CBD Research - How CBD Works for Women
CBD FOR WOMEN – TIME TO LOOK AFTER SELF FOR A CHANGE
Just last year, my wife was hit (literally) by perimenopause.
The floor dropped out on her health and our home in general.
Suddenly, the rock of our family was crumbling and we're only now coming out of it!
What we learned during this year-long process is that the medical community doesn't really know much about how to treat women.
Their first response is to throw Lexapro and BP/heart medications at women.
Multiple doctors and the same, old tired response.
Never really thought about how rough those meds might be on her!
We came out of the process a bit angry.
Women were really getting short shrift in our opinions.
There's so little time spent on hormones in medical school.
Or basic nutrition.
Maybe they just don't have time in today's world to get to root issues.
Whatever the reason, we were upset and had to learn about women's health on our own.
We found out lots along the way but CBD really stood out.
The more we learned about it, the more excited we became!
Women's bodies are incredibly complex and under assault from the modern lifestyle:
- Toxins
- Hormone disruptors (plastics, processed food)
- Stress (Supermom is super exhausted)
- Poor sleep
- Perimenopause and menopause
It's too much!
CBD can be great for women.
If you're like, "Enough...I just need some relief", you can jump right to the CBD product page.
Otherwise, you can jump to any topic here:
- CBD and a woman's body
- Best CBD for women
- Type of CBD products for women
- Full Spectrum or Isolate for women
- CBD for immune in women
- CBD for hormone balancing in women
- CBD for anxiety, depression, and OCD in women
- CBD for pain and inflammation
- CBD for women's skin
- CBD for fibromyalgia
- CBD for women's heart health
- CBD for obesity and healthy weight in women
- CBD and addiction in women
- CBD for women's heart health
- CBD for women's sleep
- CBD for perimenopause and menopause
Like we said...complicated!
Let's get to it.
CBD And A Woman's Body
Women share many of the same issues that men do in terms of health but with a whole layer of complexity on top of that.
CBD is very exciting for women's health since this level of complexity is intimately tied to the interaction of hormones.
We take for granted just how much has to go right for progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone to work together.
Now...throw into the mix lots of chemicals that mimic, block, or generally affect hormone levels.
It's a recipe for disaster.
- That sunblock you're lathering on...potential hormone blocker (go with Badger Zinc instead).
- That Starbucks plastic cup.
- That lining to the diet coke can.
- That fire retardant in our bloodstream (and umbilical cord blood as well).
- How about the hormones and antibiotics given to animals in our food supply.
- What about the glyphosate we all have in our bodies from corn, soy, and wheat pesticides.
This is a small smattering out of 1000's of chemicals that can play havoc on a woman's body.
Like we said before, women's hormone "choreography"� is so much more intricate.
Men are doing the two-step.
Women are performing Swan Lake. Every working hour (not to mention monthly cycles of change)..
Let's introduce CBD now.
The master Choreographer!
We can drill down into specific systems in the woman's body (which we'll do below) but at the top level...
CBD works with the endocannabinoid system to normalize different systems in a women's body:
- Nervous system (central and peripheral) – think neurotransmitters, mood, drive, etc
- Endocrine system (hormones – did we mention how important they are??)
- Immune system (think of autoimmune diseases, arthritis, maybe even dementia!)
- Cardiovascular system (heart, arteries, and veins)
Those are some of the big ones.
A quick look at how this system works:
Research is finding all sorts of ways that this system balances out these various systems.
This system is present in every women's body already but it may be over-taxed by the sheer workload from the toxins and disrupters we mentioned above.
Maybe we're just not as smart as we think we are in terms of chemicals used daily.
And women are bearing the brunt of it (add to the list!).
You can learn how CBD works in the body here or more in the CBD beginner's guide.
Right now, were going to focus on women (for a change!)
Best CBD For Women
Are there certain brands or types of CBD that women should focus on?
Great question.
Best CBD brands for women
Here, the same rules apply to men.
We want the best quality CBD with no other nasty additives
Remember, a woman's body is already under assault from environmental factors.
Let's not add pesticides, solvents, heavy metals, and the like to it!
Here's our CBD comparison for women:
You can also check out the CBD Product Guide for invaluable information.
Types Of CBD Products For Women
There are a few different products available for women but don't fall for "slick marketing"�.
Just because a product is called "Just for Her"� doesn't mean it's better.
CBD is not gender-specific!
In the end, we want the cleanest CBD isolate (or full-spectrum...more on that below) at the best price.
Here's what every woman should focus on:
- 3rd Party Testing
- No solvents, pesticides, bacteria, mold, or contaminants
- Best value for longer-term use
- Organically grown
- Verified level of CBD in product
We screen for all these elements here:
That being said, there are some considerations specific to women's health.
Stomach irritability
Some women have more sensitive systems in terms of the gut and allergic reactions.
CBD isolate might be a better introduction to CBD for them than the full spectrum.
Topical balms or patches can also help to avoid more of the digestive processing of CBD.
The vape pen bypasses this as well but we still want more data on safety there.
Here are some general guidelines for the way CBD can be taken in:
You can see all the products here for the screened brands:
One note...the hemp plant (which CBD is derived from) can be mineral and even nutrient-rich.
Make sure to learn all about the nutrition requirements for a healthy women's body!
- B Complex
- Magnesium
- Vitamin D
- Trace Minerals
A good percentage of women have an MTHFR or MTRR gene variant which means they might not absorb Vitamin B12 or Folate well.
Check that out at 23andMe.com first!
If you're not "methylating" well, that's a huge issue for your entire body!
Hemp oil can have a pretty rich mineral and nutrient content.
We've even seen accounts of too much magnesium (hemp oil, magnesium baths, and magnesium supplements) causing stomach issues!
Now...let's get into some specific topics close to women's hearts (and bodies!)
Full Spectrum Or Isolate For Women
It's estimated that roughly 30-40% of the population has a histamine problem. (Check out CBD and Histamines here for info)
Interestingly, women are higher on this scale and even higher if over the age of 40!
This is an important issue that none of the other websites really touch on.
We would hate for women to miss out on the benefits of CBD due to the botanicals found in full-spectrum not agreeing with them.
This can be very common!
Check out the full spectrum versus isolate page.
Our recommendation...start with CBD isolate, see how your system likes it, and then move to full spectrum.
CBD For Immune In Women
Women are hit hard by autoimmune diseases:
And the list goes on and on.
Basically, for every organ or system in the body, there's a disease resulting in the immune system going haywire and attacking it.
80% of all cases are women!
Think about that.
That's a crazy statistic.
So...how does CBD come into the picture.
The researchers are just beginning to peel back the cover and some initial research has been very exciting!
We'll add them to our page on CBD and autoimmune shortly but the two results that we love!
- CBD helps to turn the immune response level down from T2 to T1
- CBD helps to move toxins (every day from metabolism and from the environment) across the intestinal lining and out of the body.
These are gigantic clues as to why the CBD balms have shown so much progress with psoriasis for example.
The immune system's primary residence is in the gut.
That's where your body comes into contact with all the nasty, outside things that can hurt us (bacteria, virus, toxins, poisons, etc).
By working directly in the gut, CBD calms the immune response throughout the body.
Remember our general understanding is that women's bodies are being overwhelmed by outside chemical agents.
The immune system is overworked and begins to attack everything...including us.
There's even new exciting evidence of an entire system call glicands or sugar barcodes on everything that the immune system might misread.
We've added extensive research on:
CBD and inflammation
CBD and auto-immune
CBD and the gut
CBD For Hormone Balancing In Women
The biggest lesson learned from our roller coaster ride through perimenopause was this..
Hormones are ridiculously important!
Duh!
It took a few doctors to even test all three versions of estrogen
Check out just how important estrogen can be for women here.
The Dutch Test, by the way, is awesome. You may have to ask more than one doctor to get it (or an equivalent).
- Progesterone is a master hormone that has many positive (if not essential) effects within a woman's body
- Estrogen is critical for everything from hair/skin to mood normalization. You have estrogen receptors on your ligaments!! Does Plantar Fasciitis around perimenopause sound familiar?
- Testosterone is essential for sex drive, drive in general, and a general "can do" attitude.
Throw in the 80+ other hormones in the body and it's a veritable orchestra.
Now...absolutely surround a woman's body with chemicals that disrupt, mimic, and block these hormones.
- Your cosmetics. Check
- Your processed foods. Check
- Your plastic containers. Check
The endocannabinoid system is being studied primarily as a system regulator.
The endocrine system is a primary player in this orchestra.
You can learn all about CBD and our hormones here.
CBD For Anxiety, Depression, And OCD In Women
This is probably our favorite section.
A new report showed that 1 in 3 college and high school students are dealing with acute anxiety.
The medications prescribed are generally habit-forming with a slew of bad side effects such as...
Anxiety and Depression!
Just learn about CBD versus benzos or CBD versus SSRIs.
Are you kidding me?
Suicidal thoughts?
This is crazy.
We've seen it first hand in our family.
CBD might be an absolute lifesaver here.
Yes, there is a lot of existing and ongoing research pointing to its effectiveness but here's the best part.
For example...
NIH article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4604171/
It's a lengthy (and wordy) summary of many studies but the summary is this...
Overall, existing preclinical evidence strongly supports the potential of CBD as a treatment for anxiety disorders.
There's a complete summary of CBD's benefit for anxiety here.
The good news with CBD and anxiety or depression...You'll know right away.
If you're in the middle of a panic attack or anxiety, trying 25mg (up to 300mg) of CBD will show it's effectiveness immediately!
There's no guesswork there.
And furthermore for depression and other mental health issues, more here:
Key items for the report:
CBD can also increase adult hippocampal neurogenesis, as first demonstrated by Wolf et al.
Other CBD effects, such as anti-compulsive, increased extinction and impaired reconsolidation of aversive memories
If making new neurons and connections is on your list of things to do, we may be able to check that one off!
It's important enough that we have an entire article on CBD and neurogenesis here.
For OCD, they are just starting to investigate CBD's potential.
Some initial results look promising:
Recent results using the marble-burying test (MBT) suggest that CBD can also induce anti-compulsive like effects.
OCD is now thought to be due to a lack of GABA in the brain and if CBD helps to balance neurotransmitters, that would make sense!
Find out if CBD can help with OCD here.
You can check out our CBD and Depression as well as CBD and Anxiety pages for lots of research.
CBD For Pain And Inflammation In Women
Inflammation really is our enemy...when it's in excess.
It's a sign that the immune system is overworking outside of when we're sick.
It's a slow-moving sickness in terms of what the immune system is doing.
An interesting article even pointed to the possibility that women are more susceptible to negative impacts from inflammation.
Results can run from depression to pain to a host of health issues.
Inflammation caused by the overworked immune system attacking our own tissue (arthritis, Gerd, fibromyalgia, and more) hits women at a much higher clip than men.
So..it's important to keep excess inflammation at bay!
Cue the CBD!
CBD has anti-inflammatory properties but a study highlights just one aspect of how this works specifically.
- It showed that CBD turns down the immune system from T1 to T2
- It also helps to move toxins and waste material across the intestinal wall (and out!)
The latter brings down gut inflammation and the immune system calls the gut home!
There's a lot more research though and you can find it at our CBD and Pain article or CBD as an anti-inflammatory.
CBD For Women's Skin
First, as expected, we do have CBD receptors in the skin!
This is huge. It literally means that the system which CBD positively impacts, the endocannabinoid system, has work to do in our skin.
That's the first step.
There are only 4 ways a woman's body interacts with the outside world and all the nasty stuff we mentioned above:
- gut
- lungs
- skin
- vagina
The skin is our largest organ.
Women are under assault there.
- cosmetic
- "skincare" products
- sunblock
- environment toxins
Look at the ingredients in some of those.
Then google some of the longer, scarier sounding ones.
You'll see that many have already been banned in Europe and/or Canada.
They disrupt hormones. They can be cancer-causing.
We're just not as smart as we think we are with chemistry.
We know that CBD impacts the endocannabinoid system which helps to balance hormones, offsets inflammation, and more.
We can see this pretty quickly.
Let's look at just one example using CBD topically for psoriasis (an autoimmune disease of the skin).
It's pretty amazing to watch.
We have a full article on CBD for psoriasis with a great deal of research.
Just a head's up...one of the alternatives that doctors are readily handing out costs almost $50K year and has potentially horrific side effects.
Beyond disease (acne, skin patches, etc), there's general health and look of skin that's attracting attention.
We want to see if future research shows more effect for full spectrum on the skin due to the strong Omega acid profile in the hemp plant itself.
The anti-inflammatory effect is equally powerful since the skin is basically under attack 24/7.
We'll cover in more detail with our CBD and Skin article.
CBD For Fibromyalgia In Women
It goes without saying that fibromyalgia is a woman's disease primarily.
Let's take our whole premise of system-wide inflammation and toxin onslaught...
And apply it to the nervous system!
Both central and peripheral.
Pain is a response felt in the body but mediated in the nervous system.
An inflamed nervous system is a painful experience.
Now bring in CBD.
We've spoken in detail on CBD's anti-inflammatory and detoxing effects above.
What do we see in terms of fibromyalgia?
First, it's effects on pain:
The studies are just getting underway but already some positive results.
Such as blocking pain mechanism in migraines and fibromyalgia:
Find out all about CBD and migraines here!
Again...this is one of those conditions where we can quickly see if CBD works for a given person.
Studies are great, but not hurting is better!
You can access the product page here but tincture is probably the best "first approach" and use dosage estimates here as a starting place:
CBD For Obesity And Healthy Weight In Women
We need (and will have) an entire article on obesity and CBD in women specifically.
Why women?
Many factors feed in obesity but hormone regulation of appetite, calorie usage, brown fat maintenance, and the like definitely have an impact.
Let's look at early research.
First CBD, appears to reduce appetite in animal models (where THC and CBG increases it)
Furthermore, cannabidiol reduced food intake in line with some existing reports, supporting the need for further mechanistic and behavioral work examining possible anti-obesity effects of cannabidiol.
Moreover, the endocannabinoid system appears to balance the energy usage system which is important for both Obesity and Diabetes.
A new theory is that our endocannabinoid system goes off tilt and obesity is one of many results.
Speaking of diabetes in women, more research points to the following:
endocannabinoids anandamide and 2-arachidonoylglycerol, are deeply involved in all aspects of the control of energy balance in mammals
There's even evidence of CBD turning more fat into the much sought after "brown fat" which burns calories.
More to follow at our CBD and Weight page here.
CBD And Addiction In Women
Unfortunately, women are seriously impacted by addiction to alcohol, opioids, and other habit forming drugs.
First, CBD is not habit-forming (THC can be).
There's finally a full-blown study into the use of CBD for addiction since it already has shown positive effects on withdrawal and motivation.
in contrast, CBD appears to have low reinforcing properties with limited abuse potential and to inhibit drug-seeking behavior.
A second limited case study is here:
Much more research needs to be done.
Addiction is primarily a hijacking of the Dopamine (reward center) system of the brain.
Dopamine is just another neurotransmitter and as we mentioned above, the current theory is that CBD is a master regulator of the body's other systems (including neurotransmitters).
We have created an entire page for CBD and Addition.
CBD For Women's Heart Health
The effects of CBD on heart health are coming fast and furious!
First, it's anti-inflammatory.
Inflammation wreaks havoc on the cardiovascular system and is thought to be a major contributor to plaque build-up.
CBD is also calming and has an anti-anxiety effect in the body.
Mood health IS heart health.
Anxiety, depression, and OCD take a toll on the heart via increased blood pressure, heart rate, and rhythm issues.
CBD is also a vasodilator (expands arteries and veins).
It opens up the system!
This is similar to a whole class of heart medications but without all the nasty side effects!
A single dose of CBD dropped blood pressure in a randomized group:
We'll continue to monitor cardiovascular-related studies on CBD.
CBD For Women's Sleep
We're saving the best (or worst if not treated) for last on women's list of things that are driving them crazy!
Sleep.
Especially as women get older.
Most women stumble onto CBD due to one thing...lack of sleep (anxiety is a close runner-up).
Many things can disturb sleep.
It requires a precise dance of hormones (melatonin, cortisol, GABA).
We've mentioned that CBD helps to balance hormones.
It requires an absence of stress, worry, anxiety, and depression!
CBD shows amazing progress on all these fronts.
The alternatives out there for sleep can be really bad:
- Habit-forming
- Bad side effects
- Potentially leading to Alzheimer's, Dementia
Bad stuff to use routinely.
CBD has shown none of these issues.
One note...CBD by itself is generally not sedative.
That being said, millions of women swear by it for sleep.
Again, in a few days (or nights), we can quickly tell if it's working.
Right now, they're studying specifically with sleep in other diseases such as Parkinson's:
We have an entire article on the research supporting CBD for sleep.
CBD For Perimenopause And Menopause
Finally, how our family stumbled on to CBD.
Perimenopause.
It hit my wife like a brick wall.
We wrote an entire article on CBD and perimenopause here but a quick lay of the land.
Perimenopause and menopause are primarily a shifting of hormones.
Some women skate through.
But many don't!
They just don't talk about it (which drives us crazy).
Perimenopause can show itself with many of the symptoms above:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Panic Attacks
- Sleep disruption
- Pain
- Heart issues
- Hot Flashes
And much more
The thing we learned (hours and hours) is that hormones are SO important all across a woman's body and brain.
To take the patterns – the ebbs and flows that a woman's body has known for 3 decades and turn it upside out is INCREDIBLY disruptive to ALL system.
CBD can help with this transition.
Pick your ailment up above which can result from perimenopause and act accordingly.
As for hot flashes...CBD can help to regulate body temperature!
Amazing.