CBD has been shown to treat a number of different ailments. For instance, patients could use CBD treat lung damage caused by COVID, myofascial pain, and oral ulcers. However, a recent study, released this past February, looked into the idea of using CBD to improve the verbal episodic memory in healthy, young participants. 

Study

The researchers ran the study as a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized crossover trial. What this means is that the researchers didn’t know who received the actual treatments and who received the placebo. The researchers recruited 39 healthy young subjects. However, they didn’t explain what they referred to as “healthy” and “young” for the subjects. The researchers gave the participants either a single dose of CBD e-liquid and one dose of placebo. These occurred after the subjects learned 15 unrelated nouns. This repeated over two visits.

The primary aspect of this study was the short delay memory performance 20 minutes after learning them. For clarification, short delay memory performance is the number of correctly free recalled nouns. 34 of the participants completed all of the visits and entered the analyses, with 17 receiving CBD first and the other 17 received the placebo first.

Results

The researchers found that CBD enhanced the verbal episodic memory performance, or their ability to remember the words. They also didn’t detect medication effects on attention or working memory performance. The researchers took this as meaning that CBD has no negative effect on the basic cognitive functions.

Discussion

The researchers found that these results are in line with the belief that vaping CBD interacts with the central endocannabinoid system. They also found that CBD is capable of modulating, or modifying, memory processes, which would have plenty of therapeutic potential. This could further show its potential use in mental ailments like Alzheimer’s. This is because researchers in a previous study demonstrated that CBD could help treat the symptoms. Additionally, this study’s results are in line with the previous study that showed how patients could use CBD to reverse memory impairments.

Hopefully, as researchers gain more access to cannabis products, they will be better able to definitively prove its benefits.

Make sure to check back for more cannabis and hemp related news.