Take a minute to think about the major categories of pharmaceuticals in the marketplace today and you quickly come to a simple conclusion: Pain management is big business.

From analgesics to NSAIDs to opioids, the breadth of pain-relieving and pain management products is staggering. According to a market research report by P&S Intelligence released earlier this year, the worldwide chronic pain treatment marketplace will reach $106 billion by 2024, including drugs and devices. Pain drugs by themselves are forecast to attain $28.4 billion by 2024.

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Of course, this isn’t particularly news to anyone with a pair of eyes and a television set lately. It’s not your imagination that there are more pharma ads wedged between the automobile and beer commercials these days; there are many, many more. As Multimedia advertising tracker Kantar Media reported in a recent New York Times article, 771,368 such ads were shown in 2016, an increase of almost 65 percent in just four years.

Anyone who’s seen one of these ads (and who hasn’t?) has no doubt noticed the laundry list of potential negative side effects, too. It’s the ultimate rock-and-a-hard-place for patients to suffer as much from the treatment as from the underlying condition itself.

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This lose-lose situation has many looking to CBD as a viable alternative to help them manage their chronic pain, and has manufacturers taking extra steps to provide relief to customers without the downsides that come with traditional pharmaceuticals.

“Pain is a fact of life, there’s no getting through this world without it,” said Jason Martin, CEO of Tree of Life Seeds. “However, when someone you love is suffering that understanding goes out the window. All you care about is helping that person feel better and resuming their quality of life.”

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While studies into CBD oil have only recently begun in earnest, there’s plenty the scientific community can tell us about how CBD works within the body and why it holds so much promise for chronic pain management. First, CBD is one of 120 naturally-occurring compounds called cannabinoids, which can be found in many plants but are most commonly-associated with cannabis and industrial hemp.

Each of us contains a system within our bodies called the endocannabinoid system (ECS) which is vital to regulating certain functions, including sleep, immune system responses and pain. The ECS produces some cannabinoids of its own (called endocannabinoids) but primarily receives and translates signals from the cannabinoids we ingest.

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Among these is CBD, which acts in a very sophisticated manner on the ECS. Rather than have a direct impact on the ECS, it instead influences the body to use its own endocannabinoids more effectively, according to a study posted to Neurotherapeutics, the journal of the American Society for Experimental Neurotherapeutics.

In simple terms, this means CBD acts like a fuel additive in an automobile, regulating the other compounds in the endocannabinoid system. One such regulatory function: CBD stops the body from absorbing anandamide, which is a compound associated with regulating pain. Scientists theorize it is this higher level of anandamide in the bloodstream that may reduce the amount of pain a person feels. And it does so without any addictive potential or the nasty side effects of pharmaceuticals.

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Understanding the biochemistry of how CBD works on pain gives product manufacturers a starting point for CBD products. Martin said Tree of Life Seed’s full line of premium hemp CBD products has been engineered to deliver the most effective results, from the purity of the CBD oil to processes that ensure maximum absorption.

“Our CBD Balm and CBD Pain Cream topicals are great examples,” he said. “One of the problems is that CBD molecules are too large to be absorbed through the pores of the skin. Part of our manufacturing process, called nanoemulsification, corrects this issue on a molecular level. Without it, the product would just sit on the surface of the skin which wouldn’t do much for a patient’s pain.”

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Such extra steps, Martin said, are important differentiators between Tree of Life Seeds CBD products and cheaper alternatives flooding what is at present a lightly regulated marketplace.

Tree of Life Seeds utilizes a unique extraction process that allows them to completely remove all traces of THC without diluting, damaging, or disturbing the naturally present synergistic cannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids that produce the sought-after “Entourage Effect.” The end result is a premium CBD product that is trusted by professional athletes and is recommended by doctors.

“Consumers have to be really careful and educate themselves about what they are buying. It’s kind of the Wild West right now because the market is so new,” he said. “Take us, for instance: Nobody is telling us to do what we do. There’s no regulation that says we must produce something this way or that way. It’s more expensive to do it the way we do, but for us there’s something bigger at stake here.”

“We realize every one of our employees has someone in their family or among their friends who deals with pain daily. That doesn’t make us unique, but we are in a unique position to help do something about it, so we go out of our way to produce the highest quality product that we possibly can. It’s a mission we take very, very seriously.”

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Tree of Life Seeds full line of premium hemp CBD products can be purchased online at www.treeoflifeseeds.com or from our growing list of retail partners including Arkansas Spine & Pain, Arkansas Pain Centers, Meridian Medial and NWA Pain Centers.

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