CBD: You Can, But Should You?

With the popularity of over-the-counter CBD products skyrocketing, I thought it was about time to brush up on my knowledge and look at the research on CBD regarding its effectiveness in improving sleep quality, reducing anxiety, and shortening muscle recovery time.

I want to caveat this post by saying that I would LOVE IT if CBD lives up to the hype. As someone who has suffered from lifelong general anxiety, anything that can help people in this regard without self-medicating gets a green light from me.

However, it’s important to remember that most of the claims for reducing things like inflammation, which plays a role in muscle recovery, are based on mechanical theory and animal studies.

So, with that out of the way, it’s time to answer the question:

Is CBD effective for sleep quality, anxiety, and muscle recovery?

To date, there aren’t many well-controlled human studies looking at the impact of CBD on inflammation (most are rodent studies) and the ones that exist are inconclusive.

Regarding anxiety, at doses of 300-400mg, there doesn’t seem to be any benefit in reducing subjective anxiety during stressful situations, such as public speaking. There may be some benefit for those who suffer from chronic anxiety, but there are no large studies to prove this one way or another at this point.

With regards to sleep, the first placebo-controlled, double-blinded crossover trial found that supplementing with 160mg of CBD increased self-reported sleep quality in individuals with insomnia, though likelihood of experiencing ‘good sleep’ was unchanged. However, CBD seems unlikely to directly influence sleep in healthy humans.

The dosages typically used in experimental trials are many times larger than what’s seen in over-the-counter products, meaning that even if there is an effect (we still don’t know what that dose would be) then you would be spending $$$ each time you wanted to take a dose.

My estimates range from around $300 HKD to several thousand dollars PER DOSE, and that’s if you are getting what is stated on the label (topic for another time).

Overall it seems that excitement has preceded evidence at this stage; however as my astute colleague Rachel reminded me:

“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

Let’s see where the research takes us…