Does CBD deserve the hype?

with me, everyone, let's all learn together. From your local pharmacy to stores like Neiman Marcus and Sephora, it seems you can't go anywhere these days without seeing or hearing something about c B D phobe D is everywhere, d C D oil phoebe D sold here. Celebrities like Amy Schumer and athletes like soccer star Megan Rapino and golfer Bubba Watson say it helps with everything from anxiety to nausea to soar my soles. You can even walk into your local bed, bath and beyond and find CBD for

that's right, your dog. It comes in oils, lotions, bath bombs, pills, even gummies. And I actually tried a few products prepping for this podcast. They smell a little like perfume. Let me try one O. They taste a little like perfume. CBD, which stands for is a chemical derived from the marijuana plant, But unlike THHC that's another chemical found in marijuana, it will not get you high. So my next question why is CBD suddenly everywhere? And perhaps most importantly, does it

really work? A lot of celebrities these days are jumping on the CBD bandwagon. Kristen, Hi, you are so sweet to do this. I'm sorry, I know it's been such a bear to schedule, but thank you so much. Oh my god, of course I'm so happy to That's actress Kristin Bell who's talked a lot about using CBD for her anxiety. So why did she turn to it and what is it doing for her? Kristen, when did you start using CBD? I guess I started about two and a half years ago. And what prompted you to start it?

You know? I had short of been hearing about it for a while, and it was originally recommended to me because my friends who were going on like red carpets and wearing a high heel for a long time, had this bomb with CBD in it that they were rubbing on their ankles to save their feet. And I looked into this company that made the ball most called Lord Jones,

and I noticed that they had a tincture. And I noticed at a lot of people online had been saying that it helps with anxiety because it generally has a calming effect, and I am a very anxious person. You noticed a real change, How did it make you feel? And did it take a while for you to notice the effects. It was like nothing I had ever tried. Okay,

so I did not notice it immediately. But what I noticed about after the first I don't know, week or so, when I drive home from work because I raised two little girls, I'm on my way home from work going through Okay, I need to remember to buy a new

lunch pail because that one got stinky. Or I need to remember to replace the apples because they'll have no apples for their lunches, like all these silly little things like you know so and so neat the dentist appointment, And I'm just going through this sort of mental frantic list on my way home to get back into mom mode. And about after the first week, I noticed I was just enjoying the radio and I wasn't finding myself any

less efficient at home. The dentist appointment was still being made, the lunch pail will still be going to ask you who bought the apples. It was still me. It wasn't a laziness at all. It was simply a slightly calmer version of me that didn't need to worry frantically in order to complete a task. Did I notice the effects right away, No, because there's nothing that you can feel.

But what I did notice is I wasn't having these about these sort of targeted bouts of anxiety when I was alone, like in my car, and that's when it hit me. I was like, oh, this is working for me. Do you ever wonder, Christian, that it might be a placebo effect? You know, I do think about that a lot, actually, because I feel like I would be a candidate for pebo, to be honest. Um. But I have tried a lot of things. I mean I I've tried and I like

taking adaptagen sometimes for my anxiety. I've tried like every little supplement or vitamin that comes on the market, and I haven't noticed as much of a worry free Christen as I do with CBD. You know, I know, Christen, you've also been open about the fact that you like to smoke plot occasionally. Is there a difference in terms of the results? Oh, A bajillion degree of difference like this,

Taking CBD you have you are fully functioning. You can drive your car, you can make a science project with your child, you can you know, take the l sets, you can do whatever. There is nothing that messes with

your brain. You feel completely and utterly like yourself. You're just breathing a little easier and with THHD when you take something that has C HC and CBD, when you use a vape or take a gummy or you know, smoke a joint or something that has an effect on your mind, and that world is totally different now from the BBD world. And I, to be honest, like both. But I'm clearly am raising two children. I'm not smoking

pot every day, you know what I mean? And before we go, I just wanted to ask you, why do you think this is such a hot trend right now? Why do you think that everywhere you look, at least for me, you've just see C B D a couple of things. I think that speaks to a lot of people speaking highly of it and seeing results. I don't think something that's a snake oil gets this much heat around it. I also think we are in a state as humans where there is a lot of depression and

anxiety going around. People are going really fast. We have our phones. We've been going at such a fast pace as human beings. We are requiring things that calm us. And for people that don't want to drink or do drugs, this much like mindfulness is a very easy, simple effective for me solution to being less anxious during the day. It worked for Kristen Bell, but that doesn't necessarily mean it works for everyone. I decided to try some CBD products myself, and I got a boatload of them to

prepare for this episode. I even got my husband, John Mulner involved and made him try a CBD cream for his aching feet. I did my left foot because my left foot typically bothers me more than my right foot, and so I just put some of that CBD cream on my left foot and it felt pretty good this morning. It didn't ache really, and it sometimes aches in the morning. Yeah, you can do it. You're going to try it again.

I would try it again. Now I've been walking around for a few hours and it's a little it's a little laky, but um, it felt pretty good this morning, and because it was morning, I decided to fix myself a Friday. Did you know they even have c D d olive oil. I also tried some CBD drops by this tincture peppermint, and it says high cb D. Place one full dropper under the tongue hold for sixty seconds and then swallow. I've got a full dropper full um under my comp I have to be honest, I didn't

really notice a big difference. Having said that, I'm not sure I used it regularly enough for it to have an effect, but clearly it is helping a lot of people. And I wanted to understand why We're gonna take a quick break here. We'll be back in a minute to weed out CBD fact from fiction. Get it weed out. I reached out to the go to woman for all things CBD, Dr Yasmine heard she's the director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai and a professor of psychiatry, neuroscience,

and pharmacological sciences. I asked her to explain and layman's terms, how CBD works. Understanding how CBD works is also challenging for scientists. Many people are trying to figure out how it works. We do know that it is a molecule that's a cannabinoid that's found in the cannabis and hemp plants, and it binds two receptors in our body and brain that are regulating different transmitter systems. And what I mean by that is that it will change the activity of

cells in different parts of the brain. So t HC is a psychoactive component on the cannabis plant. That's why people get the high. The intoxication that binds to the cannabinoid receptors in our brain and our body. CBD actually doesn't bind to those receptors that cause the intoxication. But what it does is that it tweaks different neuro transmitter systems, So it will turn up one transmitter system and turn down another so that it stays in homeostasis in a way.

So neurotransmitters are responsible for things like pain or anxiety or depression exactly, and CBD will alter those transmitter systems that are involved in many different functions as you said, pain, mood, anxiety. So it has a broad mechanism of action and that's one of the things that's been fascinating and frustrating for the scientists, and that's why we all can figure it out completely. CBD has been shown to be really effective in a in a couple of very important areas. What

are those. One of the disorders absolutely that is clear from clinical trials is childhood epilepsy seizure disorders. So these caesar disorders such as travaise, CBD is now an f D approved medication for them. So that has think significantly moved the field in believing that CBD has medicinal properties. What about opioid addiction. I know there's exciting research that you've done about that. We have conducted small clinical studies that have shown that CBD decreased craving in people who

have an opiate use disorder. It decreased their anxiety related to their craving as well, which are two key features for why people relapse. So we're now going to start a large clinical trial and we'll see whether or not it replicates. But a lot of the work not only from our group but from others, have now started to show that CBD does have potential to decrease craving and opioid users. So those are two very very exciting areas

and that should counter this notion that it's just snake oil. Right, Absolutely, CBD is not snake oil. There are people trying to make it snake oil in promising that it can change every single thing in our society. Clearly, it seems CBD holds a lot of promise for a variety of conditions and that's not lost on people who are hoping to

cash in. And no wonder, the market is projected to reach twenty billion with the b BY So what is your concern about this growing industry and the fact that it's being sold in so many different forms for so many different problems. The fact that you can buy CBD on your steak, in your coffee and water, even mess Gara their CBD mascara, theres CBD mascara, and sadly there's

also CBD tampons. The problem is all of this lends itself to many people thinking CBD is a snake oil, because how can one thing help with all of these different syndromes, disorders, even recreational quote unquote benefits. It can't. It's a fat like any thing else. So that many people are just trying to make money without ever having to prove that their CBD messcara works. They don't have

to do that. They are just riding the wave of CBD being a fed and wanting a part of that industry because, like you said, it's gonna be billions of dollars for me. That does trivialize the potential medicinal properties that CBD is showing to have. So I want the public to understand that there may be quote unquote snake oil components out there regarding CBD that's very separate from the promise that CBD does show. So dr heard, what do you say to consumers? How do you know what works,

what doesn't, what's worth trying, what's not? How much is too much to spend on these products? Well, the month do you want to spend is going to be up to you, Like I said, of fact, that someone will pay fifty dollars for our coffee, you know, that's up to them. However, for me, in terms of safety, that's

the thing that's the issue. Right, So many people are consuming CBD and don't even know where it comes from, so they don't know if CBD is really in the product they've done studies where they have shown that the amount of CBD that's actually in the product that's compared to the label don't match, and in fact those products might even contain things like lead and pesticides. So the

public needs to be aware. They have to do their due diligence because now everybody and their mother is getting into the CBD industry because of being a fat and the profits that are there, So it is not as regulated as it should be, and I think the FDA they're starting to consider what types of regulations that will be needed for CBD. Why isn't it regulated? I don't think that the FDA realized how fast this was going to explode and that they needed to be ahead of

this wave rather than behind it. So they're now catching up and will start making so sort of guidelines. I absolutely think that no company should be allowed to say that CBD can do X, Y or Z unless they prove it. This seems like a good time for a break, so we'll be back in a moment. Rob Rosenheck and Cindy Capa Bianco are the husband and wife co founders

of Lord Jones, the CBD company. Kristen Bell mentioned Rob told me they'd be happy to have more regulation because consumers need to know that the products that they're buying are safe, that they're manufactured in a safe way, that they're properly labeled, that the dosage is accurate, just like any other food or any other drug. People want a regulated system. They want a set of rules to play by. They want to be able to comply with regulations and

um and put out products that are safe. Robin Cindy now run a multimillion dollar empire. They start it out in medical marijuana, but soon found that the real gold

could come from another part of the plant. There was this other count of ainoid we started to read about called CBD, and it was associated with all of these health and wellness benefits, and we became obsessed with it, and then we started to experiment, and so the first thing we did was make combinations of CBD and th HC and so our most popular product was this five to one ratio, so it had five parts of CBD to just one part of THHD, and we made that

both in skincare and in ingestibles, and it became our most popular product formulation. We first introduced hemp derived CBD only products, so they were our same formulations of skincare or confections, and we made those available in two thousand seventeen, and in one month the business grew larger than our entire THHD business, and we realized that was our future. Why do you think this CDD business and market has

absolutely exploded? They're basically two reasons for it. The first is the whole legalization movement of cannabis, So that's been happening for twenty years, and more consumers are aware of it, more consumers are in favor of it. A majority of Americans have access to some form of cannabis in the state that they live. A majority of Republicans are in favor of legalization. That truly is an issue that unites us. And the second piece is the passage of the two

thousand eighteen Farm Bill. So it made these products available at the same time that people were curious about them, and that opened up the floodgate. You sent me some samples, but wow, your products are expensive. Your gum drops cost fifty a pack, your oils cost up to a hundred bucks. Could chang rob CBD is an expensive ingredient if you look at all of the CBD products that are out there,

ores are actually comparably priced. There's a couple of things that consumers should be aware of, their different kinds of CBD and different methods of extracting CBD. So when you grow hemp plants, you get this giant plant. There's a lot of biomass, but you only get a very tiny amount of CBD from that plant. And supply and demand it is, and we don't have enough supply of hemp right now to provide the demand for CBD. But when you extract it, you only get a little bit, so

it's an expensive ingredient. The other thing is there's two different main ways to extract CBD. You can extract the oil from the plant, or you can distill it down into what's called an isolate, which is just pure cbd. It doesn't have the other turpenes and plant waxes and constituent components of the plant. Isolate is a more refined

form of CBD that's cheaper and not as effective. So you want to get either a full spectrum or a broad spectrum oil that's sourced from domestically grown hemp, and that CBD is more costly and that's why some CBD products are priced higher. Meanwhile, Rob has been really open about his depression and talking about what's helped him deal with it. Can I ask you a personal question, of course, how often do you use CBD and do you still use cannabis for your depression or do you feel that

CBD has helped you enough. I do use CBD, and I do use th hc U CBD every day. I put it on my face, I do why. It makes my skin feel nice, and I take it in the evening to help you sleep, help me sleep sometimes. But for your depression, you still feel still use cannabis regularly, a couple of times a week. I really enjoy it. It's legal now in California, and it takes the edge off I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke tobacco, but I do enjoy cannabis. One thing is clear. We're very

much in the early days of CBD. But for those who suffer from a whole host of problems from anxiety to pain to addiction, and for people like Dr Heard who are trying to help them, this new frontier offers tremendous hope. What are you most excited about when it comes to cb D. I'm actually most excited by the fact that more researchers are getting into this so that we will be able to finally tease out one how CBD fully works and have more insight into what disorders

and symptoms it might be beneficial for. I am excited because I'll start to conduct some clinical trials of our own, really large ones that we just got a grant for from the n i H National Institutes of Health, and we'll finally know whether or not, in a large population, does it really decrease craving in people with an opiate use disorder? And that's exciting for me. Next Question with Katie Couric is a production of I Heart Radio and

Katie Curic Media. The executive producers are Katie Couric, Lauren Bright Pacheco, Julie Douglas, and Tyler Klang. Our show producers are Bethan Macalouso and Courtney Litz. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagin. Associate producers are Emily Pinto and Derek Clemens. Editing is by Dylan Fagan and Lowell Berlante. Our researcher

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