What is the Difference Between CBD and Hemp?
Hemp and CBD are both legal and safe to use for different purposes. We are uncovering new purposes all of the time. But the common person may not know about CBD or hemp. An excellent place to start is with one question, what is the difference between CBD and hemp?
What is the difference between CBD and hemp? The answer could help make understanding how to use either one easier. Hemp was legalized for the purpose of scientific study in 2014. The idea was that the studies would help us determine if we could safely use hemp products and byproducts in the US.
Study after study proved that hemp and CBD were not only safe but beneficial in many ways. In 2018, the Farm Bill was expanded to allow for public use. That meant that farmers could grow hemp and sell byproducts of hemp legally. Hemp and CBD are not new things; they have been around and used for centuries.
But we are always learning, and constantly growing and not everyone knew about hemp and CBD before 2018. We must learn about these two items and discover their powers because they are vast. Asking questions like, “what is the difference between CBD and hemp?” is a good place to start.
People need to understand more about the plant in order for hemp and CBD to become more widely adopted. The more prevalent CBD and hemp products are, the more research will be funded, and the better off we will all be using these products.
What is Hemp?
Hemp is a word that is used to describe many things, but at its core, hemp is a type of cannabis plant. This often throws people off because they associate the word cannabis with marijuana. However, not all plants in the same family produce the same things.
For example, palm trees produce coconuts, but not all palm trees. The idea here is similar, the hemp plant is a plant that is in the cannabis family, but it does not produce marijuana. We also use the word hemp to describe products that are derived from the stem and fibers of the industrial hemp plant.
You may come across hemp clothing, hemp paper, and so on. Those products are simply products that use hemp plants as the material. There is also hemp oil which really throws people off when they already know one fact; CBD oil can come from hemp plants.
What is CBD?
Plants have different compounds and chemicals that help them function or are byproducts of their functionalities. For example, you can find vitamin C and vitamin B6 in apples; both of those vitamins are organic compounds. You can apply that same knowledge to CBD and get closer to answering what is the difference between CBD and hemp?
CBD stands for cannabidiol which is an organic compound found in hemp and cannabis plants. The compound is extracted and then used as the main ingredient in tinctures, oils, creams, gummies, and more. Unfortunately, there are still plenty of studies to be done with CBD since it was only legalized for study in 2014.
However, we have learned quite a bit about the compound and its many health benefits. We must learn more due to the promise CBD has already shown in medical fields worldwide.
What is the Difference Between CBD and Hemp?
We now know that CBD comes from hemp plants, and hemp plants are in the cannabis family of plants. But what’s the difference? Luckily, we have plenty of examples in everyday life that exhibit the difference between CBD and hemp. One example can be milk and dairy, you need milk to create dairy, but you don’t use all dairy products the same way.
We can dive further into that comparison by looking at milk and cheese specifically. Milk is a drink that we are all familiar with, but we wouldn’t put milk on our burgers. Milk and cheese have similar nutrients, but cheese has more protein, calcium, B vitamins, and more.
It is the process the milk goes through to make cheese that changes the chemical makeup of the milk as well as the appearance and texture. In fact, the most significant difference between hemp and CBD is the amount of Cannabidiol in the final product.
The hemp plant itself is used for its fibers, while CBD needs to be extracted from the hemp plant and then heated to create what we know as CBD. The answer is simple; hemp is a plant, and CBD is a compound found inside the plant.
