eliciting a better response when it came Down to anxiety,

But it also elicited a better response when it came down to sleep, Those that took 160 milligrams of CBD ended up reporting, significantly better sleep and overall less dream recall In case you’re wondering why dream recall matters you don’t dream.

What is Dream Recall

When you’re in a deep sleep, you dream during a different phase of your sleep and if you’re dreaming you’re not in as deep of asleep. So when you wake up – and you remember your dreams, you didn’t sleep nearly as good as you thought.

Dream recall means that you’re not sleeping as good. So if you have less dream recall, it means you went into that deep sleep where you’re essentially dead. For all that matters, you don’t remember anything you’re just sleeping so that’s pretty powerful.

That is a very powerful thing to see is that CBD has a more profound effect than placebo versus benzodiazepines, which are very hepatoxic and very dangerous to your brain. As far as dependency goes,

So, as always, here’s the breakdown CBD is safe if you’re using it properly. But it’s also going to help you with pain. It’s going to help you with sleep and it could potentially help you with your anxiety. Now, I’m not here to say that you need to go use it, but I am saying that it’s not what is traditionally marketed. It’s something that helps your body utilize, its resources, better plain and simple.