Fighting Inflammation with CBG: A Holistic Approach to Wellness
If you scrape your knee or cut your hand, you’ll notice how quickly the body responds to protect the injured area. A similar process occurs when you have an infection, the flu, or other internal offensive foreign agents.
In such situations, your immune system responds to the intruders by sending out inflammatory cells. While it’s normal for your body to take defensive action against all threats, the immune system can sometimes dispatch inflammatory cells even when you’re not sick or injured.
When your body fights healthy cells and tissues, it could cause severe inflammation, contributing to several chronic diseases. In this post, we look at inflammation in more detail, including its causes and effects, and explain how GBD for inflammation may be a natural solution to inflammation.
What is Inflammation?
After your body suffers an injury or encounters offending foreign agents, your immune system responds by sending out cytokines and inflammatory cells. As the first responders, these two initiate the inflammatory response to fend off any intruders or heal the injured tissues.
This action causes redness and swelling around the injured area or inflammation of internal organs. The two types of inflammation include acute (short-lived) and chronic (long-lasting):
Acute Inflammation
Acute inflammation is a short-lived response to an injury or sudden body change. For example, when you cut your finger, the body dispatches inflammatory cells to the injured area to begin the healing process. As a result, the injured area may begin to show signs of acute inflammation, such as:
- Pain
- Redness
- Heat
- Loss of function
- Fever
These signs do not always appear, as sometimes inflammation can be without symptoms. Also, symptoms of acute inflammation may occur within several hours or days, depending on the cause.
Chronic Inflammation
When the body sends out inflammatory cells, even with no danger in sight, you may experience chronic inflammation. If this inflammation goes on for months or years, you may start to develop symptoms that include, but are not limited to:
- Fatigue
- Chronic pain (chest and abdominal)
- Joint pain or stiffness (for example, in rheumatoid arthritis)
- Fever
- Mouth sores
- Skin rash
Chronic inflammation symptoms are more challenging to locate than acute inflammation symptoms. Often, you’ll only show a few of these symptoms.
Common Causes of Inflammation
While an infection causes inflammation, the presence of inflammation doesn’t always signify an infection. The cause of the inflammation could be a result of one or several factors, as discussed below:
Causes of Short-Term (Acute) Inflammation
Acute inflammation could occur after:
- Exposure to a substance: Any foreign toxic substances, including chemicals, dust, or bee stings, could cause an inflammatory reaction in your body.
- Injury: Sudden body changes from an injury could prompt the release of plasma proteins, resulting in a buildup of fluid that causes swelling
- Untreated Infections: An untreated infection from a cold, flu, or other illness can cause acute inflammation inside your body.
Causes of Long-Term Chronic Inflammation
The most common causes of chronic inflammation include:
- Sensitivity: If you’re sensitive to external triggers, your body quickly senses objects that shouldn’t be there, causing inflammation
- Exposure: Low-level, long-term exposure to irritants such as industrial chemicals could cause chronic inflammation
- Autoimmune disorders: If you have a condition where your body constantly attacks healthy tissues, such as psoriasis, you may experience chronic inflammation
- Persistent acute inflammation: If you didn’t fully recover from acute inflammation, it might develop into chronic inflammation
Stress, sleep problems, smoking habits, unhealthy diets, drinking alcohol, and obesity are all factors that could increase the risk of chronic inflammation.
Conditions That Could Arise from Inflammation
Inflammation plays a crucial part in the body’s healing. Without it, injuries could worsen, and straightforward infections could become deadly. However, both acute and chronic inflammation could contribute to several potentially life-threatening diseases.
For short-term (acute) inflammation, this could be:
- Asthma
- Allergies
- Tuberculosis
- Fever
For long-term (chronic) inflammation, it might be:
- Rheumatoid arthritis
- Periodontitis
- Diabetes
- Cardiovascular diseases
- Chronic peptic ulcers
- Psoriasis
- Ulcerative colitis
- Hepatitis
It is important to spot and manage inflammation and associative diseases to prevent further complications.
How CBG products Can Help Reduce and Treat the Effects of Inflammation
Cannabigerol (CBG) is one of the cannabinoids derived from the cannabis plant. Often known as the mother of all cannabinoids, cannabigerol acid (CBGA) – the acid form of CBG, helps produce other major cannabinoids, including cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), obtained from
Cannabis growers derive CBG when the cannabis plant is still young. As the plant develops, much of the CBG declines in concentration as it converts to CBD and THC. Due to this, cannabis farmers are experimenting with cross-breeding and genetic manipulation to assist cannabis plants in generating more CBG.
How CBG Works
The endocannabinoid system has receptors and molecules responsible for keeping the body in an optimal state. Once CBG enters the body, it may imitate the endocannabinoid, a complex signaling system that controls body functions such as appetite, anxiety, and inflammation.
Specifically, CBG may bind to both CB1 (located in the nervous system and brain) and CB2 (located in the immune system) to boost the function of anandamide. This neurotransmitter may enhance pleasure and motivation, regulate sleep and appetite, and help alleviate pain or inflammation.
Potential Health Benefits of CBG
CBG is purported to help reduce inflammation, anti-anxiety effects, and oxidative stress. A growing body of research suggests CBD may have therapeutic properties when relieving body inflammation, especially for inflammatory bowel disease.
This condition, characterized by chronic inflammation in the bowel, affects millions of people worldwide. Although no studies have been conducted on humans, experimental animal studies in 2013 revealed that CBG might positively affect inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
Researchers tested this theory by introducing inflammation similar to IBD in mice and administered CBG. After a while, CBG was found to help minimize the effects of inflammation and nitric oxide, which led them to conclude that CBD may be considered for IBD treatment.
Another study involving the compound HUM-223—a monomethoxy CBG-DMH showed that CBG was effective in treating mice’s zymosan arthritis (a form of knee arthritis). Gene analysis showed how HUM-223 might help reduce knee joint inflammation by significantly decreasing pro-inflammatory gene expression.
While research with regards to CBG for inflammation is promising, there is no confirmation of its potential benefits for humans. Still, more research is required to comprehend how CBG functions and whether CBG products may help treat inflammations.
Key Takeaways
Inflammation is an automatic response by the body to defend itself against harmful outside agents, such as viruses, bacteria, or injuries. This process is helpful to the body, especially in the short term.
However, long-term chronic inflammation could threaten the body, leading to severe discomfort and potentially life-threatening conditions. These include rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease, among others.
As scientists discover more about inflammation, they come across various potential solutions, including CBG. Although most of the tests have been on mice and other animals, all signs indicate a promising future.
To know more about CBG for inflammation, visit our website, where you’ll find various resources to help you. You could also purchase some CBD and CBG products from us. Make sure you talk to your doctor if you have an underlying health condition or take other medications before consuming any of our products.
