A short educational YouTube talk by Sherry Caplan Stalino (founder of Connected Wellness) explaining how cannabis can both reduce and sometimes worsen anxiety depending on formulation and dose. The video describes physiological stress responses (fight-or-flight), the role of the endocannabinoid system in down-regulating chronic stress, and clinical decision points (identify anxiety source; choose regulation vs. sleep goals). It provides concrete dosing examples: for regulation, higher CBD with lower THC (about 7–10 mg CBD with ~1–2.5 mg THC); for sleep, higher THC or a 1:1 CBD:THC formula is commonly used, with caution to start low due to THC-induced tachycardia. The speaker recommends following medical guidance and teases a follow-up video on hemp-derived CBD vs. cannabis-derived CBD.
Questions this video answers
Approximately 7–10 milligrams CBD with about 1–2.5 milligrams THC.
A balanced 1:1 CBD:THC formula or higher THC (used with caution).
Hello and welcome back to our channel. Can cannabis cause anxiety or can it help to relieve it? In this brief video, I'm going to share with you the ways that cannabis can help and when it does not. I'm Sherry Caplan Stalino, founder of Connected Wellness. So you wake up in the morning and your heart is pounding, you're under tremendous stress at work, the bills are piling up, or you're a caregiver for a loved one and all the responsibility that goes along with that. Or some of you are living with chronic pain and illness, various disorders, and the stress that goes along with that. So there are physiological experiences that the body goes through, along with the psychological and emotional and spiritual experiences that go along with how having anxiety. So these physiological experiences are known as your body going into an adaptation mode, fight or flight. So when the body perceives that there's danger, it will prepare itself to either confront the danger, which is fighting, or it will prepare itself to run away from the danger, which is the flight part of the response. So supporting your endocannabinoid system, when your body is in this chronic state of stress, it can assist the body in decreasing this hypoarousal mode of fight or flight that comes from chronic stress. So for people who live with sensory processing disorders, say, or trauma which causes sensory processing disorders, the body gets used to staying in this chronic state of hypoarousal throughout the day and every day. So the right type of cannabis can help and the wrong type of cannabis can actually bring on more anxiety. So first you and your doctor need to decide where's the anxiety coming from? Is it coming from a chronic state of stressors, situational stressors, long term stressors, or is it coming from a medical condition or complex trauma? And once you know where it's coming from, your next consideration needs to be are we regulating the system or we trying to meaning your body or are we trying to get the system to rest and go to sleep? So let's start with regulating. So what we found with our patients is when you use higher levels of CBD and lower levels of thc, we can actually help the body with some, with managing some of the chronic and ongoing stressors. So we usually see our patients taking 7 to 10 milligrams of CBD to somewhere around 1 to 2 and a half milligrams of THC is what we would consider higher CBD and lower THC and a dose. So if we're addressing medical, specific medical or neurological issues, we can actually add terpenes or other whole plant extracts to enhance what the cannabis is doing and give you a better desired result. And we'll discuss that with you more in future episodes to come. So now, if we're trying to help the body get to a resting place or help your body to go to sleep, most people tend to want to use higher dosages of THC or a CBD and THC formula that is balanced and exactly a one to one ratio. Now this is where you need to be careful because higher levels of THC can cause the heart to race. So if you're new to using cannabis medicine, you really want to start low on your dose and slowly increase your dose as your doctor has prescribed until you get to your optimal dose. So you want to start low and go slow. I know we've mentioned this in previous videos, but it's very important when we're talking about anxiety because we do not want you to start on a higher level of THC and cause your heart to race because chances are you won't try it again if you land up having a bad experience. So follow your doctor's advice, use the dosing that he's sharing or she is sharing with you and start low and go slow. So one more question that our patients frequently ask us and that is, is it okay if I use hemp seeds CBD instead of cannabis cbd? Well, this is a pretty big question. It's not such a small and simple answer. So what we've done is created another video for you to watch next week so that we can answer that question more fully. So if you liked our video and you found it helpful, please like us and subscribe to our channel. And remember, cannabis is a life changing medicine, but only you can change your life.
