Finally a Supplement that Might Actually Work
I'm a sucker for at least two things in life: podcasts and nutritional supplements. I spend an enormous amount of time walking my elderly dog at a very slow pace, and the podcasts have saved my sanity and my dog's activity level. Lots of times, those podcasts will be about a supplement, or a website that talks about a supplement, or a book that--you guessed it--talks about a supplement. And like the good little sheeple I am, if the speaker or the website or the writer can make a reasonably scientific explanation for their claims, my curiosity is piqued. And if I can find at least a couple other plausibly authoritative sources or well-reasoned anecdotes elsewhere, the odds are at least fifty-fifty that I'm going to try that supplement for myself.
Most of the vitamins, herbs, minerals, extracts, and tinctures I have tried have produced exactly zero noticeable effects other than lightening my wallet. I keep up with a fair number of them anyway, on the principle that maybe they're doing some good and I just can't feel it. Or maybe if I wasn't taking them I would actually be stricken with the flu. Or maybe it's all just wishful thinking. Very occasionally, though, one of my experiments actually seems to not only do something, but to do something really pretty great.
Charlotte's Web Hemp Extract Oil turned out to be one of those rare things for me. I'd heard about hemp oil for a while and its proclaimed benefits for chronic pain, anxiety, inflammation, and a host of other ailments, but my status as a federal government employee and the federal government's general disapproval of the plant from whence hemp comes kept me on the straight and narrow. After going through another round of painful injections into my neck and trying new prescription pain meds and muscle relaxers, though, I was ready to revisit the issue. So I did lots of homework and finally realized that hemp oil, which comes from an entirely non-psychoactive version of the marijuana plant, stayed happily on the sunny side of the legal street. I did some more research and decided that Charlotte's Web makes just about the best-reviewed version on the market, so I took the plunge.
And it was a plunge. Charlotte's Web is not cheap, although the website offers a few ways to make the product more accessible for those who need it and can't afford it. I got the lowest strength and lowest priced option, thinking that I could always plus up to a stronger version later on. The hemp extract is available in a couple different formulations, processed and bottled in different oils to be used in different ways. i got the MCT oil version and was happy to discover it has a pleasing mint chocolate flavor. For the first couple weeks, I drank it in my morning coffee before eventually moving on to just taking a dropper of the oil on my tongue. It took some getting used to, but now I look forward to it like a little bit of sweets every morning.
The first morning I took it was pretty standard for me, which meant that the process of pulling myself from a comfortable sleep and schlepping around the sidewalks with Sam, all in the service of going to sit in an office under fluorescent lights all day, had left me with a case of ragged nerves. Before I was halfway through my first cup of coffee, however, I felt my agitation ease up. By the time the cup was empty, i was calm and focused, just the way the image in my head of a normal person would be in the morning. I can't say that it has worked quite as effectively every day since and it's hard to sort out the benefits of one treatment from the complicated chorus of all the remedies I am trying at any given time. On the other hand, since I started taking it, I have noticed a significant improvement in headaches and muscle tension, along with at least a bump in the right direction on the anxiety spectrum.
Like I said, I can't say for sure whether the hemp oil is responsible for the improvement or if it's the increased yoga, the decreased sugar, or the radiofrequency ablation of my cervical nerves--all of which I have tried during the same period as the Charlotte's Web--that did the trick. My gut tells me that it's probably a combination of all these factors that have pushed me in the right direction, and my gut sounds sure enough that I'm going to keep up with all these pursuits, at least for the foreseeable future. If you've got aches and pains, arthritis, or a host of emotional disorders and neurological concerns, I can comfortably suggest checking out Charlotte's Web. Its website has plenty of scientific info and details about their cultivation and production methods. Do the research for yourself, and see what you think. For me, I'm going to get another bottle or two.
