Occasional anxiety is normal. You may feel anxious before making important decisions, facing problems at work, or before taking tests. However, anxiety disorders are much more than feeling fear or worry temporarily. For those with an anxiety disorder, the anxiety gets worse over time, and doesn't go away. There are various types of anxiety disorders. Below are five types of anxiety disorders in which CBD can help treat the symptoms.
- Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
With generalized anxiety disorder, you display excessive worry or anxiety, most days, for a minimum of six months, about various things like work, health, day-to-day routine life situations, and social interactions. The anxiety and fear can cause substantial issues in different areas of your life.
Symptoms of Generalized Anxiety Disorder
GAD can cause numerous symptoms, including:
- Being easily fatigued
- Feeling wound-up, restless, or on-edge
- Having muscle tension
- Being irritable
- Trouble controlling feelings of worry
- Sleep problems
How CBD May Help
For GAD, CBD helped reduce stress in rats, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). The rats' displayed lower behavioral signs of anxiety, and things like increased heart rate and other physiological symptoms of anxiety improved.
- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
OCD is a type of anxiety disorder marked by unwanted, recurrent repetitive behaviors (compulsions) and thoughts (obsessions). Individuals perform repetitive behaviors like counting, hand washing, or cleaning in the hopes of preventing or making obsessive thoughts go away. But, performing these behaviors only provides temporary relief, and when they're not performed, it increases anxiety.
Just because you perform compulsive behaviors or have obsessive thoughts, doesn't necessarily mean you have OCD. With OCD these behaviors and thoughts cause a great deal of distress, interfere with your relationships and daily life, and take up a lot of time.
Symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Common obsessive thoughts you may experience with OCD are:
- Fear losing control and hurting others or yourself
- Fear of dirt or germ contamination
- Fear of not having or losing things you may need
- Intrusive violent or sexually explicit thoughts and images
- Superstitions: excessive focus on anything considered unlucky or lucky
- Excessive focus on moral or religious ideas
- Order and symmetry: having the idea everything needs to line up "just right"
You may experience common compulsive behaviors such as:
- Checking in on loved ones repeatedly to ensure they're safe
- Excessive double-checking of things like appliances, locks, and switches
- Spending a lot of time cleaning or washing
- Tapping, counting, repeating certain words, or performing other senseless activities to reduce anxiety
- Accumulating "junk", like empty food containers or old newspapers
How CBD May Help
Research shows CBD can help modulate behavior. It helps reduce anxiety, and improve the feeling of well-being. Research shows it also induces anti-compulsive and antidepressant-like effects in rats tested in psychotic and compulsive activities.
- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
PTSD is a type of anxiety disorder you develop after exposure to a terrifying event, where there was the threat or occurrence of grave physical harm. Traumatic events that could trigger PTSD are:
- Military combat
- Human-caused or natural disasters
- Violent personal assaults
Symptoms of PTSD
You receive a PTSD diagnosis after you experience symptoms for a minimum of a month after a traumatic event. But, you may not experience symptoms for several months or years later. There are three main symptoms:
- Emotional numbness and avoidance of people, places, and activities that remind you of the trauma.
- Re-experiencing the trauma through unwanted distressing memories of the event, nightmares, and flashbacks.
- Increased arousal like trouble concentrating and sleeping, being easily angered and irritated, and feeling jumpy.
How CBD May Help
CBD empowers your body's endocannabinoid system, promoting quality sleep, preventing traumatic memories from arising, and establishing emotional and physical well-being to regulate these disturbing PTSD symptoms, so you can regain hold of your life.
Oral CBD administration, along with routine psychiatric care, helped reduce symptoms of PTSD in adults. CBD also seemed to provide relief in some individuals who were experiencing frequent nightmares as a PTSD symptom.
- Panic Disorder
PD is an anxiety disorder marked by repeated and unexpected episodes of extreme fear accompanied by physical symptoms that could include heart palpitations, chest pain, dizziness, and shortness of breath.
Symptoms of Panic Disorder
When experiencing a panic attack, you might experience:
- A pounding heartbeat, heart palpitations or accelerated heart rate
- Trembling or shaking
- Feelings of being out of control
- Feelings of impending doom
- Sensations of smothering, shortness of breath, or choking
When you have panic disorder, you likely worry about when you'll experience your next panic attack, and are actively trying to prevent any future attacks by avoiding situations, places, or behaviors you link with panic attacks.
How CBD May Help
Science shows CBD can effectively treat anxiety and panic attacks.
- A study in 2001 showed CBD decreased anxiety in individuals with a fear of public speaking.
- Researchers in Hungary, in 2004, assessed mice, and made the conclusion that endocannabinoids influence emotion and stress responses due to the brain's cannabinoid receptors.
- Acute CBD dosing appears to ease many anxiety disorders, including panic disorders.
- Social Phobia
Also known as Social Anxiety Disorder, Social Phobia is a type of anxiety disorder marked by excessive self-consciousness and overwhelming anxiety in day-to-day social situations. It can be limited to one type of situation like fear of speaking in informal or formal situations, or it can be so broad you experience symptoms just about anytime you're around people.
Symptoms of Social Phobia
With Social Phobia, you may experience behavior and emotional symptoms as well as physical symptoms.
Emotional and Behavioral Symptoms
These may include persistent:
- Worrying about humiliating or embarrassing yourself
- Fear of circumstances where you could be judged
- Avoiding speaking to people or doing things out of fear of embarrassment
- Intense fear of talking or interacting with strangers
- Having anxiety over anticipating a feared event or activity
You may experience:
- A fast heartbeat
- Muscle tension
- Lightheadedness or dizziness
Social Phobia symptoms can change over time. If you're facing a lot of demands or stress, it can trigger a flare-up.
How CBD May Help
While there still needs to be more research on this, CBD seems to work as an anxiety-reducing or anxiolytic drug.
A study of CBD found it's anxiety-reducing action seemed to be mediated by the amygdala's (one of two clusters of nuclei found deep within the brain's temporal lobes) serotonin receptors, involved in stress response regulation. CBD seemed to reduce amygdalar responses to frightening stimuli — a mechanism that might be important for CBD's anxiety-reducing effects in Social Phobia.
Reduce Your Anxiety With a CBD-Infused Pillow
If you're struggling with an anxiety disorder like any of these above, and its causing distressful symptoms, including difficulty sleeping, a CBD pillow may help. CBD-infused pillows are just that — pillows infused with CBD. They naturally help relieve a number of symptoms like anxiety, pain, mood, and sleep, while you're comfy in your bed.
Now that you know there's science and studies backing up the power of CBD for anxiety disorders, being able to sleep with a soft, comfortable CBD-infused pillow each night to help reduce your anxiety symptoms is a major plus. Try a CBD-infused pillow for yourself. Grab your free trial.