Vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid, is a compound that serves many purposes in the human body. Because of this, many researchers have questioned whether vitamin C has a direct effect on CBD levels. Let’s explore this concept and discuss the interaction between vitamin C and CBD in further detail.
What is vitamin C?
Everyone has heard of vitamin C, and we all know that it’s an essential nutrient that can only be obtained from our diet. But what is vitamin C exactly, and why do we need it?
Vitamin C is an antioxidant and an essential organic compound that must be included in every diet. People who do not have enough vitamin C in their diet develop a condition known as scurvy. The common symptoms of scurvy include weakness, fatigue, bruising, and bleeding gums.
Scurvy was prevalent in sailors throughout history because they didn’t have access to fresh fruits and vegetables while they were out at sea. As a remedy, citrus fruits such as limes and oranges began being recommended in the early 1800s because they contain high doses of vitamin C.
Vitamin C is essential because it has a range of critical biological functions in the human body. These functions include:
assisting immune function
collagen synthesis
regulating the synthesis of neurotransmitters
eliminating reactive oxygen species from the body
scavenging free radicals
facilitating enzymatic reactions
Overall, vitamin C is essential for helping your body fight pathogens, maintain cognitive health, prevent oxidative stress, contribute to growth, and repair damaged tissues or organs. Since vitamin C has so many vital roles, many researchers have questioned whether vitamin C can affect CBD levels in the body.
Therefore, determining if a relationship is present between vitamin C and CBD is important. For example, it would be useful to know if vitamin C reduces the amount of CBD in the body for a drug test. Or perhaps vitamin C might mediate CBD levels to protect the body from any damaging side effects.
Does vitamin C reduce CBD and THC levels?
Unfortunately, evidence as to whether vitamin C reduces the amount of CBD or THC in your body is insufficient. However, many people are curious about the interaction between vitamin C and CBD because it could be the answer to faster detoxes.
For instance, if vitamin C does reduce the amount of cannabinoids in the body quickly, this could help people prepare for a drug test. Although THC is legal in many places and CBD is legal virtually everywhere, these molecules act similarly in the method of storage through fat cells in your body. Although these compounds are opposites as far as psychedelic effects, many workplaces still test for THC even as cannabis continues to stride towards legalization throughout the country. This is no different from how they would test for alcohol or illicit drugs. Any substance that causes intoxication is not safe or appropriate for most workplaces.
Some users on the internet have tested this theory, and the results vary. Hence, if you’re drinking lots of orange juice to pass an upcoming drug test, you have no guarantees that this will work.
If you have no other options, it might be tempting to try a remedy such as orange juice. But if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. Excessive attempts to detoxify your body can make a drug test look suspicious, especially if your attempt causes you to urinate a lot. As a result, your test could come back inconclusive, and you might be asked to perform the drug test again.
Additionally, drug tests have improved over the years, thus becoming more sensitive. Even if vitamin C can clear THC to some extent, trace amounts of THC will still be detectable.
Other people have also suggested that vitamin C might mask THC levels, which will go undetected on a drug test. But, again, the evidence does not support this claim. And even if it were true, as mentioned earlier, drug tests have become more sensitive and can distinguish vitamin C from THC.
Drug tests aside, is it possible that vitamin C aids in detoxes? In other words, if you want to eliminate toxins or unwanted compounds from your body, can vitamin C speed up this process?
Some evidence shows vitamin C levels in the body are depleted following drug use. Drugs such as cannabis, which are typically smoked, appear to deplete vitamin C stores rapidly, and chronic cigarette smokers are also more at risk of depleting their vitamin C.
Smoke inhalation can cause oxidative stress, a condition that damages cells and tissues within the body. To recover from this oxidative stress, vitamin C is required, which is why it becomes depleted following the use of drugs or smoke inhalation.
Therefore, vitamin C could aid the detoxification process in terms of helping your body recover. But it might not have any direct effect on reducing CBD or THC levels.
How long does CBD remain in the body?
CBD can stay in the body for up to 30 days. Although longer durations have been recorded.
How long CBD remains in your body ultimately depends on your circumstances. For example, if you’re a regular consumer, cannabinoids remain in your body for much longer than 30 days. If you rarely use products that contain cannabinoids, you might be clear of CBD within a matter of days or weeks.
Another factor influencing how much CBD remains in your body is your body fat percentage. CBD and THC are lipophilic molecules, which means they can combine with and dissolve easily in lipids or fats. This means it can be stored in fat cells for long periods of time.
Hence, if your body fat percentage is higher, more CBD may be stored in your body.
Overall, the amount of CBD that remains in the body, and the duration, vary from person to person. If vitamin C does have some effect on reducing CBD levels, the effect might not be enough to clear the chemical entirely.
Do detoxes work?
If you’re looking at other detox methods besides vitamin C, beware that most detoxes are unreliable or have not been tested extensively. However, if you’re using a detox to improve your health, they could offer some benefits regardless of whether your THC or CBD levels decline.
Some people claim that drinking more water, eating a low-fat diet, and exercising also help them clear THC more quickly. Combining these methods will undoubtedly have a more significant effect, but it will still take some time before all traces of THC / CBD are gone.
Can vitamin C lower your tolerance to CBD?
Another claim is that vitamin C can lower your tolerance to compounds such as THC or CBD. Tolerance refers to how sensitive you are to a particular compound. With CBD, for example, if you have a high tolerance, then more CBD is required to produce an effect. However, if you have low tolerance, less CBD is needed to produce an effect.
Therefore, it makes sense that someone wants to reduce their tolerance because the side effects worsen when doses get too high. Also, it’s annoying when a drug no longer works how it used to.
If vitamin C reduces your tolerance, then this would mean you could take more vitamin C and less CBD. As a result, the CBD levels in your body would reduce because the CBD consumption would be less.
Although this sounds promising, the evidence doesn’t support this claim either. If you want to reduce your tolerance, the best way to achieve this is by taking a break from CBD.
And during your break from CBD, you could take vitamin C to improve your overall health.
The bottom line
It’s unlikely that vitamin C directly affects THC or CBD levels in the body. A common misconception is that vitamin C helps cannabis users pass drug tests. However, this method is unreliable—probably an urban legend—and it’s unlikely that vitamin C clears THC before a test. However, increasing your vitamin C intake after smoking cannabis is beneficial because smoke inhalation depletes your vitamin C stores.
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