Casual gym-goers and professional athletes alike tend to struggle with muscle recovery after intense workouts. Those who have engaged in strenuous exercise have likely experienced this once in their lives.
After an intense workout, one’s muscles can remain sore for a matter of days. While this may seem like the norm to some, it can actually bode poorly for one’s overall health. What’s more, intensely sore muscles can easily keep one out of the gym for a matter of days.
Rather than squander one’s momentum or ruin a perfectly good training schedule, muscle recovery supplements such as CBD can rapidly improve muscle recovery time overall.
What is CBD?
CBD is a cannabidiol typically associated with THC and marijuana. However, CBD supplements and tinctures are legal in all 50 states, as they contain less than .03% THC.
THC is the compound that causes a high when using marijuana. Because of its low THC dosage, CBD products do not get one high. Instead, they are able to accomplish a myriad of impressive things without causing any unwanted side effects.
Understanding the Endocannabinoid System
What many people hesitant to use CBD products will likely want to know is that one’s body utilizes a naturally occurring endocannabinoid system to carry out numerous tasks. These tasks are extremely vital to our wellbeing.
Cannabidiols such as CBD help to regulate our natural endocannabinoid systems, smoothing out and regulating many of these processes. Processes that the endocannabinoid system oversees include:
- immune system function
- energy
- metabolism
- coordination
- focus and concentration
This system regulates one’s general immune health as well as energy levels, which in turn are vital to any sort of physical wellbeing.
CBD and Muscle Recovery
While regulating the immune system includes various aspects such as speeding along the body’s natural anti-inflammatory processes, CBD is also a well-known sleep aid. Most of the body’s natural muscle recovery occurs in one’s sleep.
Without well-regulated sleep, one’s recovery after an intense workout is severely hampered. Because CBD helps speed up muscle recovery as well as providing better sleep and naturally boosted levels of energy, it is a great resource for athletes.
Why Do Our Muscles Need to Recover?
The type of intense training that typically leaves us sore for days after a workout has, for the most part, been normalized. However, workouts that leave us intensely aching have actually been shown to cause microscopic damage to one’s muscle fibers.
This in turn leads to muscle inflammation, leading to increased recovery time. In some cases, this inflammation takes an even greater toll on one’s body, leading to lethargy and feeling more exhausted overall.
These feelings of lethargy severely impact one’s training. Even if one is tackling an entirely separate muscle group, feeling drained and lethargic can hamper and, in some cases, completely cancel one’s workout.
This is where CBD products come in. When taken properly, the correct dosage can help to accelerate this muscle recovery process and rapidly reduce inflammation.
Hemp, CBD, and Chronic Muscle Pain
Those living with chronic muscle pain may find it hard to navigate their daily lives, not to mention a regular exercise routine. Various studies conducted as to the efficacy of CBD products have shown that CBD helps to decrease chronic pain overall.
Those who face daily pain were shown to report a greater quality of life overall after utilizing CBD products. Hemp oil contains roughly 20% CBD, meaning it is a useful concentration of CBD and a use byproduct for those looking to reduce their chronic pain and muscle fatigue.
Chronic muscle pain can have a determinantal impact on one’s daily life, even outside of athletic training. Because of its positive effects on muscle pain, CBD is also considered to drastically improve one’s mental wellbeing as well.
CBD for Mental Health
As any runner or cardio aficionado will tell you, some forms of exercise rely heavily on mental perseverance and fortitude. What’s more, many who have struggled with depression and anxiety feel their mental health can relate to their training in many ways.
Bouts of depression and anxiety can seriously impact one’s ability to motivate oneself to exercise at all. Once one has started, it can be a struggle to keep going. However, exercise has been noted to have a positive effect on mental health overall, equipping one with improved coping mechanisms for these serious conditions.
While CBD can help one have an easier time being motivated to exercise, thanks to its energizing and anti-inflammatory properties, it has also been shown to have positive effects on those suffering from mental disorders.
This improved mental wellbeing plays a huge role in improved physical performance, which has been shown to have a cyclical benefit on one’s mental health overall. Increased physicality has also been shown to improve immune health and sleep, some of the factors that CBD can also improve.
Because of this, incorporating both CBD and exercise into one’s lifestyle can create an ecosystem of improved overall health that fuels itself.
Is CBD Right for You?
If you’ve never tried CBD before, it is important to determine what levels will work best for you. Everyone’s physical needs are different, and some people react to CBD in different ways.
Similarly, taking CBD supplements or tinctures can help one feel more energetic overall. However, as a sleep aid, many find that taking CBD right before bed is key.
You’ll need to determine what dosage works best for you, just as you’ll need to determine when to take it. While some trial and error may be involved, it is important to first get the opinion of a medical professional.
One many feel as though there is a stigma surrounding CBD, however, it is legal in all 50 states and many other parts of the world. A medical professional will best be able to analyze your overall health and help you to determine how best to safely incorporate CBD into your life for maximum muscle recovery.