In the world of cannabinoids, there is a lot to know. Scientific studies have been done on these chemical compounds for the better part of a century, so if you’re just learning about them now it can feel like you have a lot to catch up on. Today, we’re here to help you with that. In this article, we’re going to be covering the difference between CBDA and CBGA.
We’re going to be looking at various applications of both of these compounds, what therapeutic benefits they’re claimed to have, and where they come from. We might not be able to make you an expert on the subject, but we can definitely get you a better understanding of this specific corner of knowledge.
Fortunately, there is a lot of information about this specific topic on the internet. Whether you want something academic that requires an advanced understanding of chemistry to be able to read or something that the rest of us can easily comprehend, it’s out there ready to be found.
You might need to take notes for this one because today’s article is going to be jam-packed with information. We’re going to cover this as quickly as we possibly can so that you can get the information that you need and move on with your day.
What is a Cannabinoid?
Before covering what CBDA and CBGA are, it’s going to be important to make sure that we’re all on the same page about what a cannabinoid is. Without this information, the rest of the article is gonna be kinda tricky to go over and be sure that everyone reading this understands what we’re saying.
A cannabinoid is a chemical compound that is naturally occurring in cannabis. Yes, that cannabis. There are a lot of different cannabinoids out there, some of which you’ve probably heard of and some that you probably haven’t heard of. Here are just a few:
- THC
- THCA
- CBD
- CBDA
- CBG
- CBGA
The only two of these cannabinoids that are psychoactive, or that gets you “high,” are THC and THCA. The rest are believed to only provide therapeutic benefits, but none of them will give you the kind of high feeling that THC and THCA will.
That’s the biggest reason why these other cannabinoids have been gaining popularity in the last few years. A lot of people want to experience the relaxation that these cannabinoids have to offer but don’t want to deal with the head high that is associated with THC.
Cannabinoids interact with your cannabinoid receptors. That is something that we’ll have to save for another day though because it’s a lot to explain and requires a deep understanding of biology, chemistry, and even a little bit of pharmacology so we won’t have the time to get that deep into it.
What is CBDA?
Let’s start with the first one we listed in the title of this article to keep things on track. CBDA is definitely the more popular of the two mainly because of what it is and the role that it plays as a cannabinoid within the cannabinoid system.
CBDA is short for cannabidiolic acid, and it’s the precursor of cannabidiol, or CBD for short. CBD is definitely the main cannabinoid that you see on the market, making it automatically somewhat well-known because of its name alone.
Now, for those of us that didn’t get through college chemistry classes, a definition is in order. A precursor is a chemical compound that breaks down into a different chemical compound. That means that CBDA breaks down into CBD, so any CBD market on the market at one point contained CBDA.
You can also find CBD products that still contain CBDA, but we’ll touch on that later. The most important thing to know here is that CBDA becomes CBD. So, what do people claim that CBDA helps with? Let’s take a look:
- Discomfort.
- Restful sleep.
- Mobility.
- Relaxation.
- Nausea.
- Improved mood.
These claims are prevalent because of what exactly this cannabinoid does. It affects specific receptors in your brain. We won’t cover which ones because that will send us down a rabbit hole we’d never come back from, but there is a lot of information on this online.
What is CBGA?
Alright, we’ve got CBDA out of the way. Let’s continue on to looking at what exactly CBGA is. This compound is actually very similar to CBDA in a lot of ways, and it’s different in a lot of ways as well. Especially when you get down to a molecular level.
CBGA is short for cannabigerolic acid. At this point, you might have a guess of where we’re going with this. CBGA is the precursor of CBG, which is short for cannabigerol. We’ve already covered what a precursor is and it means the same exact thing here.
The most interesting thing about CBGA is that most experts believe that it is also the precursor of every other cannabinoid. That would mean that every cannabinoid ranging from THC to CBD and beyond was, at one point, CBGA and then it broke down during complicated chemical reactions.
CBG was first discovered in 1964, which makes it a late entry to the party. The first cannabinoid that was discovered was actually CBN and that was back in the late 1800s. Since then we’ve learned a lot about cannabinoids, as well as both CBG and its acid form.
Just like CBDA, CBGA has a lot of supposed benefits that one can enjoy with the use of it. You might be asking what those effects are, but some of our readers certainly realize where we’re going with this. CBGA is claimed to be able to help with:
- Enzyme reduction.
- Lipid metabolism.
There are a lot of other things that CBGA is claimed to help with, but there hasn’t been enough medical research done on this compound so we don’t feel confident enough to share those in detail out of concern that someone reading this would think that they can use CBGA to treat serious conditions without talking to your doctor.
Let us be very clear, if you’re suffering from a serious medical condition you need to talk to your doctor about it and figure out what they want to do about it. This is some random blog on the internet and we in no way have more expertise than your doctor does, nor does any other random article that you find on the internet.
Which One is Better for Personal Use?
If you’ve read this article and you’re considering using this for your own personal use, it would be good for you to know which one would be better for your situation. So, before we finish this article, let’s try to answer that question for you.
In general, you’d probably want to just go with plain old CBD. It has the most research done on it, so if you’re concerned about the scientific consensus that would be your best bet. It’s also the most easily accessible out of all of the cannabinoids.
If you want CBDA, you can typically find full-spectrum CBD tinctures that have CBDA in them. Full-spectrum tinctures simply have more cannabinoids in them so you can get the benefits from more cannabinoids in one place.
Full-spectrum tinctures also have terpenes in them. Terpenes aren’t something that we have the time to get into in full detail, but they occur in a lot of things, not just cannabis, and they have a whole host of supposed therapeutic benefits that can work together with the CBD to provide a better experience.
CBGA is a bit trickier. You can find it in some full-spectrum tinctures if you want to try it out, but as far as we can tell there aren’t really any studies on therapeutic effects on this one. The small amount of research that has been done on CBGA has been on its medical effects, and those studies leave a lot to be desired.
The information available on CBGA, needless to say, is a little spotty in general. You can go and find the scientific studies and read through them yourself if you want, and there are also a ton of articles that put these studies into plain English so anyone can read them.
Just make sure that you do all of the research before you commit to something like that. It’s important to be sure that you know what you’re getting yourself into with this kind of stuff, and it may be wise to speak with your doctor to make sure it won’t interact with any of your medications.
Getting the Right Cannabinoids for You
Knowing is half the battle, as famed soldier G.I. Joe once said. By doing this kind of research you can be sure that you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into when it comes to this kind of thing, and that’s important.
Whether you’re new to CBD or you’ve been on the CBD train since before the hype started picking up, knowing what you’re doing can make a whole world of difference in the long run and in the short run.