If you’re like me, you’re skeptical  of claims that you can put CBD in pretty much anything  and make it more effective.

I’ve seen some products that are hard to believe. Like, CBD hand sanitizer?

Cmon. There isn’t any strong evidence  to support some of these ideas. I’m looking at you CBD pillows.

But it may surprise you  that many of these products actually have a basis in peer-reviewed research! So let’s look at which CBD products actually work and how confident we are in the science. [♪INTRO] You probably know the cannabis plant because of the compounds it makes, called cannabinoids. The most abundant one,  tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, is notorious for its  psychoactive qualities and may be responsible for that time you  ate three large bags of cheetos.

But cannabis also has increasingly  popular non-psychoactive compounds, like the second most  abundant one: cannabidiol, or CBD. CBD is a compound in cannabis  that doesn’t get you high. So a lot of people look to  it for herbal remedies with the added benefit of still being  able to operate a forklift.

That’s one reason researchers have been so interested in studying CBD recently. And while that’s a worthy  cause, some of those researchers also stand to make a buck selling  the product to you if it works. Don’t worry, I’ll let you know which of these studies had ulterior motives as we go.

It’s a good thing to keep in mind when  you hear their incredible results. But the other side of the coin is  that they’re the people most motivated to jump through the bureaucratic  hoops to get the study done. At least someone’s looking into this stuff.

So for now, let’s get out of the ethical weeds and into the science of CBD products. If you do a quick search online, you’ll find many purveyors of CBD pillows. Some of them put the CBD inside the  pillow so that your face rubbing against it as you sleep will break  open the CBD microcapsules and give you a slow release of the  stuff throughout the night.

Others rely on a spray  bottle that lets you add CBD to the outside of your  pillow before you go to bed. They say it’s all in the name of better sleep. The only problem is… our editorial  team couldn’t find a single peer-reviewed article that verifies  this microencapsulation technique or the use of topical CBD to  help with sleep disruptions!

We searched through peer-reviewed literature. We even looked on the product websites, where they have “lab results.” But those just tell you there’s CBD in  the pillow, not if it does anything. But there is one actual study,  complete with experiments and all, that sellers cite to convince  potential buyers that this could work.

In that study, participants with  anxiety or sleep disruptions swallowed CBD capsules to test if they  could ease some of their symptoms. I’ll repeat that: they swallowed it! Unless you’re eating your pillow at night, this isn’t going to tell you  whether a pillow does diddly squat.

But we can indulge them and keep  reading the study to see if, assuming the mode of  administration doesn’t matter, CBD helped their participants sleep better. Oh. It looks like those  results are … underwhelming.

The CBD capsules helped many of the  participants with their anxiety, but not so much with their sleep. Even the authors highlighted anxiety  but not sleep in their conclusion. And in the results section, they  called their sleep effects “mild.” Not to mention the roughly one  quarter of their participants who ended up with worse sleep after CBD treatment.

So it’s not looking good for the CBD pillow. But let’s give them one more benefit of the doubt. Maybe if CBD reduced participants’ anxiety, they could sleep better because  that’s not keeping them up all night.

Except this study kind of accidentally  demonstrated that reducing anxiety doesn’t automatically help  with sleep because they measured sleep outcomes from the high  anxiety participants too. If it were going to work, the  researchers said it might have been from the sedative effects of lower  cortisol levels after taking CBD. Since it doesn’t seem to work, I’m gonna go ahead and say this CBD product is  lacking scientific support.

But the next one looks a little more promising. Here I thought we had perfected hand sanitizer. But in this video, the premise is that everything can be improved if you just add CBD!

Or at least, that’s what it looks  like on the internet these days. The thing is, CBD does kill bacteria! In 2020, a research article  was published with the title, “Uncovering the Hidden Antibiotic  Potential of Cannabis.” It’s exactly what it says on the can.

The researchers put CBD up against  MRSA, the biggest bacterial threat we face according to  the World Health Organization. And it held its own in the fight. First, they put MRSA in a petri dish under its ideal growth conditions  and added more and more CBD until it started becoming  deadly to the bacteria.

Then they tested how CBD  would do against the biggest, baddest MRSA bacteria that  most antibiotics can’t kill. Within half an hour, they couldn’t  even detect the MRSA anymore! That convinced the researchers that CBD might be a useful tool on the front lines  of antimicrobial resistance.

They think cannabinoids attack bacterial colonies by breaking down their walls. They infiltrate the cytoplasmic membranes so that bacteria can’t form biofilms. Which is pretty badass for a compound from a plant whose main claim to fame is  making you melt into your couch.

Now, several of the authors  have applied for a patent to use cannabinoids to  prevent and treat infections. So they were definitely  motivated to find these results. But based on what other  scientists are saying about cannabinoids and bacteria, I  don’t think they’re overreaching.

I’ll give CBD hand sanitizer a  solid maybe on the scale of whether or not research supports it. CBD  definitely seems to kill bacteria. We just don’t know how it works  when combined with hand sanitizer, compared with regular old hand  sanitizer, and on a human body.

But if it might kill bacteria on your hands, maybe it can kill bacteria in your mouth, too. The idea behind CBD mouthwash is pretty much the same as CBD hand sanitizer. If it’s antibacterial, you can use it to remove bacteria from all sorts of places.

So a 2020 study published in the “Journal of Cannabis Research” put CBD mouthwash to the test. Note that this is another  one where the researchers developed a CBD infused mouthwash which is patent pending and  partially funded the research. And they weren’t testing how  it works in the human body.

Instead, they scraped plaque off people’s teeth and added CBD mouthwash to that  delightful gunk in the lab. They found that it was equally as effective as the gold standard plaque tackler, chlorhexidine! So this one also has some evidence to support it.

Not tested the way you’d actually use mouthwash, but pretty convincing. The good news is this next product really was tested the way you’d use it. According to a survey published in the The American Holistic Veterinary  Medical Association Journal, dogs are given CBD pet treats way more than cats.

And the most common reason is to help them through an illness diagnosed by their vet. Since the most common neurological  condition in dogs is epilepsy, I’ll focus on the anti-seizure claims. In a small 2022 study on  family dogs with epilepsy, some dogs were given CBD and  other dogs were given a placebo.

All of them continued taking their regular anti-seizure medication throughout the experiment. After 12 weeks, the dogs that got placebos had an average of 5.8 seizures, while the dogs that got CBD had an average of 4.1. So the dogs taking CBD had fewer seizures!

When they took CBD, 6 of the 14 dogs also ended up having half as many seizures as they used to. None of the placebo dogs could say that. And not just because dogs can’t speak English.

It’s pretty cool that CBD did anything. But the dogs testing out CBD  still very much had seizures. So it may not be as powerful  of an effect as the researchers were hoping for, considering  that they were on the board of a company that sells CBD  treats and funded the study.

And it might not even work as  well as they suggested it does, because another similar study  published a few years earlier from a different research group  found less significant results. Don’t get me wrong. CBD still  reduced seizures in those dogs.

But that 50% reduction that  the other study talked about? It was the same between  the CBD and placebo groups. So how much CBD helps with dog  seizures is still a little hazy.

If it does turn out to be a  big help in seizure reduction, it’s probably because it  binds to the dogs’ natural cannabinoid channels and reduces the amount of glutamate released into their system. Glutamate is one of the main brain chemicals that researchers have linked to epilepsy. And a lot of people use CBD as  a therapy for their seizures.

So the researchers giving CBD to dogs for their seizures might be onto something. The main caution there is that dogs are not people so if the dose isn't appropriate, they can get CBD poisoning. You also have to be careful not to give them something containing THC.

So there’s some real science here,  but a lot is still up in the air. I’m going to say CBD pet treats are solidly in the middle of being supported by science or not. Right now, it looks like it might be able to supplement anti-seizure  medication, but not replace it.

For that kind of effect, you might need to move on to this next CBD delivery method. Some people turn to CBD to clear up their acne. Now, if you have a lot of acne, that might just come down to your genetics.

Which doesn’t seem like the  kind of thing CBD can change. But here’s how it might be able to help with even genetically predisposed stuff like acne vulgaris. Sometimes acne’s origin  story starts with bacteria, sometimes it starts in your genes,  and sometimes it’s kind of both.

See, bacteria can trigger your inflammatory response and give you acne. That inflammation is caused by  cytokines like interleukin-6. But studies have also found that  people with acne more often have specific genetic variations in  inflammatory genes like interleukin-6.

So your interleukins are  involved in giving you acne. And this process can be initiated  by bacteria and genetic variations. And here’s where CBD comes  in.

CBD is anti-inflammatory, so it can reduce the amount  of interleukins you make. A small clinical trial from  2023 put it all together, first by testing human skin cultures and then testing it right on the skin of  people with mild-to-moderate acne. The CBD stopped acne growth in a petri dish, reducing the overproduction of interleukins, and then also cleared up acne on people’s faces!

They continued the trial for two months, but about a third of the acne was  already cleared up in the first month. So CBD acne cream seems pretty strongly supported by science to me! When it seems to work on real  people and we have an idea of what’s making it work under the  surface, things are looking good.

And that’s also the case  for this last CBD product. It’s time to talk about periods. A huge number of people have painful periods.

And, yes, the people studying menstrual  pain relief in the context I’m about to talk about also work for  a company that sells CBD tampons. But since it’s such a prevalent problem, it’s nice to think they’re  trying to find a solution. They think that CBD could help  because the endocannabinoid system that CBD binds to in  your body also controls pain.

And since cannabinoids can bind to endocannabinoid receptors that are found throughout the uterus, they figured that putting CBD on  a tampon might be an effective way to deliver the stuff where it  needs to go to shut down the pain. So they put it to the test in a  human trial published in 2024. In this study, 31 people used placebo tampons and 32 people used CBD infused tampons.

After using the CBD tampons,  there was significant pain relief at the beginning of menstruation,  when it’s usually most painful. And only two CBD tampon users  experienced any adverse effects. Which sounds like CBD tampons  can help relieve menstrual pain!

Let that serve as the period  on the end of this video. Now that we’ve looked through the literature on these unconventional CBD delivery methods, we have a better idea of what’s been studied and what just sounds cool. And, who knows?

Maybe the research to support CBD pillows just  hasn’t been published yet. We can only work off of what we know today and update that as new research comes out. Even the most likely to succeed  product in this list still isn’t guaranteed because  the study is so new that it hasn’t been repeated by other researchers yet.

So hopefully, with time, we’ll  get even more research on new ways CBD might be able to help  people and we can make another one of these videos. Until then,  keep talking to your doctor before using any of this stuff. [♪OUTRO]