CBD Dosage: in the search for the optimal serving

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Alphagreen | CBD Blog | Educate, Empower, Enhance

10 min readNov 28, 2019

You’ve probably heard that it is the amount that makes everything either a poison or a remedy. So a cup of coffee in the morning will bring you to life, but a set of five cups on a daily routine may eventually break you down.

When it comes to your health, a dosage makes all the difference. Our body is a complex system and, unfortunately, it can’t say: “Hey, stop giving me this stuff”. It’s unpredictable how it might react to certain medicines, that’s why it’s so important not to bother it with inappropriate dosage.

What concerns cannabinoids, there are no specific recommendations on how to use them. However, some rules may help you define the dosage that will suit you best.

So drink up your morning coffee, and let’s learn how to choose the correct CBD dose.

What is CBD?

CBD (cannabidiol) is one of the most well-studied cannabinoids found in Cannabis Sativa plant. When consumed, it interacts with the receptors of the endocannabinoid system, which is responsible for homeostasis or balance of the body. Usually, CBD is consumed as a supplement.

CBD products have the following benefits:

chronic pain and neuropathic pain relief
anxiety and psychosis relief
epilepsy treatment
diabetes treatment
anti-inflammation properties
anti-bacterial properties
psoriasis treatment
appetite stimulation
seizures and convulsions reduction
nausea reduction
prevention of nervous system degeneration
muscle spasm suppression
blood sugar management
cancer cell growth reduction
artery blockage prevention
bone growth enhancement

Supplementing the endocannabinoid system with CBD supplements enhances its ability to improve balance. So everyone can benefit from CBD product advantages, regardless of health quality or age.

Is there a universal CBD dosage?

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Even though CBD is becoming more popular in the UK and everywhere else in the world, it raises many questions about its benefits, side-effects, and ways to consume. It doesn’t matter if you are an inexperienced user or an experienced one; the questions on CBD usage may always arise. CBD doesn’t have an official serving size and might confuse customers on the appropriate dosage.

The dosage that will make you rise and shine depends on many factors:

The unique body features: age, weight, diet
CBD and other drugs tolerance
Disease severity
CBD concentration
CBD product

There is a crucial thing to keep in mind — an optimal serving changes throughout your lifetime. Suffering from severe pain will require higher doses than taking it to manage anxiety. So let’s find out how to decide on the right dosage.

How to choose your optimal CBD serving?

Talk to your physician

The best option to define the right CBD serving, especially if you have a severe medical condition, is to consult your physician. Frankly speaking, there are not so many physicians who have relevant experience with cannabinoids, but they will have an understanding of how CBD products might influence your health.

Start small and increase the dosage gradually

If you’ve defined your initial CBD dosage, based on your weight, it is better to start with lower doses and go slow. You can start below the prescribed or calculated amount and increase the serving size every few days.

When you reach the predefined dosage, you can decide if you’d like to keep on increasing or stop and enjoy it. That is how you might follow up on your body reaction to the drug and decide on the dosage that works best for your condition.

Keep in mind the delivery method

You might consume CBD in different ways:

oils or tinctures,
topicals,
edibles and beverages,
pills or capsules,
strips and patches.

Among them, CBD oil or tincture are considered the easiest and the most effective ways to consume CBD. They’re placed under the tongue, get absorbed directly into the bloodstream, and don’t pass through the lungs or liver. That is how oil retains its unique potency and helps to receive the most out of the products.

CBD vaping immediately enters the bloodstream and takes immediate effect. So far, it’s the quickest way to consume CBD, and the peak levels are in a couple of minutes after inhalation.

CBD topicals are applied in a way that doesn’t enter the bloodstream. Skin cells have receptors that can be directly stimulated. Topicals are used for localized treatments such as muscle pain, inflammation, or skin issues.

Measure your CBD dosage

The easiest way to calculate the dosage is to know how much is in a single serving. Some products, such as edibles or pills, have information on a label. Just have a look, and you’ll see CBD-per-piece indication. It is the most accurate way to learn how much CBD in a single serving.

It’s not as easy with other CBD products. We’ll explain using the example of the most popular product, which is CBD oil or tincture.

Let’s imagine you bought a 1000mg CBD oil of 30ml volume. If you are lucky, there will be detailed information on a label, saying that 30ml equals 40 serving per container. It might also indicate each serving contains 25mg of CBD, which is half of a dropper. That works if you need precisely the same CBD dosage or, say, 50mg, 75mg, etc.

You can also use the following formula to define how much CBD the dropper has:

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[Total CBD in a Bottle] ÷ [Total Milliliters in a Bottle] = Milligrams of CBD per Dropper

So, using our example, it goes like that:

1000÷30=33.3 Mg of CBD in a full dropper. You can use the same formula when measuring the CBD vape dosage. In this case, Milligrams of CBD per Dropper equals to Milligrams of CBD in a single tank.

In case you’re prescribed a different amount, it’s better to calculate CBD dosage per drop.

One drop is approximately 0.05 ml. So, do simple math, and you’ll know that a 30-ml bottle has 600 drops. If the bottle contains 1000 mg of CBD, each drop has 1.7mg of CBD. So if you need 18 mg of CBD, you’ll need to place ~11 drops under your tongue.

This method is not 100% accurate, needs to be proved by other calculations, but with regular control, you will be able to estimate your CBD intake.

Determine the CBD dosage based on the bodyweight

Some sources state that CBD dosage depends on the body weight, and the more you weigh, the more CBD you need to consume. The frequently occurring rule to define the initial CBD dosage is to take 1–6MG of CBD for every 10 lbs of the bodyweight depending on the pain level. For example, 15 mg might benefit a 150 lbs patient, suffering medium-level pain.

This method is not 100% accurate, so please use the dosage calculator mentioned in the following section.

Use CBD dosage calculator

One more convenient way to find your perfect serving is to use an online CBD dosage calculator. This tool takes into account user-specific factors to find an initial dosage from which you can go lower or higher if necessary. Upon filling out the form on this website, the calculator generates three options for potential dosages. The very first step estimates an initial dosage. The other two calculate higher doses. You can stop at any step, depending on when you achieve desired effects. According to this source, nearly half of users stop at the third step while others find their best dosage at the first two steps.

We were curious and tried the calculator. Let’s see what we’ve got.

Here is a man named John, who had a tough year: divorce, no chances for career promotion, noisy neighbors, and cranky children. Oh, boy… He consulted a physician and was offered to take CBD oil. However, it made him even more anxious as he wasn’t sure what dosage to have. To his luck, there is a CBD dosage calculator to help.

Here is how it works. We filled in the form and indicated the following parameters for John:

Agreement to disclaimers, terms, and conditions.
A person in need. Here you can choose a human, cat/dog, or horse.
Purpose of use: anxiety. Here you can also choose any other condition from a dropdown list.
Severity: severe condition.
The need to convert the CBD mg results below to drops and mL.
The total volume in mL of CBD Product: 30 mL.
The full amount of CBD in the product in mg: 1000 mg.
Bodyweight (lbs): 176 lbs.

It took a couple of minutes to fill in a form and what we’ve got:

Here we also received some statistics and additional information to make a decision.

Record the experience

The correct CBD dosage is unique to each individual and depends on many factors. These factors, such as age or severity of pain, change over time. It means that the best CBD dosage will change gradually. It’s more convenient to start a notebook, a spreadsheet, or an application on a computer or mobile device. There you may record such variables as age, weight, health conditions, the amount of CBD product consumed. That is how you may monitor how you feel before and after the consumption and define if you need a higher dose.

Can you overdose on CBD products?

It’s important to tell if CBD causes any adverse effects. CBD alone is not intoxicating and doesn’t cause euphoric sensations as THC (tetrahydrocannabinol). While THC is mainly plentiful in marijuana, CBD is found in higher amounts in hemp. Hemp also has trace THC levels, which makes hemp products such as oil a safe source of cannabinoids.

CBD products don’t usually produce side effects but may cause adverse effects when used with other medications. A 2019 study done on mice raise considered that CBD can be damaging for the liver if used with other medicines.

As for the overdose, a 2011 review on the safety and side effects of cannabidiol, a Cannabis sativa constituent, proves that chronic use and high doses up to 1,500 mg/day of CBD are well tolerated in humans. There’s no reason you would ever take that much CBD. The same review also concludes that according to other studies, this cannabinoid can induce some side effects, including inhibition of hepatic drug metabolism, alterations of in vitro cell viability, decreased fertilization capacity, and decreased activities of p-glycoprotein and other drug transporters. That’s why further studies are needed to clarify these reported in vitro and in vivo side effects. It’s essential to keep in mind that the CBD effect can change if the dosage increases. That’s why it’s highly recommended to monitor your condition and record the data when consuming CBD supplements.

Conclusion

CBD (cannabidiol) is a cannabinoid taken from the cannabis plant. It has a broad scope of application — from psoriasis or pain treatment to cancer cell growth reduction. You may choose any convenient way to consume CBD, for example, edibles, topicals, oil, etc. The dosage plays a huge role, even though the extremely high doses are unlikely to cause harmful effects. To calculate the most appropriate dosage, you’d better consult with your physician, use a dosage calculator, or do simple math. Please keep in mind that many additional factors, such as usage of other medications or condition change, might enhance or reduce CBD effect. Take care and be well.

Verified by a Healthcare Professional

Anastasiia Myronenko

Anastasiia Myronenko is a Medical Physicist actively practicing in one of the leading cancer centers in Kyiv, Ukraine. She received her master’s degree in Medical Physics at Karazin Kharkiv National University and completed Biological Physics internship at GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, Germany. Anastasiia Myronenko specializes in radiation therapy and is a fellow of Ukrainian Association of Medical Physicists.

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