Cannabidiol, also famous as CBD is a naturally occurring chemical ingredient inside the cannabis plant. Contrary to the controversies attached to the cannabis (marijuana) plant, CBD is non-sedative and doesn’t induce a high feeling. In fact, the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recognizes the role of CBD to treat epilepsy and a number of other diseases. However, people are using these CBD products to self-treat every disease which is worrisome and could be dangerous in some cases.
CBD lovers promote this chemical ingredient as a natural healer for everything. Despite so many studies and safety evaluation of CBD, its medicinal role is limited and there is no scientific data that proves if it can treat other diseases. Yet, the supplement industry is launching new CBD products every now and then, encouraging people to use them for everything.
A new study conducted by the researchers from the Center for Data-Driven Health, Qualcomm Institute at the UC (San Diego) investigates the popular uses of CBD products among the general public. The complete study findings are published in the journal JAMA Network Open.
For this study, the researchers overviewed the customer views and testimonials to find why are they using CBD and which diseases do they think CBD products can treat. They found that a majority of them use CBD products for common health problems such as pain-relief, psychiatric support, sleeping irregularities and only a limited number of people use CBD for overall health and wellness.
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It is probably the first study which is trying to find out why people are using CBD based products and none of the previous studies has worked on it. one major reason behind not studying this aspect in the past is that there is no way to collect data on user testimonials explaining why are they using it.
Dr. Eric Leas, from the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Longevity Science at UC San Diego, is the lead researcher and author of this study. The data for this study was obtained from Reddit which is a popular social platform to discuss different things. It has nearly 330mi active members which take part in many discussions and surprisingly, cannabis is one of the most discussed topics on Reddit.
The research team went through all posts based on using CBD products from January 2014 to February 2019. These posts were checked for finding out an actual medical condition for which that user was considering using a CBD product.
Going through these testimonials and comments revealed that 90% of the CBD users try it to treat a number of diagnosed diseases for example autism.
Many of them used it for different psychiatric conditions, orthopedic conditions, sleep regulation, and neurological conditions. there were some people who reported using CBD products to treat addiction, digestive, oral and sexual diseases.
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These results show that people believe CBD to be a medicine that is not true. Most of them are using it to treat a diagnosed disease but what made them think that it is a medicine that can treat all diseases?
Only 30% of the CBD users consume these products for improved health and not to treat a specific disease. The researchers highlight the need to make people aware of the true uses of CBD. Despite having therapeutic benefits, it shouldn’t be used in the place of medicine. This trend of self-treatment is dangerous and even if a person uses some type of herbs to treat himself, it still carries the risks.
