{"id":26957,"date":"2025-03-21T16:13:34","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T16:13:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/?p=26957"},"modified":"2025-04-08T13:52:28","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T12:52:28","slug":"from-hempseed-gruel-to-cbd-the-curious-history-of-cannabis-as-a-health-product","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/education-languages-health\/from-hempseed-gruel-to-cbd-the-curious-history-of-cannabis-as-a-health-product\/","title":{"rendered":"From hempseed gruel to CBD: the curious history of cannabis as a health product"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The cannabis-derived product CBD has been hailed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2019\/may\/05\/cbd-a-marijuana-miracle-or-another-health-fad-cannabidiol-anxiety-epilepsy\">\u201cthe wonder drug of our age\u201d<\/a>, offering potential health benefits without the high, <em>says Dr Lauren Alex O&#8217;Hagan, Research Fellow from the School of Languages and Applied Linguistics at The Open University.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Writing in The Conversation she says:<\/em> From juices and coffee to truffles and ice cream, CBD products have flooded the market for consumers looking for an answer to health problems from anxiety to insomnia.<\/p>\n<p>But with CBD products in the UK and EU falling under <a href=\"https:\/\/www.food.gov.uk\/business-guidance\/regulated-products\/novel-foods-guidance\">\u201cnovel foods\u201d<\/a> regulations rather than pharmaceutical standards, they aren\u2019t subjected to the same rigorous safety and quality controls as drugs. The UK\u2019s Committee on Toxicology has even flagged potential health risks, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0273230023001502\">such as liver injury<\/a>, leading the Food Standards Agency to issue <a href=\"https:\/\/www.food.gov.uk\/safety-hygiene\/cannabidiol-cbd\">safety guidance<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The regulatory gaps and health concerns of today reflect those of the 19th century when cannabis products were commercialised by the food industry.<\/p>\n<p>In the 1830s, <a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/26385975\/\">William Brooke O\u2019Shaughnessy<\/a>, an Irish doctor, discovered that cannabis was effective in treating muscle spasms and stomach cramps. French psychiatrist <a href=\"https:\/\/psychiatryonline.org\/doi\/10.1176\/appi.ajp.162.3.458\">Jacques-Joseph Moreau<\/a> later explored its potential for mental illness. This led many 19th-century doctors to champion cannabis as a cure-all.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/from-hempseed-gruel-to-cbd-the-curious-history-of-cannabis-as-a-health-product-251967\">Read the full article on The Conversation<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Picture credit: subcom810 on Pixabay<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The cannabis-derived product CBD has been hailed \u201cthe wonder drug of our age\u201d, offering potential health benefits without the high, says Dr Lauren Alex O&#8217;Hagan, Research Fellow from the School of Languages and Applied Linguistics at The Open University. Writing in The Conversation she says: From juices and coffee to truffles and ice cream, CBD [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":26961,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[862,1042,1640,1643,2200],"class_list":["post-26957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education-languages-health","category-health","tag-faculty-of-wels","tag-health","tag-ou-home","tag-ou-news","tag-the-conversation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26957"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27031,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26957\/revisions\/27031"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}