Can CBD Help with Anxiety and Stress?

Key Takeaways

CBD will not prevent, cure, or treat anxiety and stress. Instead, CBD is a tool that you can use in conjunction with other coping mechanisms and medication(s) to alleviate your symptoms.
The statements in this blog post should not be construed as medical advice. Sunset Lake is in no way saying that CBD will be an effective treatment for your stress and/or anxiety.

Is CBD the Answer for Stress and Anxiety?

Stress and anxiety are a part of everyday life. Life throws you curve balls, potential problems linger on the horizon, and you find a way to deal with them.

However, when stress and anxiety start to get in the way of you living a happy and healthy life, it may be time to start looking for external support— and there’s no shame in that. You may have found this post because someone you know is now using CBD to help them roll with life’s punches. But is it too good to be true?

In this post, we’ll cover the differences between stress and anxiety and talk about whether or not you can use CBD in your day-to-day to keep both at a manageable level.

First, What is CBD?

CBD is a non-intoxicating extract from flowering hemp and cannabis plants. Known as a cannabinoid, a chemical compound found in cannabis plants, CBD has many soothing and therapeutic effects.

The Differences Between Anxiety and Stress

While stress and anxiety are closely related, they are distinctly different in how they manifest in our bodies. By recognizing the difference between stress and anxiety, you can identify the most effective way to manage your symptoms and take steps to improve your mental health.

Stress

Stress is caused by an immediate event, situation, or pressure (like problems at work or family drama). Stress is distinct from anxiety because stress is temporary and should fade away once the stressor (the work problem or drama) is resolved.

Stress is your body’s natural response to a new problem, typically felt as muscle tension or tightness. Scientifically speaking, when you’re “stressed,” your body releases hormones like cortisol and adrenaline to prepare your body for action. While this bodily response helped our ancestors with immediate threats, it sure doesn’t help folks nowadays whose stress is more complex than life-or-death situations.

Anxiety

Anxiety is a longer-term feeling that persists even when you’re not experiencing any obvious external trigger. It’s characterized by constant worry or fear. Anxiety can range from dwelling thoughts about what can go wrong to more extreme feelings of panic.

Unlike stress, anxiety isn’t a natural response to any one thing. Instead, it’s a mental health condition that can lead to other symptoms like,

Irritability
Trouble sleeping
Difficulty relaxing or focusing
Upset stomach
A heightened state of alertness

Stress Can Turn Into Anxiety

While stress and anxiety are distinct disorders, untreated and chronic stress can eventually turn into anxiety. In some cases, people with chronic stress can also develop diagnosable anxiety disorders like Generalized Anxiety Disorder or Social Anxiety Disorder.

Can CBD Help with Short-Term Stress?

CBD can help manage the symptoms of short-term stress. In fact, in our last customer survey, 66% of respondents said that they used Sunset Lake CBD’s products to “Relax and Relieve Stress.”

If we look at studies about CBD and stress, we can see why CBD might be an effective tool to use against stress.

A 2024 study about CBD and stress found that CBD seems to curb cortisol release in anticipation of a stressor. This means that CBD taken before a stressful event helps a person stay more regulated.

Not a Cure

While we’re in no way saying that CBD will prevent you from getting stressed altogether, it’s worth noting that based on our customer reviews, folks who tend to take their CBD consistently seem to have an easier time re-regulating after a stressful event.

CBD is merely a tool you can use to better cope with stressors in your life. Other tools include breath work, yoga, mindfulness, and physical activities.

Can CBD Help with Long-Term Anxiety?

This is a much more difficult question to answer. Unlike stress, which is measurable via hormones our body releases, anxiety is harder to pin down.

We’ll get into some studies shortly that support the idea that CBD can help manage anxiety, but please take them with a grain of salt. Most anxiety studies rely on self-reported results by the participants.

CBD for Treatment-Resistant Anxiety Disorders…

The first study we’ll highlight here is relatively recent, from 2022. Because of how formless anxiety disorders can be, treating anxiety with pharmaceuticals is also challenging. When someone doesn’t have success with medications, we say they have “treatment-resistant” anxiety.

In this study, 31 young people ages 12–25 with treatment-resistant anxiety were given CBD consistently for 12 weeks. The doses ranged upwards of 800mg per day. (We at Sunset Lake don’t recommend taking this much CBD per day unless otherwise directed by a medical professional. The risk of side effects increases with the dose.)

At the end of 12 weeks, researchers found that self-reported anxiety intensity fell by almost 50%. They concluded by suggesting that CBD can reduce the severity of anxiety and has a relatively good safety profile in young people.

CBD for Social Anxiety Disorders

For this second study, we travel across the globe to Japan. This 2019 study identified 37 teens with social anxiety disorder and avoidant personality disorder and measured their response to CBD oil.

After four weeks of consistent dosings of broad-spectrum CBD oil, researchers found that self-reported anxiety significantly decreased, as measured by both testing scales the study used. The study suggests that CBD could be a useful option to treat social anxiety.

CBD for Anxiety— A Meta-Analysis

Because there has been so much research coming out about CBD and its uses, more comprehensive studies about the studies themselves have recently been published. We call these studies a “meta-analysis.”

The one we’ll highlight here was published in 2024 in the journal Psychiatry Research. Across the eight studies included, this study focused on how effective CBD is in treating generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

After combining the data sets and conducting their own analysis, researchers suggested that “CBD has promising efficacy in the treatment of anxiety symptoms (including GAD, SAD, OCD, and PTSD) in addition to standard treatments.” In nonacademic speak, they’re saying that adding CBD to your current treatment plan may help you better manage your anxiety.

Conclusion

Because Sunset Lake is a CBD company, we won’t tell you that CBD can treat your anxiety and stress. That would be irresponsible and land us in some hot water with the FDA.

However, we will say that more and more evidence is piling up that suggests that CBD may be able to help you manage the symptoms, physical and mental, that arise from your stress and anxiety. The best way to figure out if CBD works for you is to try it out. Your body will be the judge.

Sources:

Bidwell, L Cinnamon et al. “Acute and Extended Anxiolytic Effects of Cannabidiol in Cannabis Flower: A Quasi-Experimental ad libitum Use Study.” Cannabis and cannabinoid research vol. 9,4 (2024): 1015-1027. doi:10.1089/can.2023.0187
Han, Kevin et al. “Therapeutic potential of cannabidiol (CBD) in anxiety disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis.” Psychiatry research vol. 339 (2024): 116049. doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2024.116049
Spinella, Toni C et al. “The Impact of Cannabidiol Expectancy on Cortisol Responsivity in the Context of Acute Stress: Associations with Biological Sex.” Cannabis and cannabinoid research vol. 9,4 (2024): 1006-1014. doi:10.1089/can.2022.0326
Masataka, Nobuo. “Anxiolytic Effects of Repeated Cannabidiol Treatment in Teenagers With Social Anxiety Disorders.” Frontiers in psychology vol. 10 2466. 8 Nov. 2019, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02466