Can CBD Be Used For PTSD

Good evening, thank you for joining us. Produce from the cannabis plant CBD is a therapeutic chemical with many uses. But getting high is not one of them. Now inside the journeys of one Army veteran and a soccer star who say CBD changed their lives, while others remain skeptical of its uses.

Here’s Nightline’s Ashen Singh for Sergeant Ben Hayhurst. This is peace. There is great therapy and using your hands. A few years ago, I started making knives. That’s become kind of the passion of what I do. The journey of one of Hayhurst knives through the fire, cracked and beaten only to emerge stronger and with new purpose parallel to his own.

I was an Army infantryman deployed in 2004 2005 Sadr City, Iraq. Hayhurst and his unit part of the siege of Sadr City, now infamously known as black Sunday. There was 19 of us in 4 Humvees that were hit with a large-scale ambush.

I think a lot of us believed we weren’t gonna get out of there. I got hit when the bullet came through the wall. It wasn’t just the bullets that hit me, was chunks of concrete and metal. I figured we would die. His physical and emotional wounds found comfort and dependence with opiates.

He became lost until he says a plant and three letters, CBD helped him live his life again. Do you think all of this would have been possible if you never got off those pain meds and on to CBD? I was in a bad place on the pain pills, on and off suicidal and without that change I don’t know that I would be here. Hurst now lives with his family in Elk Washington.

He takes CBD oil with his coffee every morning. I notice it throughout my whole body, the pain level just drops. CBD you might say it’s marijuana’s friendly cousin and that its product of 2019. If you feel like you’ve seen those three letters everywhere, you probably have. The CBD market is predicted to reach twenty billion dollars by 2024.

We’re. Taking you inside the CBD, craze from the fields to the facilities meeting. Some of the pioneers of the booming industry along the way. I try to use CBD as much as possible. Skeptics are calling it snake oil while believers are calling it a cure-all.

But there’s one big question we want to start with. What exactly is it. CBD is cannabidiol. Cannabidiol is one of over 140 cannabinoids and cannabis plants with an industry so new the jury’s still out on what exactly CBD does.

But according to Dr. Yasmeen Herd, we do know that it can affect transmitters in the brain. So for example, it modulates serotonin that we know is important for anxiety and mood. It also impacts on inflammatory processes, even in immune related systems in the brain. CBD is in both marijuana and hemp, both forms of cannabis. The difference hemp has less than 0.3 percent THC and doesn’t get you high.

Last year, President Trump signed the 2018 farm bill which legalized hemp. Opening the door for the CBD boom really revolutionized the U.S. But where does CBD come from? Hayhurst uses the brand war fighter, a CBD company, geared specifically towards veterans to find the source of his daily dose.

We traveled to Colorado to meet agronomist Damien Fares, warfighter hemp work with a lot of veterans that have had PTSD or are trying to get off of opioids Barriss runs Colorado Cultivars a commercial hemp company.

We joined him for a tour of one of the largest organic hemp farms in the country to find out how CBD goes from this to this. We’re in Wellington Colorado and I’m, surrounded by 600 acres of industrial hemp.

This is where CBD comes from, and it’s where Colorado Cultivars supplies over 40 brands with their products. How does it go from being a plant like this to actually a tincture on a shelf after we plant and grow the the hemp? The next key step is harvesting it, so this is just the starting point.

It’s late in the season. The bright green flowers have dried and are ready for harvest. How am I gonna get on? So Damien lets us take a ride. I got it, I got it sweets.

Green Rush is the gold. You realized we just got out of the combine where they finished harvesting a bunch of the hemp. Now it’ll be sent to processing where the CBD is gonna be extracted. The hemp buds and flour comes in wet here.

We’re doing about 2,000 pounds an hour of dry material output. And as far as processing facilities go how large is this one? We’re probably in the top three in the United States. Then it’s off to their facility in Boulder for mixing and packaging.

We have to have the test done, know what we’re using and how much CBD and THC is in it. Then we formulate the mix to dilute it on to the 0.3 % for THC. And the fact of the matter is most CBD products, even just from hemp have trace amounts of THC which could be a major turnoff and hindrance for some, especially people drug tested for work.

It’s something U.S. soccer star, Megan Rapinoe grapples with. There are certain periods in competition where THC is banned. But CBDs legal so CVD is off the Wada list now. So anti-doping I think you put in your body, is like your responsibility.

That’s the blanket disclaimer. That’s why Megan joined her twin sister Rachel to start mendi. What they say is a THC free line of CBD products designed specifically with pro athletes in mind.

One women’s team member to a World Cup victory uses CBD as a part of her recovery process. So you’re taking CBD for more than just pain. I would say so. Definitely I mean I think I look at it as like. An overall approach to health in my life for her sister Rachel, it’s, a chance to change the game in how athletes manage their pain.

You know it became very clear to me, after using CBD for three years that, like this stuff works, and we need to do a better job as a society taking care of our athletes. So my solution was to start a company, the industry sort of the wild wild west.

How do you guys navigate this? Some of us that are trying to do it the right way and as the FDA comes out with more regulations around. We hope that it’s gonna wean a lot of those bad eggs out. Well, it’s not required by law.

Companies like mehndi and warfighter say that they’re taking it upon themselves to ensure quality, sending it to third-party labs. Like this one for testing there’s such a large range of to the very bad with companies not caring what they’re really put in the CBD.
In fact they don’t even have CBD. So I think that unfortunately the public have to do their own due diligence because the regulations have not been strong enough as it stands. The FDA has only approved CBD for a formulation called epidural X, which treats two rare and severe forms of childhood epilepsy other than that the FDA has not approved CBD.

For any indication why research is needed, the FDA even issuing notices that CBD could have risks. I don’t think that CBD can cure all illnesses. Absolutely not, and I don’t think that it can alleviate many symptoms.

There has never been a wonder drug. But can CBD help on certain conditions for certain disorders? Absolutely but we need more clinical trials to be able to give this FDA evidence for them to make this decision about.

But folks like the repiy knows Sargent Hayhurst and Ferris are undoubtedly believers and they can’t wait to see what’s next. I hoped and I dreamt that it would be this large and it’s exciting to see That people are starting to understand and seeing the benefits of CBD and all the other cannabinoids that were just learning about.

What do you have to say to people who say you know this isn’t real, it doesn’t work. I would say like try it first like I do every single day. But I think that there are a lot of like very tangible benefits. There’s such little medical research done on CBD.

Are there any health benefits of CBD specifically for PTSD?

CBD, or cannabidiol, has garnered attention for its potential health benefits, including its use in easing symptoms of PTSD. Research suggests that CBD may help reduce anxiety and improve sleep, both of which are common challenges for individuals with PTSD. By exploring CBD as a potential treatment option, people can discover the benefits of cbd in managing their PTSD symptoms.

A Journey of Healing and Self-Discovery

Does that concern you? I think about it, it doesn’t bother me as much. All I see is the positive benefits it’s almost 15 years since you were discharged. How is Sergeant Ben Hayhurst doing now? Better every day I would say, that’s why whatever happened in my past, those memories will never go away. Still deal with daily pain but the main thing for me that hurts me is just anxiety.

I feel like that will always somewhat be there but I feel like I’m learning to deal with it you know. CBD and therapy and just learning to accept myself, for who I am. I got out of the military when I was 27.

I’ve essentially been retired since. Those first 10 years were rough and I wasn’t much of a husband or a father. Since I’ve started to kind of get a handle on things I’m 41 and retired. So I have all the time in the world to spend with my kids and my wife and to do you know the things that I want to do with them and I wouldn’t trade that for the world.

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