To start with, we should mention that CBD doesn’t negatively impact your memory. It doesn’t lead to short or long-term memory loss either. Instead, many studies have found that it can reduce cognitive damage and diminish the impact of neurodegenerative diseases. CBD also promotes neurogenesis and reduces the symptoms of PTSD, old age, and traumatic events on your memory center. Many doctors use CBD to treat medical conditions.
However, it’s not always easy to recommend it or study it considering its debatable legality. One thing is clear, though, that CBD is not life-threatening at all. Moreover, it doesn’t have any negative impact on our memory, even if you consume loads of it. On the other hand, THC is known for impacting your short-term memory, producing hallucinations, and even altering your cognitive functions for the time being. This isn’t just hearsay; it has scientific studies behind it with participants and double-blind tests.
Does CBD positively affect our memory?
We know that THC, and especially long-term exposure to THC, can affect your memory negatively. However, CBD consumption has the opposite effect on your memory. It may, in fact, help you with memory impairment and help you remember things more accurately. BudStars.com, however, points out that this is only with pure CBD strains that contain almost no THC. For long-term users of THC-based strains, even strains with more CBD than THC will negatively impact your memory. It appears as though long-term exposure to THC will make you more vulnerable its mind and memory-altering effects, so much so that even CBD can’t suppress it enough.
For first-time beginners, this doesn’t apply. Only long-term use of THC leads to this. One study found out that CBD can decrease the reward-based memories of opioid, cocaine, and tobacco consumers. They weren’t as desperate to consume their poison, and the addiction behavior was significantly reduced. This applied to consumers of THC-based cannabis strains. CBD managed to decrease their addictive functions. That’s because addiction is based on the rewarding memories of when you last consumed the drug, and how it made you feel.
If CBD can suppress those memories or make them feel neutral instead of overwhelmingly attractive, then the addiction may rescind. Moreover, CBD has also demonstrated its influence on negative memories. This way, it can decrease anxiety and depression-related behaviors and moods by suppressing the originating stressful memories. Traumatic memories from the past or PTSD are often the causes of intense anxiety and depression. CBD may offer a simple solution to all this. While it’s not 100% certain, we prefer to believe that, given its anecdotic and scientific evidence, CBD can indeed positively affect your memory in wonderful ways.
CBD can act as a natural enhancer of memory prowess. Of course, there’s currently not evidence for this. While we may be able to say with a certain degree of certainty that CBD improves overall cognition in consumers, its memory-enhancement benefits aren’t demonstrated yet. However, we hope that scientists will eventually place more emphasis on the interactions between THC and CBD, and how they affect cognition and memory. We do know that many compounds in cannabis, including the famous THC and CBD cannabinoids, have a large medical potential, especially when it comes to mental illnesses and brain-related medical conditions.
What’s the conclusion?
The conclusion is that THC’s memory impairments have solid scientific evidence behind it, at least when it comes to short-term memory impairments. Whether these impairments carry over long-term, we don’t know yet. As for CBD’s beneficial effects on memory, cognition, and neurogenesis, scientists have a pretty good idea how that works. Even with THC, some recent evidence shows an interesting fact, that THC may not disrupt neural connections after all. Instead, it may reconfigure them in some way. We still don’t know how or why it does that, and how it could affect long-term cognition.
However, this is a pretty good sign that THC may not be so bad, after all. Perhaps this happens because CBD interacts with THC on unexpected ways. It might also be an effect of other cannabinoids playing an important role. Or the differences are individual, depending on each person’s biology and anatomy. All we have left is to wait for science to give us a proper answer. Until then, we can each experience cannabis bit by bit, seeing whether it conforms to our expectations or not. The fact is that many consumers attest to the beneficial aspects of cannabis as a whole, thinking about THC and CBD working together.
The Editorial Team at Healthcare Business Today is made up of skilled healthcare writers and experts, led by our managing editor, Daniel Casciato, who has over 25 years of experience in healthcare writing. Since 1998, we have produced compelling and informative content for numerous publications, establishing ourselves as a trusted resource for health and wellness information. We offer readers access to fresh health, medicine, science, and technology developments and the latest in patient news, emphasizing how these developments affect our lives.
