The word is out! Professional athletes all over the United States and Canada are ditching the over-the-counter medications for a more natural approach to pain management and post-training therapy. Not only is CBD great for reducing inflammation in the body and lowering the levels of lactic acid, it’s also helping with performance anxiety and sleep deprivation leading up to events.

Marijuana has long been considered an alternative pain medication in the past, containing the THC component. However, in recent years CBD is another active component which offers some of the same medical benefits (anti-inflammatory, anti-anxiety, analgesic)¹, but without the psycho-active side effect of getting high. CBD interacts with serotonin and vanilloid receptors in the brain, which affect mood and the perception of pain. It also has antioxidant properties.

“The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) removed CBD from its list of banned substances in January of 2019, which prompted many professional athletes, including ultrarunner Avery Collins and mountain biker Teal Stetson-Lee, to eschew ibuprofen for CBD. Some believe it’s a safer alternative to drugstore pain relievers and anti-inflammatories,” (Outside Magazine).

About 1/3 of people use NSAIDs ² and athletes tend to self-administer ³ them in the belief that they enhance performance (they don’t). NSAIDs have side effects that include an increased risk of gastrointestinal and cardiovascular disease ⁴ and so replacing these with CBD, which doesn’t seem to have the undesirable side effects, is a health benefit in itself. ⁵

Will it Improve Athletic Performance?

For athletes, the benefits of CBD are more subtle than in people living with a condition like epilepsy and there is a lot of research to be done before we can work out how, and how much, CBD can help. This doesn’t mean that many athletes have not embraced the trendy supplement in an attempt to get the edge on their competition before CBD becomes as common as caffeine in the athletes’ arsenal of ergogenic plant-derived substances. CBD seems to be the most effective cannabinoid in treating pain and inflammation, and it doesn’t take a Ph.D. neuroscientist to work out that those are both things athletes would like to get rid of. ⁶

Whether CBD actually will boost your performance is up for debate. Certainly, it’s not something that everyone should swallow a handful of before exercise, but if inflammation, pain or anxiety are limiting performance, then CBD can likely help in overcoming that bottleneck. CBD seems to be most promising as a supplement for athletes recovering from injury.

Our Products

Our full-spectrum hemp extract oil is made from organic industrial hemp which contains only legal trace amounts of THC (less than O.3%). These amounts are so small there is no psychoactive effect. We also offer THC-Free Isolate CBD Oil for an alternative option.

Our products are 3rd party laboratory tested multiple times from seed to shelf.  All of our products are produced from 100% non-GMO Domestic Hemp, grown to organic standards and have been tested for contaminants such as pesticides, herbicides, heavy metals and mold.  Our industry leading 3rd party testing procedure is performed on every final product batch and is critical to confirm accuracy in potency information and to check for residual solvents, terpenes and cannabinoid content. Our Certificates of Analysis are available on our website.

We also use a super critical CO2 method of extraction for all of our CBD Oils. CO2 is a much healthier choice than other potential solvents and is “generally regarded as safe” (GRAS) by the FDA.

If you decide to use CBD products for pain management, be sure to consult with a doctor first to help avoid harmful interactions with your current medications and treatments, along with negative side effects.

Visit our shop of legal CBD products today and see which ones will be the best for your needs.

Safe Harbour Wellness, is a contemporary wellness focused company, offering natural products made exclusively in the U.S.A. We aim to optimize individual wellness through natural American made products of uncompromising quality, while furthering our quest to give, love and serve.  Visit www.SAFEHARBOURGIVESBACK.com to learn about our BOG1 mission and how we support our US Heroes; US Veterans, Active Military, Law Enforcement, Firefighter and First Responders.

SOURCES:

1 https://www.remedyreview.com/sport/cbd-and-athletes-a-new-tool-to-aid-performance-and-recovery/
2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3964463/
3 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20424410
4 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20227026
5 https://gearpatrol.com/2019/01/21/can-cbd-improve-your-athletic-performance/
6 https://www.remedyreview.com/sport/cbd-and-athletes-a-new-tool-to-aid-performance-and-recovery/