Microdose Diary: 6 days and counting
Last month’s Microdosing with Cannabis article was popular with newsletter readers and certainly had me thinking about trying a microdose regimen myself, at least to make sure that I was taking the optimal dose for my condition. I take CBD tincture for anxiety and to improve my focus and it works marvelously. Setting one’s optimal dose means taking personal responsibility for how you feel, I wondered if my optimal dose would turn out to be a microdose?
The first step to embarking on a microdosing protocol is to cleanse your ECS ( Endocannabinoid System) of phyto-cannabinoids. This process takes a mere 48 hour abstinence from cannabis to bring the ECS to baseline. In plainspeak this meant I had to stop taking my CBD tincture and any other cannabinoids for two days. Needless to say I did not begin this cannabinoid cleanse until after the New Year’s celebrations! On January 6th I started my cannabis fast, as I mentioned I take CBD for anxiety and to enhance my focus so the weekend was a good time to fast as I was at home relaxing eating Rosco Des Res sweet bread for Epiphany. By Sunday I was feeling a little edgy so I took an uphill walk and looked out over the city and across the Bay which really lifted my spirits and made me hungry!
My regular CBD protocol is approximately 50 drops daily; in the morning I take 20 drops, mid afternoon another 10 drops, at bedtime another 15. I’m accounting for extra drops with my calculation of drops a day.
I decided that my microdose regimen would look like this: morning 5 drops, afternoon 5 drops, bedtime 5 drops. I was not convinced that this was going to be sufficient for me as I looked ahead at my busy, potentially stressful, upcoming week!
Monday Jan 8: Morning dose of 5 drops - I held the drops sublingually for a long time, I noticed that the low dose was less strongly flavored and didn’t have the alcohol burn sensation which I sometimes feel at my regular 20 drop morning dose. Mid-afternoon 5 drops , felt alert and energetic on my drive home despite the dark and the rain! Bed time 5 drops, no sleeplessness.
Tuesday Jan 9: Followed regime, felt fine all day, slept well.
Wednesday Jan 10: Followed regime, had a super stressful day but managed not to crumble! Felt strong effect from the mid-afternoon dose - elevated mood and good energy. No sleep issues.
Thursday Jan 11: Followed regime. Busy driving day - out to SFO and then over to Petaluma and back to San Francisco. Felt very stressed in the morning and doubled my morning dose to 10 drops and felt better! Raised midday dose to 10 drops, and went to sleep easily on 5 drops. I woke up in the early hours because I was cold. I got an extra quilt and made a hot water bottle but still struggled to get back to sleep. I took 5 drops of Synergy’s CBD/CBN tincture and fell asleep. (The next day I realized that it had been a full moon which often disrupts my usual sleep pattern!)
Friday Jan 12: Started with a 5 drop dose in the morning, but felt unsettled and took another 5 drops. At midday I decided to take 10 drops again and I did the same at bedtime and had a good eight hour rest.
Saturday Jan 13: I decided that my microdose protocol needs to be double what I started with. At 10 drops, 3 times a day I get the relief from anxiety and calm focus that I need. I took an unmeasured significant dose of broad spectrum cannabis! Fell asleep without the bedtime dose!
Sunday Jan 14: Followed my new 10 drop per dose regime. Felt good, had plenty of physical energy, calm mindset, slept well.
So, in conclusion, my microdose experiment was a good exercise in assessing my optimal CBD dosage. My microdose at 10% of my regular dose wasn’t enough but I did reset my dose slightly lower than it was.
I am starting to take Synergy Immunity CBDA/CCGA capsules daily now too because of the increase in Covid cases locally.
My opinion is that the most useful part of the experiment was the reset achieved by 2 day cannabinoid cleanse before starting the microdose protocol. The cleanse was definitely a challenge for me but well worth the effort.
If you are thinking about trying a microdose protocol the best advice I have is to plan your two day cleanse on a weekend or whenever you have the time to stay home and relax, make it easy on yourself!
I used Synergy’s #102 AC/DC 24:1 CBD:THC alcohol tincture for this microdosing protocol.
Cannabinol and You… Why is it Important?
Everybody knows how exhausting and overwhelming modern life can be. Most of us are walking around perpetually burnt out, attempting to fulfill a list of endless tasks that dictate the flow of our energies. Put simply, we do too much. We are literally clumps of organic material that are capable of electrical conduction. When you overload the circuits eventually they are going to self destruct.
This constant influx of stimulus and stress keeps our bodies in fight or flight mode. When we are in fight or flight our bodies are programmed to do one thing, and that is to survive. The problem with constant movement, stimulus and stress is that our bodies never get a chance to rest and recuperate.
The immune system needs rest in order to function optimally, in fact rest is literally a green light to your body to begin the process of healing. We are so charged up all the time that it’s literally working our cells to death, as shown by the various disease processes linked to stress and exhaustion. But the problem is it seems we barely have the time to recognize the fact that we are living in a constant state of fight or flight, let alone the time to do something about it. Yet our cells depend on us, and we depend on our cells…. What to do?
Let’s take a look a little deeper into the biology of the body. It is my goal today to remind everyone that there is no separation between ourselves and our cells. We are our cells! I know this may sound obvious, but the reason I remind you of this fact is that whatever you are doing on a macrocosmic level, your cells are literally doing the same thing on the microcosmic level. That’s right, you heard it here. If you’re stressing out and not resting, eating poorly and not exercising or hydrating, your cells are too. Just like our large scale bodies, our cells’ tiny bodies contain organs called organelles.
One of these organelles is called the mitochondria. Mitochondria are the most ancient entities in the human body. The DNA found in the mitochondria is far more primitive than that in the nucleus of our cells. That is because long before we were ever multicellular beings we actually existed as mitochondria.
The significance of this information is this, the mitochondria are tasked with the creation of the energy currency of the human body, ATP. The mitochondria are magical beings that literally take molecules of fuel and convert them into life energy. When our mitochondria are functioning, so are we. Thus, we must worship the mitochondria!
How do we do that, you ask? Well one way, according to science, is to take your CBN! CBN, or cannabinol, is a compound found in cannabis. It does not bind to cannabinoid receptors in the cells, therefore there is no high produced by this compound. However, it does produce a strong sense of calm, and this is due to the fact that the compounds in cannabis relax and slow down electrical impulses within the human body, and this slows down the need for ATP (energy) production, thus our mitochondria are working less frantically and more efficiently. Recent studies have found the compounds in CBN actually halt oxytosis, also known as ferroptosis.
This degenerative process is a method of cell death induced by oxidative stress within the cell. Oxidative stress is linked to fatigue and overuse of the bodies’ resources. Think of it as burn out at the cellular level. In the lab, scientists were able to illustrate a direct relationship between CBN and the preservation of key mitochondrial functions! This means that using CBN is like putting a layer of protection on your mitochondria. This has a direct relationship to all neurodegenerative disorders, as the major link between them is premature oxytosis of the neuronal tissue in the brain and nervous system.
It is so very important for us to slow down to allow our bodies a chance to slow down as well. It is in the calm that we heal, and when we heal we can thrive. Cannabis is an integral piece of the self care puzzle. More and more studies are being produced that illustrate the crucial functions that cannabis supports within the human body.
During these times of stress we must find ways to help facilitate the calming our nervous systems so our immune systems can do what they are built to do! Get Synergy CBN into your repertoire as soon as you can!
Wishing you all the best on your healing journey,
Nurse Lauren