CBD for heart health
BLOG BY THE TRUTH TEAM
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.
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!