Daniell Lyttle tried many different ways to sleep well over the years. At last, she found something that helped her stop tossing and turning and eased her restless mind: CBD. This simple discovery turned her nights around, proving how natural remedies can succeed when other tricks don’t. Anyone dealing with trouble sleeping or feeling on edge might be surprised by this fix that could totally change your nights. Dive in to see why this might be the sleep solution that really works.
Lyttle, 38, juggles a jam-packed schedule between work and study: she’s a home health aide and a nursing student in Los Angeles. She gets especially stressed when she has to take an exam or speak in front of groups.
CBD is short for cannabidiol, a compound found in hemp plants, but usually derived from hemp, which – unlike its cousin, hemp – contains little or no THC, the drug’s psychoactive ingredient.
Products made with CBD – promoted as a cure for everything from insomnia to epilepsy, arthritis to ADHD – are seemingly everywhere. Gummies, softgels, dropper bottles and creams once relegated to hemp stores or dispensaries now have their own displays in major pharmacies and supermarkets. According to projections, Brightfield Group, a Chicago-based market research firm that studies the industry, forecasts that sales will reach $5 billion by year-end, an increase of more than 700% over 2018, and could reach $23.7 billion by 2023.
These CBD products have a special appeal to those who, like Lyttle, are less interested in buzz and more interested in deep sleep.
So how to take the first steps, if you’re curious about CBD? Start by being skeptical. And it won’t hurt to talk it over with your doctor.
“Cannabinoids are not a panacea, and they’re certainly not a magic bullet,” said Christopher Gavigan, CEO of Prima, a CBD-focused wellness and beauty brand that launched in June, based in Santa Monica. “The whole hemp industry has suffered from social and political stigma for a long time. That’s being overcome.”
Still, “It’s still the wild west,” remarked Aliza Sherman, co-author of the new book “hemp and CBD for Health & Wellness.” “Most of the industry is moving so fast that I don’t think we consumers are getting enough information to make good decisions.”
Last year, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of CBD to treat debilitating seizures in two rare forms of childhood epilepsy, but so far that is the only federally approved medical use for CBD.
Looking at store shelves, one wouldn’t imagine it. “You would think that CBD cures everything that moves right now,” expounded Dr. Junella Chin, co-author of Sherman’s book and a New York-based osteopathic physician. “It’s not well regulated.”
Because CBD has so quickly become mainstream, users may forget to mention it to their doctors, said Ziva Cooper, director of the UCLA Hemp Research Initiative, part of the university’s Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. However, the conversation is crucial, Cooper felt, because CBD could interfere with other drugs being taken.
“We are in the infancy of this substance, we don’t know what the effects of long-term exposure are,” he considered.
Many manufacturers are eager to have FDA guidelines; they claim it would bring certainty to themselves and consumers. “There’s no denying that it’s a rapidly growing market, and the FDA knows it needs to figure out how to regulate this, because it’s not going to go away,” remarked Prima co-founder Laurel Myers. “From our point of view, the sooner the better.”
The alternative, she said, are products that are marketed and sold unethically. A 2017 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association tested 84 CBD products purchased online; 43% contained less CBD than it said on the label, while 26% had more.
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