Amidst a summer spent posting pool thirst traps and quarantining with her gardener, Martha Stewart is also dipping her toes into the field of cannabis — not with Snoop Dogg this time, but with a brand of her own: Martha Stewart CBD. That's right, the woman who launched a thousand lifestyle brands is finally getting into the CBD game.
To discuss her new line of CBD products, created in partnership with the cannabis company Canopy Growth, Stewart sat down with The New York Times. As always, the interview was chock-full of interesting tidbits. For instance, MS has a self-imposed three-Zooms-a-day limit. (Smart, tbh.) Oh, and also, she can't get enough of her new line of products.
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"I pop 20 [gummies] and just feel okay, but some of my friends do two and feel high, I don’t know why," Stewart told the NYT. "It’s not high like a marijuana high. It’s a CBD high, like, relaxed."
Stewart then went on to eat not one, but four cubes of her CBD gummies during the hour-long Zoom call. "You don’t think that you’re eating anything but pâte de fruit," she said. "I’m having a black raspberry right now."
If you feel alarmed after reading that, you're not alone. I immediately went to search the right CBD dosages and how much is too much. Twenty of Stewart's gummies comes to 200 mg of CBD. Is that a lot? A little? Honestly, it's hard to say: There really isn't that much information out there about what amount is right or wrong when it comes to the stuff.
Though people say they use CBD for stress or to help them sleep, the Food and Drug Administration has only approved one CBD product and it's a prescription drug for epilepsy. The starting dosage for that medication is 2.5 mg per kilogram of body weight twice daily. We did the math: A 150 pound person would be taking around 136 mg of the drug per day. I don't think that Martha is using the same form of CBD in her gummies as what's in the drug — but she does always surprise me.
Stewart's own company says that they recommend taking only two to three gummies a day, totaling to 20 to 30 mg per day. There are also 30 gummies per container, meaning that Stewart might be plowing through almost an entire one a day, if her habit is consistent.
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Lauren Grossman, MD, emergency medicine physician and medical director of the UCHealth Integrative Medical Center, says that the effects of CBD completely depend on the dose or concentration and the quality of the product. "An issue with gummies, particularly those with THC, is their cumulative effect," she explains to Refinery29. "People will use one, not feel much, and keep popping more until they’ve overdone it."
Stewart's gummies are THC-free, though. "I can't comment on what an individual is doing when I don't know the clinical context, but here's what I can tell you when it comes to generally accepted clinical guidelines," Dr. Grossman says. "CBD from industrial hemp is usually prescribed this way: 5-15 mg two to three times per day, which brings it to 45 mg max for the day."
Mayo Clinic does say that taking too much of the stuff could potentially result in diarrhea, drowsiness, fatigue, and reduced appetite, but surely if Martha was troubled by symptoms like these, she wouldn't still be casually chowing down on the gummies like she was. I'm speculating here, but I feel like there's also the risk that the sugar might give her a cavity or two — not that I think MS would ever skip a nightly flossing.
If you're planning on following in Stewart's footsteps and popping a few gummies, we'd recommend you eat much less than 20. Start out with one, and go from there depending on how you feel. And it's probably a good idea to consult your doctor before taking any CBD at all. After all, not all of our tolerances are to MS's levels.