White Cedar Superfoods – Organic CBD Gummy Bears Review

Here at Supplement Devil, our aim is to cut through the nonsense and provide you with independent, honest and researched reviews so you don’t waste your hard-earned cash on crappy supplements. In this review, we’re looking at a relatively new product to the market, CBD gummy bears from White Cedar Naturals.

WTF? CBD gummy bears?

That’s right. It turns out it’s a social thing – many people (wrongly) assume that being a derivative of cannabis, CBD is illegal, so if you were to take CBD capsules, people may assume you’re doing something illegal. Take it by eating CBD-infused gummy bears and people won’t say a thing because you look like you’re just eating sweets!

As a delivery mechanism, it works well. We’ll discuss why later in the article.

CBD Gummy Bears – Some Background

Since the recent softening of legal policy around medicinal use of cannabis, researchers have looked to isolate some of the more beneficial compounds in the plant, theoretically harnessing the benefits without any of the ‘highs’. This is achieved by isolating the CBD (cannabinol) from the THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol).

Broadly speaking, the CBD is where the benefits lie (from a health point of view) and the THC is the molecule that gets you high. Simple enough.

With CBD not containing anything that gets you high, products containing CBD are completely legal and widely available. They come in a variety of delivery mechanism – oils, tinctures, rubs and edibles such as gummy bears.

As it goes, the gummy bear edible is a great idea – it helps to mask the really strong flavour of pure CBD oil well and as we discussed at the top of the article, socially it’s perfect. No questions are asked. 

CBD Gummy Bears Review Considerations

When I see a crazy long list of benefits to a supplement or nutrition product, my bullshit alarm goes off faster than fat lad chasing an ice cream van. As you can imagine, covering a lot of the fitness, nutrition and supplement world professionally means my bullshit alarm is regularly going off.

CBD oil in its various forms is a product that has had a my bullshit alarm at a state of high alert. The claimed list of benefits to cannaboids is longer than the Dead Sea scrolls. A (non-exhaustive) list of the common benefits claimed by CBD oil manufacturers includes…

• Reduced anxiety
• Reduced inflammation
• Improved sleep
• Pain reduction
• Helps to kill cancer cells
• Relieves nausea
• Treats seizures
• Improves insulin sensitivity
• Improves organ function
• Helps cardiovascular function

And therein lies the problem. I approach this from a scientific bent, which means I’m open minded, but you need to prove to me something works. It needs to be measurable, but so many of these claims just aren’t easy (or possible) to quantify.

Take pain reduction for example – saying something ‘reduces pain’ isn’t robust enough. By how much does something reduce pain? 7%? 63.1%? 84.9884%? You get my point? I had to keep this in mind when reviewing the product.

White Cedar Superfoods Organic CBD Gummy Bears – The Review

It was with some scepticism that I tried the Organic Hemp Extract from White Cedar Superfoods.

The list of claimed benefits here wasn’t anything like a lot of the others, but I wondered what it would do for me. I’m not anxious, my general health is pretty spot on, I don’t suffer from unduly high levels of stress etc, so how could it help me as ‘normal’, well-functioning and (if I may say so) devilishly handsome bloke?

The potential benefits I saw were around the relaxation and recovery elements. As a self-employed personal trainer and fitness copywriter, my workloads are high and my hours are long. In this time I still have to find time to train, be a Dad and a partner. If something could help me recover and improve my sleep, then there’s a potential huge benefit.

There was scientific evidence [1] supporting them as a sleep aid, so I wouldn’t be the first to report an improvement of sleep as a benefit.

Testing, Testing, Testing…

Having read on dosages, I settled on 2 gummies. According to some of the people I spoke to, there’s no ‘maximum’ dose, but it was suggested for a bloke of my weight (95kg), that I take 40mg. Each gummy weighs in with 20mg of CBD each, so I went for the full 40mg.

They come in a variety of flavours that mask the CBD oil well. I’m not going to say they taste amazing, but they’re certainly edible. I’ve definitely eaten worse things in my life!

They smell much worse than they taste – your nose picks up the bitterness of the CBD oil, but the taste isn’t as strong as you’d imagine.

They’re dairy, gluten, nut and GMO free. They’re organic, Vegan and ethically pretty spotless. No matter what diet you follow, these are probably suitable for you. As always though, read the label first.

CBD Gummies – What Happened?

Before I go to the effects, I’ll outline the ‘test conditions’. It was a normal Sunday night – I wasn’t under stress, nor was I particularly tired. I was relaxed, hadn’t been drinking or doing anything that would affect my sleep.

I ate the gummies and went to bed. I didn’t mess around on my phone, I read a bit of my book (the God Delusion, if you’re interested – fitting for a writer at a website called Supplement Devil) and nodded off. It was around midnight when I went to sleep.

Wow.

There’s deep, restorative sleep and there’s this. I wasn’t just refreshed – I was reset to factory settings.

I woke up at 5.18 in the morning, feeling fresh as a daisy. I didn’t need to be up for another hour or so, so I rolled over and fell asleep, waking exactly an hour later at 6.18. I didn’t wake up at all in the night and didn’t need an alarm to wake me up in the morning. It was as if my body got all of the rest it needed, then woke me up.

Efficient sleeping. I like it. I could get used to it.

What’s amazing is that normally, 5-6 hours sleep wouldn’t be close to enough for me, but I bounced out of bed as if I’d had 10 hours deep sleep.

I felt as though I’d slept deeper than I had for years. I was out for the count and woke up feeling amazing. I had absolutely none of the morning groggy feeling you can have sometimes.

It wasn’t the length of the sleep that mattered – in fact it was shorter than usual. It was the quality that impressed me. I woke up feeling fully refreshed. Again, there are other studies [2] that back up the effectiveness of CBD as a sleep aid. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Was it the CBD Gummies?

It’s impossible to say with 100% accuracy – sleep is so multi-factorial that to apportion credit or blame on one thing wouldn’t be right.

Buuuuuut…

It was the only thing I’d changed. I slept in the same bed, in the same house, with the same woman, at the same time, with the same stress levels and pre-bed routine. The evidence, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is stacking up.

I’ll accept there’s the possibility of dose-sensitivity. If you’re unfamiliar with that, I’ll enlighten you using a medium we’re probably all familiar with… booze.

The first time you ever got drunk, it probably look half a can of cheap lager to get you face down in the local park. After a few years of boozing, you’ve built up a tolerance and it takes you much more to get drunk. You’re less sensitive to the booze.

It was the first time I’d ever taken CBD, so I may have been the equivalent of the first time drunk. What’s interesting though is that I’ve taken it nightly now for a week and I’m still sleeping deeper and more restoratively. If nothing else, that’s a measure of success and it’s left me convinced there’s room for CBD in my supplement stack, for sure.

CBD Gummies: Conclusion and Advice

The addition of CBD products to the supplement market is interesting, because it’s bringing us around to the often neglected area of the health spectrum – recovery.

By improving sleep it has the potential to be an amazing supplement. Good sleep helps physical and mental health. It contributes to injury prevention and cure, hormone rebalancing, muscle building and a whole host of other physiological processes.

In my experience as a weight lifter and a personal trainer for over a decade, recovery is something a lot of people neglect, so if a little supplemental help is needed, this may be the perfect product.

In terms of advice for the product, my research and experience has led me to a ‘magic bullet’ approach. The research shows that the effectiveness of CDB diminished over time with long term use (possibly thanks to the dose-response curve – the more you get used to it, the larger a dose you need to feel the effects), so I’m going to use it sparingly, saving it for periods where I’m particularly busy or stressed.

My advice is simple – if you need help with your sleep, your mental health and your general recovery, this could be a fantastic supplement for you to take, as long as you do it properly.

You can pick up the Organic Hemp Extract from White Cedar Superfoods on Amazon, with the 600mg of Hemp jar (the one I used in the review) costing £44.99 for 30 bears.

For more information on CBD and related products on Supplement Devil, click here and here.