Arthritis is a chronic disease of your joints where your joints cause immense pain due to inflammation and degeneration. The intense pain is debilitating and restricts mobility in the elderly population. All joints in your body are susceptible to arthritis-related pain. So your hips, hands, legs, and knees can all be affected by arthritis.
Pain caused by arthritis has no permanent cure, and once you are affected, you will have to adopt pain management strategies to maintain your lifestyle. Painkillers are the most common strategy to deal with arthritis-related pain.
Why Is Hemp Seed Oil Becoming A Preferred Choice For Dealing With Chronic Pain?
Long-term consumption of painkillers has several side effects. Painkillers affect the heart and may cause ulcers in the stomach. Hence, many people try out hemp seed oil to manage arthritis-related pain. If you, too, wish to try out an alternative to painkillers, you can get CBD hemp seeds for sale.
Types Of Arthritis
Arthritis can be of different types; some of them are listed below.
- Osteoarthritis– This occurs due to constant wear and tear of cartilage in the joints.
- Rheumatoid Arthritis- This involves the immune system of the body. It is an autoimmune disease meaning that the immune cells of the body start attacking the body’s cells. Here the immune cells attack the synovial membranes in the joints and damage them, causing intense pain and discomfort.
- Gout- In this case, pain is caused due to the deposition of uric acids in the joints.
- Psoriatic Arthritis- In this case, pain is caused by the inflammation caused by psoriasis, which is an autoimmune disease that primarily affects the skin.
How Hemp Seed Oil Can Help Manage Arthritis-Related Pain
- Inflammation Control- Acute inflammation is the common cause of pain and discomfort. So most of the oils, be it lavender or hemp seed oil, used for pain management work as anti-inflammatory substances.
Massaging the affected body part with cold-pressed hemp seed oil is great for reducing inflammation because hemp seed is rich in GLA (Gamma Linoleic Acid). GLA is an anti-inflammatory compound, and when affected body parts absorb it via the skin, it helps reduce inflammation in the affected area.
- Managing autoimmune disease- Arthritis may also be caused by the body’s immune cells. Hemp seed oil has certain compounds that bind to receptors, namely CB1 and CB2. These receptors are not the same ones that are bound by cannabinoids.
- CB1 and CB2 receptors are primarily involved in movement, emotional processing and the immune system. Hence, CB1 and CB2 receptors, when bound by certain compounds present in hemp seed oil, may reduce pain caused by autoimmune disorders.
- Managing Gout- If a person is suffering from gout, the main culprit is high uric acid levels in the body, which gets deposited in the joints. Protein-rich food such as meats is the body’s most important source of uric acid.
- However, hemp seed oil, unlike meats, is not metabolized into uric acid despite being a rich source of protein. The metabolized components of hemp seed oil are alkaline, unlike those of meat which are acidic in nature. Hence, cold-pressed hemp seed oil is the best alternative to meats for those affected by gout.
- Managing Oxidative Stress And Damage- Oxidative stress is a major factor that damages tissue and causes inflammation. High levels of reactive oxygen species or ROS in the body damage the components of a cell. Two substances, namely linoleic acid and linolenic acid in hemp seed oil, are reported to have great antioxidant properties.
How To Choose The Best Hemp Seed Oil For Pain Management
- Choose a brand of oil that has no more than 0.3 % THC as per its certificate of analysis. THC is the active compound present in cannabis plants that is responsible for the high that it causes.
The chemical composition of the cannabis/hemp seed and its flowers and stems are very different. So consuming the seed’s oil should not give you a high or any other side effect. However, some trace quantities of THC may also be present in the oil extracted from the seed. So it is always better to go through the THC content before using any product.
- Choose A Brand That Discloses Their Source Of Hemp.
- Choose a brand that has been certified by a third-party testing agency. A product that is certified by a third-party testing agency will be of good quality, and you do not have to worry about side effects caused by impurities or contaminants.
- Check for the certificates for pesticide content, molds or the presence of heavy metals in the product. At times the pesticides added to the agricultural fields can make their way to the plant and the different products derived from those plant parts.
- To avoid pesticide residues in your hemp seed oil, use a brand that sources the seeds from an organically maintained field.
- Do not buy products from a company subjected to any FDA warnings.
- Check for legal norms before buying a product. Although the seed of cannabis does not give a high, many countries may still consider them to be illegal. So check out the local laws about cannabis seeds before purchasing a product.
How To Use Cannabis Seed Oil
There is no hard and fast rule for using cannabis seed oil for pain relief. Most people use the oil to massage it directly onto the affected area. However, a liquid extract can be consumed orally. Likewise, capsules can be taken orally, or tinctures can be used topically.
Conclusion
Cannabis oil has been used for alleviating several diseased conditions like treating pain, managing symptoms of epilepsy etc.
However, in most cases, there is no solid scientific backing for the effectiveness, and the sample sizes for studies have been quite small. Hence, no definitive data is available about the most effective dosage and method of usage of the extracts.
But there is no denying that extracts from different parts of the Cannabis plant are useful, and several people have been relieved from chronic pain by using those products.
