Not many things in this world match up more harmoniously than medicinal foods that taste good. How much better can it get than a tasty snack that has therapeutic value? When you browse through weed edibles for sale, you’ll see there are nummy treats of all kinds: gummies, chocolate, cookies, brownies, even dried fruit!
If you’re taking edibles for health reasons, you have to keep the method in mind. Cannabis can do wonders for the human body, but sugar is a well-known villain in the domain of healthy living. This begs the question: are cannabis cookies healthy for the human body?
Benefits of Consuming Edibles
For the experienced “edibilist”, there’s no need to mention the plethora of benefits of ingesting marijuana. However, if you’re new to the game, here are a few reasons why eating your medicine is an excellent alternative to smoking.
- No Smoke: the most obvious perk is sparing your lungs the damage from inhaling hot smoke. Not only is the heat itself harmful, but the burnt matter that comes in the smoke can cause your lungs distress over time. Edibles get the THC into your body without harming your lungs one bit.
- Longer Lasting: due to the way your body processes the THC when ingested (more on this in a minute), the effects last for up to 8 hours, which is quadruple the maximum time that the effects from smoking last.
- Discretion: when your medicine looks like candy or a tasty baked good, you can take it on the sly anywhere and everywhere with no one the wiser. There are even infused beverages to drink casually or honey to be stirred into tea like your own sweet little secret.
Sugar and the Human Body
While sugar is a natural substance, it has become unnaturally common in our modern world. It’s blatantly obvious in sweet foods that taste like sugar, such as candy, chocolate, and baked goods, and is easy to avoid in that context (if you have willpower, that is).
But sugar finds its way into our diet in much more subtle ways. Added sugar pops up in unexpected places – check the labels on your groceries, and you’ll often see sugar where it shouldn’t be. Foods like grains, dairy, fruits, and vegetables also have a portion of natural sugars. While the latter group of foods has many health benefits, it all adds up in our systems if we aren’t careful.
Too much sugar, as we know, is bad for our bodies. Obvious health conditions, like obesity and diabetes, come from chronic overconsumption of sugar. More subtly, the effects of sugar can contribute to an increased risk of heart disease, depression, acne, and cancer. Increased blood pressure and chronic inflammation can also come from ingesting too much sugar.
If you are aware of the benefits of consuming cannabis, you’ll recognize that it has the power to combat some of these conditions. So is it possible to find a balance between eating cannabis cookies and not eating too much sugar?
The Sweet Truth About Consuming Edibles
Perusing weed edibles for sale at your favourite dispensary can sometimes look like a trip to the candy store: cola gummies, sour keys, and chocolate, oh my!
A person might find themselves drooling as they pack these nummy vittles into their shopping cart, anticipating the tasty high soon to come. But the query stands: is this a healthy way to consume cannabis?
Well, the news here is good: edibles are a more potent and longer-lasting way to get high, so a little goes a long way. When you ingest cannabis (as opposed to inhaling it), the compounds have to pass through your liver before being sent into the bloodstream.
After being picked apart by hepatic enzymes, the THC enters your bloodstream in a different form than when it is smoked. This digested form of THC, called 11-hydroxy-THC (often written as 11-OH-THC), can be found in the body in levels up to ten times higher than inhaled THC. So not only are you sparing your lungs by not smoking your herb, you’re also stretching the power of your medicine to its maximum effectiveness.
How To Make Your Edibles The Most Effective
Since efficiency is the name of the game, it’s good to be aware of a few tactics that can make your edibles as powerful as possible. When it comes to baked goods or candied edibles, we want to keep the sugar to a minimum and the medicine at the maximum.
Whether you have an issue like chronic back pain or you just enjoy the experience, try some of these tips to make the most of your edibles:
- Eat your edibles with fats: THC is a fat-soluble molecule, so if you eat your edible alongside something high in fats, it will help your body process the THC more readily.
- Eat your edibles with food: even if the food isn’t fatty, having something else in your stomach with the edible will help prevent any sensation of nausea that might otherwise occur. Throwing up your valuable medicine would make it ineffective indeed!
- Exercise after eating: the effects of edibles work sooner for people with fast metabolisms. That being said, you can’t change the way your body works! Going for a walk can help your body get the process of digestion moving (and use up a few calories). Faster digestion means faster absorption of THC.
- Augment with extracts: if you need a higher dosage in the day than can be delivered in one cookie, you could top up your dosage with extracts. Tinctures made with alcohol have very little calories and work quickly. Infused oils made with an organic, high-quality oil base, will have fats that can be beneficial to the body.
The Real Skinny On Edibles
In general, edibles are a healthy way to consume marijuana. The risks are few, the benefits are many, and the method is delicious! As with all things, moderation is key. When you shop for weed edibles for sale, you’ll be sure to find something that appeals to you.
If you find that a single serving isn’t enough, consider augmenting with extracts to keep your sugar intake to a minimum. If all else fails, take a look at our selection of bud and try your hand at making some healthy edibles at home. Just remember to mix well, start low, and go slow!
