Although clinical research on CBD and diabetes is still limited, many people use CBD oil to ease the symptoms of their disease as well as the whole host of diabetes-triggered conditions such as hypertension, pancreatic inflammation, and chronic pain.
There are certain areas that we may consider “well-studied” with regards to using CBD for diabetes, but some of them require more research due to unclear results from past studies.
Then, there’s the question that troubles the majority of new consumers: where do you buy high-quality CBD oil to safely manage the symptoms of diabetes?
There are way too many mediocre products on the market. Some of them have less CBD than advertised; others carry no CBD at all. And the worst, some of the untested CBD supplements can actually be dangerous for your health due to the presence of solvents or pesticides in the end product.
See? Things ain’t easy.
But don’t worry, we’re here to make both the science and regulatory matters as clear as possible.
In this guide, you’ll learn everything about using CBD oil for diabetes. From prevention to science-backed evidence on its effectiveness in certain types of diabetes, and the most trusted brands in the industry.
Let’s start with the market overview.
Best CBD Oil for Diabetes: Our Top 5 Picks in 2022
It’s not easy to find a trusted CBD company.
Many businesses are looking for a quick buck on poorly informed customers who have high expectations of CBD after reading about the myriad of its health benefits.
You want to make sure that your CBD oil comes from organic hemp, is extracted with CO2, and tested in a third-party laboratory.
That’s pretty much even for starters, huh?
That’s not everything, though.
Consider the spectrum of cannabinoids, the quality of carrier oil, the bottle design (yes, it matters!), and you have a perfect recipe for confusion.
Don’t worry, we’ve done the research part for you. After trying CBD oil from over 40 companies, we’ve put together a ranking of the best CBD suppliers on the market. Below we share the pros and cons of each brand to give you a fuller image of what you should expect from a high-quality product.
1. Royal CBD
| Potency | 250 mg – 2500 mg |
| Available Flavors | Natural, Berry, Mint, Vanilla |
| CBD per serving | 8.3 mg – 83.3 mg |
Why Royal CBD is the Best CBD Oil for Diabetes
I came across Royal CBD two years ago when they started out as a small artisan company. This premium brand now offers a wide range of different forms of CBD on top of their best-selling oil, including softgel capsules, gummies, and topicals.
The Royal CBD oil is available in four different potencies:
- 250 mg
- 500 mg
- 1000 mg
- 2500 mg
And in the following flavors:
- Natural
- Berry
- Vanilla
- Mint
The 2500 mg bottle is the only version without flavored options because it would be difficult to preserve the potency and original cannabinoid spectrum using flavorings. This is a full-spectrum product, so you’re ingesting the entire range of non-psychoactive cannabinoids, terpenes, and other phytonutrients naturally occurring in hemp.
I’ve chosen Royal CBD as the best CBD oil for diabetes due to how it helps manage my appetite and stress levels throughout the day. Normally I have huge sugar cravings after dinner. I even joke that I need to counter my meal with something sweet because otherwise, the meal isn’t complete. And believe it or not, I thought it was something normal — that I’m showing an addictive reaction towards sugar.
While it didn’t help right away, I noticed that I don’t think about food as often as I usually do when I don’t take CBD oil. I stopped freaking out because of that and my mood visibly stabilized. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have a few bad days now; of course, I do! But CBD oil helped me control it to a reasonable point.
Please note that you won’t find Royal CBD in any local store, and the only way to get this company’s products (at least for now) is to purchase them online.
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2. Gold Bee
Product Details
| Potency | 300 – 1200 mg |
| Available Flavors | Natural, Honey |
| CBD per serving | 8.3 mg – 33.3 mg |
About Gold Bee
Another California-based manufacturer, Gold Bee specializes in making honey-flavored CBD products. The company has partnered with local farmers as well as growers from Colorado, which resulted in a proprietary blend of CBD-rich hemp strains. These plants are cultivated organically without pesticides and growth boosters, ensuring potent and clean extracts. All of Gold Bee’s products are tested in third-party laboratories for purity and potency.
Why is Gold Bee the second-best company in this ranking?
I like the quality of this CBD oil; I absolutely love the honey flavor. However, I’d like to see more potency options on the table. While most people don’t take more than 25 mg of CBD daily, these figures come from regular users who use CBD oil either for preventive supplementation or for mild symptoms — and diabetes doesn’t fall into that spectrum. Therefore, if you benefit from higher dosages, you may find the Gold Bee CBD oil cost-prohibitive in the long run.
Other than that, it’s a great product for new consumers and those for whom low-to-moderate doses of CBD oil prove effective.
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3. CBDPure
Product Details
| Potency | 100 – 1000 mg |
| Available Flavors | None |
| CBD per serving | 3.3 – 33 mg/mL |
About CBDPure
CBDPure is my favorite company when it comes to low-potency oils. Until recently, the company’s strongest oil was 600 mg (full spectrum), but the guys at CBDPure have added a new potency — 1000 mg — to their collection.
Now, the strange thing about CBDPure is that these are seemingly low-strength products, but they actually work better than the majority of high-potency oils I’ve had the “pleasure” to try. For me, CBDPure is the benchmark for how the real full-spectrum CBD should work. I’ve been getting great results with this 1000 mg oil, both when it comes to my anxiety and changes in appetite. The effects were similar to what I’ve got with the 1000 mg oil from Royal CBD.
So why did CBDPure land in the third place in our list of the best CBD oil for diabetes?
Because the other top two companies from this ranking are more affordable in the long run, at least for me.
Still, if you want to try how CBD affects your body, or you’re a lightweight person with mild symptoms, I encourage you to try CBDPure’s products. The guys at CBDPure know that not everybody is willing to commit on the first date, so they offer a great 90-day return policy for a full refund.
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4. Hemp Bombs
Product Details
| Potency | 125 – 4000 mg |
| Available Flavors | Natural, Acai Berry, Orange Creamsicle, Peppermint, Watermelon |
| CBD per serving | 4 – 133 mg/mL |
About Hemp Bombs
Did you expect a CBD isolate on the list of the best CBD oil for diabetes?
Neither did I in the first place, but for Hemp Bombs, I decided to make an exception.
Back when I was working in a media outlet, we were regularly tested for THC, so I was a bit afraid of using the full-spectrum product due to a false-positive result they can give, so it won’t be an overstatement if I say that Hemp Bombs saved my career at some point.
I’m aware that full-spectrum products are a more desired form of CBD than isolate due to the entourage effect, but the isolate has two serious advantages over its whole-plant counterpart.
First, there’s no odor or flavor, so my mouth doesn’t get that silly grimace, which happens every time I ingest full-spectrum oils (sorry, that earthy aftertaste is yuck!).
Then you have the aforementioned drug testing. I’m a compulsive eater. In other words, I compensate for my stress by eating, and usually, those aren’t guilt-free treats. I know it may sound a bit out of the blue, but when you take a product that’s designed to help you reduce stress, and you get stressed because of it from the fear of testing positive on the screening — where’s the sense?
So yeah, I’ve been using Hemp Bombs until I changed my job but I’m not going to bore you with details. Long story short, Hemp Bombs will be your best bet if you want to still benefit from CBD oil but without any THC in your product. And if you’re not into isolates, the team at Hemp Bombs have recently added broad-spectrum extracts to their formula.
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5. CBDistillery
Product Details
| Potency | 250 – 5000 mg |
| Available Flavors | None |
| Potency | 8.3 – 166 mg/mL |
About CBDistillery
CBDistillery is one of the trailblazers in the industry, and actually the first company I’ve bought CBD oil from. This brand offers both full-spectrum CBD oil as well as “pure oil” based on a broad-spectrum extract. This means that the THC was removed after initial extraction, but the other cannabinoids and hemp compounds are still in the product.
CBDistillery covers the entire potency range for hemp extracts, from 250 mg to a whopping 5000 mg of CBD per bottle. I haven’t tested the highest potency because I consider it an overkill in my case, but the 2500 mg version turned out pretty effective for my sleep routine — I’ve been taking this oil before bed in order to calm myself.
The only reason I give CBDistillery the last place is that its hemp isn’t organic.
But if you want a highly affordable product that was lab-tested and extracted with supercritical CO2, you won’t be disappointed.
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CBD Oil for Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes
Now that you’ve made it through our product recommendations, we’ll explain the intricacies behind using CBD oil for diabetes. But first, let’s make sure you understand what diabetes is and why its early management is so important for your health.
What is Diabetes?
Diabetes is a health condition that occurs when your blood sugar levels are imbalanced, typically when the blood sugar is too high. Better known as glucose, blood sugar is our primary source of energy and we take it from the food we consume.
The blood sugar levels in your body are controlled by insulin, a hormone released by the pancreas that helps transfer glucose from food into your cells so they can be used to produce energy.
When you have high blood sugar levels on a regular basis, your body’s ability to produce enough insulin to manage it efficiently gets compromised — resulting in glucose piling up in the bloodstream.
Consequences?
There are plenty of them, to be honest.
High blood pressure, heart disease, clogged arteries, mood swings, depression, chronic pain, loss of vision — all of this can happen when you neglect diabetes.
Of course, diabetes doesn’t have to be severe in every individual. There are milder cases of diabetes, which doctors describe as “a touch of sugar” or “borderline diabetes”. However, that doesn’t mean you should neglect them.
Let’s discuss what types of diabetes people generally suffer from.
Different Types of Diabetes
We distinguish the two most common types of diabetes: type 1 and type 2 diabetes. There’s also gestational diabetes that some pregnant women may develop.
Type 1 Diabetes
Type 1 diabetes falls under the category of “autoimmune disorders” and it gets triggered when your body can’t produce enough insulin to efficiently manage the blood sugar levels in your body. This disease is caused by an overactive immune system. In simple terms, the immune system attacks and destroys the cells in your pancreas whose role is to produce insulin. Type 1 diabetes can be diagnosed very early — it mostly occurs in children — although people can develop this condition at any age. Patients with type 1 diabetes are usually treated with insulin injections, which they have to rely on to stay alive.
Type 2 Diabetes
If your doctor has diagnosed you with type 2 diabetes, this means your blood sugar levels are chronically too high. Although the pancreas isn’t attacked by the immune system in this case, the body stops being able to produce enough insulin due to the continuous intake of high-sugar food and other forms of nutritional neglect. This is the most common form of this disease; it can happen at any time, even if you’re a child. However, the majority of people who develop type 2 diabetes are middle-aged and elderly people.
Gestational Diabetes
As mentioned earlier in the article, some women may develop gestational diabetes when they’re pregnant. Usually, this type of diabetes doesn’t stick with you forever; usually, it disappears once the baby is born. However, having gestational diabetes during pregnancy means that a person is more likely to develop type 2 diabetes later in life.
Consequences of Untreated Diabetes
So, now you know that diabetes develops when you have notoriously high blood sugar levels. This can lead to a number of serious health problems, such as:
- Dental disease
- Foot problems (restless legs syndrome)
- Heart disease
- Loss of vision
- Stroke
If you’ve been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, you can effectively manage it by maintaining an active lifestyle, reducing the amount of sugars (and carbs in general) while increasing the intake of healthy fatty acids, as well as cutting down on the amount of stress in your life. You can use the same measures for preventing diabetes.
In today’s world, supplementation is an essential part of everyday nutrition. We use supplements to level up deficiencies in our diet and enhance our immune function. Researchers suggest that CBD oil may help alleviate the symptoms of diabetes and also reach the cause of the problem.
Using CBD Oil for Diabetes: Does it Help?
There’s no straight answer to that.
In fact, everybody reacts differently to CBD oil, so we can’t tell you whether it will work for your case of diabetes. Still, CBD is a natural and safe substance, so why not give it a shot?
In the next section, we’ll focus on the studies on the effects of CBD on different types of diabetes.
What Are the Effects of CBD on Diabetes
Scientists speculate that CBD and diabetes go hand in hand. Depending on the type of diabetes you’re diagnosed with, CBD can potentially help manage, or even lessen, some of the symptoms that make this condition particularly difficult to live with. Studies show that cannabinoids can also be used for the prevention of migraines.
Here are just a few positive effects of taking CBD oil for diabetes:
1. Faster Metabolism
Slow metabolism means that your body doesn’t effectively process energy, storing more fat in your body and compromising some of the basic functions, including blood sugar management. As you know, slow metabolism leads to gaining extra weight, and that may lead to obesity. Diabetes is a prevalent issue among obese people.
When you ingest sugars — or any carbohydrates for that matter — the pancreas releases insulin, a hormone that takes care of the proper glucose levels in the body and enables the absorption of glucose into the cells. This allows them to process sugar for energy.
Too much body fat reduces the sensitivity of the blood cells to insulin, compromising their ability to absorb sugar. Doctors refer to this condition as insulin resistance.
When your body starts to stock up with sugar instead of using it for energy, it’s a highway to becoming overweight.
So, what should you do to prevent diabetes and reduce its symptoms? You need to maintain a healthy weight, and you can only do that when your metabolism is working like clockwork.
Recent studies show that frequent cannabis users have smaller waist circumference compared to those who abstain from cannabinoids. These people also have lower insulin resistance, which results in a faster metabolism.
The reason why CBD can help with the above markers is its ability to promote the “fat browning” process. Fat browning helps the body to transform the white fat cells — the ones you store as the excess fat — to brown cells that are easily metabolized and used for energy during physical activity. This includes both exercise and regular activity throughout the day.
While CBD isn’t a quick fix to your metabolic problems, adding this compound to your daily routine may support these activities and boost your metabolism in a natural way along with a healthy diet.
2. Lower Insulin Resistance
When the blood cells become resistant to insulin, they can’t facilitate glucose transportation to cell tissues, leading to the aforementioned glucose buildup. In a healthy individual, these cells should be able to absorb the insulin in order to process it into energy.
Some studies point to CBD as the potential missing link in improving the body’s efficiency in absorbing and using insulin.
For example, a 2013 study published in the American Journal of Medicine that analyzed 4,657 adults (both men and women) found that people regularly taking plant-based cannabinoids have a 16% lower fasting insulin level and 16% lower insulin resistance level compared to those who don’t use cannabis.
3. Reduced Pancreatic Inflammation
CBD has been proposed as a novel anti-inflammatory drug that may help to mitigate some of the symptoms of diabetes — especially when we talk about the prevention of type 1 diabetes.
Researchers suggest that this condition develops after chronic inflammation in the cells of the pancreas. When this organ is inflamed, its cells become damaged to the point they almost can’t release insulin. This is a strong signal you’re developing type 1 diabetes.
Continuous supplementation with CBD may help you delay this process by reducing the pancreatic inflammation, especially in those genetically predisposed to suffer from the condition.
5. Better Blood Circulation
Both type 1 and type 2 diabetes can lead to chronically high blood pressure levels (hypertension), especially when you count obesity in that “diabetic package.”
Hypertension entails the risk of kidney disease, and if neglected, may lead to blindness.
So how can you control your blood pressure with CBD oil?
Studies indicate that CBD dilates the blood vessels, facilitating blood flow in your arteries. This effect allows for better control of blood pressure. Researchers have also found that cannabinoids can reduce blood pressure in healthy people, preventing them from developing hypertension.
What Areas Require More Research on CBD and Diabetes?
According to some anecdotal evidence, CBD may be able to improve HDL cholesterol levels and manage blood glucose.
Well, can it?
HDL Cholesterol
In a small 2016 study in the journal Diabetes Care, researchers found no link between CBD use and higher HDL cholesterol levels. The study also analyzed other markers, such as appetite and insulin sensitivity in people with type 2 diabetes, where found little impact of CBD on both.
Blood Glucose
Blood glucose management is the biggest concern for potential diabetes treatments. At this point, there are no significant studies proving CBD or CBD oil’s direct effect on high levels of blood sugar. It’s important to understand the benefits of a healthy diet and exercise before you incorporate CBD oil into your daily routine.
Is Using CBD Oil for Diabetes Safe?
The WHO issued a report on CBD in 2018, in which they clearly stated that Cannabidiol is a natural and safe substance — without abuse potential. CBD is non-intoxicating, meaning it doesn’t have mind-altering effects. It’s well tolerable in humans even in doses as high as 1500 mg daily.
With that said, there are a few mild side effects you should be aware of:
- Dry mouth
- A temporary drop in blood pressure
- Appetite fluctuation
- Dizziness
- Diarrhea (extremely rare)
There are also potential drug interactions that need to be taken into account. CBD interacts with many prescription drugs because it’s metabolized by the same enzyme in the liver. Depending on the type of interaction, CBD can either increase or decrease the amount of the active substance from a drug in the bloodstream. If you’re taking any medication for diabetes, make sure to consult your doctor about CBD before you purchase it online.
What’s the Recommended Dosage of CBD for Diabetes?
To be honest, we can’t give you definitive dosage guidelines because there aren’t any when it comes to taking CBD. The FDA doesn’t even have an official serving size for cannabidiol supplements.
That’s because everyone is different and there are too many factors that influence the way CBD affects your health, such as your body weight, age, gender, metabolism, the potency of your product, and whether or not you have used cannabidiol before.
We recommended starting out with low dosages and then evaluating the effects and adjusting the dosage. Once you find the amount of CBD that works for you — improves your symptoms and helps you feel better on the whole — you can stick to it because the body doesn’t build a tolerance to CBD.
Most CBD oil users never take more than 25 mg of CBD daily. However, in specific conditions, the optimal dosage can range from anywhere between 100 and 400 mg.
Key Takeaways on CBD and Diabetes
Diabetes is a serious metabolic condition that not only impairs the way your blood sugar levels are managed, but it can also lead to an array of other related conditions, such as heart disease, hypertension, chronic pain, loss of vision, and depression.
The key to the successful management of diabetes — especially when it comes to type 2 diabetes — is a healthy diet and an active lifestyle. When you add consistent supplementation with CBD oil to your routine, you can help your body regulate the basic biological functions so they remain in balance. This includes the performance of your pancreas and how your cells react to insulin.
Can CBD help with diabetes? Opinions are split due to the lack of enough clinical research. However, evidence from patients as well as from preclinical studies suggests that CBD may support diabetics in their struggle for better health, at least in a few areas.
We hope that you’ll find this guide useful in your future purchases!