All athletes are accustomed to pouring long hours into training and wearing down muscles in the body. Pushing your body each day to stretch its comfort zone brings numerous changes like building strength and stamina. Yet each desirable change is accompanied by undesirable consequences, which imply heavy stress on the system.
Food and nutrition play a pivotal role in training by ensuring that the body receives adequate energy to support recovery. Some supplements act as a catalyst, and adding them to the athletic routine can bring a host of benefits. Cannabidiol (CBD), is one such supplement that is alluring athletes for its tremendous therapeutic properties. Despite being a cannabis derivative, it is neither psychoactive nor addictive. In this article, let us discover six key ways CBD can support your exercise and career growth journey.
1. Better Mental Focus
An athletic career demands a lot of physical and mental zeal, along with dedication. The difference in a fraction of seconds can change the face of the competition. Therefore, it is crucial to maintain your focus. With the help of CBD, you can minimize everyday stressors that tend to interfere with your performance. CBD integrates with the endocannabinoid system to induce more GABA activity in the brain, which can have a regulatory role on the mind. Moreover, CBD can help increase mental focus by limiting brain activity.
2. Can Reduce Pain
CBD has a surprisingly great anti-analgesic that can help reduce your dependency on harmful painkillers. It modulates the serotonin receptors in the brain, which can help reduce the perception of pain and induce relaxation. The chemical structure of CBD is similar to cannabinoids present in the human endocannabinoid system. Therefore, it can modulate the mood to suppress the ill-effects of cortisol generated during physical stress. The influx of good hormones in the body, can make the pain bearable when compared to before, says a study. You can use CBD edibles for pain management, can work great to unwind and relax after a hard day of toil.
3. Better Performance and Energy
Apart from increasing mental focus CBD is also known to introduce a sense of calmness and relaxation. It can help eliminate fatigue and deal with stress and anxiety. The anti-anxiety properties in CBD are gaining a lot of popularity in the medicinal field as well. CBD can help relax the mind and let a performer to a taste of calmness that can increase mental agility. It can help you combat stress and nervousness before a competition. So that you can focus more on delivering the performance than worrying about the output.
4. Boost Your Appetite
All athletic activities are intense and require several contributing factors in place. In many cases, pushing way too hard can lead to weakness and practically no improvement in the sport. Lack of proper nutrition can be a reason behind this. Food is an essential aspect of recovery and growth. Therefore, your diet must include the correct amount of macros and micros for all essential body functions to run efficiently. CBD can be beneficial to help you achieve these results.
There are two ways by which CBD can help you balance your nutrition. First, broad-spectrum CBD oil can provide your body with healthy nutrients and terpenes which can support great health and recovery. Secondly, it can help in maintaining appetite. CBD can regulate stomach inflammation to boost digestion. Inculcating CBD in your post-training meal can help you eat better. Athletes include CBD in their diet to overcome common post-training symptoms like nausea and vomiting. Thus it can also help supplement the body with key nutrition required after training.
5. May Control Inflammation
Inflammation is the body’s natural response to heal any injury or damage. Intense physical activities cause the minute muscle fiber to break, while this is something usual to athletic life, it may sometimes cause collateral damage. Prolong periods of inflammation can cause vital organs to strain and may also delay muscle recovery. While aiming for career growth or preparing for a competition this can be a setback. Natural anti-inflammatory properties in CBD can make it a great add on to your routine.
One study conducted in 2008 shows how CBD can help control inflammation in the body.
6. Can Aid Recovery
Sleep is the most crucial and restorative part of your fitness journey. Deep sleep is the optimum time when the body obtains maximum recovery through rest. It ensures the healthy functioning of the immune systems and restores our cognitive abilities. Naturally, after a stressful day of hard work, it is essential to get a daily dose of recovery time.
Impaired sleep patterns can adversely impact your productivity and performance. Gladly, CBD can help reset sleep rhythms by reducing mental stress and aiding physical relaxation.
The Bottom Line
Nowadays, many professionals and athletes are adding CBD to their training life to enjoy its numerous benefits. Keeping this in mind, many regulatory bodies have also lowered down their norms around its use. Now that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) does not impose any restriction on the use of CBD free from THC, you can make constructive use of the compound to boost your performance and practice sessions.
