Knowing how much CBD to take can be confusing because the FDA hasn’t issued any formal guidance on it.

Scientific and anecdotal evidence shows that CBD has immense and varied benefits, but the FDA hasn’t approved it as a treatment for anything, aside from two specific groups of conditions.

If you’re looking for CBD dosing guidance, then, you have to turn to anecdotal evidence, based on the experience of real people. To help you find your perfect CBD dosage, we’ve made a full dosage guide and dosage chart, based on our experiences and talking to our many customers.

We’ve also included some information about dosing best practices and how to dose tinctures.

Want to skip to the chart? Click here.

General CBD Dosing Best Practices

Before we get to the chart and dosing specifics, here are a few best practices to employ while figuring out your CBD dosage:

• Talk to your doctor first — if you want to take CBD for a condition that you’re receiving medical treatment for, you need to speak with your doctor first. This is to ensure that CBD would actually be effective and that it wouldn’t interfere with any treatment or medication you’re already receiving.
• Start low and slow — until you figure out how your body responds to CBD, it’s best to start with a small dosage just once a day. This especially applies if you’re uncertain about how CBD will make you feel.
• Be consistent — CBD works best when you make a routine out of it. You might not start seeing good results until you’ve been taking it for a few days. Our body has a built-in endocannabinoid system, so in some respect, CBD is designed for us, but your body might need some time to adjust to the external cannabinoids you’re giving it.
• Listen to your body — while the dosage information we have is pretty accurate, it isn’t the same for everyone. If your perfect CBD dosage deviates from our benchmarks, that’s fine. The most important thing is whether it’s working for you!
• Understand that dosing CBD isn’t an exact science — the insights in this article are estimates based on anecdotal evidence. While we’re confident that this information is the best out there, it hasn’t been medically verified.

Factors that Will Influence Your CBD Dosage

The amount of CBD you’ll need will depend on four main factors:

• Why you’re using it — different situations call for different amounts of CBD.
• Severity of symptoms — even if we have a general dosage recommendation for a certain use case, depending on your symptoms, you may need a larger or smaller dosage of CBD.
• Weight — dosage depends directly on weight, as you need to take a large enough amount of CBD for it to have an impact.
• Body chemistry and tolerance — everyone has different body chemistry, and CBD tolerance varies. You might need more to feel the same effects, or you might only need half of what people normally take.

Recommended CBD Dosage Strength for Specific Uses

Your ideal dosage will depend on what you’re using CBD for. Below are our recommended starting strengths for the main broad use cases.

Note that CBD hasn’t been FDA-verified as a treatment for these different conditions, save for some types of epilepsy and cancer (and only in pharmaceutical grade). Rather, these are conditions that people have found CBD beneficial for, and rough estimates of doses they found success with.

These strengths (low, medium, and high) match with weight-based dosages; after you know your strength, look at the chart in the next section to determine your dosage.

Anxiety, Stress, Depression – medium

Inflammation – medium

Chronic Pain – medium

Muscle & Joint Support – low

General Relaxation & Wellness – low

Sleep – low

Here are the recommended starting strengths for specific conditions. You should speak to your doctor before deciding how much CBD to take if you’re using it to address conditions such as these. Still, we have rough benchmarks based on anecdotal evidence:

Epilepsy – high strength or pharmaceutical strength

Cancer – high strength or pharmaceutical strength

Insomnia – medium

ADHD – medium

Inflammatory Bowel Disease – medium

Gout – medium

Menopause Support – low

CBD Dosage Chart by Weight & Strength

Now that you’ve figured out your dosage strength, here’s a chart to determine your dosage based on your weight:

CBD Dosage Formulas

The above chart is a quick way to figure out how much CBD you need to take. However, it also helps to have a formula that you can use to calculate your dosage if you don’t have a chart handy.

Here’s how much CBD you’ll take per 10 pounds of body weight, depending on the strength of dosage you need:

• 1 mg per 10 lb of body weight for low strength
• 3 mg per 10 lb of body weight for medium strength
• 5 mg per 10 lb of body weight for high strength

Based on these numbers, here are the formulas:

Low strength: (0.1) x (your body weight in pounds) = your dosage in mg

Medium strength: (0.3) x (your body weight in pounds) = your dosage in mg

High strength: (0.5) x (your body weight in pounds) = your dosage in mg

This ratio can apply to any weight.

So for example, if you’re 140 pounds and need a medium-strength dosage, we pick the second formula:

(0.3) x (your body weight in pounds) = your dosage in mg

Then we plug in weight:

(0.3) x (140) = 42 mg

You’d need 42 mg of CBD per day.

How to Determine the Potency of Your CBD Oil

The packaging on edibles, drinks, or gel capsules will tell you how many mg of CBD is in each piece. Easy dosing!

But CBD oil, in particular, can be confusing to dose because you have to figure out how many mg of CBD are in 1 milliliter (ml) of oil, which is one dropper.

It varies depending on the total amount of CBD in the bottle. Everything is based on the standard 30 ml, or 1 oz bottle:

100mg bottle = 3.3 mg CBD per 1 ml.

250 mg bottle = 8.3 mg CBD per 1 ml.

500 mg bottle = 16.7 mg CBD per 1 ml.

1000 mg bottle = 33.3 mg CBD per 1 ml.

1500 mg bottle = 50 mg CBD per 1 ml.

3000 mg bottle = 100 mg CBD per 1 ml.

5000 mg bottle = 166.6 mg CBD per 1 ml.

CBD Dosage: Frequently Asked Questions

Here are a few questions we frequently get relating to CBD dosage.

Does CBD dosage vary based on the type of product?

The reason we haven’t mentioned products in this article is that as long as the amount of CBD you’re taking is the same, the method by which you take it makes no difference — edible, oil, or drink, it’s all the same.

Can you overdose on CBD?

Possibly, but you’d have to take hundreds of milligrams of CBD (think 500, 600, 700 — far more than you’ll ever need) in order to qualify as “overdosing.” Even then, you’d just experience adverse side effects — there has never been a report of someone dying from CBD.

Will CBD get you high?

No, even full-spectrum CBD, which contains up to 0.3% THC, doesn’t contain enough THC to produce a high.

Is CBD legal?

CBD is federally legal in all 50 states as long as it is extracted from hemp and not marijuana. It’s all the same plant, but plants containing less than 0.3% THC by dry weight are considered hemp.

Note that some states may have restrictions on different forms or uses of CBD:

• Arizona
• Delaware
• Hawaii
• Iowa
• Idaho
• Louisiana
• Massachusetts
• Montana
• New Hampshire
• Pennsylvania
• Utah

Is CBD safe?

Yes. Apart from short-term side effects, there is no long-term negative health impact of using CBD — at least not if you take it in the recommended amounts.

What about CBD for my dog or cat?

To view our dosage chart for dogs, click here. To view our dosage chart for cats, click here.

Side Effects of CBD

Side effects of CBD that may occur include:

• Dry mouth
• Drowsiness
• Diarrhea
• Reduced appetite
• Fatigue

These side effects will manifest differently in different people, and they may not manifest for you at all. To avoid feeling negative side effects, start out with low doses of CBD and increase slowly.

Takeaway: Finding Your Perfect Dose

Since the FDA hasn’t issued formal guidance on how much CBD to take, what we know is based on all of our personal experiences.

This means finding the right dosage of CBD might take a little bit of experimentation (and some patience). Our best advice? Always start low and slow, be consistent, and talk to your doctor if you’re unsure at any point in the process.