LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Right now there are products on shelves that claim to help everything from acne to inflammation to stress but we wanted to know are people actually seeing results from CBD skincare.
"There is an old Arab proverb that says, he who has health has hope and he who has hope has everything," plastic surgeon Dr. Jeffrey Roth said.
The modern medical world relies on much more than hope. It requires research, and science, and the new kid on the block, CBD-infused products, has little of either.
"For a while nobody wanted to do these studies because it illegal and technically still is at the national level and it takes time and energy and resources and body really wanted to put it through that," Dr. Roth said.
In 2015, the FDA eased the requirements to allow research on CBD. Despite the limited time to study CBD products, companies have started making some pretty bold claims.
The first one: CBD products help you relax.
"Stress. Anxiety. Everybody has it. Now we're able to get relief from stress and anxiety through the blood, from a topical," Emma Pietrzak, with Silver State Wellness said.
Yes, you can absorb things through your skin and into your bloodstream, but not everything that penetrates the skin will be absorbed and most of products contain multiple ingredients.
"Does this relax your skin? You put it in with five other compounds, you don't know which compound might be the active ingredient or the one doing the magic," Dr. Roth said.
The next claim: CBD can help with acne.
"Because of the CBD it helps to reduce the inflammation so therefore it helps with the acne inflammation and blemishes that cause acne," Lia Yulianti, and aesthetician, said.
Yulianti says that can be true for some patients, but it's not for severe cases. Still, for people looking to avoid chemicals, it could be a good option.
One more similar claim: CBD helps with inflammation in general.
"We talk about decreasing inflammation with things like ibuprofen and aspirin and Tylenol and that kind of thing. So that's been around for a long long time," Dr. Roth said.
Now there's another potential option.
"CBD's job is to bring down inflammation so we're actually seeing a lot of results from patients," Pietrzak said.
The big hurdle for some: Cannabis. It comes from the plant that's carried a stoner stigma for so long,
"Having medicine come from nature is not anything new. Aspirin originally came from the bark of a willow tree," Dr. Roth said.
When it comes down to it, CBD could work for you, but as of right now, there just isn't enough scientific research to say that for sure.
"To go ahead and make a claim on the bottle of oh we've put this in here and therefore it'll calm things down again scientifically that's hard. Now it may be true but you want to get a scientific standard in there to make that claim. The thing is, everybody is so individual anyway that one medicine might work for one patient and may not work for another," Dr. Roth said.
