Let's talk about anxiety and depression really quick and how certain things can affect it
when we understand what is known as the 5HT1A receptor.
Before you turn off this video and you're like, "Okay, this is way too far down the
scientific rabbit hole for what I want," let me explain something really quick.
It's not as complex as it sounds.
I just want to help you understand how your brain works when it comes down to anxiety
and depression, some of the things that happen.
But I also want to understand CBD a little bit more because there's a lot of misinformation
out there.
A lot of marketers that are trying to push CBD as this miracle drug.
In reality is, it's pretty impressive stuff but it's important to know how it works with
the physiology of the body, how it works with our neurochemistry, our neurotransmitters,
so I'm going to give you a low down on how it actually works because CBD does have a
powerful effect on anxiety and depression.
First off we have to know that we have CB1 and CB2 receptors in the body.
Okay.
These are the receptors that usually are acted upon by endocannabinoids.
Okay they're acted upon by cannabis.
They're acted upon by exogenous sources of things like that.
Now the interesting thing is CBD, Cannabidiol oil does not directly affect these CB1 and
CB2 receptors.
Okay?
Now, CB1 and CB2 can give you those sensations of well-being, that bliss, everything like
that.
While CBD oil doesn't directly affect those like cannabis would.
What CBD does is it actually allows the body to create more of it's natural endocannabinoids
so that those CB1 and CB2 receptors can be acted upon by naturally produced endocannabinoids.
Basically what that means is CBD oil allows your body to create more of the things that
make you feel naturally very good.
Okay, so let's talk about how it works when it comes down to your brain and as a potential
anti-anxiety and anti-depressant.
You see we have this receptor in the pre-frontal cortex portion of our brain and the hippocampus
portion of our brain.
It's called the 5HT1A receptor.
Now 5HT1A stands for Hydroxytryptamine.
Hydroxytryptamine is a form, or a subset of serotonin.
But what ends up happening is when we are depressed or when we are anxious we have less
receptors for 5HT1A in the prefrontal cortex and in the hippocampus.
What that means is we have less ability for the body to process certain types of serotonin.
Serotonin is the feel good neurotransmitter.
It's the neurotransmitter that allows us to get a sense of well-being.
And if you've ever heard of Prozac or anything like that, the whole idea behind those is
to increase your body's utilization of serotonin, to help you feel better.
So, it's a good thing, we want to feel good, but a lot of times if we go down that cascade
or feeling anxious or depressed, we start to lose our ability to process serotonin very
well.
Now what ends up happening is CBD directly affects the 5HT1A receptor, making it more
sensitive.
So it's not like we're coming in and we're adding more of something that's going to make
us feel good, we're making our body more responsive to it.
We're helping the brain become more receptive to the neurotransmitters that help us feel
good.
And here's what's really interesting.
The same neuron that actually releases serotonin, or 5HT1A is the same neuron that receives
it, so there is a dispatch and a receiving portion of this neuron.
Now why on Earth would a neuron both release and absorb serotonin?
Well it has to do with the negative feedback loop.
Okay, what this negative feedback loop is is very simple.
When the body recognizes that it's released so much serotonin, it needs to be able to
know how much is out there so that way it can modulate how much more to release.
So example being, the neuron releases a bunch of serotonin and you only utilize a small
fraction of it, well because the receptor is on the same neuron it can scavenge the
rest of it and say, "Oh wait a minute, we've seen that there's enough, we can stop producing
it."
It's your body's natural way of modulating how good you should feel, ultimately.
So what ends up happening since CBD works on one of these receptors, this hydroxytryptamine
receptor, it allows your body to utilize more of it, so it's allowing your body to actually
absorb it rather than to just have to waste it and turn off production, which leads me
into the next section, SSRIs.
Have you ever heard of a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, also known as something
like Prozac?
Okay, these SSRIs work in a very interesting way.
They block the reabsorption of serotonin.
So here's what happens in your body, whenever you have a natural production of serotonin.
Your body produces serotonin and if it produces too much it takes the extra and it reabsorbs
it and releases it again later.
It basically recycles it.
Well, what CBD does, is it acts on the receptor to make it so that it doesn't have to recycle
it and what an SSRI does, like Prozac is it blocks the reabsorption.
The reason you feel good when you take an antidepressant is because it's blocking the
reabsorption of the serotonin.
So the neuron released serotonin.
The serotonin would normally go out to where it needs to go, but instead of your body reabsorbing
the extra, the SSRIs, the pharmaceuticals you're taking is blocking, artificially blocking
the neuron's ability to reabsorb it.
So you have all this spare serotonin floating around.
You could see how that could be detrimental in the long term.
It just doesn't seem healthy to just block something.
But what CBD does is it naturally allows this hydroxytryptamine receptor to absorb more
than what your body's already released, so ultimately there's less to reabsorb because
your body's fully utilizing it.
I hope that makes sense.
It's a pretty complex thing and this is about as distilled as I could make it.
Now additionally there's another more long term component that happens when it comes
down to consuming CBD.
You see, we have this thing again in our brain called the hippocampus.
The hippocampus is the portion of our brain that is responsible for memory, long term
memory, spatial memory, even navigation.
And when we're talking about navigation, we're not talking about just driving down the road,
we're talking about navigation through life.
Spatial awareness in a room.
I'm standing in a room right now and there's things all around me.
If I didn't have my hippocampus, I would be completely disoriented and wouldn't be able
to even navigate my way through this.
So again, it's not just geographically, it's just in life and in general and emotionally
as well.
So what ends up happening is unfortunately when people suffer from anxiety and depression
there are a lot of studies and scans that show that these patients end up having an
atrophy of the hippocampus portion of their brain.
They have less activity, less neuron activity and their brain cells actually start to die.
So there's an interesting study that was actually published in the International Journal of
Neuropsychopharmacology.
And it found that those that were suffering from a shrunken hippocampus that were consuming
CBD on a regular basis, so CBD that was administered regularly for an extended period of time,
actually started to have neuroregenerative effects.
They were creating new neurons in the hippocampus.
New neurons in the hippocampus means that new life could be breathed into the brain,
but was actually starting to shrink.
So the portion of the brain that was becoming less and less active was now able to have
new cells, new life.
Something that quite honestly 50, 60 years ago we didn't think was possible at all.
That neuroregeneration is extremely powerful.
So not only can you have a short term effect by utilizing CBD properly, you can actually
have an effect that lasts beyond just the actual utilization of the compound.
So that's why I wanted to break this down.
It goes a lot further than what is just happening in the very minute that you're in.
It goes beyond that and it reaches into your overall nutrition and your overall genome
and how your body is actually responding in the long term.
Again, the nice thing about CBD, if it's good quality, if it's nice triggering the CB1 and
the CB2 receptors.
It's allowing your body to naturally utilize what it already has, just more efficiently
so that it can combat all the craziness that we go through in this world.
As always, make sure you're keeping it locked in here on my channel.
And any ideas for future videos, you know where to put 'em, down in the comment section
below.
So I'll see you soon.