Our understanding of the human body and the advancements in healthcare have produced a population that lives twice as long as it did just 100 hundred years ago. We now have the knowledge and technology to optimize our bodies to their near full potential. Getting a clear understanding of balance, as it relates to your body and its fundamental functions, will help you along this path.

What is balance and why is it important? Your body works tirelessly to maintain homeostasis to keep you happy, healthy, and disease free. The endocannabinoid system is integral to this work, as are other important systems like the endocrine, renal, and lymphatic systems. Internal balance is as integral to your overall health and well-being as external balance is, and as you probably know, the two are interdependent. Now, this isn’t meant to be a self-help book, but this concept is essential to grab hold of. Being able to wake up and be present, comfortable, and pain-free within your body will enable you to show up and put your best foot forward each and every day.

The American diet can contain up to 70% highly processed foods. If you are like three-quarters of the US population, you have a bottle of multivitamins sitting in your kitchen cabinet. Because of an inadequate diet or to fight off a bad cold, many of us feel like we need the added boost of vitamins to stay out of the doctor’s office and get out the door to work each day. If taken at the right times and with the right foods, supplements are an important step you can take to improve your health. After the generic multivitamin, omega-3/DHA, glucosamine, echinacea, flaxseed oil, and ginseng are among the top dietary supplements in the country.

Are you looking for an improvement in your overall health and wellness? More energy? More mental clarity and focus? Less anxiety? Better sleep? If you have a need, chances are there is a health supplement for that.

Because of the way they are used by our bodies, cannabinoids can do the job of many supplements (and some pharmaceuticals, to boot). It has been my observation over the past decade as a registered nurse that the use of cannabinoids can significantly improve the quality of life of most individuals. When it comes down to it, can we ask for anything more fundamental than that?

So let’s turn our attention to one cannabinoid in particular: cannabidiol. The future of CBD is bright! The myriad ways that CBD works its wonders in the body coupled with its nonintoxicating properties make it an extremely valuable therapeutic compound, and as the scientific study of CBD ramps up we are uncovering new and exciting possibilities for CBD all the time. We already know with a good degree of scientific certainty that CBD can be used to treat a number of symptoms and conditions, and we’ve outlined these for you in the following section.

We’ve put together a list of the concerns and conditions that have the most science backing them up, but there are several others that show real potential based on preclinical study. And did you know that CBD can help your furry friends too? It’s true; CBD is being used to treat a variety of health issues for pets.

We used Uwe Blesching’s The Cannabis Health Index as a jumping-off point. Blesching is a medical journalist who developed the The Cannabis Health Index as an “evidence-based rating system that shows degrees of confidence in cannabis as an effective treatment for a specific condition.” Blesching painstakingly collected the credible scientific studies available for each condition, rated each study on its overall quality and credibility, and tabulated the results to create a 5-point rating scale, ranging from possible to actual in terms of efficacy. Blesching looked at cannabis as a whole and did not break it down as far as individual cannabinoids like THC or CBD.

From there we cross-referenced his ratings in the The Cannabis Health Index with CBD-specific studies to give you information on conditions that have the most evidence to support CBD’s use. Many thanks go to the fine folks at Project CBD for their comprehensive list of scientific studies as they relate to CBD and specific conditions.