Have you been shopping for CBD oil lately? You’re not alone. CBD is perhaps the fastest-growing segment of the supplement industry, and it’s expected to maintain a remarkably high compound annual growth rate over the next several years. With all of the positive studies that are being published about CBD seemingly every day, people are trying it for just about every health purpose imaginable. So far, there have been virtually no reports of negative side effects when using CBD, and it’s considered safe for humans even at extremely high doses and for long-term use. With those things in mind, it almost seems as though you’d have to be crazy not
to give CBD a try.
Choosing which CBD product to buy, though, isn’t exactly easy. There are tons of products and many look superficially the same and contain the same basic active compound. CBD oils differ, however, in subtle ways. The strain of hemp used, where the hemp is grown and how it is processed can all affect the cannabinoid and terpene profiles of the final product, which means that you may find some CBD products more effective than others. Since companies typically consider that information proprietary, the only thing that you can really do to learn about the subtle differences from one brand to the next is try as many of them as possible.
There is one thing, however, that can greatly increase your chance of getting the perfect CBD oil for your needs. You simply need to know the answer to one question, and that question is this:
How much CBD is in the bottle?
Here’s why that one detail is so important.
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A Higher CBD Strength Means You’re Getting More for Your Money
Brands label their CBD oil in two ways: by the approximate amount of CBD in each dropper and by the total amount of CBD in the bottle. The second of those numbers is the primary one that should concern you; you want to know how much total CBD you’re getting for the money.
Why is that so important?
When you shop online for CBD, you’re going to find a huge range of different options and price points. The average price of a bottle of CBD oil is around $150, which will typically get you 1,200-2,500 total milligrams (mg) of CBD in the bottle. But some brands, such as New Orleans-based CBD manufacturer Crescent Canna, give you quite a bit more CBD at that price point.
Crescent Canna’s Extra Strength CBD Drops contain 5,000 mg of CBD. If you’re going to spend $150 for a supplement, do you want to get 1,500 mg of CBD, or would you rather get three times that amount? The more CBD there is in the bottle, the better value you’re getting for your money.
Buying a higher-strength CBD product isn’t just a matter of getting more for your money. It also means that you won’t need to buy CBD as often because you’ll be able to use less of the oil to achieve the result you want. One dropper of a high-potency CBD oil can deliver as much CBD to the body as three droppers of a standard-strength CBD oil.
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Higher-Strength CBD Products May Bring Greater Benefits
The second reason why it’s so important to consider how much of the active ingredient you’re getting when you buy CBD is because some people legitimately need to take high doses of CBD to achieve their desired results. If you read the available medical literature, you’ll find many preliminary studies suggesting that CBD could have an enormous number of potential benefits.
That is, of course, why so many people are buying CBD these days – but if you read the studies carefully, you’ll see that the CBD dosages being given to animals or to human volunteers in those trials are often very high. Some of the dosages, in fact, are almost the equivalent of
drinking an entire bottle of a lower-strength CBD oil.
For most people, drinking an entire one-ounce bottle of mostly MCT oil isn’t particularly healthy – and buying a bottle of CBD oil every day isn’t economically sustainable anyway. If you’ve read a particular CBD study and want to see if it might be possible for you to achieve the same result, you’re probably going to be using a fairly high dosage of CBD. The most affordable way to do that is by buying the highest-strength CBD oil you can find.
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A More Expensive CBD Product Isn’t Necessarily Better
If you can get a weak CBD oil or a strong one for around the same price, you might jump to the conclusion that the more expensive CBD oil is probably the higher-quality one. However, that’s not actually a safe assumption to make because the high prices in the CBD industry are largely artificial.
During the early years of the CBD industry, CBD brands suffered from a serious shortage of the raw materials necessary to make CBD products. Almost from the beginning, demand for CBD boomed, and entrepreneurs across the country jumped in to launch CBD brands and claim slices of the emerging market.
The problem, though, was that there weren’t enough farmers in the United States growing hemp, so the CBD-rich hemp flowers necessary for making CBD products were in short supply.
When American farmers did begin to ramp up production, the CBD industry still suffered from a shortage of raw materials because there weren’t enough laboratories with the equipment and expertise necessary to extract the cannabinoids from the hemp flowers.
Today, the materials shortages that plagued the CBD industry in the past largely no longer apply because there are plenty of farmers in the United States growing hemp and plenty of laboratories extracting CBD oil from the flowers. The CBD brands that launched during the industry’s early years, though, are going to continue charging the same prices they’ve always
charged as long as the market will bear those prices.
When you shop for CBD, you shouldn’t assume that a particular brand is better just because its prices are higher. Instead, look for lab reports verifying the quality and potency of a company’s products. If a brand doesn’t have lab reports available for you to read, choose another brand.
