Footsteps through the house, the fridge door being opened, the dog who rearranges herself at night, or the backyard flood light coming on inadvertently. These are all small things that startle me awake throughout the night, not to mention all of the loud noises. A neighbor leaving their headlights on and shining into my window after they get home at 2 a.m., the enthusiastic ambulance driver that honks too much at the nearby intersection, and living three very protective dogs all can wake me up throughout the night. It sucks being that sensitive to things that wake me up, and I lived in a state of perma-tiredness for years.
I used to have migraine medication that I was given once to take sparingly but it also served as a good sleep aid, though it came with an expiration date — the end of the prescription. Nothing really worked completely, though an essential oil diffuser pumping out lavender oil helped a bit. Research for an article on hemp and CBD let me to buy a pen of CBD paste and gave it a try (I also bought hemp pasta, hemp seeds, and hemp cooking oil, I was all in for this research). I slept deeper than I had in a very long time that night. I woke up feeling more refreshed, a word that I never associate with waking up. Waking up never felt good. I kept at it and even did some experiments by not taking it some nights as a comparison. I could truly tell in the morning if I had taken my nightly CBD or not. The difference was clear and CBD affected my sleep in a good way.
This is not medical advice and is based on my own experiences. Consult your doctor or wellness professional if you have questions about if CBD is right for you.
What is CBD?
CBD is a compound found in cannabis, but it is not the one that gets you high (that's THC). You can read more about what CBD is here for a longer, more scientific explanation. CBD comes in several forms: oils, pastes, sprays, water-soluble solutions, vape juices, gummies and other edibles, and probably even more.
CBD has anti-inflammatory properties and is most often used to help with symptoms from seizures (especially in kids), inflammation that causes pain, autoimmune and other disorders, along with generalized anxiety and many other things that are being studied daily.
What is Bioavailability?
When you consider what type of CBD is best, think first about the bioavailability and why you want to take CBD. Anxiety? You will want the CBD to affect you fast, with higher bioavailabilty, like vaping it. For better sleep, the oils, sprays, and pastes are a good choice, because they will linger in your system for a while, keeping you snoozing all night. This article explains and gives good numbers on CBD bioavailability.
Gummies and edibles have the least bioavailability because it has to go through your digestive system and isn't as potent. But they're still fun and useful especially for CBD newbies who aren't sure how it may affect them. Same goes for water-soluble CBD, which is what coffee shops are adding to their java to give people a calming jolt of energy to start their days.
What Type of CBD to Use for Better Sleep
Since we're talking about sleep, let's discuss the oils, sprays, and pastes I recommended. I used to use the Plus CBD pens that dispense a kind of paste that tastes like sweet, wet hay. They were fine but I wanted more control over how much I used. Sometimes I dispensed too much from the pen and there's no putting it back.
So I switched to the Plus CBD raw oil, which I just did because it was the next least expensive option from the same brand. It did me good at 1 mg per dropper full, which is the amount I took each night. I had no idea about dosing, so I took it until I ran out and needed a new bottle. I went to Rosewood Market and they didn't have the same brown labeled bottle so I got the gold bottle, which was their Plus CBD oil that is 3 mg per dropper full. I could tell the difference by upping my dosage, and I slept even better, felt better, and even felt less anxious overall, especially while driving. (I hate driving in traffic, South Carolina has the worst drivers!). So now I stick with the 3 mg dose and recommend that anyone trying CBD for the first time start with a lower dose and seeing how they like it before going up.
There are other brands beyond Plus CBD, but make sure to buy your CBD from a reputable source, not from some thrown together storefront in a shady strip mall that has homemade labels on their CBD bottles, or a MLM scheme. That's two ways to guarantee you're getting olive oil with a drop of CBD that won't do you any good. Get your CBD from a trusted health food store or online store with hundreds of positive ratings.
How CBD Feels
I tell people that the effects of CBD aren't what you feel (like you can FEEL yourself getting drunk or high, like it takes over your body) but the effects of CBD are what you don't feel. You realize after you take it that you don't feel tired from bad sleep, you don't feel those tension headaches, you don't feel anxious over dumb stuff. And once people who are expecting CBD to do something for them realizes that it doesn't work like that, they can then tell the difference.
You won't feel waves of happiness or calm or tiredness like from a sleeping pill. You'll just not feel the crushing fist of anxiety or heavy eyelids when it's only 8:05 a.m. and the whole day is stretching ahead. CBD doesn't knock you out when you're sleeping like a pill would, it just removes the restlessness from you and keeps you asleep more deeply. If your baby cries or the dog barks out a warning, you'll wake up.
Hopefully this primer on using CBD to have a better night's sleep has been helpful and informative. Sleep is required by all of us, and we need to have a lot of quality sleep to function in a fast-paced world. There's no need to live semi-tired all of the time, so if you've been thinking about how you can get to sleep more soundly, give a try CBD for better sleep.