CBD Oil for Anxiety - Does Cannabidiol help for Anxiety Disorders?

CBD Oil for Anxiety. Each of us has had reason to be scared in a certain situation before. This reaction to a particular situation is normal and natural. However, when fear takes over and can be triggered by seemingly harmless everyday situations, panic attacks, deep feeling of fear, sweating, one speaks of anxiety. Many are wondering what to do about it and can CBD help with anxiety?

Yes, CBD oil can be used in anxiety. It has been found that CBD can even be a very effective remedy for it. At least that’s what a lot of users report about CBD. But there are already some scientific studies which can confirm this statement, which we will look at in more detail on this page below. Also, there are countless reports from people who use CBD for anxiety with sometimes amazing results.

From our personal experience, we can also confirm that CBD can have a very calming effect. We can as well imagine that it can help with anxiety, although we do not suffer from anxiety. When I was stressed out by pressure, it always helped a lot. This may not exactly be anxiety in the real sense of it, but the potential could already be guessed well.

In the following article, you will learn more about the studies on CBD for anxiety, how a cannabinoid helps on the physical and psychological level and how it works in the case of Anxiety.

So what is science saying about the relationship between CBD and anxiety?

Let’s look at some research. CBD for anxiety is one of the few fields where studies that have actually been conducted in the past on mice and also on human models.

Despite the fact that the trials haven’t gone up to that double-blind placebo-controlled kind of studies, the studies are still there anyway. A number of studies have actually been conducted in particular which have to do with CBD and social anxiety.

When researchers were studying the relationship between CBD and anxiety they did a test. They got two groups of people up on stage to kind of fake a public speaking assignment.

Now, obviously one group took CBD and one group didn’t. Their findings were pretty interesting. They found CBD significantly reduced the feelings of anxiety, cognitive impairment, and speech problems in the first group compared to the placebo group that didn’t take CBD which performed significantly worse than the group that did take the CBD.

CBD interacts with the serotonin receptors

CBD has also been found to interact with the serotonin receptors that are responsible for our mood and stress levels.

Cannabidiol also works with anxiety by boosting our own endocannabinoid levels, meaning that we can naturally produce more of the things inside of us that put us in a good mood without needing extra things like CBD. Another interesting side effect of CBD with anxiety is that CBD actually boosts our own natural production of endocannabinoids such as anandamide.

CBD improves the anandamide level

Scientists have actually noticed depleted levels of anandamide in people with depression and anxiety. Anandamide is only produced by the body when it really needs it.

And when the anandamide is produced, it gets broken down pretty much straight away by an enzyme called the faah enzyme. Now, the interesting thing about CBD in regards to this is that they found that CBD actually blocks the production of the faah enzymes.

Meaning that more of our natural and anandamide has time to hang around in the body and do those wonderful positive effects that we associate with anandamide and our endocannabinoid system and our levels of anxiety and stress.

So while we and scientists aren’t sitting here saying that CBD cures anxiety, science and research is leaning towards CBD being a fantastic way to mitigate the symptoms of anxiety and perhaps make it less cumbersome for the people that are experiencing it.

In the following lines we will go into more detail on how Anxiety develops and how CBD can help with anxiety. We will also take a closer look at the current studies.

At the end of this article we have linked the sources to the studies for you. So stay tuned and read on.

Let’s take a closer look at how anxiety develops and how CBD can help

It is normal to feel anxiety in certain situations, but when anxiety occurs on a regular basis and for no apparent reason and alters the quality of our life, then we can say that we have a serious psychological problem.

When someone experiences anxiety during daily tasks, the health and well-being of that person can be severely affected because excessive anxiety can actually disable a person. In other words, that person will not feel capable of performing his or her usual tasks and lead a normal life.

In America alone, 40 million people suffer from anxiety disorders, a situation in which each of these people need medical attention. When a person receives such a diagnosis, the regular treatment involves antidepressants like Prozac, anxiolytics like Xanax, and psychotherapy.

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CBD for Anxiety: How do you get Anxiety?

We’re going to talk about anxiolytic activity decreasing anxiety. Anxiety is modulated through our limbic system. In your brain, there’s a limbic system and it’s made up of the amygdala, basal ganglia, hippocampus, hypothalamus, and then the neocortex.

What happens during anxiety depends on how your amygdala is perceiving what’s going on. It attaches emotion to situations, to events, to words that are said, and to looks that are given.

If the amygdala and this whole limbic system is off, then that would be a trigger to increase anxiety.

So, what CBD has been shown to do is:

Reduce anxiety in social situations
Reduce hyperactivity (through its action in the limbic system),
Activate adenosine receptors (which are calming)
Activate adenosine, the 5-HT1 receptor (which again help with serotonin and they’re sort of the happy modulating neurotransmitter)

The role of the limbic system in anxiety

The activity in the limbic system influences emotional learning, like we were saying, the amygdala attaches emotion to situations, to ideas.

It modulates stress reactions through the hypothalamus.

By reacting in the hypothalamus, it’s actually helping to control your pituitary and then all of your hormone system.

Not only is it helping at the brain piece, it’s helping endocrine wise in modulating and reducing stress response, that is fright or flight.

And then it helps with emotional regulation, learning, and extinction of fear. When you talk about that, actually all anxiety is based on fear. And it’s just in different levels and different pieces but it’s really an excess of fear and then you start to become anxious.

Something that did not cause fear before now leads to anxiety

It can actually be something that’s threatening or something that can potentially threaten you. Or it can actually be a real situation that’s ongoing or it can be what’s perceived to be a threatening situation.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be as extreme as being chased by a bear. It can be as simple as seeing a situation as being stressful and then it induces anxiety. And as this loop stays, you can get those triggers that keep leading to the onset of anxiety.

So you may have one thing that starts to create anxiety. But over time if it stays there, you start to build a pattern in the amygdala and hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.

Now other things can trigger fear in situations that weren’t really creating fear before. So the idea is to really get this modulated so you’re not having big issues.

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Prolonged stress & high level of Cortisol

Prolonged stress and having to think a lot about it can affect the hippocampus. What’s going to happen is that things which may not have created fear or issues before, will now start to create fear and issues.

And in the hippocampus the high level of cortisol, which can be observed in a lot of people that are in that fright or flight mode, is actually starting to deteriorate the hippocampus.

You then begin to get atrophy, which means you don’t get new cells being formed because the old cells are not replaced. So, if your cortisol stays high, you’re under extended stress for an extended period of time.

It now affects your hippocampus, which means it’s affecting your ability to control your anxiety. And it starts escalating. And then there’s a decrease in synaptic plasticity, so the ability to start to modulate things gets reduced.

CBD & Social Anxiety Disorder

Are you someone who withdraws from society because of Social Anxiety Disorder?

Then know that you do not have to continue sitting in your bedroom wishing that you could join in all the fun around you.

You possibly can find help in CBD oil.

While psychotherapy is not harmful, as it involves counseling, antidepressants and anxiolytics have a wide range of unwanted side-effects and risks.

But, regardless of consequences, the people that suffer from anxiety need medical help to keep this health problem under control and get a chance at leading a normal life.

Recently, new hope emerged for all the people that have to deal with anxiety every single day, under the form of a treatment that is highly effective and extremely safe.

The answer lies in CBD oil, CBD being a non-psychoactive type of cannabinoid that is extracted from the cannabis plant.

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CBD for Social Anxiety or even a Phobia

Social anxiety disorder is a condition that induces irrational fear of being among other people within a person, because he/she is afraid of what others may think or say about him/her. If this description suits you or someone close to you, then read on:

The role of CBD in the treatment of a great variety of mood disorders has been studied for quite a while now, enabling medical scientists to not only know that Cannabidiol could be quite effective in the treatment of these conditions, but to also follow the modus operandi that is followed by the substance when administered to a patient.

Studies on CBD for Social Phobia

Do you know what the most frequent situation in which people have to face anxiety is?

Believe it or not, having to speak in public is a situation that triggers high levels of anxiety. And, in many cases, impairs the ability of people to get this task done.

Cold sweat, dry throat, elevated pulse, trembling knees. These are all signs that anxiety has set in before the moment of having to deliver a speech in front of an audience.

The same can happen in the case of people with social phobias, who don’t feel comfortable being surrounded by people they don’t know.

According to studies, carried out with the purpose of finding out if CBD can help reduce anxiety triggered by public speaking.

Researchers discovered that administering CBD prior to the event significantly diminishes the presence of any discomfort, anxiety, and impairment in cognitive skills, allowing the subject to proceed with their public speech with minimum difficulties.

The results were compared with a group of people that had placebo treatment, which showed much higher levels of anxiety and discomfort. So the group that received CBD managed to remain calmer and accomplish their task.

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CBD has strong Antidepressant, Anxiolytics & Anti-Inflammatory Properties

Well, the uses of CBD are very broad and it’s great for anxiety. It’s an anxiolytic at low doses. So, that effect is through the limbic system and it affects the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex.

It can allow the extinguishing of fear. Therefore, it can be used with post-traumatic stress disorder, panic disorders, and similar conditions. It can also be used for gut inflammation because it does that on two sides:

It affects the microglial cells in the neuro immune system. And it topically decreases inflammation. So, when you’re looking at something like ostrich colitis or crohn’s, CBD can help decrease the inflammation from any of those conditions and increase the healing speed.

Studies on CBD for Anxiety Disorders

In recent studies, researchers discovered that CBD has the same properties as antidepressants and anxiolytics but without the unwanted risks brought by this kind of treatments.

The studies used the help of animal models in order to determine the effects of CBD on the models in stressful situations.

The results have shown that anxiety was significantly diminished by CBD. The models reaching a calm state of mind in spite of the fact that they were subjected to a variety of stressful external stimuli that triggered states of anxiety.

The research has enabled medical professionals to create a list by which they can precisely determine which medical conditions can be effectively treated by the administration of CBD oil.

Let’s take a closer look at the outcome of the study performed on the roles and effects of CBD oil, on social anxiety disorder in particular.

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More Studies on CBD for Anxiety

Even though most studies used animals and not humans, there is the risk that the results obtained on mice, for example, won’t be the same in the case of people. However, there are people that decided to try CBD oil for keeping their anxiety under control. And they are more than satisfied with the results provided by this treatment

However, scientists need to be sure about the actions of cannabidiol in this case before an official treatment is launched on the market. What they discovered is that CBD boosts serotonin receptors such as 5-HT1A, promoting a state of well-being in spite of the fact that the brain may interpret some external factors as being stressful.

In fact, CBD works even faster than the currently available anti-depressants, which means that anxiety treatments based on CBD would exceed the limitations of the present traditional treatments.

In a recent study

A group of 10 people was recruited for the study who have been diagnosed with social anxiety disorderin order to study the blood flow to a number of different parts of their brain.
Half the group was given CBD oil while the rest of the group was given a placebo. As per the results, the group with CBD medical treatment were seen to have a reduction in the anxiolytic features.
The blood flow to different parts of the brain did also hint towards a reduction in the anxiolytic features in patients with CBD medical treatment.

Studies with CBD in mice show promising results

Also in the case of mice, research shows that besides reducing anxiety, CBD can even stimulate the regeneration of neurons in the hippocampus. This can also be very helpful when trying to effectively manage conditions like depression and anxiety.

After quite a few studies on animals, the next step would be to perform more studies on the effect of CBD in the case of people, with the purpose of seeing how CBD can help reduce the symptoms of anxiety disorders.

These studies are just starting out, but the results obtained are already promising. CBD oil can indeed reduce anxiety and promote a calmer state of mind.

This is an extraordinary finding considering that so many people have problems related to too much stress, panic attacks, and anxiety triggered by a variety of causes.

All of these people will be able to diminish the presence of these unwanted emotional and mental states. Fast and easy, with no risks to their health.

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CBD negates the negative properties of THC

Most studies until now have been comparative in the sense that they were geared to compare the role and effect of CBD as opposed to other Cannabinoids.

And more specifically THC, which is the most abundant Cannabinoid in the Cannabis plant.

Although greatly beneficial in a purely medical sense, THC is also responsible for the psychoactive effect that Cannabis has on many users.

It can therefore aggravate a condition such as anxiety or paranoia.

CBD can thus reduce or eliminate the negative properties of THC. It can also allow patients who use products with a high THC content to minimize negative side effects.

Despite the fact that studies on CBD have been stated as inconclusive so far, there is a vast percentage of medical professionals that consider already existing proof of the medical benefits of the substance as more than sufficient to begin prescribing Cannabidiol oil to treat prominent mood disorders such as social anxiety disorder.

Consider the fact that in addition to its anxiolytic properties which are highly beneficial for treating stress and anxiety, CBD oil does not display the psychoactive effect that THC does. This should rule out any fear that it will “get you high”, should you decide to use it for anxiety.

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Reference to a CBD oil for anxiety customer review

It is about a guy named Justin who used CBD to get off anxiety meds. Justin is a software and computer developer and he was dealing with some anxiety.

He saw a doctor and he was given a choice of what he wanted to take as far as prescription medication and he tried a few things.

Although they did work, he had negative side effects and that’s really common for prescription medication for both depression and anxiety. They do work obviously, in fact, sometimes they work very well.

But there are negative side effects and people often want to find something that’s more natural or has less side effects. CBD definitely can be that for some people.

A lot of people use CBD Oil for anxiety and it certainly does work for a lot of people. It worked for Justin but we want to say the first time he tried it, it didn’t quite work.

So he definitely had to use it again and he had to use it consistently for it to work. The first time he used it he kind of wrote it off as something that’s not gonna work for him.

He had to keep using it and see how it did. With it, the other thing he noticed was that it did make him a little bit sleepy which for him wasn’t a bad thing. Because it allowed him to get some rest.

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Drowsiness as a side effect is not permanent

But if you’re taking it during the day you obviously don’t want it to make you sleepy. But the more he took CBD the less he experienced of that side effect. So that could be just like something like our body getting used to it.

We’ve heard that before from Dr. Bonnie Goldstein, who wrote Cannabis Revealed. We’ve heard the same thing from her in that the side-effect of drowsiness goes away after some time of using CBD.

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If you want to try CBD oil for anxiety, how much should you take?

We always recommend you start at around 10 milligrams a day for a couple days. Maybe do that a couple times a day for a couple days and see how it goes. And then increase the dosage just until you get the effect you’re looking for.

From there you can increase it in increments of ten to twenty milligrams. We wouldn’t increase it in any increment higher than that and just increase it till you get the effect that you’re looking for.

But you got to give it a couple days at that dosage to see if it works. Now if you want to use CBD and you’re already taking some other medication, in that case, check with your doctor so that there are no drug interactions.

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Remember, CBD is processed by the cyp450 enzymes.

You can tell your doctor that and you can make sure that anything else you’re taking isn’t also processed by those enzymes. Also be sure to ask if it will affect anything else you’re taking.

CBD Oil for Anxiety: Conclusion

Of course, all the results obtained recently will fuel further studies. As scientists don’t fully understand the mechanism through which CBD can actually reduce anxiety and how it works inside our brains.

In the countries where cannabis-derived products are legal, many people already enjoy the benefits of CBD oil, while the areas where this treatment is not available still wait for signs from the scientific world.

Both scientists and doctors need to make sure that CBD is the treatment they are looking for in the case of anxiety. And for this, they will have to embark on a good number of clinical and pre-clinical studies that will provide sufficient proof.

But, keeping in mind that CBD already showed that it can work, without altering one’s state of mind or having any psychoactive effects, the outcome can only be positive. In other words, it is only a matter of time before the scientific world will be convinced about the anxiolytic and antidepressant properties of CBD oil.

It is incredible that we can find such amazing treatments in one plant. A treatment that would save so many people from living a life sunk in fear, stress, panic, and a wide array of negative emotions.

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