Does CBD Make You Feel Sleepy?

sleepy woman

From stressed-out parents to night owls, many individuals all over the world struggle with insomnia. With 30 to 35 percent of adults in the U.S. showing insomnia symptoms, experts are not referring to insomnia as an "epidemic."

These days, just about everyone is running on a fairly tight schedule. If you're living a fast-paced life, you can't afford to feel tired or sleepy. Medical research shows CBD could help treat the symptoms of insomnia, along with other sleep disorders. But you may be wondering if CBD makes you sleep. And, if you have that belief, it could deter you from giving CBD a try, despite its positive effects.

But, does it induce sedation that could negatively affect your daily routine? Here you'll learn how CBD works, and how it doesn't make you feel sleepy, but yet is still a good natural treatment for insomnia and other sleep problems.

How Does CBD Work?

You can use CBD in numerous ways, including:

  • Inhalation
  • Consumption
  • Sublingual absorption
  • Exposure to CBD-infused products

Now, you even have the choice of a CBD pillow which can help with sleep.

Once you administer CBD, it enters your body and starts interacting with your network of receptors you have throughout your body known as your Endocannabinoid System (ECS). This is because your receptors only interact with cannabinoids like CBD.

It's the relationship between your ECS and CBD that allows CBD to offer relief for a number of health conditions, including anxiety, stress, and insomnia. Knowing this, let's get back to the topic at hand — whether or not CBD makes you sleepy.

CBD and Sleep

If you're like other people, it would be easy to assume CBD would likely make you sleepy, particularly if you're familiar with THC's sedative effects. After all, how could CBD help ease sleep issues like insomnia if it didn't make you sleepy?

Although CBD has been shown to effectively alleviate insomnia symptoms, the way in which it works is different than what you'd think. Instead of causing sedative effects like sleeping pills or THC, CBD combats the source of insomnia, which is usually stress or anxiety.

Individuals using CBD for insomnia notice its stress-relieving and calming properties help them relax, and thereby obtain a full night's rest.

A study in 2006 found when researchers gave rats CBD in an attempt to see how it impacted their sleep/wake cycle, what they found was during the daylight hours of the test is that the rats were more alert, but during the nighttime, their alertness didn't affect their sleep pattern.

Therefore, the study suggests CBD might provide you with a more balanced sleep/wake cycle because it prevents daytime sleepiness, ensuring your mind and body can rest properly at night.

It's important you understand the relationship CBD has with your ECS. Your ECS and its receptors throughout your nervous system regulate various functions in your body such as:

  • Anxiety and stress response
  • Mood levels
  • Body temperature

When CBD starts interacting with your ECS, it improves how your body regulates these essential functions, providing balance throughout your body.

With that said, CBD isn't easing insomnia by sedating your body, but rather it's fighting the causes of your insomnia — stress, anxiety, chemical imbalance, etc., to provide balance and calmness. And, it's this that helps you enjoy a restorative sleep and follow a natural sleep/wake cycle.

Benefits of CBD For Sleep

Because of the immediate and long-term risks insomnia could pose, it's essential to find an efficient treatment as soon as you can. While each person responds to treatments differently, it's often the blend of both conventional medicine and cannabis (or CBD) that proves to be most efficient in not only improving sleep, but also in easing the emotional and mental components which often lie behind insomnia like stress, depression, and anxiety. Although prescription medicines might be effective in the treatment of the physiological causes of insomnia, they can't provide the holistic, wellness benefit to both mind and body.

CBD's benefits go way beyond extending your sleep duration, which is really just one component of being well-rested. They also include:

  • Decreased sleep latency: Your sleep onset latency (SOL) is the amount of time it takes you to fall asleep from the total wakefulness state. CBD can decrease SOL, allowing you to fall asleep in minutes instead of hours.
  • Improved sleep hygiene: This refers to your sleep quality (and the habits contributing to it like avoiding caffeine). Many individuals using CBD report experiencing more satisfying, deeper sleep with fewer interruptions from waking up throughout the night.
  • Lack of impaired memory or "hangover": A lot of individuals suffering from insomnia try to experiment with alcoholic "nightcaps" prior to going to bed to help them fall asleep quicker. But, this often is counter-productive, since drinking before going to sleep could cause you to wake feeling disoriented, groggy, poorly-rested, and headache-y. Those using sleeping pills report morning fuzzy-headedness and loss of short-term memory. CBD doesn't produce these unpleasant hangover effects.

Research on CBD and insomnia is still somewhat limited because of federal regulations. Even so, studies showing CBD's effectiveness on improving sleep are increasing. Also individual user anecdotal evidence often shows promising results when using CBD for improving sleep without it making you sleepy.

Try Our CBD-Infused Pillow to Help You Sleep

If you're struggling with insomnia or some other sleep problem and don't want to use a medication that's going to leave you tired and groggy the next morning, you may want to consider CBD. Better yet, since sleep and pillows go hand-in-hand, you may even want to try a CBD-infused pillow.

CBD-infused pillows are soft, comfortable, and effective at helping you fall asleep and stay asleep. Enjoy a restful good night's sleep when cuddling up with your new CBD-infused pillow. Click here to get $10 off on your order by joining our Ambassador Club.