Your Body Makes Cannabinoids Similar to CBD + 4 Other Fascinating Facts About The Endocannabinoid System

Everyone's talking about CBD, short for cannabidiol, which is just one of the many compounds found in the hemp plant. But have you ever wondered why cannabinoids like CBD actually affect the body—and how? The answer has everything to do with the endocannabinoid system (ECS), a large system of compounds, receptors, and enzymes that regulates various important functions throughout our body.

CBD was first isolated1 in the 1960s, but the endocannabinoid system wasn't discovered until the 1990s (1992, to be exact). Interestingly, studying cannabinoids like CBD actually led directly to the discovery of the endocannabinoid system. When scientists were trying to figure out why and how the plant compounds in hemp affect human physiology, they discovered that we have an entire system of cannabinoid receptors within our body.

CBD and THC are known as cannabinoids, but we should really be calling them phytocannabinoids because they come from plants (phyto means "of a plant"). The difference matters because our body also produces its own version of these compounds, called endocannabinoids (produced endogenously). These endocannabinoids act on the same receptors as the cannabinoids that come from plants—both types sharing a similar effect on our body.

So if the ECS is such a giant system, why are so many of us just hearing about it now? One explanation reasons that the ECS is so vast, it's almost hard to pinpoint. Its receptors are sprinkled throughout our brain, immune cells, organs, skin, GI tract, and even our connective tissues and bones.

It's often described as a "master regulatory system" because one of its main jobs is to maintain homeostasis, which is just another way of saying it helps maintain balance. In a 2013 paper3 published in Cerebrum, the editor wrote that the "endogenous cannabinoid system—named for the plant that led to its discovery—is one of the most important physiologic systems involved in establishing and maintaining human health."

Even though the spotlight had mainly centered on CBD, that's not the only ingredient in CBD oil to care about. We should also be paying attention to terpenes, which are often described as the essential oils of the hemp plant. Terpenes seem to display their own benefits that work synergistically with cannabinoids. For example, one terpene called beta-caryophyllene is also able to activate the CB2 cannabinoid receptor, which means it can influence the ECS in its own right. 

This is more widely known as the "entourage effect," and it's one reason researchers think extracts from a whole plant—a format known as broad-spectrum—are more powerful than a CBD isolate, which contains just the CBD compound alone, stripping out terpenes like beta-caryophyllene.

Unfortunately, our endocannabinoid system doesn't always function at maximum capacity. Researchers have even coined the term "clinical endocannabinoid deficiency4" to describe a condition where a person doesn't have adequate levels of endocannabinoids circulating throughout their body.

How can you protect the health of your ECS? There's still a lot to learn about this, but it appears factors like lifestyle, exercise, and diet play a role in the health of the ECS. Endocannabinoids are synthesized from omega fatty acids—getting the right ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acid is a good place to start.