Sweet Dreams Are Made of THC (Or Are They?)

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small 😎

❝I’m one of those older folks that have a hard time getting 7 hrs. I know a lot of it my fault…like a few beers at nite…🥰am now trying THC gummies for anxiety, instead of alcohol……less calories 😁how does THC affect our sleep,? Safer than alcohol…..I know your next article 😊😊😊😊❣️😊alot of us older kids do take gummies 😲😲😲thank you❞

Great question! We wrote a little about CBD gummies (not THC) before:

Do CBD Gummies Work?

…and went on to explore THC’s health benefits and risks here:

Cannabis Myths vs Reality

For starters, let’s go ahead and say: you’re right that it’s safer (for most people) than alcohol—but that’s not a strong claim, because alcohol is very bad for pretty much everything, including sleep.

So how does THC measure up when it comes to sleep quality?

Good news: it affects the architecture of sleep in such a way that you will spend longer in deep sleep (delta wave activity), which means you get more restorative and restful sleep!

See also: Alpha, beta, theta: what are brain states and brain waves? And can we control them?

Bad news: it does so at the cost of reducing your REM sleep, which is also necessary for good brain health, and will cause cognitive impairment if you skip too much. Normally, if you are sleep-deprived, the brain will prioritize REM sleep at the cost of other kinds of sleep; it’s that important. However, if you are chemically impaired from getting healthy REM sleep, there’s not much your brain can do to save you from the effects of REM sleep loss.

See: Cannabis, Cannabinoids, and Sleep: a Review of the Literature

This is, by the way, a reason that THC gets prescribed for some sleep disorders, in cases where the initial sleep disruption was because of nightmares, as it will reduce those (along with any other dreams, as collateral damage):

Clinical Management of Sleep and Sleep Disorders With Cannabis and Cannabinoids: Implications to Practicing Psychiatrists

One thing to be careful of if using THC as a sleep aid is that withdrawal may make your symptoms worse than they were to start with:

Updates in the use of cannabis for insomnia

With all that in mind, you might consider (if you haven’t already tried it) seeing whether CBD alone improves your sleep, as while it does also extend time in deep sleep, it doesn’t reduce REM nearly as much as THC does:

The effects of a brand-specific, hemp-derived cannabidiol product on physiological, biochemical, and psychometric outcomes in healthy adults: a double-blind, randomized clinical trial

👆 this study was paid for by the brand being tested, so do be aware of potential publication bias. That’s not to say the study is necessarily corrupt, and indeed it probably wasn’t, but rather, the publication of the results was dependent on the company paying for them (so hypothetically they could have pulled funding from any number of other research groups that didn’t get the results they wanted, leaving this one to be the only one published). That being said, the study is interesting, which is why we’ve linked it, and it’s a good jumping-off-point for finding a lot of related papers, which you can see listed beneath it.

CBD also has other benefits of its own, even without THC:

CBD Oil: What Does The Science Say?

Take care!