One group of people who may really reap the benefits of CBD are athletes. Whether they may be professional or amateur, or just your every day fitness-fanatic, CBD can help in quite a few ways to aid recovery!
Exercise Induced Muscle Damage
When performing strenuous, continued or unfamiliar exercise, ones muscles are at high risk of damage to the muscle fibre. This muscle fibre damage impairs muscle function and initiates an inflammatory response. This can then impede on the rest of an athletes training; they may not have time to rest for as long as they need. CBD modulates inflammatory processes, and can contribute largely to the reduction of the inflammatory response. This means it can help to reduce swelling in injury and speed up the road to recovery. A CBD oil or cream, applied directly to a sore muscle can also help to directly reduce the pain, allowing athletes to get back to it as quickly as possible.
Bone Health
Excellent bone health is an important for an athlete. While exercise is the most effective way to improve bone health, athletes are especially at risk of fracture or bone breaks, due to the nature of what they do. There is some evidence to suggest that CBD may support strong bones, and a study in an animal model showed that CBD was able to help improve healing time on a bone fracture.
Cardiovascular and Metabolic Function
Similarly, as above, athletes are those among us who have the highest cardiovascular and metabolic function, which CBD may be able to help support. It has been shown that the use of CBD can lower resting systolic blood pressure by an average of around 6 mm Hg. It could be a useful addition for an athlete to support their proper metabolic function.
Sports Performance Anxiety (SPA)
SPA, or pre-competition stress can sometimes severely affect an athlete’s performance. The negative effects can be due to nerves directly impairing performance but can also be due to the effects that SPA has on the body such as reduced sleep or decreased nutritional intake. CBD can help all those things, by decreasing anxiety, improving sleep quality and appetite.
Sleep Recovery
Sleep quality and quantity is essential in athletic recovery, so that performance can be 100% optimal. Better sleep can reduce cortisol levels and increase the levels of hormones required for muscle repair. It is estimated that athletes often actually sleep less than required, around 6.5 hours per night. This can be due to factors such as evening competitions, training sessions, pre-competition anxiety, use of caffeine and long-haul travel causing jet-lag. CBD has proven to improve sleep quality in humans and animal models.
CBD can be used as an addition to any healthy lifestyle but a doctor should always be consulted before use to make sure it is safe. It should only ever be purchased from a reputable company who uses full ingredient labels and 3rd party testing!