When it comes to hemp and its cannabinoids, a product can be made with full or broad-spectrum plant oil or it can be made with an isolate; that is, only the cannabinoid itself. For example, CBD Elixir A can have 25 milligrams of CBD from broad spectrum hemp oil per milliliter of liquid while CBD Elixir B can have 25 milligrams of CBD isolate per milliliter of liquid. Both products contain identical amounts of CBD and one would think that the products were very similar. That is not the case. You have heard the adage that there is strength in numbers. Well, that is certainly true when it comes to cannabinoids.

The cannabis plant contains hundreds of chemical compounds each with diverse health benefits. As a remedy, cannabis compounds are thought to work best together– not extracted one by one. This principle is aptly called “the entourage effect” to suggest that these compounds support each other and combine forces to heal us, as nature intended.

For this reason, products referred to as broad or full-spectrum cannabis or hemp oils preserve the integrity of the plant and its medicinal potency and are far more effective than isolates or highly refined oils. The science supports this without question. For example, a study by the Hadassah Medical School at the University of Jerusalem showed how whole plant extracts reduced inflammatory conditions in mice to a far greater degree than purified CBD when administered orally or by injection.

Why then would a company make isolate products?

While cannabis seemingly works best when the product maintains a full range of its natural compounds, the culture of pharmaceutical drugs encourages a completely different mindset. Consumers habitually check their over-the-counter drugs for the list of “active ingredients,” and the most prominent chemical is often seen as its most helpful. We assume that the more of it there is, the “better” the drug will be. Though cannabis remains an “alternative” therapy to the mainstream world of medicine, it is still very common for manufacturers of cannabis products to ignorantly follow to this popular perception. They market isolate products as “refined,” as if freed from some impurity and reduced to the most essential elements.

This “isolate is better” argument is furthered by pharma companies who say that cannabis is a “dirty” plant, meaning that it has a lot of extraneous compounds in it that could confound scientific testing of an individual cannabinoid compound, i.e. CBD. That is true, of course, even if that the “dirty” aspect is other cannabinoids that are very beneficial to one’s health.

The reality is if you are a pharma company and you want to test the effect of CBD itself on migraines, you need to know that your treatment contains CBD only. Recall, you have already learned that the other cannabinoids offer real therapeutic effects themselves and if given together in broad or full spectrum form, there would be no way of knowing if it was the CBD that helped migraines, other compounds in the plant or perhaps a complex interaction of many compounds. For pure science and/or drug development, the pharma company must take the natural compound in isolate form, test it on various maladies, then perhaps even make a synthetic analogue and test it on those same maladies. If there is a positive change, even a minor one, and it doesn’t do harm, the natural or synthetic isolate can progress through FDA drug trials and end up a patented prescription medication.

But there is no need to remind you that you are a human being looking for maximal advantages from the products you take and not a pharma company pursuing research and profits. Therefore, the real point here is - if you believe CBD (or any cannabinoid) is more effective in the full (whole) plant extract, why would you want to remove it for use? The simple answer is you wouldn’t. Stripped of its natural complexity, and in CBD isolate form only, the predominant belief among the cannabis world is that it loses much its power to heal.