For millennia, cannabis has been utilised and revered for its medicinal and psychoactive properties; it is well documented that physicians from ancient cultures around the world used it to treat pain and other ailments.
More recently, scientists have discovered remarkable medicinal effects: in test tubes, the molecule shielded neurons from oxidative stress, a damaging process common in many neurological disorders and provided the well-publicised ‘miracle’ to alleviate symptoms for epilepsy sufferers.
CBD is one molecule from the cannabis plant and hailed as a therapeutic cure-all. Unlike the better-known ‘marijuana molecule’, THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol), CBD is not psychoactive, meaning it does not get users ‘high’.
Cannabis also contains hundreds of other non-cannabinoid components eg. terpenes and flavonoids. It is the complex synergy of these constituents that gives the plant its medicinal properties.
Research is ongoing to see how different strains of the plant affect the brain and body in order
