CBD Oil For Heart Health: What’s the Evidence?

The more I read about Cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychoactive oil extracted from the Cannabis plant, the more excited I become about its prospects for human health.  I’ve just come across an article published in the British Journal of Pharmacology that basically investigated the beneficial effect of having a dose of CBD just prior to having – and even during - a heart attack.  

You might well be wondering how the clever researchers knew to give CBD oil to people just about to have a heart attack (and wouldn’t it have been better to just call 999 than to give them some Truth Naturals!).  Of course, the study I’m referring to was performed on experimental rats that received either intravenous CBD or a placebo just prior to having one of their coronary arteries clamped off for 30 minutes (or just prior to having it unclamped).  Now, to be clear, my blog isn’t a forum to advocate animal experimentation, though I do believe that we rely on these early studies to advance medicine and health care.
The scientists determined that CBD had a highly significant and profound cardioprotective effect!  The rats that received CBD either before or during the heart attack had a full 50% reduction in heart muscle damage.  Amazing!!!! The authors postulated several possible explanations for the effect. Here’s what they wrote:

“Thus our data show that CBD can undoubtedly reduce the initial injury that is associated with rapid events such as oxidative stress and activation of death signalling pathways. Second, we have also shown that CBD can do this when given just before restoration of blood flow, implying a potentially valuable clinical application in patients undergoing clinical reperfusion.  Quite how CBD exerts cardioprotection against immediate lethal injury has yet to be fully explored”. [1]
Does anyone else think this is incredible? 

To put these findings into context, let me quote some statistics from the British Heart Foundation.  Today, in the UK, 7 million people have cardiovascular disease.  Each day, just under 600 people will go to emergency because of heart attack and of these, 180 won’t make it out of hospital.  The cost to the economy: 20 Billion Pounds per year.

I have a personal interest in cardiovascular disease, having looked after hundreds of patients with the condition.  Moreover, I myself, had a stent inserted in to my right coronary artery just after turning 40.  I was getting angina – which is a symptom of not getting enough blood to the heart muscle.  On the bright side, I was lucky to actually get angina – because most young people don’t get a warning!
Now, once again, I know we’re talking about a single study (though there have been others) and one that was done in rats. However, the effect was so great, that even if it only partially translates to humans, CBD oil will end up saving a lot of people – and that’s what’s got me all excited.  Yet another reason that I’ve added CBD to the fistful of medications prescribed to me by my mate, the cardiologist.
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