As the CBD market matures and users become more aware of the proper use of CBD oil, new questions are being asked by those who are about to try CBD for the first time.
One of such questions is “What’s the best time of the day to take CBD oil?”
Indeed, the time of the day you take CBD can make a difference in how your body responds to it. You can use this knowledge to get the most out of your supplements.
In this guide, we’ll give you the answers about the ideal time of the day to use CBD oil, different dosages, and how to incorporate CBD into your daily routine for the best results.
When to Take CBD Oil: Best Times of the Day to Take CBD
The perfect time of day to use CBD oil boils down to your preferences. As a matter of fact, the ideal time is whenever you feel CBD fits into your daily plan.
Many users prefer to take CBD oil in the morning, using smaller doses to enhance productivity and maintain higher energy levels throughout the day. Others take CBD in higher doses in the evening or before bed. However, the vast majority of users take CBD oil consistently throughout the day to continuously support their endocannabinoid system.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the specific effects depending on the time of the day you take CBD.
Benefits of Taking CBD In the Morning
Better Focus
Taking CBD in the morning is a good idea if you’re struggling with morning brain fog. While CBD oil is not going to stimulate you like caffeine, it helps to induce a healthy state of balance and calm the mind. The morning is the best time of the day to take CBD oil if you want to stay focused and keep your worries at bay. Low doses of CBD can also increase your morning alertness, contributing to a healthier sleep-wake cycle.
Improved Stress Response
You can take CBD in the morning to cope with unexpected things and events life throws at you, especially if you want to calm your thoughts before going to work or when you’re about to experience a stressful moment in your life. CBD regulates the activity of the GABA receptor, which controls the balance between the hypoactivity and hyperactivity of the nervous system.
Muscle Relaxation
Your body can also benefit from CBD when you take it in the morning. Whenever you feel stiff, tense, or experience any kind of physical discomfort, taking CBD oil can help relax your muscles. You can combine sublingual CBD use with a topical formulation for optimal results.
More Effective Workouts
If you exercise regularly, consider adding a few drops of CBD oil to your pre-workout routine. As mentioned, CBD can boost focus and improve your physical endurance. Throwing a CBD cream into your gym bag can help you speed up regeneration processes in the body on top of reducing the soreness after a tough workout session.
Benefits of Taking CBD In the Evening
It’s Easier to Unwind After a Tough Day
If you feel stressed after a big day, taking CBD in the evening is a great choice to relax your mind and body before bed. Higher doses of CBD have a sedating effect on the user, which may come in handy if you experience difficulty getting enough sleep.
Quality Rest
CBD can help you regulate sleep cycles, but it can also affect the time you spend in a particular stage of sleep. For example, CBD has been studied for its ability to keep humans longer in the deep sleep stage while reducing REM sleep disorders such as vivid dreams, vocalizations, tremors, and abrupt body movements.
No Racing Thoughts Before Bed
Putting too much burden on your shoulders can make it difficult for the wired mind to slow down after a whole day of work. Simply sinking into the couch or bed will do little to help you relax — especially if you wind up yourself with a stream of racing thoughts. CBD can induce feelings of calmness and tranquility when taken in higher doses before bed, helping you protect yourself against these thoughts as you try to fall asleep.
When to Take CBD Oil and Other Products?
The form of administration is another important factor determining the best time of the day for taking CBD. Products like CBD vape pens will have faster effects because vaporization offers the highest bioavailability of all consumption methods. CBD oil comes with a relatively fast onset and long duration of effects. On the contrary, products like CBD capsules, gummies, and honey sticks will offer more of a slow, gradual effect because the CBD needs to pass through the gut first.
Below we suggest the best time to take CBD by product type:
When to Take CBD Oil
CBD oil is taken sublingually (under the tongue), where it gets absorbed into special glands in your mouth. This form of CBD produces faster effects since the oil enters the bloodstream more directly than if you took a capsule or edible.
CBD oil usually needs up to 30 minutes to provide its calming effects, so it’s much easier to incorporate it into your daily routine. We recommend starting out with ½ mL of the Gold Bee CBD oil in the morning to get the CBD pumping in your blood throughout the day. You can take it twice or even three times a day if you find that the results fade off quickly or need more time to take hold.
When to Take CBD Capsules and Gummies
Oral CBD products like capsules and gummies are slow-fuse products, so you’ll need to think about how these products will interact with your body to gauge the timing. For those experiencing stress during daytime hours, it’s best to take these products in the morning. It usually takes about 40 minutes for the effects to kick in. If you have trouble getting quality rest at night, you’ll want to take CBD gummies and capsules in the evening, somewhere around 2 hours before going to bed.
When to Take CBD Topicals
Topical formulations work best for localized problems, especially those involving physical discomfort. In this case, topical application is not about figuring the best time of the day to take them. Instead, you should use topicals as needed. The CBD will not absorb into the bloodstream; it will target the cannabinoid receptors in your skin’s epidermis layer to produce its soothing effects.
Should You Take CBD With Food?
Taking CBD with food may help to boost the bioavailability of the cannabinoid. As a fat-soluble compound, CBD easily binds to lipids. Natural fats that come from many different foods are likely to boost the absorption rate of CBD when you take it along with a meal. Some users like to take CBD before or after a hearty dinner or, at least, with a light snack.
CBD Before and After Exercise (Pre and Post-Workout)
According to anecdotal reports from both amateur and professional athletes, taking CBD before and after performing is a good method to boost overall performance in a natural way. The sure in CBD’s popularity can be partially attributed to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) recent decision to take CBD off the list of prohibited substances.
Due to CBD’s lack of psychotropic and directly stimulating qualities, the Agency did not feel the need to throw the cannabinoid in the same category with THC-rich cannabis — which is still banned by WADA. This means that athletes in the NBA, NFL, UFC, and Olympics, on top of other major sports leagues, can use CBD before and after working out.
Although there aren’t many clinical trials on the use of CBD in sport, researchers and consumers are intrigued by its potential benefits. Considering the role of the endocannabinoid system in meditating physiological functions related to energy metabolism, coordination, regeneration, sleep, and much more, it’s worth exploring this natural alternative to conventional supplements.
With the tension and restlessness experienced by many professional athletes before events, there is a widespread demand for any substance that could help with these problems.
Other Factors That Affect Taking CBD
There are many different variables affecting the way CBD works for users. Some of these factors, such as body fat and weight, are possible to modulate immediately. However, other variables, such as dose and potency, are easier to change on demand.
Below we highlight the most important elements of taking CBD
Proper Dosage
As with many herbal supplements, there is no universal dosage of CBD that will work for everyone. As mentioned, doses are measured in milligrams. Studies have tested different dosages, from 2.5 mg up to a few hundred milligrams per serving in clinical conditions. It’s best to start low and slow to test different doses and adjust them to your needs.
Type of Product
As the CBD market continues to mature, customers are more aware of different product formats. Different products not only provide alternative routes of administration but provide different results as well.
For example, full-spectrum CBD features a combination of different phytochemicals found in hemp, including cannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids. All these compounds work in synergy to improve the overall efficacy of the extract. This concept is known as the entourage effect.
On the other hand, products such as CBD isolate provide the highest amount of CBD per serving, but they lack other cannabinoids and terpenes. Although these products don’t offer the same type of synergy, they allow users to access large amounts of CBD in a single dose.
Quality
The quality of CBD oil also determines how the product affects the user. When shopping for CBD, you should always look for reputable manufacturers that can provide relevant and up-to-date third-party lab reports proving its potency and safety. Many companies fail to deliver quality testing, and many products on the market contain higher levels of THC than stated, as well as contaminants.
Why Do People Take CBD Products?
People take CBD oil for many different reasons. For some users, it’s just to feel better overall, while others have specific goals about their CBD supplementation.
CBD is a highly versatile compound due to its interaction with the endocannabinoid system (ECS) — the major regulatory network in humans.
The ECS controls virtually every biological process within the body, from memory to mood, stress response, immune function, body temperature, pain perception, appetite, sleep cycles, and more.
There are thousands of studies regarding the health benefits of CBD oil. In fact, cannabinoids are the best-researched natural compounds from an empirical point of view. Cannabis has been part of traditional medicine for centuries, and now cannabinoids have garnered the attention of the medical community.
CBD can regulate the aforementioned processes without directly binding to any of the cannabinoid receptors. CBD also has adaptogenic properties, meaning it can enhance your daily performance without any negative side effects.
Moreover, CBD oil also contains other beneficial nutrients that we often lack due to the modern high-paced lifestyle. Full-spectrum CBD oil contains a wide range of important compounds, such as:
- Minor cannabinoids
- Terpenes
- Flavonoids
- Essential fatty acids
- Vitamins
- Trace minerals
- Chlorophyll
Before we cover the best times of the day to take CBD oil, let’s take a look at different CBD dosages and their effects.
How Much CBD Oil Should You Take for the First Time?
There’s no one-size-fits-all CBD dosage because everybody is different; people have unique body chemistries, struggle with different types and severity of symptoms, and they have different goals with CBD.
The effective dose of CBD can range from 5 mg all the way up to 300 mg per day for some individuals.
Another important factor to consider when trying to find a proper dose of CBD is the consumption method. For example, products like CBD oils and benefits offer a faster onset of effects and higher bioavailability — but they last shorter than other formats. Oral products like edibles and capsules come with a slight delay in effects and low bioavailability but produce longer-lasting effects. Finally, topicals are the best form of CBD to address localized problems.
The best method to determine how much CBD works for you is to start with the lowest dose possible and gradually go up until you can feel the desired effects. If you haven’t used CBD oil before — and you’re a lightweight user — we suggest that you start with 2.5–5 mg to see how your body reacts to CBD.
Heavier users will need more CBD to achieve the same results — some people start feeling the benefits of CBD oil after reaching 25 mg.
CBD may also need some time to produce its positive effects on the body. Experts estimate that a period of 2 weeks is sufficient enough to decide whether or not CBD oil works for you.
Here’s a CBD dosage chart based on a user’s weight and the type of effects they’re aiming for:
| User’s Weight | Mild Effects | Moderate Effects | Strong Effects |
| 5 – 10 kg | 2.5 – 5 mg | 6 mg | 9 mg |
| 10 – 20 kg | 6 mg | 9 mg | 12 mg |
| 20 – 40 kg | 9 mg | 12 mg | 15 mg |
| 40 – 70 kg | 12 mg | 15 mg | 18 mg |
| 70 – 110 kg | 20 mg | 25 mg | 30 mg |
| > 110 kg | 25 mg | 35 mg | 50 mg |
How Often Should You Use CBD Oil?
Many new users are wondering if there’s an optimal frequency of taking CBD products.
Similar to dosing CBD, the frequency of use depends on individual preferences. However, there are many benefits to taking CBD oil daily as a health supplement. The most noticeable among these benefits is that CBD, along with other hemp compounds, can regulate the ECS and its ability to produce natural cannabinoids to encourage homeostasis — a fancy term for the balance between the body’s biological processes.
Depending on the consumption method, the cannabinoid spectrum of your product, and CBD potency, it can take anywhere between 5 minutes and 2 hours to start feeling the effects of CBD.
The duration of these effects is influenced by the following factors:
- Total body weight
- Body fat percentage
- The potency of CBD
- Frequency of use
Some users prefer to take several doses of CBD throughout the day to ensure consistent concentrations of cannabinoids in the circulatory system.
Most consumers like to use one CBD format, such as CBD oil. Others prefer to use a variety of different products, such as gummies, capsules, vapes, or topicals throughout their daily routine.
At Gold Bee, we offer every popular form of CBD to different types of users so you can always have a choice depending on a particular problem you’d like to manage with hemp extracts.
Final Thoughts On When to Take CBD Oil
The best time to take CBD oil depends on your preference and the goals you’re looking to achieve with CBD. We hope the above guide will help you figure out the best time for you.
Always listen to what your body is trying to tell you and keep experimenting with different dosages and timings. After a few weeks of taking CBD at different times of the day, you’ll be able to find the optimal spot in your routine to take CBD oil — whether in the morning, evening, or at both times.
Remember that everybody reacts to CBD differently, so be patient and give the cannabinoid some time to interact with your ECS and maintain homeostasis throughout the body.
