Does CBD oil help you sleep better?

CBD oil is widely used as a sleep aid, but the available research does not yet justify that confidence. In a small, uncontrolled case series of 25 poor-sleeping adults, just over two-thirds reported improvement in the first month. After that, however, scores fluctuated up and down, and because there was no control group, you cannot conclude from this that CBD was the cause.

A double-blind, placebo-controlled study tested what happens when you add CBD to another cannabinoid (cannabinol). Conclusion: the addition of CBD produced no extra improvement. CBD was not tested as a standalone sleep treatment in that study, so you cannot draw firm conclusions from it, but it is not a positive signal either. A Cochrane review also found that CBD oil offered no added benefit for people with advanced cancer, including for sleep.

The only sleep study involving cannabinoids that showed a modest positive effect concerned nabiximols: a combination of THC and CBD together, not CBD alone. The average difference from placebo was small. That finding therefore says little about pure CBD oil.

Two recent review studies reach the same conclusion: the scientific evidence for cannabinoids in sleep problems is not proportionate to how frequently they are used. Large-scale, well-conducted studies are largely absent. Added to this, CBD products sometimes also contain THC. THC may shorten the time it takes to fall asleep, but over the longer term it can actually worsen sleep quality, which makes it difficult to assess brands and products at face value.