Nature CBD Review – My 1st Experiment With CBD Oil
Cannabadiol otherwise known as CBD is something that caught my eye recently, and I was impressed by some of the claims made for it's apparent efficacy in treating a wide range of health issues, and it's suggested mental and emotional healing effects.
So here I'll be reporting on my experimentation with a CBD product called “Nature CBD” which is a rebranding of “Bio CBD”, a propriety blend of CBD, and some other additional supplments like ashwaganda, etc.
This is the first time that I have used any form of CBD product, and I'm excited mostly by it's anti anxiety effects, as claimed by many who use it.
Apart from that, there is some research suggesting that CBD is a powerful anti-inflammatory (which was relevant on a personal level too and heightened my interest) and can be extremely valuable for those who suffer from chronic pain, and other difficult to manage physical conditions.
Here's a quick page contents index, just to make this review easier to navigate:
My Nature CBD Usage Journal
– Day 1
– Day 2
– Day 3
– Day 4
– Day 5
Summary Of My Experience With This CBD Supplement
A Quick Word On Greenfield Fitness Systems Support
Your Experience With Using CBD Supplements
My Nature CBD Usage Journal
Day 1 / Dose 1 – 1 Capsule, empty stomach, 10 45pm drop
I checked my inbox and noticed that the now somewhat slow delivery has been updated, and long story short, the weirdos had left my package containing the Nature CBD in my letterbox at some weird hour, like 9 30pm, as I had just checked it a couple of hours before hand.
Anyway, point being, it was pretty late, and I'd planned to take it at about 6 30 pm after an early dinner (I will do that tomorrow and take 2 capsules, depending on how this goes.
11 pm – could be placebo, but noticing some kind of feelings of warmth, and slight well being. Hard to describe and definitely too early to say whether this is an associated affect of taking the CBD.
11 45 pm – not really feeling that much to be honest, and it's been about an hour, so I dropped a 2nd capsule to see how that would put me down for the night. I will try again with 2 caps tomorrow late afternoon to see what the effects are… Hopefully something more obvious will happen from taking 2, as so far I'm not impressed for the expensive cost of the product..
12 20 am – So not really impressed so far after my first experiment with this product. I feel maybe a SLIGHT increase in relaxation after 2 caps, but nothing like what I was expecting, so either my expectations were way off, the product is not very good as a CBD supplement itself, or my dosing is way too low (but if that's the case then this supplement is just way too expensive, as I'd need to spend several hundred $$$ per month just to be able to afford it)
More testing required, so I'll be back with more in the following days and weeks as I further test Nature CBD.
Day 2 / Dose 2 – 4 Capsules, empty stomach, 3 10 pm drop
Okay, so after waiting for an hour and a half after I'd eaten, to ensure faster uptake (well so I thought) of the CBD, I dropped 4 caps this time in one go (each Nature CBD cap has around 10mg of the active CBD ingredient along with mixes of the other stuff such as Mg and Ashwaganda).
I was pretty expectant of some sort of noticeable effect this time around, as from what Greenfield had said in his article, he started noticing SOME result at as low a dose as 10mg, and would sometimes go all the way up to 100mg per dose.
4 30 pm – Unfortunately after more than an hour and 15 mins later, It was obvious that nothing was happening. Damn… that's 40mg of the CBD and it's apparently doing nothing too me. I was a little pissed off and agitated by this time. Probably not helped by my local bus service not showing up.
5 30 pm – By this time, I just decided screw this, and took another 2 caps.
7 pm – As i'm writing this now, still no really obvious affects from the Nature CBD product. At this point, i will probably try 8 or 10 tomorrow, and not really expect any big results. At this point it's kind of impractical anyway for me using this supplement, if i have to take $50 worth of caps in one dosing just to get any affect, it kind of defeats the purpose.
DISAPPOINTING.
Day 3/ Dose 3 – 8 Capsules, empty stomach, 11 am drop
So day #3, and i decided that i was going to go all out here. No messing around with smaller doses if they hadn't done anything so far. I dosed 80mg of CBD via Nature CBD's combination, and waited….
1 pm – and waited… and nothing.
If anything, i would actually say that i experienced a slight increase in anxiety. Now it's very hard, actually almost impossible to tell if this was in fact caused by the NatureCBD or i was just anxious as i normally am these days quite often due to underlying biological causes, and the timing of taking the CBD was inconsequential. Who knows?
Point is, so far i've seen very little, if any noticeable effects from taking this supplement. Again, pretty disappointed, as Ben Greenfield talked it up pretty well in his post about CBD oil and it's benefits. I think Ben does some great work, and this is not a personal diss on him, I'm just expressing my disappointment.
There may in fact be underlying personal biological reasons why the NatureCBD didn't work for me. I do have some gut issues right now, and it's possible that I'm just not absorbing the product like i would be if these issues were absent. Lack of absorption would definitely be a good explanation.
Anyway, i'm going to give it one more shot today. It's been about 2 hours since i ate, so BINGO, time to drop 12 capsules, and see if i get any affects whatsoever. That will basically be my whole supply used, which cost me about $150 AUD, i used in about 5 days, and got basically zilcho benefit from.
Luckily i think Ben Greenfield is a ethical dude, and his promise of a full refund on this product if anyone bought it and was not fully satisfied should still be good. If not, i'll be sure to kick up a fuss about it 🙂
I will post my final update (after taking the 12 capsules and seeing if there is any effect at all, and that will be that regarding my experience with this specific CBD product. I'm not going to let it stop me trying other ways of getting CBD though.
Based on my personal hypothesis, if i'm not getting it absorbed properly via my gut, then getting a high quality oil product, and vaping it would be the next solution to try.
Day 4/ Dose 4 – 3 Capsules, empty stomach, 4 20 pm drop
So this was the last attempt at making this supplement work. Of course, the product was already way way too ineffective for the monetary expense by this point, but I guess I wanted to prove my above hypothesis (absorption of the CBD was being decreased significantly by malabsorption issues, likely having their roots in gut dysbiosis and inflammation issues).
Upon dropping the 12 capsules, my expense for taking this supplement (presuming the 12 capsules got me a nice affect, which it really didn't) my monthly expenditure on this one supplement would be around $650 AUD! 😀
Updated Testing Protocol – I decided to change my strategy on testing of this supplement, in case it needed more time for my body to adjust and for me to be able to notice the effects. Ben does say in his article that lower doses are good for a calm sense of focus (30 mg or less in most cases) and then higher doses are what one would use if they're more interested in being super relaxed for an increase in sleep quality.
So I decided to give him some credit and just take 3 capsules again today. So correction on the above rant from yesterday about just going all out haha.
I currently still have about 10 caps i believe, so a bit more time to see if i can get that calm focused affect Ben discussed. If i get nada, then i'm back to my hypothesis about malabsorption being the issue.
6 pm – I did in fact notice a slight increase in my ability to focus and there was a sense of a slight increase in relaxation and less distracting thoughts. Based on this, I'm going to continue dosing with the same 3 capsule dosage (totaling 30 mg of actual CBD) until my bottle runs out, which should be about 3 more days at this rate.
Am the following day – I did sleep pretty well, but my sleep has been improving so i'm not sure if there was any added benefit from the CBD the night before. I'll keep monitoring this aspect as well.
Day 5/ Dose 5 – 3 Capsules, empty stomach, 6 pm drop
6 pm – Took the same dosage again after a seemingly small but beneficial experience last night. We'll see if there's any sort of consistency in my increased relaxation and improved focus as experienced prior.
7 pm – Just about to have dinner, and it's been an hour since I took the CBD. I did notice that my ability to do the work that I had yet to get done on the computer was pretty painless, and there was an ability to focus. But the effects are very subtle if this is something that's related to the use of the Nature CBD caps.
I think i basically need more time, and more testing to figure out if this product is doing anything at all, subtle or not. I will continue with at least one more update to this journal style page, but I probably won't bother with updating for each dosing, as i still have about 3-4 left if I stick to the 3 caps per dose per day rule that I've been using the past 2 days.
Summary Of My Experience With Nature CBD
Unfortunately my experience with this product was not very satisfying. I ended up taking a few more doses in the following days after I had last updated this page, but alas, the effects were so minimal that it was hard to tell if anything “was happening”.
So unfortunately for the price, this is just not something that I will be bothering with in the future, as there are far better ways to get value from that kind of money in the supplement world. For example, I could use that $150 to stock myself with a good multi vitamin for several months, or something similar.
I definitely want to try more CBD products, but it will probably have to wait until I have the money/time/resources to play around with it.
I'm still aware that lots of people benefit from this supplement, so I'm still very excited by the possibilities.
I would also like to be fair to Ben Greenfield and state that the reason this product didn't work for me could be personal, and I'm certainly not saying that it won't work for you. I'm just reporting my honest feedback, because that's part of what this website is about 😉
There is another CBD product that I mentioned before, that although the customer support team stated to me that they had far less than ideal success rates in getting it through customs, if one day i become really rich (It's important to have dreams) then I may try my luck in getting that into Australia.
For now thought, unfortunately my CBD experimentation journey must come to a halt.
A Quick Word On Greenfield Fitness Systems Support
So as I mentioned, I was not really satisfied with Nature CBD, just based off my personal experience. I'm certainly not saying that it won't be helpful or good for you, but that's just my personal experience.
Because I had actually believed it would work, and had the backup of Ben Greenfield saying on his page about the product that he would refund with no questions, I had purchased this from Greenfield Fitness Systems (Ben's eCommerce site) with a lot of confidence.
So at this point, it was time to test Ben's word, and his customer service. I am more than happy to say that I was very pleased to easily get my refund (minus shipping, which is fair) with little issues from these guys. I just wanted to post this as it's ethical. Ben Greenfield stuck by his promise, and because of that I'll be happy to deal with him again in the future.
Now, I'm only posting this here to show that their customer support is good, and to talk about my experience with this company and it's positive reflection on how they do business. Having said this, I do not want anyone reading this thinking they can get free CBD.
It would be shameful to use Ben's belief and word for his own products against him just to get a few caps of CBD. If you're genuinely interested in using the product, and hoping it works, then I would wholeheartedly recommend you give it a shot. It's an easy company to deal with.
Have You Tried Using CBD, What's Your Experience?
I'm interested to hear of any comments from my readers related to the efficacy of CBD in itself. I have a feeling that I'm yet to really see the true power and benefit of this interesting compound.
If you got the gist of what i wrote above, i haven't really been very impressed with this particular form of CBD, but as I explained this could be due to some personal biological issues going on that are stopping me from experiencing the true quality of this product. I do hope so for the sake of others who got as excited as I did when reading the original article on Greenfield's site.
There is another product that I'm looking into which is either CBD oil, or tincture from the same company, however they tell me that currently only about 40% of their orders to Australian customers (where i'm currently based) actually get through customs, so that's a no go.
If you reading this have any good ideas as to where to source really high quality CBD that actually gives the touted benefits, then please do comment below with your thoughts, or send me a message!
Thanks for reading, stay tuned as i'll definitely be following up with more information on this line of supplementation in the future.
Not sure what the half life of CBD is, but it takes 5 half lives of a molecule/drug to reach steady state levels and have a full effect. If CBD has a half-life of 12 HR you did not attain a steady state for 2.5 days, half of your 5-day experiment. If its half-life is 24 HR, then you achieved steady state at day 5, which is when you quit the experiment. My second critique is that you used a difficult endpoint for efficacy, namely, your subjective feelings of anxiety. The combination of the short experiment and the tenuous endpoint, in combination, was almost sure to fail. A 30d trial and using a different endpoint would be a better way to go. For example, chronic pain might be a somewhat harder endpoint than anxiety. I recognize at you may not have pain, just saying. I do not feel that your conclusion is valid based on the experiment that you ran. I am a physician and NIH-funded scientist, and I do not have a financial interest in the company involved or any similar company, and I do not use CBD in any formulation.
Thank you very much for your comment Golgi! Well I really appreciate your feedback, and you’re right, the experiment needed to be constructed with a stronger approach from the beginning. Unfortunately this supplement was prohibitively expensive for me, so I couldn’t really do a longer experiment at this point. I also found out by getting more information that I’m probably TH2 dominant right now, which according to my knowledge means that CBD wouldn’t work for me, and also explains why things like L theanine didn’t work for me either.
I greatly appreciate your feedback, and I wonder do you write any of your own material, have a blog or anything? I’d love to see how you formulate your experiments in your own life, if you have any further insights into that!
At the end of the day, myself, along with this website is a continually evolving work in progress, so I certainly don’t claim to be perfect when it comes to running self experiments, but I’m learning and I’m very happy with the progress I’m making! 🙂
what he said :). There is a loading phase…you really didn’t give it a proper trial. Looking for instant results is a bit, well silly. This is a nutritional supplement, not a pharmaceutical.
What is the deal with Th2 dominance? Would you mind giving a reference for this, as I have only seen research showing very mild effect from smoking cannabis (ie from THC).
Thank you.
I have personally found CBD and the GFS Natureblend CBD product to be one of the most effective supplements I’ve ever used.
I primarily use it at night, before bed, as a calming Pre-Sleep aid. I currently stack it with a magnesium drink, a magnesium oil topical (legs), and sometimes a low dose GABA cap, or Sleep Remedy by Doc Parsley.
Yes, CBD is expensive but for me it’s worth the cost I actually use 2-3 caps daily, sometimes during the day. It goes really well with good coffee. The perfect blend of alert calm!!
Hey man, just found this. Thanks for the thorough review and feedback. I may have missed this, but what was your marijuana use/tolerance prior to using CBD? Just curious if there was a tolerance effect. My dose of NatureCBD during times of year when I’m not smoking weed is just 2-3 capsules, but 4-5 if I’ve been vaping or using edibles.
Hi Ben, thanks for stopping by! I didn’t use any THC/marijuana any where close to the time (years) before experimenting with your product. I think I’m just someone who doesn’t really react to CBD. Could be genetics, I’m not sure. I might try another CBD product in the future, but for now I’ll leave it out, as I have other concerns to focus on.
Cheers,
Nick
Hey Nick,
Have you tried the Elixinol brand? I just started selling for them but only because I did my research beforehand and everything I read, including a ton of testimonials, all touted their impeccable quality control and bioavailability. The Elixinol brand might give you a different effect / results than the other you tried.
Hi RoxAnne, I haven’t, but thank you so much for the suggestion. CBD is something I’m still very much interested in. I’m just waiting for the right time to continue the experiment 😉
I would recommend you try a Liposome based CBD spray. We have one at Natural Native and they can be much more easily absorbed. Happy to send you for your own review.
Hi Alex,
I would gladly test your CBD product, as I did want to further my investigations with CBD. I have emailed you about this.
Cheers,
Nick
I have taken the CBD oil in a full spectrum product of hemp oil, however with less than the legal max of THC. It is not something that will give a swoon or make your toes twinkle. I do believe it does give me a better night of sleep. Who knows what the actual other benefits may be. There are many claims or cures, from cancer to psoriasis. If you simply consider it a health benefit supplement (curcumin) then you will have a better evaluation.