According to Dr. Johnson-Arbor, how long CBD stays in your system may depend on several factors.
How and what to eat
How much you eat, as well as how much you eat, can affect the way your body processes CBD, says Dr. Johnson-Arbor. After consuming a high-fat food, there are usually higher levels of CBD in the bloodstream, making its half-life (the time it takes to eliminate half the amount of a substance from the body) longer than in the bloodstream. people consuming CBD. while fasting, he explains. In other words, if you consume CBD on an empty stomach and do not eat immediately, CBD is more likely to leave the system earlier. Meanwhile, eating high-fat foods, such as avocados, cheese, and nuts, can have the opposite effect. A 2019 study also found that exposure and absorption to CBD increases significantly when combined with high-fat foods.
Processed drugs in the liver and liver disease
Some medical conditions can affect how long CBD stays in your system. “Because CBD is metabolized by the liver, people with liver disease or taking other medications that are metabolized by the liver may have altered CBD metabolism,” says Dr. Johnson-Arbor. He explains that the human liver contains enzymes that help the body break down drugs and other compounds, and some drugs may increase or decrease the activity of these enzymes. “When this happens, medications can be metabolized faster or slower than normal, and this can lead to unwanted side effects,” he says. Because CBD is metabolized by liver enzymes, there may be a potential interaction with many other drugs.
Frequency of use
If you use CBD frequently, it can build up over time and stay in your system longer, in large part because CBD is highly fat-soluble. “This means that it can build up in our fatty tissues for a long period of time after heavy use, and therefore can remain in the system for extended periods of time (e.g., weeks) in heavy users,” he says. Dr. Johnson-Arbor.
How much do you use
Not surprisingly, the more CBD you take in at a time, the longer it will stay in your system. A 2005 study in the journal Monitoring of therapeutic drugs it was found that taking 1.35 milligrams of CBD was only detected in the blood for about six hours after ingestion, but higher doses were detected for longer periods of time.
Types of CBD administration
The way you consume CBD can affect how long it stays in your system. According to a 2018 review, smoking or inhaling CBD not only causes CBD to enter the bloodstream faster, it also leaves the body faster. Meanwhile, the same review found that CBD oil can stay in your system longer, up to two or five days. Dr. Johnson-Arbor explains that the reason smoking or inhaling drugs causes faster clinical effects than consuming an oral drug is because orally administered drugs must be absorbed through the gastrointestinal tract, and this requires more time. However, whenever you’re talking about how long CBD can stay in your system, it’s important to remember that it really depends on how often you use it. “CBD (and other cannabinoids) are fat-soluble, which means they can build up in fatty tissue after chronic use and then be slowly released into the bloodstream to remove them from the body,” he says. “This means that chronic users may have longer detection times than acute or punctual users (the latter is what is usually represented in clinical trials and may not be applicable to the general population). The same goes for smoking. “I don’t want people to get the wrong impression and believe that no matter how much or how often they use CBD, it can only be detected in their system for two or five days.”
