Is Cannabis the New Frontier in Sports Recovery?
Dec 19, 2024
Is Cannabis the New Frontier in Sports Recovery?
It seems like everywhere you look sport is rolling out a red carpet for cannabis as it has slowly disappeared from drug testing policies. The NBA doesn’t mind it anymore. UFC gave it the green light. The NCAA too dropped its ban on cannabis. The NFL has gone a step further funding research on how athletes might use cannabis more effectively. From the street corner to the professional playing field, cannabis is now officially mainstream. This is more than just hype because it is blazing into the gigantic $6 billion per year sports recovery market. Athletes are beginning to use it more often for things such as pain relief and deeper sleep. While there is greater acceptance of this elixir, there are still many professions, like the military and first responders, that test for cannabis in the workplace and a positive drug test for THC in these professions can mean the end of a career. Like the truck driver who lost his job after failing a drug test using a CBD product, a case now in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The lack of regulations on CBD products mean product quality may be questionable. Thankfully third-party certification programs like BSCG’s Certified CBD program stand ready to ensure compliance and quality control meet industry standards and test every lot to verify CBD label claims and screen for THC and more than 500 banned substances in sport or other drugs to protect against positive drug tests. Take a deeper dive with us and explore what cannabis might do for athletes navigating the highs and lows of training and recovery?.
NFL Leads the Charge on Cannabinoid Research
The NFL’s million-dollar cannabinoid research program is changing perceptions about cannabis. The NFL is exploring CBD’s potential as a safer alternative to opioids for pain relief and wants to figure out if it can improve recovery from concussions. The goal is to determine how much CBD a healthy athlete should take to get the best results. While this might sound like a step in the right direction, it’s a new way of looking at this type of therapy because there are plenty of healthcare workers who don’t have a great deal of knowledge about how to use cannabis products like CBD. This educational gap is something many researchers are hoping to bridge as we head toward a more research-driven understanding of its uses. More and more sports bodies are starting to see the research around cannabis that suggests it’s a therapy that can’t be ignored.
UFC and MLB CBD Sponsorships and Licensing Agreements
The UFC and MLB became some of the first sporting groups to accept official sponsorship and licensing agreements with CBD brands, officially rolling out the red carpet. In 2021, the UFC announced a five-year agreement that named Love Hemp the Official Global CBD Partner of UFC. In 2022, MLB announced that Charlotte’s Web was the Official CBD of Major League Baseball. Both sporting groups required third-party certification and testing for banned substances as part of the consideration of the CBD brands. BSCG is proud to include Love Hemp as one of the BSCG Certified CBD brands.
Cannabis and Its Recovery Benefits
If you’re an athlete or someone who cares about their health, painkillers probably aren’t a long-term solution you want to rely on because they come with a lot of nasty side effects. In this space, a study published in the Journal of Cannabis Research found that cannabis is gaining plenty of ground as a tool for athletes who want to recover faster and feel better. In this survey of 111 active subjects, a massive 93% of people who used CBD had improved recovery, with 87% saying the same about THC. These fitness buffs spanned the gamut of sport, from cardio lovers to gym rats. All of them overwhelmingly felt CBD and THC played a positive role in their post-exercise recovery, easing their pain, helping them sleep, and reducing their inflammation. Sure, this initial data might be promising, but these researchers caution more evidence is needed to definitively say cannabis is a great recovery supplement for athletes.
CBD’s Growing Superpowers
CBD is effective because it taps into your endocannabinoid system. This network can influence everything from mood to inflammation, the mechanisms behind which we’re only beginning to understand. Recent research in Frontiers in Pharmacology suggests that CBD acts on specific receptors, such as CB1 and CB2, which might be the strings that pull the cords of reduced muscle inflammation, lower pain, and improve recovery after strenuous workouts. In this setting, CBD’s potential seems almost boundless. It may lower your stress hormone, cortisol, improve some aspects of sleep, and even modulate pain pathways, possibly providing athletes a more balanced and sustained recovery process. This research builds on growing evidence that CBD’s anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects can make the body less sensitive to the nasty aches and pains that often follow intense exercise.
Third-Party Certification Brings Peace of Mind in a Budding Industry
As cannabis and CBD blossom as sports recovery aids, product safety and transparency are becoming ever more important. Consumers want assurances on product quality and need to be able to trust the label claims and ensure they aren’t filled with environmental contaminants like heavy metals, pesticides, or microbiological agents. Athletes and first responders need to ensure no banned substances are hiding as contaminants. BSCG’s Certified CBD program sets a new standard for CBD products incorporating a compliance and quality control process review with each lot tested for cannabinoids and more than 500 banned substances and drug contaminants and regular screening for environmental contaminants. Certified CBD THC limits are well below industry standards to protect against positive drug tests in first responders or other professions like truck drivers where cannabis drug testing is still in place. With so many unregulated CBD products flooding the market, BSCG Certified CBD products stand apart as premium options consumers, first responders, and athletes can trust. This level of quality assurance gives athletes the ultimate peace of mind so they can experiment with cannabis as a recovery tool. For drug-tested athletes, first responders, truck drivers, or other professionals looking to explore the world of CBD without risking their careers, third-party certification is the ultimate safeguard.
Beyond the Haze: The Future of Cannabis in Sports Recovery
While CBD and THC hold undeniable promise for athletes, even the paper published in the Frontiers in Pharmacology says there’s still a long way to go. Cannabis research will keep intensifying, which means athletes, trainers, and healthcare providers will ask for precise dosing guidelines, rigorous, long-term studies, and a deeper understanding of product quality and how that impacts an athlete’s performance. BSCG’s Certified CBD Program offers athletes the clearest path to explore these benefits without the risk of testing positive if they are tested in their sport, or in a professional environment. With constantly evolving policies, groundbreaking research, and the safety net of third-party certification, the future of cannabis in sports recovery is strong.
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