Does CBD Help Hangovers?

So, you've had an eventful night full of alcohol consumption and laughs with friends.

You've woken up with an empty stomach, a headache and hangover anxiety. Can CBD help? Can CBD alleviate hangover symptoms? Well, we're going to find out below!

But first, a cautionary tale.

CBD For Hangovers

While consuming alcohol can be a pleasure in life, it can lead to all sorts of health problems and increase your likelihood of developing health conditions. If your alcohol consumption is very high and you often experience a severe hangover, it might be time to seek help.

Let’s be quite clear, there is a reason why it is called the ‘demon drink’. It truly can destroy lives, not just for those cursed with an addiction but for their family members looking on as someone they love repeatedly presses the self-destruct button. We all have our moments but from a health expert’s perspective, one should be sensible enough to manage your regular intake of alcohol so it's not making you ill. If not, it can increase the stress hormone in your body, cause fluctuations with your blood sugar levels, wreak havoc on your stomach acid and a lot more.

But can taking CBD oil help to alleviate more severe hangover symptoms? Or will CBD make a hangover worse? Well, let's take a look at what a hangover is, and then look at how taking CBD for hangover symptoms may help.

What is a hangover?

In a nutshell, a hangover is a sign that you have drunk too much alcohol and your body is dehydrated. Each of us is physiologically different so one person may get a hangover from a small amount of alcohol whilst another will not.

A hangover means that your alcohol intake may have been a bit too much the night before. Alcohol is a diuretic, and consuming too much of it results in water being removed from the body. You'll likely notice this because you pee a lot more when you're drinking alcohol than normal. When we urinate a lot, this can lead to dehydration. This is what leads to many hangover symptoms.

Hangover Symptoms

Common symptoms of a hangover include:

• A headache
• Nausea
• Thirst
• Fatigue
• Gut problems
• Muscle aches and pains
• Anxiety

As the body attempts to expel this toxic waste the hangover is at its worst. Most people get these acute ‘poisoning’ effects the day after they have been drinking. Which is when many of people will call for some form of hangover cure.

How CBD interacts with your body

When you ingest CBD for a hangover how does it interact with your body? 

A relatively recent discovery has been a new system of the body that we knew nothing about. This is the endocannabinoid system or ECS. This is the system that CBD affects.

The ECS is a body-wide network of receptors called CB1 and CB2 receptors. They are spread throughout your brain, central and peripheral nervous systems and are located in most of your organs, muscles, tendons, joints and even in your skin.

Because the ECS is so widespread it is one of the reasons why CBD appears to be so useful for so many people and so many problems.

The role of the ECS is to ensure homeostasis works efficiently.

What is homeostasis?

Homeostasis is the body’s self-regulating mechanism that influences all our systems so that we can function well no matter what demands we place on our bodies.

Simple examples of this are that if we start to run our body changes our heart rate to ensure we can get the circulation pumping faster to our muscles to allow us to run without collapsing.

Another example would be that we start to sweat if we are in a hot environment as our body attempts to ensure our core temperature remains constant despite the external heat.

The same is true in the cold except that then we start to shiver.

These balancing effects are happening all the time and the more efficient they are the better we can function.

CBD appears to influence this wide range of balancing effects.

CBD: The Great Balancer!

Therefore, I refer to CBD as the great balancer. If you are sluggish and hypo CBD may nudge you upwards, lifting your mood and energy. If you are anxious and hyper, CBD may gently dampen this down, giving you a sense of calm.

Interestingly your body makes its own form of CBD that interacts with the ECS. This is a cannabinoid compound called anandamide and it makes you feel good. However, with the stresses and strains of modern life, it is possible that we do not produce enough of our own anandamide.

And this is where CBD comes in. Because it interacts with the ECS just like anandamide does, it is effectively harmonising with your body. This is why CBD has so few side effects. It is influencing a system that is already primed for cannabinoids to work with it.

So if CBD helps us to maintain our balance can you use CBD for a hangover?

Is CBD a Hangover Cure?

Given that CBD can be considered the great balancer you can see that a hangover is a sign of a system that has been knocked out of balance.

Therefore, it may have a helpful role when you are lying on the sofa groaning and promising yourself you will never do it again!

Interestingly, people use alcohol after a stressful day to calm down but when we drink alcohol, it can actually make anxiety worse. Therefore, my advice would be not to have a drink to help you cope with stress or anxiety.

However, if your anxiety is being caused by a hangover, will CBD help this hangover? Well, the first thing to be clear on is that CBD is very safe to take. It is low on the scale of toxicity. Far lower than alcohol or any of the doctor’s drugs such as paracetamol.

Because it's safe I would argue it is worth a try. Given that alcohol damages the liver and so does paracetamol maybe we should be trying something that will not damage our liver. 

This is where CBD for a hangover may have its place. It is safe, it is non-toxic so you are not adding more poison to the mix you drank the day before and it encourages your body to find balance. 

Plenty of people use CBD for its calming and uplifting effects and given that a hangover is most definitely the opposite of this then I would say you are safe to try CBD for a hangover.

For hangover relief, you should also drink lots of water as alcohol can dehydrate you very quickly. Therefore, I would suggest you add a shot of our Absorb range of CBD products to a pint glass of water so you are putting in hydration and CBD at the same time.

So there we have it. The hangover recovery recipe is simple, lots of water, a shot of CBD and time. As the days progresses and your body cleanses you will start to feel better.

To find out more about CBD from the hemp part of the cannabis plant, explore our blog further. We have lots of interesting articles on the blog including whether CBD has anti inflammatory properties, whether it can help you exercise and a great deal more.

And for the best CBD products in the UK, explore our shop. Just remember, though, CBD isn't a cure for heavy drinking or alcohol poisoning, so please consume alcohol in moderation.