What Is Considered A High Percentage Of CBD?

CBD… these three magical letters seem to tackle every disease known to humanity. From insomnia to chronic pain, there is no ailment that is beyond its reach. It comes as no surprise that more and more people are choosing CBD oil as an alternative to traditional medicine. After all, who wouldn’t want to take advantage of an effective, versatile, and natural remedy? However, to savor every single benefit of CBD, you should know what’s what. It turns out that the content of CBD (cannabidiol) itself in CBD oil is not quite regulated, so products from different brands will contain dissimilar amounts of the healing component. But what is considered a high percentage of CBD? Typically anything over 10%.

Cannabidiol and Co.

When buying any vegetable oil, you can be sure that it contains at least 99% of the oil itself. However, things are a little bit different when it comes to CBD oil. Besides cannabidiol, these bottles contain a wide range of substances naturally occurring in hemp (the plant of the cannabis family CBD is extracted from) including terpenes, fatty acids, proteins, minerals, vitamins, and many others. CBD oil also contains THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the most prevalent component of the cannabis plant. Unlike marijuana that is rich in THC, hemp features only trace amounts of this compound. As a result, over-the-counter hemp-derived CBD provides less than 0.3% of tetrahydrocannabinol (higher contents are available by prescription only).

With that being said, the ingredient that has the largest proportion in commercial CBD-rich products is carrier oil. Hemp oil, sesame oil, coconut oil, and MCT are the most popular solvents for cannabis extracts. More often than not, their concentration exceeds 90%.

While base oils have their own merits (lent by unsaturated fats and vitamins), they are not the reason why we buy CBD oil. We are interested in cannabidiol and accompanying substances that create the so-called entourage effect (i.e. they help CBD realize its potential to the fullest). Needless to say, the higher the percentage of CBD in a product, the better in terms of the desired health benefits.

How to Decipher CBD Percentage in CBD Oil

The label of each bottle containing CBD oil must feature two figures – volume (often in ml) and CBD content (in mg). The second figure represents the total amount of cannabinoids in the product. While a large quantity of the active ingredient is great, it doesn’t fully represent a remedy’s potency. A 50 ml bottle may contain the same amount of CBD as a 100 ml bottle. Accordingly, the former is going to be twice as potent as the latter. Therefore, to understand the strength of a particular hemp extract, you need to focus on the relative content of cannabidiol, i.e. its percentage.

Manufacturers rarely indicate the percentage of CBD in their tinctures but, luckily, you can easily calculate it on your own. To do this, you need to divide the amount of CBD in milligrams by the bottle size in milliliters, and then divide the resulting number by 10. For example, you have a 20 ml bottle of oil with 750 mg of CBD in it. The concentration of CBD oil will be (750 mg / 20 ml) / 10 = 3.75%

How to Spot High-CBD Products

So, you’re looking at 3.75% CBD, is this a high or low concentration? In our opinion, products with less than 2.5% CBD are classified as low-potent. They are unlikely to provide any tangible health benefits. You can give these to your pet, though.

If a CBD percentage ranges from 2.5% to 10%, you’re dealing with a medium-potent product. You will find plenty of those on the market in the form of eatables, tinctures, topicals, etc. Concentrations of more than 10% are considered to be quite high. We recommend using these products when you need to tackle the symptoms of serious illnesses (such as severe chronic pain, for example). Ultra-high percentages of CBD are few and far between because it is difficult to dissolve CBD extract in carrier oil.