It can be hard to tell just what CBD can for people’s health.
Health claims have ranged in the hemp industry, some reaching to truly ridiculous heights. Still, the novel coronavirus pandemic has many wondering whether CBD oil and hemp use might improve the body’s immune system.
Let’s look at how this may work, and what you need to keep in mind while making a decision on whether to try out CBD.
Research continues despite limitations
The most important element of CBD science to remember as one evaluates the compound’s properties and promises about its health benefits is that information is still scarce for the moment.
Industrial hemp was only legalized in the U.S. in 2018, and the studies being conducted before then were done in limited numbers, sample sizes, in Europe and using animal subjects by-and-large.
Still, we aren’t completely in the dark on how CBD works. Testimonial evidence from plenty of happy CBD users indicates people use it successfully for a number of issues, like chronic pain and insomnia and arthritis, among others.
The studies currently published also indicate the compound works on the body’s endocannabinoid system, or ECS, and may have potential as an anti-inflammatory, as a pain reliever alternative to NSAIDs, along with other possible benefits.
CBD, coronavirus and immunosuppression
No known cures or treatments for COVID-19 exist.
While some universities in Israel, Canada and the United States are evaluating CBD’s specific benefits on COVID-19 patients, here we are simply examining whether it can benefit the immune system overall.
We know that it is always important to keep one’s body operating as efficiently and robustly as possible, so a pandemic is a great time to think about the immune system.
Some sources claim the same processes that make CBD an anti-inflammatory also help it to suppress the body’s normal immune functions.
This might sound like a bad thing, but according to the Fresh Toast, a newsletter that emphasizes cannabis issues, it actually isn’t very noticeable in healthy people and helps less healthy folks from careening from one immune response to the next.
That doesn’t mean CBD is a silver bullet by any means, but we can keep an eye on the developments.
“What we were looking for when we started working on this was not to misrepresent CBD, not to pretend that it is suddenly now the magical immune boosting agent,” Dr. Matt Halpert of Baylor University, who studies CBD in partnership with Medterra, told cannabis blog Leafly.
“But how can you consume CBD while strengthening your immune system at the same time?”
Sources
[2] https://www.laweekly.com/cbd-for-immune-support/
[3] https://www.leafly.com/news/cbd/can-medterra-cbd-help-immunity
