Sublingual cannabis strips are a discreet lung-saving method that come on quickly with accurate dosing and predictability. What’s not to like?
Feature image via kinslips.com
Sublingual cannabis allows for clean administration. With predictable and repeatable effects that provide fast and effective relief, it ensures patients avoid the side effects of other forms of administration.
What is Sublingual Cannabis?
Sublingual cannabis involves placing a thin strip beneath your tongue. It allows the active compounds to absorb via the oral mucosa — the mucous membrane that lines the mouth.
Sublingual administration is very common with a range of pharmaceuticals due to the high permeability of the mucosa. The design of this type of medicine ensures it dissolves under the tongue in a matter of minutes. This process ensures that cannabinoids absorb quickly into the bloodstream.
Sublingual Cannabis: The Direct Route
Few methods of cannabis administration are ideal. Most have their drawbacks. While smoking involves the inhalation of carcinogenic compounds, vaping with cartridges can expose the patient to some toxic compounds. With edibles, the issue for many is the variability in the time between ingestion until the effects come on. In addition, there’s the often unreliable nature of just how strong the effects will be.
Sublingual cannabis ensures that patients avoid the aforementioned problems by providing the medicine access via a clean and direct route to the bloodstream. This results in a form of cannabis that’s highly bioavailable and one where patients can expect predictable results each time they dose.
The Advantages of Sublingual Cannabis
Immediate Relief
Sublingual cannabis works so well because it avoids the GI tract. The convoluted process of digestion and absorption of edibles often leads to unpredictable results, both in onset time and strength. In addition, a decrease of bioavailability in the digestive tract means the consumer absorbs only ten to twenty percent of cannabinoids.
With edible consumption, the process of converting delta-9 THC to the more potent form of 11-hydroxy-THC in the liver takes time and often leads to a medicated feel that’s unpredictable. With sublingual cannabis, no such problems exist. Once a patient knows their dose, the results should remain consistent each time.
The Avoidance of Harmful Compounds
While smoking cannabis is not as harmful as smoking tobacco, patients are still subjected to carcinogenic compounds that are harmful.
Vaping with THC cartridges may be even more dangerous according to the CDC. There are suspicions that the exposure to harmful compounds present in cheap THC oil cause severe irritation to the lungs.
A Titrated Dose with Sublingual Cannabis Strips
Many patients have difficulty finding the minimum effective dose when it comes to using cannabis. This is something that is especially important for patients who need to medicate for pain while continuing to function at work or as a parent. With sublingual dosing, patients can titrate their dose safe in the knowledge that they’ll likely experience the same effects in the same time frame each and every time they dose.
Discretion and Savings with Exact Dosing
Medicating with cannabis is not always seen as appropriate, even in legal jurisdictions. Sublingual cannabis offers a discrete method of administration that’s odor-free and won’t draw unwanted attention.
Due to the fact that sublingual administration enables cannabis compounds to take the direct route into the bloodstream, patients use less medicine due to increased uptake efficiency. This saves money in the long term as it avoids wasted medicine.
How to Consume Sublingual Cannabis
Sublingual cannabis isn’t like a Listerine strip that you simply slip into your mouth. When placing the strip you must take care to ensure that it goes directly under your tongue and remains there for several minutes.
If you don’t leave the strip in place for long enough, then you won’t absorb the compounds optimally and may experience reduced medicinal benefit. Swallowing the strip will put it through the digestive process, thereby changing predictable dosing.
Sublingual Strips: The Creation Process
Sublingual strips are usually made by spreading a cannabis oil thinly onto a substrate. The use of specialized equipment is necessary for the procedure as the dose present on each strip is of critical importance.
With the cannabis oil evenly spread, the substrate is then sent through an oven, before it’s cut into suitably-sized strips.
An additional factor in the production of sublingual strips is the taste. Cannabis oils generally have a bitter taste which can be difficult to mask. While some manufacturers will use artificial sweeteners, this is far from ideal. Many of these flavor and sweetening compounds have a reputation for being neurotoxic.
Aspartame is a popular additive in food and supplements. A study, published in Nutritional Neuroscience (2018), investigated its adverse effects on neurobehavioral health. In addition, a Spanish study, published by the American Society for Nutrition (2019), demonstrated how many commonly-used artificial sweeteners can negatively affect the health of the gut microbiome.
In addition to taste, many manufacturers will add more chemicals to keep the compounds intact and bound to the film. Always read the label before purchasing to ensure that you avoid any potentially harmful compounds that may negate the medicinal effects.
Commercially Available Sublingual Solutions
Several commercial solutions exist for sublingual cannabis administration. Kinslips and CBDfx are two market leaders who provide tailored solutions for specific applications. Kinslips are not yet available in Canada, but “Legalization 2.0” should bring about a Canadian version of the U.S. strips. Formulations exist to target mood enhancement, anxiety, relaxation, and sleep, as well as solutions for those who choose to microdose on the go.
Like other cannabis products, sublingual products also use broad-spectrum extracts. Different ratios of THC to CBD are also commonly available allowing patients to select the right product for their needs.
Are Sublingual Strips the Ideal Medicine
With sufficient research, it is possible to find a form of sublingual cannabis tailored to your needs that’s free from any form of harmful additives. Once you find it, you have an ideal form of medicine that’s discreet, clean, and fast-acting.
