@
CrankyFranky: That's the second or third time someone has reported good results with their pets on CBD. It's pretty hard to fake it with pets and I'm not sure a placebo effect works on animals. However animals can respond to positive attention in other ways and I wonder whether the process of trying new products on them also focuses pet owners/carers into renewed attention which may be beneficial.
I've been trying it on the very senior cats I inherited from my mom after she went into a nursing home (mom died in November), 10 and 14 years old. Just three drops in their water dish daily from a 10mg per ml oil -- very small amount. They were both in pretty good health anyway, no chronic illnesses, pain, etc., so there's no dramatic difference.
But the older Siamese seems healthier and more active. For awhile last year she seemed listless, slept all the time, was scrawny and felt bony, too thin. Her fur didn't look good and she was mostly isolating herself. The Siamese was always strictly my mom's cat and it took her a year to adjust to me. At first she'd let me brush her, which may have helped with the appearance of her fur -- the Siamese never grooms herself much. In contrast my own 5 y/o tabby is a beast warrior princess and beauty addict -- she grooms herself constantly. Now the Siamese flops into my lap as soon as I sit down, which makes it easier to check her condition.
Granted, part of the improvement in the Siamese may be due to accepting the transition from mom to me. The 10 y/o Persian cat needed only a few weeks to adjust to me and is a permanent tick or leech, always in my lap, next to me or in bed with me. Even my own tabby isn't quite that attached. So perhaps the older Siamese cat was just getting through a grieving and adjustment period.
For myself, I'm still reluctant to claim miraculous results from CBD. For one thing it seems to take fairly large doses to have any effect on me and it's expensive at 100-200 mg a day. So recently I've switched to adding several drops to everything I drink, mostly coffee early in the day, herbal tea later. Lower dose but more regular throughout the day. For that I like the chocolate mint flavored oil from Green Mountain CBD (soon to be renamed Sunsoil, due to a copyright spat over the popular Green Mountain moniker in Vermont).
But due to longtime chronic pain, worsened last year by injury, CBD is just part of a daily routine of pain management. I have prescriptions for moderate strength opiate and non-opiate pain relievers -- hydrocodone, cyclobenzaprine, diclofenac (time released NSAID) -- but I take only the diclofenac daily. I might need a hydrocodone once a week on really bad days, and the muscle relaxer even less often. I still have some left over from a 30-day supply issued last August, so my VA doctor knows I'm not over-using the stuff.
And I still use the topical analgesics I've mentioned before, especially Stopain roll-on. Helps prep me for warmup exercises before a bike ride. I tend to bunch up my shoulders and neck muscles anyway, and it's worse in cold weather, so it helps to spend 30 minutes warming up first, and dressing appropriately.
I drink 2 or 3 cups of strong coffee, usually espresso, during the first hour or two after I'm awake. It's a remarkably effective adjunct for pain management for me. It may not work for everyone. But for me, coffee does what I'd hoped CBD would do, minus the effect of caffeine on my heart rate and keeping me awake at night if I indulge too late in the day.
I'm hoping CBD will become mainstream enough that pain management specialists will prescribe in instead of the current wonder drug that they seem to believe fixes everything -- gabapentin. Gaba is involved in some neuropathic issues, but it's not a cure-all analgesic. Besides making CBD affordable for folks whose health care plan would cover the cost, it would also increase production which would help reduce the price.