Explaining CBD to Your Friends and Family

Starting The Conversation About CBD

Cannabidiol (CBD) from hemp oil is changing lives.  We’re grateful and honored to be part of new breakthroughs in understanding cannabis.  Explaining CBD and helping people choose the right product is amazingly gratifying.

But, it can be a challenge to stay on top of the latest CBD news and information.  It can be even more challenging to translate that information for the everyday listener.  There is a temptation to revert to medical terms. You can read in more detail here, or please visit NCBI for a comprehensive review.

We need everyone’s help. It is important for our customers to communicate with their friends and family. We want your help spreading the word about CBD.  With that in mind, here are some ways you can describe CBD and the endocannabinoid system without running to the nearest medical text books.

Neurotransmitters and Cannabinoids

A simple way of describing how the endocannabinoid system works is as a communications system in your body. Your nerves send information from one nerve to the next.  If you touch a hot stove, that information travels one nerve at a time to your brain.  When your brain realizes “ouch hot”, it sends a signal back down your arm to move your hand.

Your nerves use all sorts of signals to perform most all body functions.   This doesn’t just include voluntary motion like moving your hand.  It also includes breathing, digestion, appetite, mood, restfulness, and a host of other conditions. This clearly gets complicated. In order to regulate such complex systems, nerves need more than just a binary (on/off) signal. To accommodate that complexity, nerves use what are called neurotransmitters.

Neurotransmitters are a vast collection of chemicals that will cause nerves to fire or not to fire depending on the amount of that chemical present.  A number of things can happen if we don’t have the right balance of neurotransmitters.  It’s widely theorized that a person suffering the effects of an anxiety attack has a neurotransmitter (serotonin) imbalance telling the brain “things are on fire”. Neurotransmitters act in thousands of different ways in the body – whether directly, in concert with one another, or by regulating downstream production of various hormones.

Endocannabinoid System

The endocannabinoid system is one of the oldest neurotransmission systems.  It is found in animals as old as 600 million years.  As you might guess, it plays a very primitive role in our bodies’ regulation.  The endocannabinoid system seems to play a regulatory role with other neurotransmitter systems, hormone release, and a cadre of higher order function like: sleep, appetite, mood, locomotion, reward gratification and more.

One prevailing hypothesis for CBD’s wide range of effects is precisely this regulatory aspect.  In short, cannabinoids may help keep your body in stasis.

Further Reading and Details

This is typically where we end our introduction to CBD and endocannabinoids with a new customer.  There are clearly many more relevant details about the endocannabinoid system.  If you examine cannabinoid research for any disorder, they will break out observation and effect across very specific chemicals and compounds. If you are curious about CBD and any particular condition, we always recommend PubMed as a search resource – simply type “CBD” or “cannabidiol” and whichever condition you’d like to learn more about.

The content on this site is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. While research has shown that CBD has the potential to help provide beneficial outcomes for several complaints, it is advisable to seek the advice of a physician or other qualified health care provider when you have questions regarding any medical condition and when starting, augmenting or discontinuing any existing health routine.