Connect with us

News

Choosing the right CBD for you

Published

on

In an exclusive extract from her new book, The CBD Book: The Essential Guide to CBD Oil, medical cannabis journalist Mary Biles offers guidance on making the right choice for you.

I used to be a cigarette smoker, but gave up after reading Alan Carr’s hefty tome, The Easy Way To Stop Smoking. For most of the book, the reader is encouraged to continue smoking.

However, by about halfway through, you’re desperate to stop, if only to shut dear Alan up. I can imagine right now you may well be feeling the same, as all you really want to do is learn how to buy a decent CBD oil.

So, let’s get on with it, shall we?

First things first, don’t be afraid to shop for CBD oil online. Many of us struggle to trust companies selling health products online, thinking them somehow less reputable than retailers on the high street. However, with CBD, this isn’t generally the case.

When CBD oil hit the scene five or so years ago, no high-street shop would touch it with a barge pole.

Those early CBD companies could only be found online and because they were incredibly passionate and knowledgeable about CBD’s health potential, they knew their products inside out.

So, while they couldn’t give medical advice, they would go the extra mile when it came to customer service.

Overall, this level of expertise and customer service continues today when you buy CBD oil online. Unfortunately, the same

cannot be said for the high street, where staff in supermarkets and chemists often know very little about the CBD products on sale.

Not only that, buying from the high street is no guarantee of superior quality products. In 2020, CBD sold in a well- known pharmacy chain was found to contain no CBD at all, while products from a popular health-food store had less CBD than labelled and above the legal limit of THC.

DON’T BE FOOLED BY CBD MARKETING TRICKS

That said, without the right tools and knowledge, buying CBD online can feel utterly overwhelming.

Logic would suggest that the CBD companies nearest to the top on Google must be the best. Sadly, this is not necessarily the case. I’m not knocking the CBD guys rocking the Google rankings, but most of them will have employed some nifty techniques to optimise their online content so it ranks highly on Google.

One shady technique sometimesused is setting up fake ‘impartial’ CBD oil review sites that miraculously link back to a company’s own CBD products.

Also beware of any list articles claiming to review top ten CBD oils for pain or anxiety.

There is no way of saying whether one product is better than another for specific health conditions, and CBD companies have invariably paid to have their product mentioned with a backlink to their site.

A key reason CBD companies employ these tactics is to get round the regulators like the MHRA and FDA banning them from making medical claims.

So while you may be yearning to find informative articles about whether CBD will cure your migraines, if a company says so on their website, you should immediately be suspicious of their credibility.

BUYING CBD – START BY FINDING A TRUSTWORTHY CBD COMPANY

Choosing which company to buy your CBD oil from is a bit like looking for a new love interest on a dating app or website.

If you don’t set up crucial key criteria, you will be inundated by offers of varying quality.

In CBD terms, here are a few criteria you should consider:

Organic

Whether for wellness purposes or to help treat symptoms of a health condition, it’s important to make sure the CBD oil you take is organic certified whenever possible.

Why is this important? As well as providing us with the wonders of CBD, hemp can also remove heavy metals and radioactive toxins from polluted soil through a process called phytoremediation.

So imagine if the hemp used to make your CBD oil was grown on contaminated land. Thanks to hemp’s soil-cleaning powers, your CBD oil would be brimming with heavy metals and goodness knows what other toxic nasties.

So, make sure you choose a company selling CBD oil made from organic certified hemp. If the products aren’t organic, insist on seeing a certificate of analysis showing they are free from heavy metals, pesticides etc.

Transparency and Traceability

My introduction to the CBD industry came through a CBD company that controlled the whole CBD production process from seed to shelf (they grew, extracted, packaged and sold their own CBD oil).

This is of tremendous benefit to the consumer, as with minimum links in the chain, it gives total traceability, greater transparency and less room for substandard products.

Because domestically grown hemp flowers cannot be used to make CBD oil in the UK, most British CBD companies source their CBD oil from mainland Europe or the United States.

Perhaps they go straight to the farmers, or increasingly they might buy through a wholesale middleman.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this as long as every step is traceable.

So ask yourself: how transparent is the company about where they source their CBD from? If in doubt, reach out to them and ask directly

Value for Money

CBD is expensive, especially if you’re taking it on an ongoing basis for a chronic illness.

That’s why before you buy it’s good to do a bit of homework comparing CBD oil prices.

Just divide the price of comparable CBD products by the number of milligrams they contain and, hey presto, you get the price of CBD per milligram.

Make sure though you’re comparing like with like. For instance, there’s no point comparing the price per milligram of a water-soluble product with a standard CBD oil, as the water soluble is always going to be more expensive.

At the cheaper end of the market, some CBD companies offer CBD oils at around £0.025 per milligram, while some of the well-known American CBD products can cost as much as £0.19 per milligram; that’s almost eight times the price.

However, there seems to be a well- trodden middle ground at around £0.08 per milligram, occupied by the more long- standing UK CBD companies.

So if in doubt, use this as a guide price.

An Informative Website with No Medical Claims

You can glean a lot about a CBD company from its website. If any medical claims are made about their products, warning bells should immediately ring, even if they’re referencing scientific studies to back up their claims.

The MHRA has been very clear in their message that CBD cannot be said to cure or even alleviate the symptoms of any health condition.

There should also be a detailed description of each product on sale. It’s not enough to say: ‘Hemp oil, hemp paste (leaf and flower),’ as in the case of a brand of CBD oil sold by a well-known health-food store.

I would like to see not only how much CBD is in each product, but also what other cannabinoids are contained, plus, if possible, a detailed description of any terpenes.

This should all be backed up by a valid, up-to-date certificate of analysis (COA), traceable to the CBD product you are buying, and detailing not only what’s in the oil, but what is not present, such as heavy metals, mould and pesticides.

Good Ratings on Peer Review Sites

Once upon a time you could find glowing testimonials from satisfied customers on CBD websites, waxing lyrical about the amazing health-giving benefits of their products.

Since the MHRA got involved and banned the use of testimonies on CBD websites, most companies encourage customers to write reviews on sites like Trustpilot.

The good news is that CBD companies have no control over whether customers write positive or negative reviews, and once they’re public, there’s nothing they can do to take them down.

Comments usually cover good or bad customer service, as well as sharing personal CBD success stories.

Either way, you can be fairly certain that if a company has mostly four or five stars from thousands of customers, they’re doing something right.

The CBD Book: The Essential Guide to CBD Oil by Mary Biles (£12.99, HarperNonFiction) is out now.

Trending

Cannabis Health is a journalist-led news site. Any views expressed by interviewees or commentators do not reflect our own. All content on this site is intended for educational purposes, please seek professional medical advice if you are concerned about any of the issues raised.

Copyright © 2023 PP Intelligence Ltd.