What is CBD?
Unless you’ve had your head under a rock for the last couple of years, it’s likely you’ll have noticed the increasingly loud buzz around anything that contains Cannabidiol Oil.
Cannabidiol, better known as CBD is one of the 104 compounds found in the cannabis plant. Unlike some of the other compounds in cannabis, CBD has no psychoactive effects and as such, it will not get you high.
CBD Oil derived from cannabis is seemingly always being celebrated in the news for its successful application in treating a wide range of medical conditions. It has particularly been successful in easing the symptoms of epilepsy and anxiety and as a result was adopted by the UK’s NHS as an official medicine.
Some of the most popular ways to ingest CBD include tinctures and herb vaporizers. However, 2019 is tipped to be the year CBD has an industry changing impact on the beauty industry. Some of the world’s largest beauty companies are racing to get CBD infused products to the market first and are now including the cannabis compound in their creams, soaps and lotions.
Beauty fashionistas with a memory will remember when aloe and shae butter were the darlings of the beauty industry. Today, we know those ingredients were largely overhyped by beauty companies following a buzz so it had me thinking whether or not CBD is here to stay. The easiest way to find out is to put it to the test!
Putting CBD to the test
Beauty scientists claim that CBD has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. These are the exact features to look for when creating products that soften and improves skin condition and remove wrinkles; so far, so good!
To find out for myself whether CBD lived up to the hype, I decided to replace every single product in my skin care regime with a product containing CBD for a full week.
Admittedly, this is more of a bit of fun than a comprehensive scientific experiment. However, I would expect to finish the week with at least an idea whether CBD is worth keeping in my daily regime.
I suffer from both acne and psoriasis on my face and back. To keep these under control I have a daily skin care regime that I follow almost religiously. To minimise the risk of a break out I use a gentle soap, moisturising lotion and a sleeping skin mask. Ditching the Nivea, Dove and Vichy products I used for years left me feeling quite nervous but for the sake of my experiment I swapped them for the following three products :
- Cannuka CBD Cleansing Body Bar
- Ildi Pekar sleeping Mask
- Imbue Botanicals Embody Premium CBD Lotion
The Cannuka Cleansing Body Bar is basically a huge chunk of soap but it smells great. As well as CBD it contains Coconut and grapefruit so you can imagine how great it smells! The best thing about this soap however is the lather it creates with very little effort. Typically products that lather this well leave your skin bone dry; the Cannuka soap didn’t.
I have to admit, I wasn’t looking forward to rubbing CBD infused body lotion into my skin. I had assumed because it contains CBD in an oil form it would be greasy and grease is a sure way to encourage my acne. However using the Imbue CBD lotion was a delight. I used it as soon as I got out the shower whilst my skin was still warm and damp. It left my skin glistening, soft and moisturized for the remainder of the day.
The final part of my skin care ritual is applying my skin mask before I go to sleep. I purchased the Ildi Pekar sleeping mask and was expecting a lot because it was so expensive ($125 for a tiny jar). Ildi Pekar promote the product as ‘the ultimate skin repairing mask’. It did at least promote restful sleep and my skin was glowing each morning when I removed it but I’m still not sure it warrants the price. It was didn’t have 4x the effect of my usual skin mask for example.
So are CBD products here to stay?
Honest answer? I am not convinced but I did like all the products. All three were clearly made with love and attention and after a week of using them my skin is great but they are all so expensive.
In reality, until there has been more scientific research carried it is impossible to know if it is the CBD that had that great effect on my skin of if it was the other ingredients in the soap, body lotion and skin mask.