With marijuana activism growing throughout the United States, researchers and scientists have been trying to figure out what cannabis plants and their by-products can be used for. Recent research has shown that CBD oils are effective in treating a host of clinical conditions both physical and mental. You can use CBD for social anxiety, depression and many other conditions. In the following articles, we’ll break down how CBD can help you, and point you in the direction of some of the best CBD oils for anxiety.
What is Social Anxiety Disorder?
Anxiety Disorders can be triggered by many stimuli and affect everyone differently. Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is a condition in which social situations such as job interviews or friendly gatherings cause undue stress to the person suffering from SAD. Symptoms of SAD include increased heart rate, an inability to relax around new people, and dread of large social gatherings. These symptoms, while not uncommon, are disproportionately powerful in people with social anxiety.
They are more common than one might think, and for a long time, those suffering from social anxiety had no recourse except to consult a physician or therapist. Since the dawning of medical marijuana, however, CBD products have become available on the open market in many states.
What Causes Social Anxiety
There are as many causes for social anxiety as there are people who suffer from it. These causes can include a history of abuse, a lack of socialization from a young age, or even a genetic disposition toward the condition. Someone suffering from SAD may have been made to feel inferior by their peers or may have suffered some embarrassment that they were unable to move on from.
But it isn’t so clear cut. Research has often shown that something as basic to a human being as the arrangement of neural pathways can contribute to the condition. As we grow, these pathways grow as well, and their development can be affected by drug use or physical trauma as well.
Whatever the cause, the condition can be debilitating and can prevent people from actualizing their fullest potential.
What Does Social Anxiety Feel Like?
Have you ever experienced stage fright? Felt the butterflies in your stomach before picking up a partner for your first date, or not known how to react in social situations? These are symptoms of SAD that many people experience in their lives, and going through those ordeals does not mean that you have SAD.
Your anxiety disorders can only be properly diagnosed by a doctor or medical professional, but unless those butterflies become a debilitating problem that causes you to forego social gatherings, you don’t suffer from SAD. Those who do are prone to feelings of embarrassment and inferiority. The prospect of public speaking, being seen in public, or interacting with peers can become so dreadful that SAD can lead to depression and other mental illnesses by limiting a person’s social engagement to a devastating low. CBD Products gives patients a soothing feeling to help them cope with constant and severe symptoms of anxiety.
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How Can CBD Help?
In order to demonstrate how pure CBD can treat anxiety with little or no side effects, we’ll have to break down the science of how it interacts with our nervous systems.
Cannabidiol CBD is a concentrated, ready-to-ingest version of a naturally occurring cannabinoid that is being tested for its potential health benefits all the time. It operates in one’s body by exploiting the neurotransmitters and receptors of the endocannabinoid system.
As some may know, THC also utilizes the endocannabinoid system built into our brains to create the euphoric feeling known as being high. Though CBD products use the same neurological functions, they do not bind with the endocannabinoid system’s receptors as easily as THC, and therefore, do not produce the same effects.
So, we’ve discussed how THC and CBD differ: THC is highly reactive, and CBD less so. This isn’t to say that they don’t come with their own intricate pathways and their own positive effects on mental and physical health.
But what does this mean for users of CBD and people hoping to treat their social anxiety? Because of cannabidiol’s low rates of binding with receptors in the endocannabinoid system, it must bind somewhere else to produce any effect on our body. One of the receptor sites it binds to is actually the receptors responsible for the release of serotonin.
We are firmly in the rabbit hole here, and the list of receptors and neurological pathways with names that resemble alphabet soup is long and tiring. But what we need to remember is that CBD tinctures and full spectrum CBD oils contain cannabinoids that bond with the receptors that control the flow of serotonin from your brain, and that serotonin is the chemical responsible for feelings of joy and happiness.
If just a few mg of CBD or hemp oil for anxiety can replace a laundry list of pharmaceuticals simply by activating our serotonin receptors, then this opens the door for a long list of applications CBD can have in the field of medicine and human health
SUMMARY
Perhaps one of the most interesting things we can take away from our study of CBD’s effects on social anxiety is that our body is hardwired with an entire system of neural pathways dedicated to cannabis intake. Though this system within our bodies evolved long before the first suspected use of cannabis in the human population, its ability to interact with biochemicals produced in plant species is a boon for medical practitioners and psychologists.
Despite feelings that your social anxiety is a cloud looming over your life, or that it will never go away without professional treatment, many people are being proactive with their treatment plans and switching to a CBD dosage for their anxiety. Again, making decisions related to your physical and mental health is a process you should undergo with a doctor, but more and more medicine men nowadays are turning to CBD for treatment of a wide range of conditions beyond just anxiety.
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