Looking for an extra lift to get you through your workouts, or some soothing relief for when you’re sore? Protein bars and electrolyte water aren’t the only supplements to stash in your workout bag. You might want to add some cannabis products, as well.
“Cannabis has the ability to aid sports and workouts that don’t involve prime motor skills,” says Dr. Stephen Brenner, a sports medicine orthopedic surgeon and chairman of Diagnostic Lab Corporation, a cannabis and food safety laboratory. Not only does cannabis provide a certain sense of confidence, serenity, and anti-anxiety to calm you down during a workout, he says, but it can also function as an analgesic and a bronchodilator, which helps with oxygenation and breathing. “The {person’s} actual performance may be aided by any of those types of things,” Brenner says.
Moreover, cannabis can be a tool for post-workout recovery. “Cannabis has an anti-inflammatory effect. It’s almost 20 times stronger than aspirin, and even two or three times as strong as hydrocortisone,” says Brenner. But unlike other medications that are accompanied by risk of gastrointestinal bleeding or other drawbacks, cannabis doesn’t have any physical side effects, he adds.
Cannabis is famous for its pain relieving properties if you’re combatting aches and soreness, but it can also help with more serious conditions, too, such as broken bones. Research coming out of Israel has shown that CBD, a non-psychotropic compound in cannabis, can aid in bone fracture healing and stimulate the activity of Lysyl Hydroxylase (a bone repair enzyme) in osteoblasts, or cells that build bones.
Dr. Brenner notes, however, that in using cannabis in sports medicine, it’s important to consider the mode of ingestion. “Smoking is a really deleterious thing,” he says. “Once you’re burning and carboxylating, you’re changing the chemicals. Unless there’s a specific real indication for smoking, you can get that with vapor. But much better would be oral pills or oils.”
And while cannabis fits into sports medicine, it’s also been shown to correlate with a healthier lifestyle overall. Research has shown that cannabis consumers exercise more than their sober counterparts, while a number of weed gyms are cropping up around legal states to integrate cannabis into your workout regimens. Moreover, despite the munchies, cannabis consumers overall are also thinner than people who don’t consume. And if you’re trying to lose weight, strains of weed high in cannabinoids like CBD and THCV can help suppress appetite and enhance general wellness.
