CBD Effects and the Importance of Homeostasis for the Human Body
A couple of years ago, a remarkable thing happened when CBD became legal in all 50 of the US states. If you remove CBD from the THC, coming from the cannabis plant or the hemp plant, CBD is now legal to use as a nutritional supplement.
Since that time of course, the market has exploded with interest. And this Article is about the physiological effects of CBD on the human body. Truly, CBD is not just another nutritional supplement.
The effect of CBD on the human body & the homeostasis
In this Article we are going to accurately describe the CBD effects & the intense scientific research that’s going on around the world. But in simple language so that everyone understands of why CBD is so important for human physiology.
In order to comprehend the significance of CBD to our health, we first have to ask the simple questions. What exactly is our health? Is it just the absence of disease? If you don’t have symptoms you must be healthy?
How does human physiology work & how is it designed?
In general, every aspect of human physiology is based on the balance between polar opposites, between the yin and the yang. This creates homeostasis.
The Immune System
When we look at specific parts of our physiology like the immune system, the yin and the yang, the opposites would be anti-inflammation and inflammation. The negative and the positive. When those two things are in balance, your immune system is functioning properly.
The nervous system
If we’re talking about our nervous system, then we’re talking about the forces of excitation and the forces of inhibition or relaxation.
The endocrine system or hormone system
When we’re talking about our endocrine system or our hormone system, we have the forces of breaking down tissue or the catabolic hormones, and we have the anabolic hormones which build up tissue. When those two forces are in balance, we have homeostasis of our endocrine our hormone system.
Oxidation and Antioxidants
If we’re talking about oxidation, we have forces of antioxidant and forces of oxidation. Most people think that you have to just take buckets full of antioxidants all the time, as if oxidation is bad.
Not true. If you didn’t have oxidation and the forces of oxidation in your bodies, you couldn’t survive even one minute. Those two things have to be in balance, they have to be in homeostasis.
All of our physiological systems, have to be in this constant state of homeostasis. A dynamic balance. The stronger your physiologies ability to stay in homeostasis is, there were more robust your capacity to be in homeostasis is, the healthier you are.
What exactly is Dynamic Balance –
Homeostasis?
This is kind of difficult to understand. And the best way is a model. A model of a mobile. We’re looking at a mobile you’ve probably played with this when you were a kid. Perhaps you even have some of these in your home right now.
We have all of these horizontal elements, with little strings hanging down from them and we have these stars hanging at the bottom. In this particular model the stars represent signaling molecules.
If this is a model of your neurology, the stars that are hanging would be the neurotransmitters. If this was a mobile of your endocrine system, your hormone system, then the hanging stars would be hormones.
And if this was your immune system, the hanging stars would be cytokines or lymphokines, these are the signaling molecules that make your immune system work.
Everything is connected – changing one affects the other
What makes us a dynamic balance is, as you know, if you change anything in this mobile it affects everything in this mobile.
Let’s say for example, that the star down here at the bottom that’s now big and swollen and red gets weighted down. As if you took a paper clip or some weight and attached it to the mobile hanging in your home.
What’s interesting however, is that initial the mobile is gonna go through these oscillations. Where things are bouncing up and down and shifting up and down, until the oscillations slowly quiet and the mobile finds a new point of homeostasis.
A new point of balance.
But our physiologies are so smart, that they will find a new point of balance. During the shifting and the oscillation is, when you feel sick, when you have symptoms. But our body, our physiology will compensate and the new balance will be found.
How modern medicine & pharmaceutical drugs interacts with this system
So you’re feeling lousy, and you go to the doctor, and the doctor does some kind of test and decides, okay, we need to give you a drug.
And so you take a drug, some kind of pharmaceutical drug, to deal with this one element, that’s now gone somewhat haywire.
The drug is designed to clamp down on those symptoms.
Notice, that the drug is designed to deal with exactly that one star, not the entire system with a mobile, but that one star and the symptoms that it’s creating.
However, we know that pharmaceutical drugs have many many unintended side-effects. And so, because of the drug you’re taking now, another star goes haywire and you have more symptoms and now you have to take a drug to counteract the symptoms on their first drug. And so you clamp down on that star as well. And then a third one goes haywire. And so you clamp down on that one as well. And let’s say now, you seem to be stable, you seem to be functioning and everything is copasetic.
After the treatment of the symptoms with
pharmaceutical drugs
Everything seems to be stable, because the mobile isn’t shifting anymore. But let’s take a closer look at your system. This is what’s actually happening. You now have all sorts of artificial weights at hatch to your physiology to your mobile.
You can see that your physiology is under a lot of stress.
The weight of all these different drugs and these overexpress stars are pulling down heavily on this mobile and you can see that some of those bars are now bent. Because they’re under so much tension.
One more little thing going wrong with your physiology, perhaps it’s something as simple as a cold or a little virus, or some kind of drug interaction, that you didn’t anticipate and now something breaks.
This system is under so much tension and somewhat stress that the oscillations would be huge and you might find yourself in the ICU under life support.
In a nutshell, pharmaceutical drugs work at the level of the symptoms not the system’s. Which causes enormous strain on your human physiology.
The difference how CBD works to pharmaceutical drugs
So we’ve showed you this in order to point out to highlight the differences between how pharmaceutical drugs work, at the level of the stars, and how CBD works.
That’s where the system knows if it’s in balance or out of balance. It can’t tell what’s happening at the level of the star but it knows what’s happening right there in that green crystal and orb, where balance is maintained and established.
So in the model that we are using, the mobile, to highlight how our physiology works, that’s where CBD works. Now in our actual physiology where does CBD work.
CBD Receptors and the central nervous system
Let’s take a closer look into our central nervous system. And we’re going to see at the level of individual cells that the cell surface is covered with these green receptors. These are receptors for CBD.
And when the CBD binds to that receptor it sends a message into the cell. Which travels all the way down into the nucleus of the cell where the intelligence of our entire physiology is contained within our chromosomes.
So, the chromosome is going to unwind and you’re going to see the actual DNA that contains the codes for everything that our body does. This is like the software that runs our physiology.
Hormones & Proteins
Genes are the codes for every protein that our bodies make. Including all the signaling molecules that run our physiology, such as our neurotransmitters that run our nervous system, our hormones that run our endocrine system, and our cytokines that run our immune system.
Imagine for instance, that these are cells in your pancreas making insulin. This is happening in a million cells, let’s say all producing huge amounts of insulin to keep your blood sugar’s in proper balance. Again your insulin is a hormone which is a protein.
So, we see that throughout our physiology, we have receptors specifically designed to bind with CBD. And CBD has its effect on the nucleus of our cells, where proteins are being made.
Which proteins are being made from the influence of CBD?
CBD modulates the transcriptions of over 1,100 genes that make the signaling molecules that naturally reduce inflammation in our central nervous system and throughout our immune system, restoring homeostasis to both our immune and to our central nervous systems.
CBD and its influence on genes
So as you can see on image above, CBD up regulates the genes that create anti-inflammatory bio chemicals for our immune system, and up regulates the
GABA-system in our central nervous system, which brings calmness to our central nervous system.
And on the right side of image, we can see that CBD down regulates the genes that create the inflammatory bio chemicals in our immune system. And also down regulates the glutamate system in our central nervous system, which causes over excitation.
How CBD affects our physiology?
We see a cascade going through all the points of balance in our system and the mobile comes back to homeostasis, to its original stable beautiful balance.
Now our physiological systems are far more complex in a simple mobile that we’ve been showing you here with only 12 stars. For instance our immune system has 350 different signaling molecules on it. So it’s an enormous mobile.
Which also explains why there’s so many unintended drug interactions. Because if you affect any one of those little stars, it’s going to shift all 350 of those other stars. And who could possibly figure that out.
Here’s what our immune system actually looks like
And of course, when you introduce CBD to our amazingly complex physiology, in the immune system the cascade of homeostasis trickles down through all 350 of those stars. It’s a beautiful thing .
Bottom line, CBD causes a cascade of homeostasis, through our entire central nervous system, in our entire immune system. So why is this happening?
CBD & our Endocannabinoid System
Because as I mentioned before we have receptors in our physiology for CBD. This is called the endocannabinoid system. Back in medical school, we didn’t even know about the endocannabinoid system.
It was only discovered in the 1990s by Dr. Rafael Mechoulam from the hebrew university in Israel, where an amazing amount of incredible biomedical technology innovations are coming from that tiny little country.
So the endocannabinoid system is a network of cells throughout our body, that have receptors for CBD. In fact there are more receptors for CBD in our body than any other kind of receptor.
The endocannabinoid system is truly the largest network of its kind throughout our entire physiology.
Endogenous Cannabinoids – Manufactured by ourselves
Among other things, Dr. Mechoulam also discovered that we make our own cannabinoids in our body. This is an anandamide and 2AG. Anandamide is something that we create when we’re meditating, hence it’s called the bliss molecule.
And 2AG as well as anandamide are released in mother’s milk, when a child is breastfeeding. So, no wonder that child is so calm and happy when they’re breastfeeding.
Those two compounds are also associated with a runner’s high. You know that point, when you’re running and suddenly you’re in bliss, you kind of break through the wall and now you just feel wonderful.
Those two are natural cannabinoids that our own bodies make and bind to our CBD receptors.
Receptors for CBD in our body
So here we have our CBD receptors in our central nervous system and in our cardiovascular system, we’re immune cells are constantly circulating. Of course in our bone marrow, where the cells are actually manufactured. And of course in our immune organs, our major immune organs are the intestines, the spleen, and the bladder. And last but not least the lymph system, so our bodies are filled with CBD receptors.
Why is the Homeostasis so important?
If you live in urban America or urban anywhere in the world, you’re body is inflamed. Your central nervous system is inflamed as well as your immune system is inflamed. And nobody is exempt, because our physiological systems are under assault.
This assault from environmental toxins such as herbicides, insecticides and heavy metals, causes chronic biological infections such as bacteria, viruses, fungus and molds.
And last but not least are inflammatory diets, which are very poor, usually way too much sugar, which causes leaky gut and inflamed gut that allows certain bacterial infections to occur that gets into our blood into our systems.
What kind of symptoms & stress do all these things cause to us?
If your immune system is inflamed, you might be suffering from autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, inflamed bowel disease, lupus and thyroid or fibromyalgia or even MS.
And your skin, psoriasis and eczema and all sorts of other chronic infections. Do you realize many of these things didn’t even exist a hundred or 150 years ago.
Incidents of these kind of diseases is growing throughout the last century, because of the environmental load of toxins that we are now absorbing into our systems.
What kind of things might you be suffering from when the central nervous system is inflamed?
Brain fog, Migraines, Epilepsy, Anxiety and PTSD, ADD/ ADHD, Autism and Insomnia.
Again a 100 or 150 years ago, these kind of symptoms, these kind of diseases were really rare. And over the last 150 years, because of the insult, the ongoing insult to our systems, these kind of things are more & more prevalent with every single year.
CBD Effects: Conclusion
So, if you are suffering from any of these conditions, any of these symptoms, CBD might provide you with tremendous healing, tremendous relief, right through your own natural endocannabinoid system that brings homeostasis to your immune system and to your central nervous system.