Can CBD help with muscle soreness?

Have you ever woken up the next day after a rigorous workout and felt sore, stiff and achy? If so, it’s likely you’ve been suffering with DOMS. DOMS stands for Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness and results in tender, weakened and sore muscles usually within 12-72 hours of a strenuous workout.

What causes DOMS?

Any exercise that is higher intensity than your day-to-day movement can cause tiny, microscopic tears in the muscles. Your body responds to this by increasing inflammation which leads to a sore, stiff or tight feeling muscle.

DOMS is not necessarily a bad thing, it means that you have exercised past your usual limits and when your body repairs the tiny tears in the muscles they build back bigger and stronger – thus seeing the ‘gains’ that you are working for.

Can CBD help with DOMS?

This recent study into whether CBD can influence the treatment of DOMS is very promising. The results suggested that:

“consuming a CBD/MCT oil solution immediately after performing a EIMD protocol has a significant influence on the reduction in DOMS when compared to those consuming a 1ml dose of MCT oil or having no intervention.”

What this is saying is that CBD has a statistically significant effect in reducing DOMS when taken immediately after exercise. Furthermore, the study concluded that CBD allows an athlete to return to normal after DOMS sooner than the MCT or null intervention. This means that the athletes were able to get back to training without soreness sooner than those in the study that weren’t given CBD.

Of course, we’ve been hearing stories like this anecdotally for years. Many people have been taking CBD Oil and using topical creams and balms to help them with exercise recovery and was even used by some athletes at the 2021 Olympic Games.

If you are interested in trying CBD to help with post-workout pain, and would like to take CBD oil like those in the study, one full pipette of the 500mg Isolate Oil is equivalent to what they were given. If you want to target specific areas then we recommend applying topical CBD directly to the muscles. Our Maximum Strength Deep Relief Cream or Muscle Balm can all be used to target sore areas.

For maximum benefit, we recommend taking a CBD oil immediately after exercise and apply topical CBD to the affected muscles post-shower and continue as needed in the days following.