Hello again everyone, welcome back to our channel. For those of you that are new
here, I'm Craig and this is Claire and I am a T4 complete paraplegic, which means
that I have no movement or sensation from the chest down. So one of the side
effects you can get from a spinal cord injury is that you can get muscle spasms.
Now, muscle spasms are involuntary contractions or reflexes which occur
below your level of injury. So before Christmas we made a video all about
muscle spasms, which you can watch just here. So in this video we focus heavily
on ways that you can reduce or manage your spasms and one of the things we
touched on was using CBD products. Now, at the time we didn't know anything about
CBD and we'd never tried it ourselves, but we know lots of other people with spinal
cord injuries who swear by it and say it's really good for helping with muscle
spasms. So a few weeks ago a company called Provacan who manufacture
their own CBD products reached out to us and asked us if we would like to test
some of their products, and because I find my muscle spasms really annoying
and people have said such great things about CBD, we jump to the chance to find
out if it's really as good as people claim it to be. So, Provacan offer a wide
range of CBD products including CBD oils and other edibles such as capsules and
gummy sweets and also topical products such as balms, creams and massage oils. So
we had a look at the products which they offer and we chose a few which we
liked the look of and here they are the delivery has arrived.
So lets have a look at what we've got. So because CBD products are derived from
cannabis, there's a couple of questions you might have. Are they legal and will
they get you high? Now, we're in the UK and in the UK a CBD product is
considered legal if it contains less than 0.2% THC. Now, all of
Provacan's products contain less than 0.05% THC, so that's well
under this limit and are considered legal. Now, these rules change from country to
country so you need to do your own research to see what's considered legal
where you are. And with regards to will they make you
high? No, they won't make you high. This is because the psychoactive ingredient in
cannabis is THC and because almost all of the THC has been removed from this
type of CBD product, no they will not make you high. Right, so let's see what we
got. So the first product we have is a CBD
oil. Now, this one is a 300mg CBD oil, which means there is 3% CBD in this
oil. Now CBD oils come in a wide range of strengths. At Provacan they offer oils
starting at 3% and going all the way up to 24% in strength and because we're new
to CBD products we decided to start with a bottom with a 3% and see if it has any
effect. And then at that point we can increase the dose if we feel we need to.
So this type of CBD product, the CBD oil, takes a while to get through your body
and get into your system, so you have to take it continuously every day for it to
build up and have an effect. So for Craig's spasms this is quite good because Craig
gets his spasms every day throughout the day, so something that you take daily
should have an impact upon that. So another use of CBD that you may have
heard of is it can reduce pain and inflammation. Now a lot of people with
spinal cord injuries suffer really severe pain associated with their injury.
I'm lucky enough that I don't get any of this chronic pain, but after a long day
of pushing or sitting in the chair I do get quite bad muscle pain in my
shoulders and my neck, so we've opted for some topical products so that we can
apply the CBD directly to the area that hurts. So we've got two different topical
products. We've got a CBD balm which is 900 mg CBD (9%) and also a massage
oil. And because these are topical we can just apply them as and when we need it
and we can apply it directly to the area where I'm experiencing the pain so it
should have a more targeted effect and hopefully it will be more instant.
So this type of CBD oil comes in a bottle with a little pipette and you are
supposed to take it sublingually. That means that you put a few drops
underneath your tongue and you're supposed to hold it there for at least
30 seconds. CBD oil has a reputation for having quite a distinctive taste
which a lot of people find unpleasant, which is why a lot of people prefer to
take CBD oil as either a gummy or as a capsule. But since we've never tried it
before we thought we'd test it out and see what
it actually tastes like. So shall we give it a taste test and see
if it actually tastes as bad as people say it does. Let's do it.
So it's a greenish colored oil in a, in the pipette if you can see that. So let's
taste it. It's not the most pleasant taste, but it wouldn't say it's awful
either. It tastes a bit like a bitter tea, that's the best I would
describe it, some of the unusual varieties of tea. Yeah, I don't really
know how to describe it actually. It reminds me of a bitter tea.
It is quite bitter. Ooh, it gets stronger after a while.
I think, yeah, it's got quite a erm, yeah like an earthy taste. I guess a bit like a
tea. It tastes a bit like a, I guess, like a plant, if you were just
eating some bark or some leaves or. It's not like a normal tea but I've had some different
varieties of tea and I can't remember exactly. It reminds me of
one of these unusual teas, it's quite
bitter I think. Yeah okay, I can see why people don't like it, but it's not too
bad so we're gonna stick with it. Yeah, it's not it's not nice but it's not the
worst thing I've ever tasted and because you only take a small amount of it... Like, the
taste has got now. So one 10ml bottle of CBD oil contains about 200 drops. So if
you're taking it two to three times a day and two to three drops at a time
this bottle is going to last you about a month. So Craig is going to go and take
this twice a day and two drops a day and see if it has any
effect. Because it takes a while to get into your system we will come back in a
week or two and see if it's had any effect, yep. So we just stopped filming
and then I said to Craig "Oh, my neck's a bit sore from from looking at the
computer, so I'm gonna try some of this balm", not really thinking anything of it.
Or thinking it would at least take a while to have an effect. So I've just put it
on and literally instantaneously, it actually, my neck actually feels less
sore. Now, I don't know if this is because of the balm or because I
like massaged the area as I was rubbing it in. But yeah, actually I'm so surprised
it actually feels less sore like instantaneously, which I really was not
expecting. Yeah, and then at the same time I was telling Claire that my neck
was also a bit sore so she came over and rubbed some on to the back of my neck and,
it's like she said, it's instantaneously felt quite a lot better. Yeah so
whether that's because I'm so good at doing a massage, that I can instantaneously get rid of
pain or because this balm actually works? So we'll test it out a bit more
and see if it keeps working, or if it's not, and it was just the massage. So Craig has
been using the CBD oil now for a week, so we just thought we'd give you a quick
update as to the effect that it's been having. So, so far I've been taking two
drops twice a day and I've definitely noticed a decrease in the number of
spasms I'm having. They're also less violent and they seem to stop quicker,
which is good. But unfortunately I'm still having quite a lot so we're gonna
try increasing the dose. From now on I'm going to take four drops twice a day and
see if that has any extra impact. So it's been about 10 days now since I increased
the dose of CBD oil from 2 drops twice a day to four drops twice a day. Now
unfortunately I haven't seen any further reduction in spasms, so I'm going to try
increasing the dose one more time from four drops twice a day to four drops
three times a day. Unfortunately there's not that much left, so this will probably be
the last time I can increase the dose, so we'll let you know how it goes.
Now the CBD balm on the other hand has been really good. The other day we went
out for a long push and when I came back I had quite sore muscles in my back. We
rubbed a bit of this on and within minutes I was feeling a lot
better, so I'm actually really surprised but this works wonders. So it's now been
over two weeks since our last update. Craig finished off the CBD oil pretty quickly
after increasing the dose but we also wanted to wait for the CBD oil to leave
Craig's system, so that we could see if there were any effects from coming off
of it. So now for the review first and foremost, the biggest and most important
question is: Does CBD oil work? While taking the CBD oil we noticed a reduction
in the frequency, duration and strength of my spasms, but they did not stop
completely. Now that the CBD oil has left Craig's
system, we've really noticed an increase in his muscle spasms. I think that
because spasms are really annoying, you notice having them much more than you
notice not having them. When Craig was taking the CBD oil, I was actually
wondering it was a bit of a placebo effect, but now that he's stopped, I've
really noticed the increase in spasms. So we do think that CBD oil definitely has
an impact. Increasing the dose of CBD oil seemed to have no further effect on my
spasms, but I was only taking the lowest strength oil, so I'd be interested to see if
taking a higher strength CBD oil would have any more effect. CBD oil does seem
to work, but does it have any side effects? I actually haven't noticed any side
effects from a CBD oil except for a slightly dry mouth. This was great
because a lot of anti spasm medication has very strong negative side effects.
Craig used to take oral baclofen to manage his spasms, however he became very tired,
drowsy and unresponsive. Honestly sometimes it felt like we were talking
to a brick wall. These side-effects were so bad that they
were actually worse than the spasms themselves, so Craig ended up coming off the
medication completely. Since then I've been really reluctant to try any other
medications because of the side effects. So the lack of side effects from the CBD
oil is really the best thing about it. So do we think that CBD oil is worth
trying? Well, that depends on two factors. So firstly are your spasms bad, do you want
to reduce them, or are you currently taking any medication which are causing
negative side effects? So if you've answered yes to any of those things, the
next thing you'll want to consider is whether you have the budget for it. In
most places CBD oil is not an approved medication, it's just a health supplement,
this means that you can't get it on the NHS or on your insurance and you have to
pay for it out of pocket. One bottle of CBD oil costs around 25 pounds but it
can be a lot more depending on the strength. A 10ml bottle like this
contains around 200 drops which will last for around a month or so depending
on the dosage that you use. We do have a discount code for Provacan which will
be in the description of this video. So if you think the benefits of reducing
spasms or the side-effects from other medications is worth the cost, then it's
definitely worth trying. If I was still taking Baclofen, I would swap the CBD
oil for sure, despite the cost, because the side-effects of Baclofen were so bad
it would be worth paying extra. As is, it's a little bit too expensive for us
at the moment, but it is something we would consider in the future if we got
richer or it became a little bit cheaper. So what about the other CBD products?
Well, we thought that the massage oil was nice but as far as the CBD component
goes, we didn't notice that it had any extra effect compared to a nice massage
or without CBD. However, the balm really exceeded our expectations! We really
didn't expect this at all, but it was like a miracle cure for sore and achy
muscles. You just rub a little bit on and almost instantly the ache was gone. The
only downside of the balm was the price tag. This is the stronger more expensive
balm and is currently around 75 pounds. There is a cheaper balm available but
because we haven't tried it we can't vouch for how well it works. We've been
using this balm intermittently since we've got it and we barely made a dent
in it, so we would expect one pot to last for quite a long time. So although
it's a high initial outlay, the cost per use is much more reasonable, as you
only need to use a small amount each time. We hope you found this review useful,
if you've got any questions about muscle spasms, or CBD, or if you use any CBD
products yourself, then leave a comment down below. If you like this video then
please leave a thumbs up and if you're not already subscribed to our channel
then do so to see more videos like this. If you do want to try CBD oil for
yourself, then remember we've got a discount code which will be in the
description of this video. Thank you for watching and we'll see you in the next one
bye!