Colin Cook
August 8 is National CBD Day. There are a half dozen cannabis-related holidays on the calendar, of varying degrees of frivolity. National CBD Day, I submit, is the least frivolous. I say this because CBD is not a recreational compound. It doesn’t work on your brain, and it cannot get you high.
What it can do, however, is help control your anxiety, manage your insomnia, relieve your arthritis pain, and reduce your chronic inflammation.
Before I get into the need for a CBD holiday, let me get three important points about CBD out of the way:
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- CBD works not on your brain but with your synapses, and it won’t get you high.
- CBD has been pronounced safe by the World Health Organization (PDF): “CBD is generally well tolerated with a good safety profile. Reported adverse effects may be as a result of drug-drug interactions between CBD and patients’ existing medications.”
- In New Hampshire, CBD from hemp is legally available without a prescription.
CBD Is Not Psychoactive
Sounds great. So why does it need a day to itself? Before National CBD Day was recognized — just six years ago — CBD, as a so-called “cannabis product,” was illegal. It seems perfectly obvious today that CBD, while found in marijuana, can be separate from cannabis. But in those days, CBD advocates were struggling to separate CBD from marijuana in the public mind. Step one was to get it off the federal schedule of illegal substances.
According the USDA, “The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (2018 Farm Bill) authorized the production of hemp and removed hemp and hemp seeds from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) schedule of Controlled Substances.” That made it clear that CBD — which is the oil extracted from hemp — isn’t marijuana. At the same time, it enabled people and organizations to grow, process, and sell it, regardless of the legal status of weed.
Taking CBD Out of the Culture War
But changing a law doesn’t always change people’s minds, particularly in the midst of a culture war. So CBD advocates applied to the National Day Calendar to have August 8 (which doesn’t seem to have been committed to any other commemoration) designated National CBD Day.
With this background, you can understand why there’s really nothing political about CBD. It’s just a substance that has been used for centuries in many health and wellness applications. In fact, hemp was the original; marijuana was selectively bred from hemp over many generations to increase its THC content. THC is the stuff that gets you high. CBD doesn’t get you high. But, according to Healthline, it may control your inflammation, soothe your anxiety, enhance your heart health, and protect your nervous system.
Celebrate National CBD Day
CBD is a nutrient rather than a drug. Side effects (fatigue, nausea, change in appetite) can develop, but hemp/CBD is safe. Its principal risk is in interacting with drugs you may already be taking. If you use any medications, you should speak with your doctor before using it.
We offer several CBD products here at Peak Recovery & Health Center. If you want a natural way to deal with anxiety, insomnia, cancer symptoms, side effects of cancer treatment, arthritis, heart health, or nervous system problems, ask us about them the next time you stop by.
We believe in the efficacy of CBD, and we support National CBD Day!
