Chronic pain is one of the major problems that the World Health Organization urgently needs to solve. Every year, millions of people suffer from chronic pain. They initially relied on painkillers to relieve pain. However, it is well known that traditional analgesics can cause side effects. And using these analgesics for a long time will cause damage to the human body. The emergence of CBD oil has given rise to hope that it can replace traditional painkillers for the treatment of pain-related pain, arthritis and other types of chronic pain. Today we will look at two questions. One is how does CBD oil treat chronic pain. Another is what are the benefits of CBD oil for patients with chronic pain.

Let us first understand what is chronic pain?

Chronic pain can be a very devastating pain condition. It usually happens after some form of trauma, and then becomes worse. It is difficult for people who have not experienced chronic pain to imagine what chronic pain can bring to patients. This pain is recurring and can last for days, months or even more. The usual symptoms of chronic pain patients are the inability to fall asleep, lack of long-term sleep, and the inability to find a comfortable sitting, standing or sleeping position. Depression and anxiety are more common in daily life. Patients with chronic pain will be accompanied by some depression and anxiety.

Since it is said that CBD oil brings hope to patients with chronic pain, what is CBD oil and where does CBD oil come from?

CBD oil is the final material obtained by adding an extract from natural cannabis or hemp plants to a carrier oil(usually is coconut oil). The most important component of CBD oil is CBD, which is one of more than 60 cannabinoids in marijuana. CBD can interact with the endogenous cannabinoid system ECS in the human body to affect the human body. The endogenous cannabinoid system can receive signals from CBD and produce some of its own cannabinoids called endocannabinoids. When CBD enters the human body, it binds to the CB1 receptor and CB2 receptor in the endocannabinoid system. This process helps to regulate symptoms such as sleep, immune system response, and pain.

Unlike another well-known cannabinoid THC, CBD does not cause a high psychoactive response. And CBD can counteract this euphoric effect produced by THC.

The difference between Traditional methods of treating chronic pain and those of CBD treatment

Traditionally, surgery, physical therapy, and painkillers have been used to relieve chronic pain. This is mainly because these methods are easy to buy and inexpensive, and among these ways, the most common analgesic drugs are opioids, which we often call narcotics. Although narcotics can relieve chronic pain and make patients feel comfortable, sometimes the effect of opioids is excessive, thus leading the opposite effect. These are the traditional ways doctors use to treat chronic pain, but unfortunately, chronic pain can resist rapid repair. So people need new alternatives to solve the problem of chronic pain.

How does CBD relieve pain?

When CBD oil enters the human body, the endogenous cannabinoid system in the human body interacts with at least two receptors, producing the effects we need. Among them, THC adheres to the CB1 receptor, which produces a high euphoria; while the non-psychoactive CBD attaches to the CB2 receptor, which controls the human body while counteracting the side effects of THC.

When CBD is used to treat pain, it can provide a powerful control for neuropathic pain. Neuropathic pain is one of the chronic pain diseases. It is a nerve pain that may be caused by damage to peripheral nerve tissue or other factors. By activating CB2 receptors, CBD can act on many pain relief aspects, which helps manage long-term conditions such as diabetes and fibromyalgia, but at the same time, research on chronic pain in CBD needs to continue, which means that CBD has a long way to go for treating chronic pain.

Studies have shown that CBD can also relieve pain by acting with glycerol receptors. The glycerol receptor is part of the central nervous system and is found in different parts of the brain and spinal cord. If a person suffers from chronic pain, inflammation caused by the disease may invalidate these receptors, resulting in more severe pain. But the use of CBD can reactivate these receptors, thereby alleviating the symptoms of chronic pain.

So what are the benefits of using CBD to treat chronic pain?

We have already mentioned at the beginning of the article that patients with chronic pain often experience sleep deprivation, anxiety, depression, and despair. These symptoms of patients treated with CBD for chronic pain gradually improve. Let’s take a closer look at what CBD can bring to chronic pain patients.

1. Sleep is improved

Sleep is a very important aspect of life. When people sleep, the body and brain will self-recover and be fully prepared for the next day. Without high -quality sleep guarantees, people’s body and mind will be in a state of depression. According to the survey, patients with chronic pain have an average daily sleep time about 4.5 hours. When they take CBD, the duration of sleep increases to 6 hours, and most patients show a significant improvement in sleep quality. It can be seen that CBD helps to improve sleep for patients with chronic pain.

2. Reduce the degree of anxiety

Chronic pain can irritate the patient’s nerves causing them to experience severe anxiety. Traditionally, patients often use benzodiazepines to relieve anxiety, but the biggest drawback of this drug is that it is easily combined with other toxic substances, causing the patients to die. Unlike traditional medicines, CBD does not cause side effects on the human body, and patients with chronic pain using CBD have significantly lower levels of anxiety. The use of CBD to replace traditional benzodiazepines can reduce the anxiety level of patients with chronic pain, and it is also the trend for treating chronic pain in the future.

3. Relieve the patient’s depression and encourage the patient

Chronic pain can cause a feeling of despair and depression for the patient, and more seriously they do not feel the hope and the motivation to continue in their life. This is because chronic pain can alter the brain and disable functionally coordinated pathways. After using CBD, patients with chronic pain can feel the hope, then they will start to participate in more outdoor activities and physical exercise such as yoga, running, etc. And they gradually get rid of the sense of despair and loneliness and embark on the right track of a healthy life. CBD promotes neural plasticity and the formation of new brain cells and develops into a new way of thinking giving maximum encouragement to patients with chronic pain.

4. Relax muscles

For people with chronic pain, it is difficult to exercise or do yoga, because chronic pain often puts their muscles in a state of tension. The emergence of CBD allows them to operate normally. Patients with chronic pain can try to use CBD oil before and after exercise, and they need to spend enough time to warm up the body because that will relax the muscles and make movement easier. If you have a disease like ankylosing spondylitis, using CBD slows the severity of arthritis and gives you more freedom to do what you want to.

5. Reduce fear of touch and benefit personal social

Many people with chronic pain refuse to some form of physical contact with others because they can feel strong pain. So this behavior makes many people with chronic pain unwilling to contact with others. However, long-term no contact with others is likely to seriously affect the social and life for people and cause serious consequences. The benefit of using CBD treatment is that CBD can act on the central nervous system of the human body, relieving the action of certain compounds and CB2 receptors to alleviate the intense pain and promote a more positive feeling. When you start to try to use CBD oil, you will slowly be willing to contact others and restore normal social and life, which is a good thing for patients with chronic pain.

6. Diversity and convenience of CBD itself

CBD has many benefits, it can improve many of the symptoms of patients with chronic pain. Because CBD itself is not a drug, so it will not adversely affect the human body. Patients with chronic pain can choose appropriate intake methods such as topical use or sublingual swallowing and directly taking according to their own conditions when they choose CBD oil. Of course, if you don’t want to directly ingest CBD oil, you can also add it to food or drink. CBD can exert the same calming effect on the joints and muscles of the patient.

The dose of CBD oil for the treatment of chronic pain

The dosage of CBD oil varies from person to person. The different type and degree of chronic pain that each person suffers from, the difference in personal physique, diet, metabolism, and product brand will result in different doses. Although we hope to provide a standard for CBD oil dosage, this thing is not easy. With these facts in mind, the advice we can give is to start with the smallest CBD dose for people who are unfamiliar with CBD.  Then gradually increase the dose until they achieve the desired results. In the process, we recommend that patients with chronic pain consult with your doctor and take the required dose as necessary.

Finally

CBD oil really shows great pain relief and there is evidence that it can be used to help control chronic pain. It can be seen from the above studies that treatment with CBD oil for chronic pain is promising. That is because CBD oil is not addictive and has lower side effects potential than traditional analgesics. Although many studies have shown that CBD oil does help to alleviate chronic pain, more research is still necessary, especially for long-term studies of human subjects.