CBD oil has become a staple in many consumers’ medicine cabinets. They use it to treat ailments like pain, inflammation, sleep problems, anxiety, and more. Some say that there’s no such thing as too much CBD for helping these ailments, but can that be true?
The dosing can be somewhat confusing when shopping for CBD oil as well. Should you buy a bottle of 600mg CBD oil or 2500mg of CBD oil? How much should you take? What if you take too much?
Use this guide to help demystify some of the confusion around the proper dosage of CBD oil and when you’ve had too much.
How CBD Works
It’s difficult to fully explain overdosing with CBD without identifying the way CBD works in your body. Your body has an endocannabinoid system, a structure in the body that is likely responsible for immune responses, hormone production, and other processes and functions in the body. It uses cannabinoids and endocannabinoids that your body naturally makes to send and receive messages from the brain.
When you take the best CBD oil, you increase the number of cannabinoids in your body, aiding your endocannabinoid system in its purpose. Rather than dealing with imbalanced message that can cause problems in your body, the additional cannabinoids canhelp to balance things out.
If you take too much CBD, however, you might suffer from an imbalance the other way. Your body might struggle with the influx of cannabinoids, and you’d be subjected to nasty side effects that would make you sick and uncomfortable.
How Much CBD Oil Is Too Much?
The answer to this question will vary from person to person. There are many factors that go into it, including weight, height, and gender.
For some, 20mg of CBD oil would be considered too much. Others wouldn’t flinch at this amount and require 50mg to feel the side effects.
The vast majority of people will experience a handful of negative side effects when taking too much CBD, although most are mild and wouldn’t prevent you from going about your daily tasks.
Common symptoms include:
- Dry mouth
- Dizziness
- Light headedness
- Headaches
- Changes in appetite
- Drowsiness
- Nausea
In rare cases, CBD users who take too much might also experience:
- Vomiting
- Diarrhea
- Anxiety
- Jitteriness
Usually, when consumers feel this way after taking CBD, it means their dosage is too high and needs to be adjusted. If you’re concerned about the symptoms, talk to your doctor to make sure there are no underlying issues that might be worsening your symptoms.
Can a CBD Overdose Be Lethal?
Most scientists today don’t look at CBD as a dangerous substance; therefore, there have not been many studies that look into lethal doses of CBD. However, one study performed in 2011 and published in the magazine Current Drug Safety examined just how much CBD it would take to kill a person, and the answer is absurd.
It would take about 20,000mg of CBD taken in one sitting to potentially kill a person. Even then, this dose might not be considered legal because there is not enough research to fully back it up—nobody is going to test this on humans, after all, and nobody has died from a CBD dose thus far. The Current Drug Safety study was performed on monkeys.
Most bottles of CBD only contain between 250mg and 2,000mg of CBD. That means someone would need to drink a minimum of 10 bottles of CBD in a row in order to deliver a potentially lethal dose. With this in mind, it’s clear that CBD would not be one’s substance of choice for an overdose, accidental or otherwise.
Most doses of CBD range from about 10mg to 20mg per serving. Even if someone drank the whole bottle of CBD, it wouldn’t be lethal, although it would probably make them sick and uncomfortable for a couple of days.
This information goes for pure CBD. If you’re taking CBD with THC purchased at a dispensary or from a supplier that is not concerned about quality, there could be other toxins or substances in there that could be harmful. There’s no telling what a lethal dose of this CBD would be, although it would be very, very high. It’s always a good reminder to shop carefully when looking for CBD.
Determining Your Dosage
In order to prevent the negative side effects of taking too much CBD, it’s important to get your dosage right.
When figuring out how the CBD dosage you should be taking, there are many factors you should consider. There’s your weight, height, age, gender, and other biological factors. Sometimes, race can play a factor into how much CBD you’ll want to take as well.
Some people also have a surprising physiological mutation that actually makes it more difficult to feel the effects of the cannabinoids. This mutation increases the number of cannabinoids that your body needs to regulate the endocannabinoid system, rendering CBD somewhat useless.
There’s also the consideration of different types of CBD and delivery systems. CBD isolate tends to be the weakest form of CBD, which means your dosing might be higher for this type of the substance. Broad-spectrum CBD and full-spectrum CBD are considered more potent, and you might require less of them.
You can take CBD sublingually, through inhalation or digestion, or topically. Topical ointments usually come in higher concentrations of CBD because it takes more to penetrate the skin and get into your blood stream.
Inhaled CBD is the most potent, so it’s somewhat easier to take too much CBD in that case. This form of CBD is also considered the highest risks because of potential dangers of vaping, so try it at your own risk.
Sublingual tinctures and oral forms of CBD are the most recommended for people taking CBD for the first time because they’re easily measured and less likely to cause side effects.
The biggest recommendation for dosing is to start small, with maybe 10mg of CBD. Use it for a few days, and if you don’t feel any effects, increase the dose by 5mg until you feel the effects without the negative side effects.
After trying out the correct dose in oral and sublingual applications of CBD, you might consider trying other forms. Play around with the dosing until you get it just right and avoid side effects altogether.
