Benefits Of CBD

In this video Dr. Richard Harris clinical advisor to CBD Health Collection in his pursuit for the benefits of CBD oil, he has done a new study focusing on cannabinoids and infections.

Here is what he has to say:

So the name of the study is the antimicrobial effect behind cannabis and sativa. Sativa is just the name for the plant that we derive our cannabinoids. Bacterial resistance is a major problem Harris says.

In fact, infectious disease is the second leading cause of death. Worldwide estimated 17 million people die each year from bacterial infections and unfortunately there’s not a lot of research being done on new antibiotics.

He goes on to say, this is a big problem. So whenever there’s a big problem, one of the things we like to look at is: what did we do before? What did we do ancestrally and historically. Plants were used against bacteria and fungus, and many plants have antimicrobial properties.

What Are the Benefits of CBD

The actual first use of the cannabis sativa plant that we have recorded is in 1800 BC by Chinese Emperor Shin Nung, who used it for rheumatic pain, intestinal constipation, as people used it for menstrual irregularities and malaria. The Assyrian culture used it for epilepsy and neuralgia. Even in 1500 BC in India it was used for relieving anxiety and stress.

There are reports from Egyptian papyrus’s African natives, European and South American folklore using it to treat wounds using the tree boils anthrax, sepsis, dysentery and malaria. Bringing it to western side in the 19th century, William O’Shaughnessy and Jacques Moreau described using cannabis for rheumatism, convulsions, muscular spasms, tetanus, rabies and to treat mental health. Now there are over 565 natural components to the cannabis sativa plant, including 120 different cannabinoids.

There are other components that are bioactive like amino acids, fatty acids, steroids, terpenes, flavonoids and alkaloids in the plant. Nine THC, CBN, CBD and CBC are the most abundant cannabinoids.

We call these phytocannabinoidsm, phyto – meaning from plants and actually cb ga, which is the acidic form of CBG. It is the precursor to THC, CBD and CBC. All those in the acidic form and then CBG in the non-acidic form is in low concentration.

But we know CBG has some anti-proliferative effects, meaning it helps keep cells from growing out of control. Has some muscle, relaxant properties, antidepressant properties, analgesic properties and we know CBD is being used for a lot of different conditions. a lot of research going on.

So there’s, numerous applications, including epilepsy, neurodegenerative diseases. This is like alzheimer’s and parkinson’s, anxiety, multiple sclerosis and cancer. There are over 200 different terpenes in the cannabis plant and terpenes act by doing a number of different things they bind to receptors, so they open locked doors in our cells.

Benefits of CBD Oil No THC

They open ion channels, which is how things move in and out ions like calcium, like sodium, like potassium. That’s how they move in and out of our cells. They also bind to the keys for the neurotransmitter so the brain chemicals have receptors that they bind to and that causes action and terpenes bind to those sites.

They also work on something called second messenger systems and second messenger systems are when something like a CBD molecule or let’s, say a hormone binds to a receptor. It causes something inside the cell to activate, and that carries on that message.

It’s like a relay team, where one member passes off the baton to another member, that’s a second messenger system and then terpenes also activate enzymes benefits of CBD oil and ms which do numerous things in the body. Enzymes are a little cellular machinery.

They turn one thing into another: whole cannabis plant extracts shown to have activity against pathogenic meaning harmful bacteria and fungus. And there’s numerous components of the plant alkaloids flavonoids, peptides, tannins and phenols.

All of these have antimicrobial properties and studies. Crude extracts of cannabis have activity against a wide variety of bacteria in laboratory studies, including well-known bacteria like staph, which is a common cause of skin infections. Also works against Ecoli which is a common cause of urinary tract infections and gut infections.

The Benefits of Hemp Oil

What’s really cool is that some data indicates that the cannabinoids would have activity against these pathogenic these bad bacteria. But then against strains that are in probiotics, there was no antimicrobial activity and this was a study that looked at hemp seed extract.

It actually makes sense plants don’t just make these things just to make them. It costs energy. It costs resources for plants to make these phytocannabinoids, but these phytocannabinoids have beneficial properties that the plants use and then they have beneficial properties.

Because we get to take in what the plant has so carefully made it wouldn’t make sense to make something that’s going to be harmful for your own bacteria. It does make sense to make something that’s going to harm stuff that’s normally not part of your normal bacterial flora.

And the microbiome and I think that’s a really cool property of these phytocannabinoids and it ties into what they do overall, is that the cannabinoids, when we take them externally help our own cannabinoid system.

What we call the ecs work a little bit better, it’s a really cool thing. So let’s get back to cannabinoids and our immune system and infections. So CBC and CBG seem to have the most activity of the phytocannabinoids.

There’s some evidence that cannabinoids are effective in reducing dental plaque and they may even be more effective than commercial oral products. That’s really encouraging because a lot of people have poor dental health because we’re afraid to go see my dentist and it’s so important for your overall health.

Do CBD products have antimicrobial properties?

Cbd antimicrobial benefits have gained attention in recent years. Studies suggest that CBD products, such as oils and creams, have the potential to combat certain bacteria and fungi. While more research is needed to fully understand their antimicrobial properties, early findings have sparked interest in the potential of CBD as a natural alternative for fighting microbial infections.

Benefits of CBD Oil Internally

Cannabinoids appear to disrupt biofilms. So bacteria tend to clump together and some bacteria make something called a biofilm. You can think of this as a protective dome. So bacteria really don’t want to be caught and killed by antibiotics and the immune system.

I know that may be shocking for you to hear but they actually want to live and one of the ways they do so is they hide themselves in a dome called a biofilm and what the biofilm does is it prevents things that the bacteria don’t want in from getting in. It’s a literal dome.

It’s a shield and this makes it very tough to treat some bacterial infections with just antibiotics alone. You have to disrupt the biofilm so you can actually get to the bacteria. You have to destroy the dome so you can get to the bacteria and cannabinoids appear to disrupt biofilms and even prevent biofilm formation which is a key mechanism of bacterial defense.

There’s also some evidence that CBD and CBG can work synergistically with some antibiotics against bacteria, that’s really encouraging. This seems to be because the cannabinoids help destabilize the cell walls on bacteria.

The cell walls are the portion of the bacteria that covers them. It’s the outer covering it would be like us wearing a coat of armor and the CBD molecules help to disrupt that armor, and they also seem to work by destabilizing communication networks for the bacteria.

So a lot of people again don’t seem to think about this. The bacteria want to live. They communicate with each other to help form these biofilms to signal if there’s danger and CBD helps by disrupting that process.

Okay, terpenes also have antimicrobial activity. Alpha Pinene seems to be the most effective against bacteria in laboratory studies. In fact, there are some studies that show that, against certain bacteria, isolates of the cannabis sativa plant and terpenes are as effective as some conventional antibiotics.

This study was looking at ampicillin and ciprofloxacin. Now, what is the key take home here? The reason i wanted to come and talk to you about this is because we are doing more and more research on the benefits of the cannabinoids and how they can benefit numerous systems in the body how they are regulating agent, a balancing agent.

Now unfortunately, looking at these molecules and the immune system, some studies show that it activates the immune system. Some studies show it inhibits the immune system. Some animal models show that there is improvement in infections when given these. Other animal models show there was a worse condition in the animals when they were given these.

So this is not something we can sit here and say: recommend if you get an infection, take CBD. No, this is more of a introduction to how CBD works, how the cannabinoids work and some of the properties of them and show that there’s ongoing research for these molecules with numerous applications in the body and the good news is CBD is very well tolerated in humans. There are studies where doses of up to 1500 milligrams per day are used and it is well tolerated.

You can find more articles on this here https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33822478/

This has been research education with Dr. Richard Harris clinical advisor for CBD Health Collection and he loves talking about the endocannabinoid system and phytocannabinoids.  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoCJT8tqAm88Uku4ZiHXW2A

They’re so beneficial with numerous applications and we’re still scratching the surface on all the ways that these are beneficial for us.