We’ve all spent a night or two trying to catch our much-needed beauty rest to no avail. If this happens to you more often than you’d like to admit, we have three magic words for you: weed for sleep. Nowadays, it’s more and more common to use cannabis products to fight insomnia. But how do they work?
When Does Weed for Sleep Come in Handy?
Many cannabis enthusiasts are the biggest weed for sleep advocates. Why? Because taking cannabinoids has little to no side effects when compared to traditional sleeping meds. The right cannabis product can help you unwind and shake your day off so that you can focus on the crucial body function that sleeping is.
CBD or TCH: Which One Is the Ultimate Sandman?
The cannabis plant has over 100 cannabinoids. The most researched to date are:
- Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – This is the psychoactive chemical compound that makes you feel high.
- Cannabidiol (CBD) – This is a non-psychoactive substance that helps the body fight pain and inflammation.
While, depending on your ailments, both compounds can help you stop your restless nights, THC is the one that will ultimately put you to sleep. If you can’t remember your dreams, that’s a great sign the treatment’s working. THC is famous for reducing your REM cycles — which are where your dreams take place.
So no dreams mean your sleeping more profoundly, and deeper sleep means more rest and extra recuperation. Before you know it, you’ll be waking up fresher than ever and improving your daily performance at work and all your other daily tasks. However — and this is a highly relevant “however” — you still want some REM sleep here and there. Alternate your strains and only use high THC concentration a couple of nights a week for better results.
Additional Sleeping Aid Agents in Weed
Cannabinoids are not the only substances in weed that will help you get a good night’s sleep. The cannabis plant also has terpenes, which are the compounds that provide the buds with their distinctive flavor and scent. The most popular to fight insomnia are:
- Caryophyllene
- Terpinolene
- Linalool
- Myrcene
A strain that contains one or a combination of these chemicals might be even more beneficial for you in the long run.
Do You Really Need Sleep?
Absolutely! Catching some Zs every night is crucial for our bodies to stay healthy and thriving. However, the stress caused by our daily routines sometimes robs us of our precious hours of deep rest and self-reparation.
Without the recommended hours of sleep, your brain ceases to function correctly. Much like your PC gets laggy after being on for days on end, your brain might start getting glitchy as well. Rest is vital to maintaining optimal concentration, processing new memories, and thinking straight. In fact, the average adult requires seven to nine hours of sleep every night.
If you cannot moderate the stress that you handle each day, complement a healthy diet and positive lifestyle habits with a cannabis-based sleeping aid regime. If smoking feels ineffective or impractical to you, you can always ask your local budtender for other cannabis products like tinctures, oils, sublingual strips, or edibles.