CBD Oil and Pets Guide
CBD oil is more popular today than ever before, and it’s no coincidence there’s a growing interest to incorporate CBD into our pets’ lives. Sixty-eight percent of U.S. households own a pet of some kind with dogs and cats being among the most popular. With research starting to show CBD could provide an array of health benefits for our four-legged friends.
What kind of Pets can take CBD?
Every mammal, including our dogs and cats, can consume CBD safely. This is because they, like humans are born with a fully functioning endocannabinoid system located in the central and peripheral nervous system. The endocannabinoid systems job is to provide homeostasis and keep our body balanced, which is crucial for our overall health and well-being. Are you feeling too hot? Is there something building up in your bloodstream? Are your hormone levels off? Your body will activate the endocannabinoid system to regulate that function until it’s back at its optimal level. Key areas this balancing happens are with:
- Inflammation
- Mood
- Sleep
- Motor control
- Temperature regulation
- Memory
- Pain
What are the benefits of giving CBD to my pet?
The first clinical study was recently done back in July 2018 by Cornell University looking at the efficacy of CBD oil for arthritic dogs, with results showing more than 80% of the dogs in the study saw significant decrease in pain and improved mobility. Knowing also that humans and pets alike have endocannabinoid systems and that CBD will affect the same receptors similarly whether it’s a human or pet you can safely say CBD will have very similar effects on our pets that humans experience. This would mean CBD has the potential to help your pet with the most common areas including:
- Anxiety
- Inflammation
- Pain Relief
More research needs to be done to understand this further, but there’s no question CBD has the potential to make a tremendous difference in our pets lives.
Is CBD Safe for my pet?
Hemp Derived CBD products with less than .3% THC are considered amongst researchers to have very high margin of safety and non-toxic. When it comes to THC infused products however, researchers aren’t so sure. This is because Dogs specifically have more cannabinoid receptors than humans do in their brain that THC binds to that creates the psychoactive effect, with studies showing at extreme doses can be extremely toxic to your pet. This is why having access to all 3rd party testing and relevant information is so important when deciding which CBD product to give your pet to prevent this issue from happening.
What about Dosing?
Every dog or cat will be different and requires a lot of trial and error at the start to determine which dose will work best for your pet. The study done by Cornell mentions using a similar method humans use when coming up with a starting dose by calculating 1-5mg CBD per every 10 pounds of body weight. Ultimately, for this particular study, they decided to use 2mg CBD for every 10 pounds of body weight. So, if your dog weighs 50 pounds, an ample starting dose would be around 10mg CBD. We want to point out however, high doses of CBD with pets has been shown to have a sedative effect and is something to watch for when dosing.