It is said that there has been a wave of industrial hemp in the beauty and healthcare circles in Europe and the United States recently.
Even a lot of skincare brands have started to follow up.
So, What the hell is this?
What does it have to do with the legendary drug marijuana?
Is it reliable?
In order not to be eliminated by fashion trends, I decided to be forced to open a business and started the first round of “Scholarship Mode” in the new year.
What is industrial hemp?
Well, let’s talk about what marijuana is first.
The official concept – cannabis, Morus cannabis plants, can be peeled and harvested after planting. There are female and male plants.
Industrial hemp means hemp used for industrial needs. Well, right or wrong.
In fact, in addition to its medicinal value (and if abused it will turn into a drug), this marijuana does have a lot of industrial value, so it is cultivated in many places, including our country.
It’s just that with such a high amount of planting, the country is also afraid that it will be abused by everyone accidentally. What should I do?
The following is a bit of a long experience
The reason marijuana is classified as a “narcotic” or “drug” is that it contains an addictive ingredient called tetrahydrocannabinol ( THC ), but different varieties of large The content THC in hemp is very different, and according to research, if the THC content in marijuana is less than 3 g/kg, it will not show psychoactive effects on the human body (that is, its “drug” properties), Only the ingestion of cannabis with a THC content above 3 g/kg produces medicinal or “drug” properties.
Based on this, many countries have made relevant regulations on hemp. According to the content of THC in the hemp plant, hemp is divided into three types: industrial hemp, drug hemp, and intermediate hemp. Compared with drug hemp, industrial hemp has taller plants, fewer branches, and a high fiber content. The THC content of the dried flowers and leaves is less than 3 g/kg (flowers and leaves are the parts with relatively high THC content in hemp), these are also cannabis varieties that are allowed to be grown by the laws of the United States, the European Union, Australia, South Africa, and other countries.
In short, industrial hemp can be understood as a type of legally cultivated hemp plant that is mainly used for industrial production and does not have “drug” properties. However, does this industrial hemp have “drug” properties or not?
This is about another main ingredient in cannabis CBD
This is a fat-soluble small molecule compound, the molecular structure is shown in the figure:
This thing is a non-psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, it does not have hallucinogenic effects, but it has many, many pharmacological activities such as analgesic, anti-epileptic, anti-convulsant, antispasmodic, anti-rheumatoid arthritis, anti-anxiety, and so on.
At present, liquid preparations of oral high-purity cannabidiol extract have been approved by the FDA for the treatment of certain epilepsy disorders. In the United Kingdom, Canada, and other countries, oral sprays containing 50% CBD can also be legally prescribed to relieve some of The pain and spasm caused by the disease, showing that at least some of its pharmacological activities are not only in the research literature but have real clinical value.
Among its numerous pharmacological activities, there are of course those that are likely to have an impact on beauty, such as anti-oxidation and anti-inflammatory, and may even have oil-controlling effects.
The first major role: is anti-oxidation.
Initially, scientists may have guessed that it may have good antioxidant properties after looking at its chemical structure. Anyway, a lot of work has been done to confirm and explore its antioxidant properties.
For example, the potential of cannabidiol as an antioxidant was measured three times repeatedly by cyclic voltammetry, and it was found that cannabidiol has a similar electron-donating ability to the commonly used synthetic antioxidant BHT:
Cyclic voltammetry measures the ability of a compound to accept or donate electrons under variable voltage potentials, that is, the oxidation or reduction properties of a compound. This result shows that cannabidiol is also relatively easily oxidized, or that CBD does have the potential to act as an antioxidant, and even its antioxidant capacity is similar to that of the synthetic potent antioxidant BHT.
Then, further confirmation was made in the Fenton reaction, and the results were also consistent with the measurement conclusion of cyclic voltammetry (the Fenton reaction is a process of generating ROS catalyzed by metal ions).
Of course, these are just basic chemical experiments, and their conclusions are far from enough to prove the antioxidant effect of cannabidiol in vivo, so scientists have also done a lot of cell experiments.
The most influential one is the glutamate-induced neurotoxicity experiment.
In this experiment, scientists compared the antioxidant properties of cannabidiol with vitamin E and vitamin C and found that under this experimental condition, cannabidiol has a stronger protective effect on nerve cells than vitamin C and vitamin E.
However, although the data of cannabidiol in this experiment performed very well, it cannot be said that the antioxidant power of cannabidiol must be stronger than that of vitamin C and vitamin E because it is also possible that cannabidiol is shown in this experiment. Could the better cytoprotective effect come from some other temporarily unknown mechanism? This point, including the author of the paper, is also emphasized. In the future, don’t see any experimental conclusion that the antioxidant capacity of XX is extremely strong, which is how many times that of vitamin C and vitamin E. Let’s get carried away and think that the antioxidant capacity of this XX is the first in the world. After all, these are all cell experiments or In vitro model experiments, a slight change in any one of the experimental conditions may lead to completely different conclusions.
But in any case, at least for now, it is a recognized fact that cannabidiol has a good antioxidant capacity.
As we all know, just anti-oxidation can bring out a lot of possible effects related to skin beauty, such as anti-aging, whitening effects, and so on. Just like vitamin C, vitamin E, and even a series of ingredients such as anthocyanin, astaxanthin, ferulic acid, resveratrol, etc. that have been or are on fire, they all stand out because of their antioxidant capacity. Yes, so I wouldn’t be surprised when you tell me that this CBD is on fire and has become a star beauty ingredient
After all, the current research results of this CBD are not inferior to those mentioned above, and may even have some advantages in the field of external skin application. For example, its fat solubility allows it to accumulate more in the stratum corneum, isn’t this what we are striving for?
The second major role is anti-inflammatory.
There are more kinds of literature in this area, and I can give you a bunch of them in any review:
One of the most classic is the mouse arthritis model experiments.
In this set of experiments, the researchers found that either intraperitoneally or orally, CBD inhibited arthritis in mice:
And the effect is related to the dose. When using intraperitoneal injection, the dose of 5mg/kg is the best, and when taking oral treatment, it has the best protection effect of 25mg/kg.
Later, some people used carrageenan to do a rat foot edema experiment (this is a classic animal model of acute inflammation), and the effect was also good:
It can be seen in rats with foot edema caused by carrageenan injection, after using CBD, except for the lowest dose (5mg/kg), other dose groups have significantly reduced edema after a few hours. The edema continued to decrease significantly with the duration of administration, especially on the 4th day, even the edema of the lowest dose treatment group improved by 50%, while the highest dose group (40mg/kg) almost reached 100% improvement.
In short, the anti-inflammatory effect of CBD can also be said to be ironclad.
However, I know that when it comes to anti-inflammatories, the first thing that comes to your mind is probably the improvement of acne. However, I am thinking of after-sun repair and sensitization relief.
Because the inflammatory parts of acne are generally deep and also involve the action of microorganisms such as Propionibacterium acnes, it is difficult to achieve effective control simply by external application of anti-inflammatory ingredients, and mild inflammation caused by sun exposure (ultraviolet stimulation) or other external stimuli, however, it is relatively superficial (because sensitive muscles are also a manifestation of skin inflammation, and this inflammation is at least caused from the outside to the inside, and the most superficial skin must be problematic), and the source of irritation is also It is easier to avoid or remove directly (avoid re-exposure or avoid contact with ingredients that are irritating to you), so I have always believed that dealing with these two kinds of inflammation is the best direction to use externally applied anti-inflammatory ingredients.
And, excitingly, I found two research papers on the protective effects of CBD on keratinocytes and fibroblasts after UV radiation! Although these two are only cell experiments for the time being, at least they gave me more confidence to try to use them for after-sun repair.
Coupled with the fat-soluble properties of CBD, it is easily absorbed by the stratum corneum and accumulated in it for a long time, which is more beneficial to be used as an anti-inflammatory component of the skin for external application. The transdermal route of administration realizes more clinical value of CBD!
