Chris Kresser: There is really not a lot of research on CBD in kids. There’s some, and there is certainly a strong like a community of parents, particularly with kids that have epilepsy that have used CBD oils successfully. I personally don’t have a lot of experience with CBD in kids, but I’ve used it in a few patients and typically just a few drops, depending on the preparation, maybe two, three, four, five drops if it’s a younger kid. And it also depends on what you’re treating. If you’re treating just anxiety, something like that, then it’s going to be lower. If you’re treating severe epilepsy and the alternative medications are horrible and they caused just debilitating life-changing side effects, you may be willing to be a little bit more aggressive with CBD.
One thing it’s important to be aware of with CBD is that it inhibits cytochrome P450, which is the enzyme that metabolizes most other medications. So there are a lot of chances for drug interactions with CBD, and something like 90 percent of medications are processed with that enzyme. So patient is taking antidepressants or antianxiety meds or ADHD meds or just about any meds and they’re taking CBD, then they’re going to have additional amounts of those medications floating around in their body, and that could be problematic. So that’s definitely something to be aware of.
If you’re talking about teenagers, especially 19 years old and someone who is heavy, 200 pounds, as you mentioned Ashley, then you can just use the full adult dose probably in that case.