Hemp oil is “extra” anti inflammatory because it has gamma linolenic acid, a super anti inflammatory. Better than flax oil but also more expensive.
More information from somone more qualified than I:
The seeds themselves have slightly less than three times more omega-6 than omega-3 fatty acid. While this fatty acid profile of hemp seeds doesn’t match the higher omega-3 content of flaxseeds, the hemp provides an omega-6 fatty acid called gamma linolenic acid (GLA). GLA is somewhat unique among omega-6 fatty acids in that, unlike most omega-6 fats, research shows it supports anti-inflammatory processes in other animals. It’s not found in flaxseed or other oils commonly fed to horses, whereas in hemp oil GLA makes up about 3% of the fat composition. Fat from hemp oil is about 76% polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) as compared to flax oil, which is about 66% PUFA. Reports suggest horses find hemp oil very palatable.
Do you understand what you posted? GLA is NOT an anti-inflammatory. It is USED by the body in the anti-inflammatory process. Medications like bute ARE anti-inflammatories. There is absolutely NO research to support hemp oil or CBA reduces inflammation.
I am a big believer in CBD (chemically extracted from plant flower, not seeds). My basic understanding of CBD is as follows. Our bodies’ nervous system includes the endocannabinoid system, which relays sensory information to our brain’s cannabinoid receptors to increase/decrease chemicals in our body that make us feel good/bad. CBD (cannabidiol aka phytocannabinoid) modulates our bodies’ cannabinoid receptors by inhibiting receptors that make us feel bad (ie pain, inflammation, anxiety, stress, etc.), activating receptors that make us feel good, and otherwise balancing the body’s endocannabinoid system, leading to feeling a general sense of well being.
Anyhoo… I swear by it for my dog’s degenerative joint disease. It works better than ibuprofin for my nagging back aches, and helps my husband get a more restful sleep. It is gaining traction in traditional medical world too, as my 71yo mother was just prescribed cbd by her ortho surgeon for post foot surgery.
My final thoughts. All cbd products are not created equal, it takes time to research reputable products, and you get what you pay for. But, it’s not snake oil, despite what some people may think.
I went down a bit of a rabbithole reading up on cannabinoid receptors. It sounds like a lot is still unknown at this point, despite the assured but simplistic claims of the various folks marketing and popularizing it.
I realize that cannabinoids are distinct from THC and not considered psychotropic. But IMHO a substance that contributes to “make us feel good” is indeed mood altering, if only on a very modest level.
Marijuana in general is a fascinating plant in that various strains and crops can vary so much in how they affect the user. However, I never used it consistently enough to run any kind of systematic investigation that way :). It sounds like there is much more going on in the plant than just the known CBD and THC components.
From everything I read, I have to conclude that there is indeed a mood altering component to CBD, even if it isn’t strong enough to be psychotropic. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and certainly it sounds more pleasant than the side effects of Robaxin or Tramadol. I think however in trying to distinguish CBD from “recreational marijuana” which is still illegal in many parts of the US, its proponents feel they need to overstate its non mood altering qualities. But my guess is that it works primarily by being a gentle mood alter and slight depressant of the central nervous system, and that is why it is effective for such a wide range of chronic conditions. That’s absolutely fine, IMO, but I do feel that if the discussion of CBD was more upfront about this, there would be less mystification about what it can do and how it works.
I would think that both organisations are going to follow, or have already done so, the CPMA (Canadian Parimutuel Association) on this one - no CBD or THC for any participant, equine or human. This came down when weed was legalised in Canada.
arktos19…back in the day when there was no testing for much of anything, I knew of a few horses that raced on weed and they raced well because it calmed them down enough to be handled on the track (read steered and rated) - the method was a Kleenex or two or toilet paper to in a bucket, add weed, and light then stick the bucket over the horse’s muzzle and drape a towel around the relevant parts of horse and pail
My trainer (who is my age) swears that cocaine first entered our city via the local racetrack, where it was being used as a painkiller on horses, and then the grooms started partying. Given our city, the reputation of the track, and the general timeline of drug use here, it’s totally believable, though it may just be a fun story.
Well, I think it is a reasonable story because I had no experience with cocaine in the early 70s and by the late 70s, there were vats of it around the track it was so cheap people would soak tongue ties in the stuff, then they decided to put it into themselves and shortly after that, they started testing for it and caught a whack of people using it on horses
@Janet Conway and @Scribbler: @Scribbler , YES!!! Cannabinoid receptor 1 (our bodies normally make ligands for this receptor) surpresses GABA signalling in the brain, maybe the rest of the body. GABA does a TON. Receptor 2 plays a role in pain relief, and maybe this is what people notice in themselves and dogs.
But I totally agree with scribbler…what else is this doing to the body? One might feel better, but longer term, are there negative outcomes of hyperstimulating this pathway? They affect gene expression. No one knows the long term effects. And no one really knows what’s in the stuff you buy (I’m skeptical about all batches from a company).
I asked you all because I have good friends (a couple) who got into CBD. They take it and swear by it’s effects (more him than her). They give it to their dogs and swear by it’s effects. They don’t bother with the horses because they say it is so freakishly expensive. She now is a “distributor”. She is a MBA but not a scientist, and I’ve never heard a real argument as to what CBD does other than catch-phrases. He’s a very high level manager/director with natural science background, and keeps wondering why I don’t try it. He says it makes him calmer and sleep better. OK, fine, but I wonder what else it is doing?! THANK YOU all for your input!!
Seriously? I can maybe understand a fit racehorse on pot (but didn’t it effect their lungs?). But a racehorse on cocaine? How in hell was that horse handled? The poor horse? How many died from racing heart rates when racing? Oh my god!
thing about cocaine and horses is there cannot be enough administered to do good/harm by the methods used; even a wet tongue tie can only hold a very small dose which was just enough to give a bad test. You don’t shoot a horse up, nor can you induce it to snort the stuff like a human will do, so all it really produced was bad tests and the horses didn’t do any better or worse than before; there are other, more insidious drugs that do not require a huge dose (think a horse size line and it is pretty huge). As to the weed, it was often used on heavey horses along with an old time remedy called Asthmador and it did clear the lungs and ease the breathing
I don’t have the time to do the research for your Palm Beach. If CBA is a typo (I think you’re referencing CBD) maybe you can find the article referenced below which says it could lower inflammation (ie anti inflammatory as opposed to something increasing inflammation and thus being inflammatory).
CBD may offer an option for treating different types of chronic pain. A study from the European Journal of Pain showed, using an animal model, CBD applied on the skin could help lower pain and inflammation due to arthritis. Another study demonstrated the mechanism by which CBD inhibits inflammatory and neuropathic pain, two of the most difficult types of chronic pain to treat. More study in humans is needed in this area to substantiate the claims of CBD proponents about pain control.
Not sure anyone confused hemp oil with bute in this discussion. :lol:
Cocaine was used as a topical anesthetic in 19th century human medicine so I always assumed that was it’s race track use for horses. Like Hoof Freeze, numb an injury for the length of a race.
Yep, GLA is an active anti-inflammatory https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19842026
“GLA significantly inhibited LPS-induced protein expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase, pro-interleukin-1beta, and cyclooxygenase-2 as well as nitric oxide production and the intracellular glutathione level. LA was less potent than GLA in inhibiting LPS-induced inflammatory mediators.”
about 20% are the omega-3, alpha-linoleic acid (ALA)
about 3% is gamma-linoleic acid (GLA)
about 1% of the rising omega-3 fatty acid star, stearidonic acid (SDA)
This study in people found that 30mL hempseed oil for 20 weeks showed an increase in GLA. If we extrapolated that amount to a horse's weight, so let's say just 8x (140lb person, 1120lb horse) that means 240mL of the oil a day. Feasible? Sure. Economical? :lol: But obviously horses aren't people, they may metabolize these components differently, which might lower (or raise!) the dose needed.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2868018/
Interestingly there’s another thread on CBD that has many posters saying how CBD helps their anxious dogs cats horses and indeed a few themselves.
That reinforces my suspicions that CBD isn’t just working as an antiinflammatory. It’s also working on the brain, mood altering. And that might be a big part of its pain relief mechanism. Which is fine.
But I just wish then people involved would be more honest about its mechanism. Right now it’s being marketed as this wonder cure-all with no pschotroppic properties. But what if it mainly works by just getting you very gebtly buzzed and the anti-inflammatory aspect is neither here nor there?
Endocannabinoids are invloved in pain modulation, so the effects of CBD are more likely than not acting along those pathways, and not merely a collateral effect of any “mellowness” perceived.
I am fascinated by this topic. I recently bought a jar of CBD oil (1000mg) and have found that it really does ease physical pain and I don’t notice a mental difference at all. I’m sure it is affecting my brain but that’s fine. I’m for anything that doesn’t require more pills to go down my throat and that WORKS.
I’m going to look into the supplement mentioned for my one neurotic OTTB.
See, if you are planning to use it for a “neurotic” horse, you must believe it has some mood altering ability.
An example of an NSAID that doesn’t seem to really alter moods would be Advil or Bute. You would never take Advil for your own anxiety or Bute a horse that was anxious but had no pain.
I think it’s fine if CBD works in part by being mood altering. But if that’s the case, then I wish people were upfront about this and not pretending that it only works on pain receptors. I get that this is a holdover from trying to prove that it is “medicinal” and not “recreational,” a distinction that people felt they needed to make during the period that “medical” cannabis was OK but “recreational” illegal (still the case in many States).
But I want to know what things actually do before I take them, or use them on an animal. And I distrust the current discussions about CBD because I think there is a vested interest in people not being quite honest, and mystifying it’s actions.
