Should You Take CBD Oil With Food?

Taking CBD with certain foods enhances how much your body absorbs

Thanks to its many therapeutic benefits, the use of CBD oil is being studied for the treatment of a wide variety of health conditions. As interest in CBD and its many applications continues to mount, one of the questions that comes up is how best to take it in order to maximize its effectiveness. Is it OK to take CBD on an empty stomach, or is it better to take CBD with food?

Well, according to new research, it’s better to take CBD products with food. A University of Minnesota study, published in Epilepsia, found that taking CBD oil orally, with fatty foods, increased both bioavailability (how quickly and how much of a substance is absorbed into the body) and the concentration of CBD entering the bloodstream.

When you take CBD oil orally, it’s absorbed through digestion, but the enzymes of the digestive system can alter the structure of CBD during so-called first-pass metabolism. This diminishes the concentration of CBD before it even reaches the circulatory system. Liver enzymes — CYP450 mixed-function oxidases — work on CBD, producing more than 100 metabolites.

One way to increase bioavailability is to allow CBD oil to be absorbed sublingually (under the tongue), which bypasses the digestive system. As mentioned, taking CBD with food enhances oral bioavailability and increases the concentration of CBD, particularly foods that contain medium- and long-chain triglycerides (fatty acids, in other words).

When researchers compared CBD absorption in two groups of patients — some with empty stomachs versus others who had eaten a fatty breakfast — they found CBD exposure was considerably higher among those who had eaten. They discovered that taking CBD with food increased the amount of CBD in the body by four times on average, and up to 14 times.

The Best Types of Foods to Take With CBD Oil

Foods high in fatty acids act as strong binding agents for CBD and are metabolized into energy by the liver. This means that the loss of CBD concentration through first-pass metabolism is diminished. These foods include several types of oil (coconut, olive, soybean, sesame), as well as eggs, avocado, fish, meat, and nuts.

Crescent Canna uses coconut-based medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) oil as the carrier oil in all of our CBD tinctures, which range in potency from 500 mg to 9000 mg of CBD — the strongest CBD oil on the market. MCT oil not only helps preserve the CBD in our products, but it also is easy to digest and helps the body absorb CBD quickly. And we’ve taken the guessing out of serving sizes: All of our products come with easy-to-understand dosing suggestions, and our droppers have clear dosage markings from .25-1ML.

All Crescent Canna products are made from the highest quality CBD that’s extracted from USA-grown, organic hemp, and full-panel lab-tested to ensure potency, quality, and transparency in every drop. So however you take CBD, make sure you’re getting the quality and purity you deserve, at a price you can’t beat.