CBD Flower and Your Lungs — What Does the Research Say?

If you were born after 1950, one social command has been drilled into your head more than any other: SMOKING IS BAD. And, it’s certainly true — tobacco cigarettes and the nicotine they contain are harmful to human health. Even eliminating the tobacco doesn’t make nicotine entirely benign.

Smoking tobacco is bad for you, so is smoking CBD hemp flower equally bad? We don’t think so — learn why as we progress through this guide.

What do your lungs do?

Let’s begin with the absolute basics. Your lungs serve as the oxygenators of your entire body. Every cell in your body uses oxygen to survive, and the alveoli sacs in your lungs transfer oxygen from the air you breathe into the hemoglobin in your blood. Then, they take carbon dioxide out of your blood and place it in your lungs where it is then expelled back into the atmosphere.

If it sounds like your lungs are absolutely vital to your survival on planet Earth, you aren’t wrong. We should take proper care of our lungs, and controlling what goes into them is the first step.

Is smoking bad for your lungs?

Not necessarily. We know what you’re saying right now: “Are you serious?” Yes, we actually are — smoking isn’t always bad for your lungs if you do it sparingly and smoke the right substances in the right ways.

The problem is chronic smoking of processed tobacco cigarettes, which contain nicotine along with various industrial additives. Organic tobacco is slightly better, and eliminating tobacco plant material is the best option. Nicotine, though, is cardiotoxic, so inhaling nicotine vapes could harm your heart.

Is smoking hemp bad for you?

Smoking hemp is not inherently bad for you. Your lungs are a delicate ecosystem, and they should be treated with the utmost respect. Done with conscious intent, hemp smoking can be helpful, not harmful.

As we’ve noted before, people have smoked temp for thousands of years without incurring any significantly negative effects. Even tobacco smoking was practiced by Native Americans without any reports of injuries or disease for uncounted generations.

It’s our Western excesses that have led to smoking becoming a harmful practice. Hemp flower actually contains a wide variety of beneficial antioxidant compounds that could improve your lung health when inhaled.

Is CBD good for your lungs?

We don’t know enough about CBD yet to know for certain if this non-intoxicating cannabinoid is good, bad, or neutral for your lungs. Since CBD does not appear to have any significant side effects in general, though, we think it’s safe to assume that this cannabinoid would fall into either the “good” or “neutral” categories.

It’s worth noting, in fact, that CBD has been researched for its potential impact on lung inflammation, and research into CBD and inflammation in general has been ongoing for decades. The international medical research and pharmacological communities appear convinced they’re onto something when it comes to CBD and oxidative stress given the continued outpouring of costly research budget that is being funneled into the subject.

How to inhale CBD safely

We hope we’ve convinced you to at least be open minded regarding the potential impact of CBD flower on your lung health. As purveyors of hemp products, it is ultimately not up to us to tell you which products you should or shouldn’t use for particular medical purposes.

If you’ve decided to inhale CBD flower for whichever reason, though, it’s our duty to steer you in the right direction as you find the products that will best suit your purposes. Here are three basic qualifiers you should keep in mind as you select the CBD flower your lungs will like the best:

1. Choose organic hemp

Most smokable hemp on the market contains agricultural contaminants since it is grown outdoors. The only way to completely prevent the presence of agricultural contaminants in hemp flower is to grow it indoors where wafting or dripping chemicals from adjacent properties can’t make their way into unsuspecting roots.

2. Use a bong or similar filtration mechanism

If you’re still concerned about the inherent healthiness of inhaling incinerated plant matter into your lungs, you can filter your smoke using a water pipe, also known as a bong. Water filtration reduces the potency of inhaled hemp flower somewhat, but it also traps a lot of the charred plant matter and tar that’s present in smoke.

3. Consider vaping

There is another option entirely if you want to inhale cannabinoids but you’re dead set against smoking in any form. Vaporizing delivers cannabinoids into the lungs in the same way as smoking, but it doesn’t involve inhaling any plant matter whatsoever.

CBD and lung health — discussion

In the past, the world had a lamentably laissez faire view toward smoking. The peace pipe of old was converted into the stench-inducing, cancer-causing modern cigarette, and millions died from tobacco-related illnesses.

Whenever something terrible happens, there’s a reflexive urge to move too far in the other direction. From a social perspective, smoking is now almost on par with infanticide, which is a situation an average person from the 1950s would have had a hard time imagining.

The truth is that inhaling certain plant-based substances into your lungs in moderation is not guaranteed to cause negative effects. In fact, the benefits of cannabinoids and other substances in hemp may outweigh any potential drawbacks.

CBD is currently the target of intensive international research regarding its potential anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. This isn’t nicotine, which acts as a stimulant and otherwise has no other beneficial qualities even though it causes cardiovascular damage.

We would invite you and your doctor to make an open-minded decision regarding the impact of smoking CBD on lung health. These aren’t tobacco cigarettes we’re talking about, and nobody has ever taken the time to exhaustively research how smoking hemp might impact your health either way.

In an odd sense, we’re all pioneers right now as we find out what hemp flower truly is and what it does.

If you’ve been feeling guilty for harming your health every time you smoke hemp flower, consider suspending disbelief. It’s entirely possible your hobby isn’t as harmful as you might have thought, and the experiences you have with hemp flower now will help CBD smokers of the future make the safest and wisest possible decisions.