What Time of Day Should I take CBD Oil?

CBD oil is a great option for a wide range of health issues such as chronic pain, arthritis and chronic inflammation, mental health disorders such as anxiety, epileptic seizures, and much more. If you have started taking CBD or are considering it as a means for improving your health and wellbeing, then you will likely be asking yourself “when is the best time of day to take CBD oil?” or “should I take CBD oil in the morning or at night?”

Important Factors That Determine the Best Time to Take CBD

The truth is that in reality, there isn’t one single answer for everyone regarding the best time to take CBD oil, and there are a number of reasons why. First of all, each of our endocannabinoid systems (ECS) are going to interact with CBD oil slightly differently since no two people are exactly the same. This means that while night time may be better for one person, the morning or midday may be better for someone else due to the specific effects that CBD has with an individual’s ECS. The only way around this is to simply find what works for you.

And secondly, the specific health reason that you are taking CBD oil for will also play a part in your routine. While some health problems require regular doses throughout the day for optimum effect, others may require taking CBD oil before bed at night or in the morning before breakfast. To ensure that you are able to make an informed choice regarding when the best time to take CBD oil is for you, here are some important considerations to make that will give you a better idea:

Taking CBD at Night vs Day

Whether taking CBD during the day or night best suits you will need to revolve around your particular schedule. This is because you need to ensure you are able to tolerate the side effects of your particular CBD dosage throughout the day if you take it in the morning, or whether it is best to wait for the night time before bed. For anyone who works during night shifts and sleeps during the day, this will obviously correspond to your own active periods and rest periods.

Common side-effects of taking CBD

Although CBD is non-psychoactive and therefore won’t get you high like the THC and other psychoactive cannabinoids in marijuana, it does have some physical effects. The most common side effects from taking CBD include:

• Nausea
• Fatigue
• Drowsiness
• Irritability
• Increasing the blood-levels of medications you are already taking
• Diarrhea
• Decreases in appetite

According to the Harvard Health Publishing Blog, CBD also has the potential to increase the blood-levels of medications that you are already taking. This has been proven true when combined with the blood thinner coumadin, and it is also thought that CBD may interact with other medications like some antidepressants and other mental health medications like lithium, in the same way that grapefruit does. If you are taking other medications, it is essential to bring this up with your healthcare provider before starting CBD.

The above side effects are going to be experienced more with a higher dose and if your body is not yet accustomed to taking CBD if you have just started. Many people actually find that taking a smaller dose of CBD can actually provide a boost in energy and focus, and taking lower doses is also more common for people who take their CBD regularly throughout the day.

When fitting your CBD into your schedule, you will need to take at least a couple of weeks to see exactly how the CBD affects you regarding fatigue and drowsiness to find out if it you can work and function without being impaired for your daily responsibilities. While CBD won’t show up in a blood test provided that there is zero THC, and even though you can drive while taking CBD, because it can cause drowsiness, we recommend taking things slow and finding where your working limit is if you, say, drive often or drive for a living.

This is how your own schedule can fit into the time that you take your CBD oil, and if you wish to take it in the morning, you may have to consider lowering the dose so that the side effects aren’t as apparent. If lowering your dose isn’t an option however, then you can instead choose to take your CBD before bed where the side effect won’t affect what you need to do during the day.

Reasons to Take CBD During the Day

Although everyone’s experience with CBD is going to vary a little, there are many ways in which CBD can help you both in the morning and throughout the day too as the morning dose takes effect.

A morning CBD dose can help combat pain during the day

If you suffer from chronic pain caused by a health issue that is interfering with your ability to get through the day, then taking CBD oil in the morning may give you some of the pain relief so that you can focus on what you have to through the day. This isn’t to say that CBD is going to magically cure the cause of your pain, but it can help with the pain, along with associated inflammation from things such as arthritis or injuries.

It is always recommended that you and anyone else first take the advice of a healthcare professional to fix the cause of pain and inflammation, while CBD can be used alongside those treatments to insure you are still able to balance painful symptoms and your daily responsibilities.

CBD can increase mental focus during the day

One of the most interesting reasons taking CBD during the daytime can be good is the fact that it can increase your levels of focus and energy. This is surprising due to the fact that CBD is known to relax people with the possibility of making them drowsy and fatigued, perfect for bed time. But it turns out that the relaxing effects of CBD can also increase your mental focus, since being calm and collected can lead to better judgement and decision making.

Taking too much CBD in the morning may lead to drowsiness, but just the right dose, normally a lower one, can help to perk users up in the morning and through the day. This is best described as an “active” type of relaxation, where someone is ready and mindful of what they are doing. Studies have also shown that while CBD helps in regulating sleep patterns, it also plays a role in controlling feelings of drowsiness, so a morning dose of CBD may be the trick for waking up, similar to a morning coffee.

Taking CBD in the morning can help with a stressful day ahead

Because CBD combines with the brain’s own CBD receptors as well as those throughout the body in a relaxing manner, it not only helps to lower your stress levels but to also better cope with stress throughout the day. And because the effects of CBD can be felt for up to 6 hours later, that morning dose could be the thing that gets you through a stressful meeting or puts you in the right frame of mind before you arrive at work, no matter what you are doing.

And because stress can present in the form of tensed muscles and tension throughout the body that may have accumulated from earlier in the day or on previous days, CBD has the double effect of helping with the physical side of stress by relaxing muscles. This is because CBD plays a key role in regulating and reducing the production of certain chemicals that when released, signal muscles to tense up which in extreme cases can lead to muscle spasms. Therefore, taking CBD in the morning can also help to relieve the physical signs of stress from the previous day or that have been accumulating for a long time.

CBD can improve your morning workout

As well as acting as a muscle relaxant to help relieve and combat the effects of stress, CBD is also an effective anti-inflammatory. As we mentioned earlier, CBD can be effective at reducing the inflammation caused by arthritis and improving symptoms, and the same anti-inflammatory mechanism also works on muscles after exercise.

This means that after pushing through a morning workout, your muscles are going to be relaxed and will also be less painful with less inflammation which boosts recovery time. And because CBD is also considered an analgesic with natural painkilling properties, your morning workouts, even the hard ones, won’t feel like they take such a toll on your through the rest of the day.

Reasons to Take CBD at Night

Taking CBD oil at night has a host of other positive effects that a morning dose doesn’t provide and will be better suited for other health reasons than a day time dose.

You can take higher CBD doses at night

Although CBD is not psychoactive like its fellow THC cannabinoids, the side effects that we mentioned above may be difficult to manage if you need to take higher doses of CBD. This could in turn interfere with day-to-day activities, meaning that a taking CBD before bed or at least in the afternoon after the day is over lets you take that higher dose with no problems.

CBD helps you to unwind

Because of the relaxing effects of CBD, while it can help you to focus during the day time through relaxation, it can also help to relieve stress after a long day. This can help to take your mind away from some of your worries about the day and instead focus on you, whether it is relaxing watching TV, spending time with friends and family, or any other activity that can be spoiled by post-work anxiety and stress.

This then follows in to the night, with the relaxing effects of CBD helping you to bring your thoughts together in a peaceful manner before going to sleep. A racing mind is often a part of sleepless nights, and so calming the mind not only helps you to get to sleep, but to maintain a quality level of sleep through the night so that you wake up well-rested.

On top of that, higher doses of CBD also have a sedative effect, and so that drowsiness caused by CBD can be what gets you to sleep rather than just the levels of relaxation you might experience.

Taking CBD regularly

Regardless of whether you choose to take CBD at night time or in the morning, what is most important when taking CBD oil is to take it regularly on a daily basis rather than sporadically or in one single dose.

Because CBD works by interacting with our body’s endocannabinoid system, both stimulating the body’s cannabinoid receptors while also providing the body with additional cannabinoids to keep the system functioning properly, what matters more than the time of day is the fact that you take it daily.

This way, your endocannabinoid can be topped up with CBD daily so that in the long run, your endocannabinoid system (ECS) can function better and do its job of regulating many different aspects of how the body functions. With your ECS working properly, you likely won’t need to take so much CBD after a time, and will see long-term improvements in your wellbeing.