For the modern American, anxiety disorders are the most common form of mental illness, affecting over 40 million adults \u2014 18 percent of the national population.<\/p>\n
Characterized by feelings of panic, fear and uneasiness, anxiety<\/a> can greatly impact quality of life and can even cause physical symptoms like heart palpitations, dizziness, tingling in hands and feet, shortness of breath, nausea, tense muscles and insomnia. These symptoms can be extremely debilitating, painful and frightening.<\/p>\n But some patients report that using cannabis has helped them ease symptoms and reclaim their life.<\/p>\n Just ask Joely Balazs, a residential property assessor from New Brunswick, Canada, who thought her first panic attack was a heart attack. Now 47, Balazs has been suffering from anxiety for the last 23 years; at times it was so bad she had thoughts of ending her life.<\/p>\n When Balazs had a breakdown in her doctor\u2019s office, her doctor suggested she try medical marijuana.<\/p>\n \u201cThe lowest it got, I just felt nothing \u2014 at least that was what I felt like most of the time,\u201d Balazs says. \u201cI thought\u2026 \u2018I might as well start thinking of things completely differently \u2014 like I\u2019m starting all over.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Balazs says she was healed over the last three years by using cannabis edibles<\/a>: With a spoonful of cannabis-infused coconut oil<\/a> in her coffee, Balazs began to feel like it was easier to handle her anxiety and deal with underlying issues.<\/p>\n \u201cNow I was living and I didn\u2019t want to pull out in front of a Mack truck anymore,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I was genuinely healed; I didn\u2019t kill the pain, I embraced it and pulled the hood off and saw myself. I really credit the uplifting source of pot for helping me do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Balazs isn\u2019t the only one to find cannabis helpful for anxiety.<\/p>\n Dr. Perry Solomon, chief medical officer at HelloMD<\/a> \u2014\u00a0an online portal connecting medical cannabis patients to doctors \u2014 says that anxiety is one of the top three conditions patients report treating with cannabis.<\/p>\n And research published<\/a> in the August 2017 issue of the scientific journal Psychopharmacology shows that using cannabis can actually blunt stress reactions, reducing the release of cortisol (a stress hormone) and lowering subjective stress ratings from patients.<\/p>\n Still, Dr. Solomon has words of caution for patients considering edible cannabis treatments for their anxiety.<\/p>\n \u201cEdibles, in general, are a little bit less predictable than any other way of using cannabis, be it smoking, vaping or tinctures,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n With edibles, it takes longer for the effects to begin, and they last for a lot longer, so edibles are less helpful for treating acute anxiety when it hits. Edible absorption can also vary based on what else you\u2019ve eaten and the time of day, so there are more variables to keep in mind than with other methods.<\/p>\n Still some chronic anxiety patients \u2014\u00a0like Kathryn Grant, one of the founders of tinctures and topicals company Forest Nymph Botanicals<\/a> \u2014\u00a0report the long-lasting effects of edibles to help keep anxiety more manageable throughout the day.<\/p>\n Grant uses edibles to treat her chronic anxiety, and if she\u2019s having an acute anxiety attack, she combines a high-CBD sublingual tincture with smoking a joint. She says smoking XJ13 and Dream Queen work best for her.<\/p>\n For individuals considering using edibles for your anxiety, both Dr. Solomon and Grant advise starting with low doses and paying careful attention to what strains work best for you.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone is different and what works for one person definitely may not work for somebody else,\u201d Dr. Solomon says.<\/p>\n Grant echoed these sentiments, encouraging people to take the time to try different things and \u201chave enough self-awareness to discriminate what\u2019s good for them and what\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n Originally published in\u00a0Issue 28\u00a0of Cannabis Now.\u00a0<\/em>LEARN MORE<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, have you tried using cannabis for anxiety?<\/p>\n The post Eating Away at Anxiety<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
For the modern American, anxiety disorders are the most common form of mental illness, affecting over 40 million adults \u2014 18 percent of the national population. Characterized by feelings of panic, fear and uneasiness, anxiety can greatly impact quality of life and can even cause physical symptoms like heart palpitations,Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1967,50,111,384,85,2629],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26524"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26525,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26524\/revisions\/26525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Eating Away at Anxiety<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"