CBD OIL for Anxiety

Anxiety: Causes, Symptoms, Treatments and How CBD Oil for Anxiety Can Help

Ask 10 people who suffer from anxiety to define what they think anxiety is, and you’ll probably get 10 different answers. The truth is, no matter how different these answers might be, they would all be probably accurate in the various interpretations being presented. That’s because anxiety is the expression of a complex set of causes and effects in which internal and external factors have an important role to play.

Anxiety: the unwelcome guest that sneaks itself into our lives and can strike anyone regardless of gender, age, background… Including my niece!

A couple of years ago, I took my sister’s teenage daughter to a doctor.  Like most teenagers, my niece had been going through a period of uncertainty and stress in her young life and began suffering from bouts of anxiety, if not depression. It went on for a few months and nothing her mom could say helped in any way.  In fact, my niece found herself increasingly at odds with her mom who thought she needed to “tough it up”.

The more mom told her to just “deal with it”, the more my niece withdrew herself to a point where mom asked me if I could help.

You’re close to her and she thinks you’re cooler than me. Why don’t you talk to her and see what’s going on? It was a request I couldn’t refuse, having myself experienced my own share of anxiety during my teenagers years.

So for the following three months, this is exactly what we did.  We talked about the stress of growing up, the peer pressure from parent, teachers and friends, romantic relationships, school, homework, the worry that she was letting her parent down etc… and it became clear to me that this was an issue that went beyond your ordinary growing pains.

Teens who are at peace and feel good about themselves seem to have a built-in mechanism that allows them to effectively handle conflicts and resist negative pressure.

For other teems unfortunately, the challenges of their young life can sometime become a major source of frustration and anxiety and I felt that our regular conversations, though beneficial, needed a push.

It is said that anxiety can be an indicator of underlying disease, when emotions become overwhelming, excessive and can even interfere with daily living. I didn’t think that this was the case for my niece but felt we had to dig deeper.

I therefore asked mom if she would take her to her doctor, but my niece wanted to go with me instead, and off we went.

Taking my niece to the doctor and anxiety sets in as we wait to be be seen…

As we sat in the waiting room, I could literally feel her anxiety seeping out of every pore until she turned to me, with tears in her eyes and she said something that I will never forget:

Auntie, the doctor is going to think I am crazy. Maybe mom was right, lets go home and I’ll learn to live with it.

“Live with it…”  How many of us do exactly that? Live with our anxieties, our fears, our depressions, our frustrations, our feelings of not belonging to anything, of being selfish, weak? How many of us “live with it”? Or at least try?

Twenty minutes later, the doctor walks in…

By that time, my niece was a nervous wreck and if truth be told, so was I.  Finally, after months of chats, moments of hopes and despairs, here we were, about to discover my niece’s fate!

Parenting is a funny thing.  As parents, mentors, or in my case an Aunt, we can pretty much handle anything life can throw at us. But when it comes to our teenagers, it is as if reality has shifted and we don’t know what just hit us.

I was half expecting the doctor to start fiddling in front of the computer for a few minutes, take a copious amount of notes, and then take his prescription pad before sending us with an anxiety prescription pill. But this one took his time to listen to what my niece had to say instead of rushing into discussing an anxiety treatment he felt would be appropriate.

Am I crazy? Asked my niece.

His answer was immediate:

“Of course you are not crazy. In fact you are 100 % normal. But there is chemistry in your body at play here, and we just need to address that and make it right.  It is nothing that you are responsible for. Anxiety causes are as numerous as they are people, with different types of disorders and while there are debates as to the mechanisms that cause anxiety in the brain, one thing is sure:

Once chemistry is out of whack, people start to feel the effect of this imbalance and you’re not the first one, nor are you the last one who will ask me if they are crazy.  You’re not.

You have what we call a generalized anxiety disorder, not uncommon in young adults, which, if not treated can find its way into all parts of daily life.

It doesn’t appear as if you have any phobia, you don’t seem to be the kind of person with irrational fears about a particular set of circumstances and as a result tries to avoid it.

You don’t seem to have an obsessive compulsive disorder.

You don’t seem to be suffering from a post-traumatic stress disorder which is really good!

And what I understand from our short conversation, you don’t have panic attacks.

Sometimes, the level of the anxiety disorder is such that I need to prescribe a medication for it, but I always prefer to start with a softer, more natural treatment approach, especially with someone like you who doesn’t exhibit the usual tell tale signs that something deeply rooted is at play here. “

Do I have to take a pill everyday then? Asked my niece.

CBD Oil for Anxiety is what the doctor recommended

Not an anxiety pill, replied the doctor. Just a good quality CBD oil for Anxiety. It’s an excellent and natural form of treatment which can be really effective and I would like for you to try this for next 3 months when I’ll see you again. It’s used to help alleviate symptoms of depression, stress and panic attacks.

My niece looked at him with a sense of relief, but you could see that she had no idea what CBD oil for anxiety was. The job of explaining to her what it was would be mine, and luckily I had intimate knowledge of the natural compound as I have been taking CBD Cream for my pains for a several years now.

CBD – WHAT is it and why is it good for us?

If you have spent any time on this website, then you will have read that  CBD is short for cannabidiol. The problem with that explanation is that unless you have dug deeper into the subject, you’ve probably never heard of the word cannabidiol which of course doesn’t help when trying to explain what CBD is in the first place.

CBD (also known as HEMP) and Marijuana are literally “siblings” issued from the same plant: CANNABIS.

My niece had no idea what that meant either but when I mentioned the word marijuana, of course her attention perked up!  Show me a teenager who hasn’t a least heard about marijuana! And cannabis. Yes my darling, beautiful and innocent niece was familiar with all that and knew that people typically took marijuana for medical and recreational purposes.

Those who take the drug marijuana do so for medical or recreational purposes.

1. The recreational component of this drug has its source in the psychoactive part of cannabis otherwise known as tetrahydrocannabinol, one of the 483 known compounds in the plant, including at least 65 other cannabinoids. This is component that gets people high.
2. When taken for medical reasons it is generally accepted that marijuana may be effective in the treatment of many medical conditions, including cancer, pain, anxiety and so on.

Of course, there is a major difference between the two: CBD doesn’t get you high!

CBD vs THC: what’s the deal?

As more and more states in the USA are beginning to legalize the use of marijuana, its psychoactive component is a source of concern for many people who seek the benefits of the cannabis plant but don’t want to “highs”.

As it turns out, two of the major compounds found in cannabis are:

1. tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC is the reason for the highs
2. CBD which can be extpracted from hemp or marijuana

What makes these two compounds unique is that they are both similar to our body’s own endocannabinoids which allows them to interact with our cannabinoid receptors. These interractions are crucial in that they are responsible for the release of neurotransmitters which are themselves responsible for transmitting messages between cells and play a role in pain, stress, sleep, anxiety etc.

What makes them different is what is at stake her. CBD and THC are fundamentally different in one aspect. They don’t have the same psychoactive effects in that CBD is a non-psychoactive compound which means it doesn’t produce the “highs” associated with THC.

CBD vs thc: medical benefits

Here’s what makes CBD so interesting.  Medical research is beginning to highlight the fact that a cannabis plant which has been stripped of its THC compound can offer the same medical benefits as the original plant.

In other words, CBD, (cannabis stripped of THC) is as effective as THC which makes CBD increasingly popular with those of use who are looking for the relief of medical issues rather than go on psychoactive trips.

CBD got its official stamp of approbal when the FOOD and Drug Administration approved EPIDIOLEX, a prescription medication that contains CBD and which is used to treat rare, difficult to control forms of epilepsy.

The use of traditional cannabis product have produced conflicting results with some people attesting to the efficacy of marijuana in the treatment of their anxietys whils others believe that using marijuana can actually make a person more vulnerable to anxiety. True of false, this is not a topic of conversation that is relevant to CBD oil.

CBD is used to help with various conditions such as: