With all the hype surrounding CBD in recent years, it's natural for people who hear about it to wonder: does it work? With properties that provide support for a variety of potential health benefits. CBD is helping everyone from individuals struggling with everyday stressors to people suffering from extreme medical conditions
SCOTTSDALE, AZ / ACCESSWIRE / November 26, 2019 / Athletes are an obvious niche with the potential to benefit a great deal from CBD. They routinely experience sport-related pain, inflammation, and stress as part of their professions, but treating these ailments often entails pharmaceutical drugs or even dangerously addictive painkillers. CBD can make a dramatic difference in their lives-but are they even allowed to purchase it?
CBD comes from cannabis, after all. Marijuana and related substances and products are still heavily stigmatized due to their psychedelic properties. As such, THC is still outlawed in sport, and it took a long time-as recently as last year-for the US Anti-Doping Agency and the World Anti-Doping Agency to remove CBD from its list of banned substances.
It was removed, though-which means that the answer is mostly yes: athletes can reap the benefits of CBD, under certain circumstances. CBD business owners like Jeff Yauck are happy that athletes can now access CBD, but say the conditions are due for a change as well.
How athletes can benefit from CBD
Professional athletes played a significant role in the new permissive use of CBD. As retired NFL linebacker David Ahrens (now 60) tells Men's Health:
"I enjoyed a 10-year playing career [from 1981-1990]. I have taken more pain pills in that time than most people have in their lifetime. I wish I had known about the benefits of CBD much earlier. All the doctors ever gave us was codeine, Tylenol-Codeine No. 3, and other stuff. In the beginning of my career, it was handed out like candy. We had to play. There was no care about player health-only your performance was important."
Now that Ahrens has become a consumer and proponent of CBD, he says he no longer needs pain medications like he once did. Another plus is that pharmaceutical drugs can come with unpleasant side effects, while the side effects of CBD are infrequent (though people who take other medications should talk with their doctors before adding CBD to their diets, as CBD has indeed been found not to mix well with certain medications, such as blood thinners).
Many other professional athletes have joined Ahrens in advocating for CBD, including NHL players like Riley Cote and other NHL players like Derrick Morgan. In Morgan's case, he consistently takes CBD in hopes that it may help to protect his brain from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
Conditions of athletes buying CBD
Many CBD users are fond of "full-spectrum" products, which include CBD and other compounds like CBN and CBG. CBD is only federally legal in the United States if it contains equal to or less than 0.3 percent THC, which is too little to create any psychedelic effects. Companies like Premium Jane, for instance, sell high-quality CBD oils, gummies, and other products that contain 0.2 percent THC, and they test their products for purity and potency.
However, both the World and US Anti-Doping Agencies prohibit all of these substances that contain any THC, along with every other compound found in the cannabis plant. This means that athletes must resort to products that contain "CBD isolate."
How does CBD work?
In exceedingly brief terms, CBD works the way it does because the human body, along with countless other animals (which is why CBD for pets exists), produces its own kind of cannabinoids. These compounds, along with receptors and special enzymes, make up the "endocannabinoid system," or ECS. The ECS's critically important job is to help the body maintain regular bodily functions, so adding "phytocannabinoids" from the cannabis plant gives the body support in an effective power-up. As such, CBD and other cannabinoids help the body stay in a functional state. Athletes are a prime group that could benefit from CBD. Experts like Jeff Yuack want them to have complete access to it, and hopefully, relevant organizations will listen.
Media Contact Information:
Jeff Yauck
[email protected]
844-259-5092
Scottsdale, Arizona
SOURCE: Premium Jane