Colorado CBD Study Recruiting Retired Athletes

Calling all retired jocks: Cannabis doctors want you try CBD.

Cannabis Clinicians Colorado, a group of health-care professionals dedicated to studying medical marijuana, is recruiting sixteen retired athletes to participate in a study to see how using CBD affects quality of life with regard to sleep and chronic pain, among other things.

Former athletes who have played collegiate or professional sports can sign up for a screening to see if they qualify to become CBD guinea pigs, testing how certain CBD products and dosages affect their overall health.

“If you’ve played at least one season of college, we’ll take you,” explains CCC director Martha Montemayor. “That’s a pretty elite level, with the amount of work that you have to do to get there. All we require for you to be qualified as a retired elite-level athlete is to at least have played a year, or even a season, in college.”

As hemp-derived CBD becomes more readily available across retail outlets nationwide, athletes and active consumers have incorporated CBD products into their regimens for physical recovery and other ailments. One example is Drew Pontius, a fitness advocate and former Marine Corps who says CBD helped him treat ruptured disks and his back; it also enhanced his overall workout, he adds.

“Using stuff like this has changed my life,” he says. “I got my appetite back, I’m training at a super-high level. I have more endurance when I work out, and my oxygen intake is higher, too.” But Pontius and other CBD users only have anecdotal evidence from personal experience for others to lean on. The CCC study hopes to clear a path toward proving — or disproving — testimonials like his.

Montemayor and her staff will analyze feedback from study participants on which CBD products and dosages work most efficiently for certain physical and mental conditions, using products such as CBD tinctures, topicals and more. “Whatever comes out as being a clear winner — or if they all work well —that’s what we want to see,” she says. “We also want to see if there’s a dosage that people like better than others.”

The study consists of an eight-week "active period,” where those participating in the study take different CBD products, increasing their CBD intake every two weeks by 25 milligrams. The first two weeks consist of starting subjects on a 25-milligram dose, eventually reaching 100 milligrams by the end of the active period. Participants will then be taken off the product for a month, and will report if any CBD effects last after one month. Participants will record how they feel each day during the study, and undergo electroencephalogram tests to record brain patterns while on and off CBD.

The CCC hopes the results create more rigorous trials for CBD products, especially those marketed toward athletes and active users. “What we’re doing right now is less rigorous but more investigative,” Montemayor says. “But we want to look at which products stood out the most and further analyze how the dosage can affect our participants.”

Those interested in the study can email [email protected] to see if they qualify to attend screenings on September 27 and 28.