The user’s metabolism and whether they routinely use CBD are only two of the many variables that affect how long CBD benefits endure. One CBD dose may last for several hours, and the cannabinoid may stay in the body for days or even weeks after administration. The non-intoxicating substance CBD is known to offer a number of advantageous benefits, such as the decrease of pain and inflammation as well as the alleviation of anxiety. But it won’t make you feel high.
How long does CBD remain active in your body?
Your body stores CBD (also known as cannabidiol) in fat cells, where it might theoretically stay undetectable in a blood test for days or even weeks. However, because there isn’t much of a need for testing, the study on how long CBD oil lingers in the system is patchy. Few employers care if their staff members use a drug that is primarily used to treat pain and anxiety, and commercial testing protocols don’t actually measure CBD.
How long does CBD continue to work?
The first thing to understand is that for CBD to work at all, you need to absorb enough of it. A significant portion of CBD’s benefits may be lost depending on how it is used. By forcing the drug to go through the liver after being swallowed, up to 95% of it never reaches the bloodstream. Vaping or smoking CBD has the highest bioavailability (the amount that is absorbed and enters the bloodstream), with CBD oil tinctures placed sublingually (under the tongue) coming in second.
Users may experience a much more immediate and pronounced effect from inhaled CBD than they would from tinctures or edibles because it quickly reaches the brain. However, assuming you use enough, the therapeutic effects—reduced inflammation, pain, and anxiety—are eventually perceptible from all forms of consumption. It may be necessary to experiment with CBD dosage to get it right.
The effects of CBD typically subside within a few hours, but this is dependent on the dosage, delivery method, user size, metabolism, and usage history. Simply take more CBD if you start to experience pain or anxiety again. It is not possible to overdose on CBD.
Related: How Does CBD Make You Feel?
How long does it take to find CBD in your system?
The effects of CBD wear off from the body fairly quickly. The average plasma level in a study of 14 patients who received about 700 mg of CBD orally daily for six weeks fell to just 1.5 ng/mL a week after the final dose and was undetectable thereafter. The half-life of CBD was estimated by the authors to be 2 to 5 days.
A drug must typically have 5.5 half-lives before it is completely eliminated from the body. As a result, CBD taken orally would completely leave the body in between 11 and 28 days, but it might not be possible to detect it in a blood test much earlier. Just a few hours is the half-life of CBD in blood plasma after vaping or smoking as opposed to several days after ingestion. Regular users may require more time than infrequent or new users to completely eliminate CBD from their bodies.
There isn’t much data on how long CBD remains detectable in urine, but one study found that a single test subject only kept CBD detectable in his urine for 24 hours. In any case, CBD is rarely detected in routine drug tests (like those given by employers).
If you’re worried that CBD will cause you to fail a drug test at work, it’s advisable to limit your use to CBD isolate and broad-spectrum CBD products, both of which contain nearly no THC.
