What’s the Holdup?
The delayed onset of edibles, demystified
As far as cannabis stories go, this is a tale as old as time. Whether it’s an accurately dosed gummy from a legal dispensary or a haphazardly thrown together batch of brownies made in the house while your parents were out of town, anyone who’s had an edible has probably had that experience. It goes something like this (we’ve numbered the steps for you):
“What a beautiful day to take an edible, don’t mind if I do!”
30 minutes pass
“I don’t feel anything, maybe it’s a dud. I’ll give it 15 more minutes and then I’ll take another”
15 minutes pass
“Ok, still nothing, going to double down here so that maybe I’ll feel something”
10 minutes pass
“Oh no, I may have made a mistake”
30 minutes pass
“I’m going to hold onto the grass so I don’t fall off the earth”
No matter how experienced you may be, you’ve probably done this time and time again, before eventually learning your lesson. It might as well be a right of passage.
Curiously, though, this doesn’t happen when consuming cannabis via smoking. Take a hit of a joint, a puff on a pen, or a rip of a bong and you’ll feel the effects within a couple of minutes, many times instantly. So why do edibles make you wait and guess about whether you’ve properly dosed yourself? And why is the edible high different? Turns out, the experience has some similarities, but what you experience when eating cannabis is actually different than when smoking. To get to the bottom of this, let’s take a look at what exactly happens, physiologically, when you consume cannabis by these two methods.
Up in Smoke
For our purposes here, smoking is any inhalable cannabis ROA (route of administration), whether that be a joint, blunt, bong, bowl, pipe, vape, gravity bong, an apple with some holes drilled in it, an old coke can with some tin foil (we don’t recommend this one) or any other method you may have used or heard of to get heated flower into your body.
When cannabis is combusted, the organic compounds in it are vaporized, so to speak, into an inhalable format. When you inhale cannabis into your lungs, these compounds (THC included) are introduced to the air sacs, called alveoli, which exchange gas between your lungs and your blood stream. Because of this, the THC is absorbed into your blood stream just as oxygen is. Of course, this means that the THC (and other compounds in cannabis) are immediately routed to your brain. Because this process is so immediate, you feel a very quick onset of the high as the THC binds to the CB1 receptors in your brain’s endocannabinoid system.
A Succulent Meal
Sometimes you don’t feel like smoking, sometimes your environment means you can’t. Maybe you’ve never smoked and don’t plan on starting. For any number of reasons, edibles have been gaining in popularity. As cannabis becomes more mainstream and we see the stigma die down, edibles are an accessible ROA with a familiar format for those who are just dipping their toes in the cannabis pool. With familiar form factors like gummies and chocolates, to more novel ones such as THC infused chips or granulated sugar, there’s pretty much an edible for everyone.
What happens when you consume an edible then, and why does it hit so differently? There’s a couple of reasons for this:
1. You have to digest it. OK, you probably could have guessed this one. Before that edible can start making you feel all warm and fuzzy, your body has to break down what you consumed first. After all, it makes you feel high the same way smoking cannabis does: by crossing your blood-brain barrier and binding to your CB1 receptors. This is the first step to that destination.
2. Your liver metabolizes it. Believe it or not, once you’ve digested your edible, it does not send the Delta 9 THC straight to your brain. Instead, it passes through your liver. Your liver converts this THC into something called 11-Hydroxy-THC. This version of THC is actually stronger and longer lasting than the Delta 9 that you get while smoking. Once this makes it to your brain and binds with your CB1 receptors, you’ll get that classic edible high that can’t be replicated by smoking.
3. External Factors. Unlike smoking, there’s a lot more at play with consuming edibles that can effect the onset, strength, and duration of your high. For example, eating edibles on a full stomach may result in a longer come up duration (but this isn’t always the case). Eating a gummy vs. a chocolate can have an impact due to the rate at which your body can digest each type of edible.
Cheat Codes
Want to speed up the process? Want to get that edible to hit a bit harder than the last one? We got you covered. The key thing to know here is that Delta 9 THC is fat soluble. This means that it needs a fat present to be released and be made available to your body. Eating your edible with fatty foods (preferably saturated fat, due to the molecular structure) will make a noticeable difference to both the onset and strength of your high.
Don’t feel like eating any fatty foods today, but still want your edible to hit hard and fast? Try taking it on an empty stomach. As you can imagine, without anything else taking up valuable space and digestion time in your stomach, the edible will have less to pass through before getting to your brain.
The Latest Edible Technology
Over the past few years, there have been some pretty substantial strides taken to solve the problem of edibles taking a long time to hit. The biggest advance here is the advent of nanoparticulation, which has the unique benefit of allowing nanoemulsions to be used in THC beverages.
If you’ve ever bought edibles that tout a fast acting benefit, you’ve bought yourself some nano THC. At it’s most basic, you can think of nanoparticulation as a process that breaks apart the delta 9 THC molecule into much smaller molecules, which has a couple effects.
First, this makes the THC more bioavailable. With traditional edibles you get, at a maximum, 10% of the THC you consumed making it into the blood stream. A lot of it is lost in the digestion process, as well as the metabolization that occurs in the liver. Because these particles are now so small, you don’t have to wait for them to be metabolized. Instead, they can enter your blood stream as soon as they hit your tongue and mouth. This means you start to feel the effects much quicker than you would with traditional edibles.
Second, because the bioavailability is increased, you get stronger effects out of an edible made with nano THC compared to a traditional edible. This is, as you can imagine, important to understand when choosing and ingesting your edibles. If you’re used to taking 10mg THC traditional edibles and switch to 10mg edibles with nano THC, you might be surprised at how hard they hit.
One of the other core benefits of nano THC is the ability to emulsify it into a water soluble solution. As we mentioned above, normal THC is fat soluble, which means it a.) requires fat to dissolve and b.) can’t be easily mixed into a liquid such as water. The advent of nano THC has opened up the THC beverage market, as these now smaller particles can be suspended in liquids like a seltzer, allowing you to not just eat your cannabis, but drink it too!
Bon Apetit
In closing, we hope you learned a thing or two about how edibles work and why they can be so unpredictable today. From external factors to advances in technology enabling new ROAs, edibles are a fascinating, fun, and delicious way to consume our favorite plant.
Next time you’re shopping around for edibles, make sure to ask your budtender about nano THC and the products that use this technology. Chances are you’ll not only experience the benefits while eating/drinking it, but you may also be able to stretch your dollar a bit farther as well. Also, make sure you read the dosage and follow the instructions on the package. That whole chocolate bar is probably 100mg, not 10, and trust us, there’s a HUGE difference.