{"id":27682,"date":"2016-04-08T13:45:17","date_gmt":"2016-04-08T17:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hhoupgrade.wpengine.com\/?p=27682"},"modified":"2025-01-29T21:10:57","modified_gmt":"2025-01-30T02:10:57","slug":"synthetic-cbd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healthyhempoil.com\/synthetic-cbd\/","title":{"rendered":"Synthetic CBD: How Does it Compare?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Short Mini-History<\/b><\/h2>\n

As an<\/span> article<\/span><\/a> published in the British Journal of Pharmacology reads, the first CBD to be synthesized was on a historic day in 1940, in the laboratories of Roger Adams in the USA.<\/span> Adams<\/span><\/a> was an extraordinary chemist whose crown achievements span far wider than his credit for the first synthesized cannabinoids, which includes synthetic CBD. His Department of Chemistry in Illinois was among the top in organic chemistry in America. He is credited for discovering an innumerable amount of chemical synthesis methods and natural products, as well as for training over 200 Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows over the course of his career. He was enlisted by the Narcotics Bureau of Washington to study what is \u00a0commonly called \u201cmarijuana.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Adams isolated and synthesized Cannabidiol, the cannabinoid we know as CBD. Both varying forms of THC and CBD were later synthesized for the purpose of pharmacological study and application investigation. They were also studied to determine which cannabinoids affected which CB receptors and how. For example, it was later found that CBD isn\u2019t actually very active as an agonist or antagonist of CB receptors and actually gets its modus operandi via the manipulation of other pathways, such as pathways that influence serotonin.<\/span><\/p>\n

How Are \u201cSynthetic\u201d Compounds Made Anyway?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Synthetic vs. Natural<\/b><\/h3>\n

There is an idea in pop culture today that \u201csynthetic\u201d automatically means \u201cbad\u201d and \u201cnatural\u201d automatically means \u201cgood.\u201d But let\u2019s pause and remember that malaria and arsenic are perfectly natural. So how are synthetic compounds made?<\/span><\/p>\n

We often have this picture in our mind of a white-coated man brooding over test tube contents, or maybe of a steam-powered engine magically spitting out some assembled, creepy clone of a natural compound. But, using some information gleaned from an article in Scientific American covering<\/span> natural vs. synthetic chemicals<\/span><\/a>, we can use alcohol as an example of what \u201csynthetic\u201d really means. Alcohol can be made naturally from fermenting fruit, or synthetically by combining ethane with steam.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chemical Structure<\/b><\/h3>\n

\u201cSynthetic\u201d simply describes a compound that is created using man-made force, and that compound may or may not be found in nature. But chemically speaking, synthetic copies of natural compounds are structurally the same. This means that natural vitamin C and synthetic Vitamin C are going to smell the same and do the same things in your body because the chemical structure is the same. However, to quote Scientific American, \u201cThis is true for most cases, yet sometimes there are additional and unintended products. For example, naturally derived Vitamin E is called d-?-tocopherol and synthetic Vitamin E is called dl-?-tocopherol. The difference between the two is that the \u2018dl\u2019 refers to a mixture of both d- and l-?-tocopherol. There is no evidence that the \u2018l\u2019 version is harmful to the human body at all, but it is about 1.4 times less effective than naturally derived Vitamin E (<\/span>Research Article<\/span><\/a>).\u201d With that said, we\u2019re going to look at how synthetic CBD compares to whole plant CBD, to see if it might be the exception to the rule.<\/span><\/p>\n

Synthetic CBD vs. Whole Plant CBD<\/b><\/h3>\n

A<\/span> study<\/span><\/a> published in the <\/span>Journal of Pharmacology and Pharmacy <\/span><\/em>clearly shows that synthetic CBD has a bell-shaped response when it comes to the therapeutic applications researchers looked at. This means, basically, that smaller serving sizes were effective, and then at higher amounts, efficacy actually diminished. This makes synthetic CBD slightly subpar for therapeutic purposes, and it was determined by measuring the inflammation inhibition responses of mice. The maximum, optimal serving size was maxed out at 25 mg\/kg. However, when they compared this to the results that cannabis clone 202 extract (standardized plant extracts derived from <\/span>Cannabis sativa<\/span><\/em>) yielded, they found that that bell shape had much more of an allowance for increasing efficacy with increasing serving size, with the maximum therapeutic effect observed at 50 mg\/kg and 150 mg\/kg, respectively. It also might be worth noting that the study\u2019s contributing co-author, Lumir Hanus, was instrumental in the discovery of anandamide, the endogenous cannabinoid compound first identified in the mammalian brain in 1992.<\/span><\/p>\n

More Bang for Your Buck<\/b><\/h3>\n

So what does this mean for you as you consider synthetic CBD options versus CBD from whole plant extracts? Put simply, it means that whole plant extracts give you more bang for your buck. Here are some facts to consider:<\/span><\/p>\n