Dosage, Types, and Proven Effectiveness

Are you looking for reliable, accurate information on the real effectiveness of cannabidiol (CBD) againstinsomnia and sleep disorders, or simply to sleep better ?

There’s a lot of content on the subject on the Internet, in magazines… But this information is often rather superficial.

With this article, I’m really trying to answer as thoroughly as possible. You’ll find all the references and sources at the end of the article.

And a comment area where you can post your comments or questions!

Happy reading 🙂.

♻️ Last update: August 20, 2025
👩‍⚖️ Declaration of financial interests: Amazon links + Sensilia affiliates. My complete declaration of links of interest is in legal mentions. Written by Nelly Darbois, physiotherapist and scientific editor

Better sleep with CBD: what does it mean?

Here are the 2 situations I encounter most often with patients who ask my advice on CBD for better sleep.

• Situation 1: You have really serious sleep problems. You have insomnia:
  • you wake up during the night and have trouble getting back to sleep;
  • or you take a very long time to fall asleep at bedtime.
• Situation 2: you think you could sleep better: have a more restful sleep, be less anxious about going to bed, wake up less tired, wake up less tired.

Personally, I think it’s important to identify before taking CBD what you really hope it can work on.

This will allow you to :

• whether CBD can really help you achieve this goal;
• identify other possible solutions;
• evaluate the effectiveness of CBD on the problem you’re taking, to decide whether or not to continue taking it.

In practical terms, you can also assess your sleep before taking CBD (for example, for a week), and then 2-3 weeks after you start taking it, giving yourself a month’s test.

To evaluate your sleep as objectively as possible, you can use these tests (links at the end of the article):

• Insomnia severity index (7 multiple-choice questions);
• a sleep diary.

Here’s what a sleep diary looks like:

People who want to take CBD to sleep better sometimes suffer from insomnia. Or simply wish to improve their sleep.

A quick reminder about cannabidiol (CBD)

If you’ve come across this article, you probably already have a good knowledge of what CBD is.

A brief reminder of the main difference between :

• CBD;
• cannabis (therapeutic or otherwise).

This is the THC content, whose real name is Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol.

CBD-based products marketed in France or Europe must contain extremely low levels of THC (virtually zero). They are therefore authorized for sale and consumption.

Conversely, cannabis also contains CBD, plus a significant proportion of THC.

CBD has different properties to THC, according to studies carried out initially on live animals.

• It appears to have anti-inflammatory, anxiolytic and antioxidant effects.
• It does not have the psychotropic effects of THC, which can lead to short- to long-term memory loss and motor disorders, followed by anxiety and paranoia.

Why give my opinion on CBD for better sleep?

I’ve been interested in CBD ever since CBD stores opened in France, and more generally in Savoie, where I live.

I first learned about CBD from my patients, who asked my advice on using CBD to relieve their chronic pain. Especially my patients with neurological diseases.

That was several years ago, and I didn’t know much about the subject. In order to inform them as objectively as possible, I did a lot of research.

Not by reading the websites of CBD stores, but by actually going and looking at what the research teams working on the subject were saying.

I felt it was all the more important to do this because my patients hadn’t been able to get any answers from their doctors. Or hadn’t dared broach the subject with him or her.

A little over a year ago, I decided to share the knowledge I had acquired for my patients with a wider audience, via my website kinedarbois.fr.

My patients mainly ask me about the effect of CBD on their pain. But sometimes also about their sleep: is CBD a solution for their sleep problems ?

Hence this specific article on the effects to expect (or not) from CBD on sleep!

Is the effect of CBD on sleep being extensively studied?

To date (spring 2023), there are around ten studies published in the international medical literature specifically on the effect of cannabidiol on sleep.

That’s not much, of course, compared with the number of studies on paracetamol or even homeopathy!

Nonetheless, it does provide slightly more accurate data on the potential effects of CBD on sleep.

I’m going to share with you the main findings and results of these studies on cannabidiol and sleep. Then I’ll give you my opinion on the effects of CBD on sleep that can be expected, based on my own interpretation of these results.

How effective is CBD for better sleep and insomnia?

The idea is to really give you an overview of the research findings on CBD’s effect on sleep.

And not to select only those studies that show an effect, or on the contrary an absence of effect!

But first, let’s look at the plausibility of a possible effect of CBD on sleep. In other words, given CBD’s known properties and our knowledge of sleep, is it reasonable to assume that CBD has a positive effect?

Theoretical effectiveness of CBD on sleep

Here are the identified properties of CBD that could have a positive impact on sleep:

• via increased secretion ofendorphins, a hormone that promotes relaxation;
• via its anxiolytic effect: reduces anxiety, calms the central nervous system;
• via increased secretion of another hormone, cortisol, at a time when its secretion normally increases to trigger wakefulness. Cortisol is a hormone involved in regulating the sleep cycle.

It’s all supposition and hypothesis. We don’t have much hindsight yet.

Source : Shannon 2019

Effectiveness according to studies on sleep disorders

As I’ve done with my other articles on the effects of CBD, I’m going to summarize a few studies specifically on “using CBD to sleep better”.

To give you an idea of this underdeveloped field of research: studies often focus on just a few people.

Desired effect	Type of CBD taken	Positive and secondary effects	Reference
Effectiveness of CBD on sleep and anxiety in people with psychiatric disorders (epilepsy, anxiety, schizophrenia)	25 to 175 mg/day	No improvement in sleep scores, but improvement in anxiety Side effect: fatigue	Shannon 2019 (simple case study)
Effect of CBD on hormone secretion and sedative effect in people with no particular pathology	2 doses of 300 or 600 mg spaced a few days apart	Modifies sleep hormones, and sedation sensation described	Zuardi 1993 (placebo-controlled trial)
Effectiveness of CBD in insomniacs	Taken with 40, 80 or 160 mg of CBD	Sleep duration significantly increased after high-dose CBD (160 mg) but less dreaming than placebo	Zhornitsky 2012 (systematic review) citing Carlini, 1979 (compared with placebo)
Children with epilepsy for whom the usual medications do not work well enough	2 years of daily CBD intake	Improved sleep duration and fewer nocturnal awakenings	Anderson 2021 (study to assess non-hazardousness, not placebo-controlled)
Children with epilepsy for whom the usual medications do not work well enough	20 to 50 mg/kg/day	Positive effect on sleep microstructure/architecture	Klotz 2021
People with no specific pathologies whose sleep was recorded (polysomnography)	Administration of 300 mg or placebo 30 minutes before bedtime	Acute administration of a dose of CBD does not appear to interfere with the sleep cycle of healthy volunteers. The present results support the proposition that CBD does not alter normal sleep architecture.	Linares 2018
Online survey of 387 CBD users (mostly from the UK)	Most had been using CBD oil (sublingual) for 3 to 6 months. 73% used less than 100mg of CBD per day.	Sleep problems were the 2nd most common reason for taking CBD (after anxiety). Users reported a positive effect on their sleep. 71% reported no side effects. 11% reported dry mouth, and 3% fatigue.	Moltke 2021

In 2022, a research team in the United States sought to answer the question that interests us here: the effectiveness of CBD on insomnia (Ranum 2022).

She listed ALL the studies on the subject. All of them, in any case, sufficiently well-constructed for us to be able to draw something from them.

Here’s his overall conclusion:

CBD alone or with equal amounts of THC may be beneficial in relieving insomnia symptoms. Nevertheless, future research evaluating the efficacy of CBD in a patient population specifically suffering from insomnia and using validated subjective and objective measures is needed before definitive conclusions can be drawn.

Rylea M Ranum and colleagues

However, this synthesis was published in a journal dealing specifically with the effects of cannabis.

If she herself says that we should be cautious about extrapolating her results, then in my opinion we should take these conclusions with double hindsight and caution.

Here’s what the research team who conducted the survey of 387 CBD consumers had to say:

Research on CBD and sleep has so far been mixed. However, as sedation and drowsiness are considered common adverse effects of CBD in a meta-analysis of clinical trials where high doses are used (Chesney et al. 2020), it is perhaps not surprising that low-dose CBD improves sleep quality and duration.

Moltke 2021

One thing seems relatively “safe” though: the risk of serious side effects is very low when taking CBD (Shannon 2019). No cases of fatal overdose have been reported with either cannabinoid.

And when side effects are described, they are minor (dry mouth, fatigue, dizziness, nausea, stomach upset, accelerated heart rate, diarrhea, headaches, anxiety, psychotic symptoms, sexual problems, concentration problems) and subside when CBD intake is stopped.

In theory, CBD should reduce insomnia or improve sleep quality scores. Some studies on the subject suggest a positive effect, but they are few and of low quality.

When to take CBD to sleep?

It seems reasonable to think that CBD is best taken about 1 hour before bedtime. It does not diffuse immediately into the body.

You can try out different evening schedules, to see which one seems most suitable for you.

How much CBD should I take to sleep?

Some people describe sleeping better with CBD in doses of less than 100 mg a day.

However, CBD isoften used in larger doses in clinical studies. Even in those involving children aged 2 and over!

In these studies, the dose often recommended is 20 to 50 mg/kg/day for children. That’s at least 1400 mg per day for a 70 kg person!

These seem like extremely large doses compared to the reality of CBD consumption.

Starting with doses of around 100 mg/day and increasing gradually if tolerated well seems reasonable to me. Taking less seems inappropriate if you want to maximize the chances of efficacy.

How many drops of CBD for sleep?

Many people wonder how many drops of CBD they should take to sleep.

It all depends on :

• the total amount of CBD in your bottle;
• product concentration ;
• the amount of CBD you wish to take;
• the quantity in mL of product in a drop!

That’s why it’s impossible to give a specific number of drops for all CBD oils! And why I think it’s important to choose a product that gives you very precise indications on all these elements!

The number of CBD drops to take can be from 1 to more than 20 depending on the amount of CBD and its concentration in your oil!

See below for the CBD sleep oil I’ve identified to meet these criteria.

CBD interacts with other substances

CBD can interact with various substances.

If you’re taking large doses of CBD over a long period, it’s advisable to consult a doctor familiar with your medication regimen and potential CBD interactions.

In particular, the following interactions:

• Estrogen-based drugs and the oral contraceptive pill : Consumption of large quantities of CBD may reduce or even cancel out the effectiveness of the contraceptive pill.
• Anticoagulants such as warfarin (an anti-vitamin K): It is advisable to monitor the INR (International Normalized Ratio) at the start of CBD consumption in a person taking warfarin.
• Cancer immunotherapies: There is a potential risk of reduced efficacy due to CBD consumption, which can reduce the immune response.

Source: Henson 2022, Grayson 2018

Thanks to researcher Jeremy Henson of the University of New South Wales (Australia) for reminding me of these interactions.

Which CBD to take to sleep?

Not all forms of CBD are alike: concentration and diffusion in the body depend very much on the type of CBD taken.

The least recommended forms are inhalation and vaping: CBD is less likely to pass into the bloodstream and remain there for longer.

The form most recommended for sleep is CBD in sublingual form, i.e. in the form ofCBD oil.

This is because the bioavailability of sublingual CBD is between 13 and 19% higher than that of the oral route. This means the effects can be felt at much lower doses.

Source: Moltke 2021

CBD oil for sleep

Many establishments and websites sell CBD. The most difficult thing, in my opinion, is toidentify products containing a sufficiently large quantity of CBD.

After several years of trying to find a manufacturer that clearly communicated about this, I discovered the Sensilia brand of CBD.

It communicates very clearly on the amount of CBD contained in these products and in each ration, which I find very good, and very rare. And the prices are quite reasonable for the amount of CBD in them.

I’m not paid to tell you about them, but if you click on the link and buy, I can earn a small commssion. And it’s 10% cheaper for you if you use the code NDB10 for purchases of 50 euros or more.

If you wish to go through Amazon : see here.

CBD for sleep in other forms

Of course, CBD exists in many other forms:

• herbal teas ;
• to inhale or vapourize ;
• spray ;
• smoking ;
• for swallowing (flowers, capsules).

These forms are less likely to be effective. And it’s often even harder to know just how much you’ve taken!

Buy CBD to sleep in pharmacies?

You can of course buy CBD in pharmacies or CBD stores.

In pharmacies,prices are often a little higher for an equivalent product than on the Internet. Store prices vary widely.

I recommend that you find out exactly how much CBD it contains (known as dosage):

• in the entire product ;
• in each ration.

And not to take this product if you don’t have precise information on the dosage, which is often the case. That’s why I recommend Sensilia.

Does CBD make you sleepy for the rest of the day?

Will CBD make you feel drowsy the rest of the day if you take it in the evening?

This is a rarely described side effect.

In an online survey of 382 people who used CBD for sleep and other purposes, numerous minor side effects were reported. But not being sleepy for the rest of the day (Moltke 2021).

On the other hand, 3% of people in this study experienced fatigue. And this is an effect reported in other studies too.

CBD probably won’t make you fall asleep in the middle of the day, but some people experience fatigue when taking it (a priori, 3% of people taking it).

Summary: CBD for sleep: my opinion as a physiotherapist

When a patient complains of sleep problems, I first ask them about their sleeping habits. And what routines they are putting in place to help them fall asleep or limit the risk of waking up.

I never suggest CBD unless my patients ask me directly what I think of it.

But quite regularly, my patientsask my opinion on the benefits of CBD for better sleep. In this case, my answer is:

• that, in theory, there are fairly good reasons to believe that CBD can positively influence sleep;
• that this would require taking fairly large quantities of CBD(more than 100 mg), and rather in the form of CBD oil (see here) ;
• as always, if a substance has potential positive effects, it can also have negative side effects. These remain minor for CBD;
• that when studies are carried out, they don’t necessarily show any significant improvement in sleep.

***

I hope I’ve answered your main questions about the potential benefits of CBD for better sleep! Any questions or comments? See you in comments!

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