Best Marijuana Edibles for Sleep Aid

After considering the side effects and dependency potential of standard sleep medicine, some patients opt for medical marijuana to help them sleep. Since it has fewer dependency issues and milder side effects, cannabis helps tons of folks with their insomnia without the risks.

Many of these patients medicate with edibles. Edibles are an accessible and familiar way to consume marijuana. Not everyone has smoked or vaped, but everyone has eaten food!

Whether you’re new to eating edibles for sleep or have a medicated midnight snack every evening, we can help you brainstorm what edibles will work best for you.

What Are Marijuana Edibles?

Weed connoisseurs use the term “edible” to refer to any consumable product with marijuana or cannabinoids in it. Edibles include food, snacks, and cooking ingredients. You can commonly find them at marijuana dispensaries.

Popular weed edibles you can buy include:

• Desserts, such as brownies and cookies
• Candies, like chocolates, lollipops and hard candy
• Snacks, like popcorn and cheese doodles
• Drinks, such as juice and tea

In addition to buying cannabis goodies, you can also make your own. DIY edibles are great for folks who can only purchase marijuana flowers in their state and patients with specific dietary needs. If you know basic cooking skills, you can make an edible!

What Kinds of Edibles Help With Sleep?

While dispensaries often carry a large selection of edible products, the variety can make it difficult to know what will help you sleep and what won’t. You might not realize that certain types of regular food enable you to sleep more than others. To understand what will work best for you, you should apply the same rules that apply to food without weed in it.

In general, eating something before bed is better than nothing. Having a small, healthy snack before you go to sleep will prevent you from getting hungry in the middle of the night. Hunger can make it harder to fall asleep or wake you up in the middle of the night.

However, we recommend sticking to healthier options if possible. Many prepackaged edibles have high amounts of fat and sugar, and food with large amounts of fat and sugar can disrupt your sleep.

So, that leaves the question: what food promotes sleep? Foods high in sleep hormones like tryptophan and serotonin — such as turkey, low-fat dairy products, honey, oats, and bananas — can help. Herbal teas without caffeine will relax you, too.

As you can see, many of those sleep-promoting foods often don’t appear in the typical edibles section at your dispensary. So, if possible, you should make your own marijuana-infused foods that implement them.

How to Make Your Own Edibles for Bedtime

Making yourself a weed treat before bed is as easy as whipping up something in the kitchen. Patients of any cooking skill level can make an edible — you just need to know a recipe or two! Here are a few to start with:

• Weed Tea: Making marijuana tea takes a little more effort than making regular herbal tea, but it works as a great bedtime beverage. We have an in-depth guide on our blog, but in a nutshell, making cannabis tea involves combining a fat with marijuana and adding it to the tea of your choice. Try picking an herbal tea that provides sleep benefits.

• Cannabutter: If you need more versatility, you can try making cannabutter, or butter infused with cannabis. You can add a small amount to food to add cannabinoids to it — just don’t add too much, since too much fat inhibits sleep. It also makes it easy to brew marijuana tea, since the fat and marijuana are already infused together.
• Marijuana Flour: Another flexible marijuana ingredient is marijuana flour, which doesn’t contain the fat that cannabutter does. You can use it as a replacement for flour in recipes or supplement existing food with it. Marijuana flour is simply finely ground marijuana, so it’s very easy to make.

Best Strains to Use in Edibles for Sleep Aid

When you make your edibles, you should consider the strain of the marijuana you use. Every kind of marijuana plant has different qualities. So, not just any bud you get will work the best for helping you sleep.

Cannabis comes in two major categories — indica and sativa. Indica strains are known for promoting restfulness, and sativa strains give a jolt of energy. So, logically, you want to use either a pure indica strain or a hybrid strain with mostly indica in it to help you sleep.

Digging a little into the chemistry behind marijuana, the chemicals in each strain type shape how they make you feel. Indica has more of the cannabinoid CBD, which relaxes you without making you feel high. So, if you’d like, you can use CBD oil in place of a strain and see if it makes you sleepy.

If you do use regular bud to make your goodies, some indica strains work better for sleep than others. Here are some of our recommendations for more common strains:

• OG Kush: When bred using primarily indica strains, OG Kush can address depression and anxiety in addition to your sleep problems.
• One to One: If you find indica-dominant marijuana sedates you too much, you can try this strain, which balances out indica’s effects with sativa.
• Atomic Northern Lights: Patients dealing with appetite issues should try out this variety.
• Crimea Blue: If you deal with eye pressure from a condition like glaucoma, Crimea Blue can relieve it while promoting a good night’s rest.

Marijuana farmers grow thousands of strains, so consider this list just the tip of the iceberg. Just like anything else related to medical marijuana, make sure to do your research before deciding what to use.

More Brain Food for Your Perusal

Speaking of research, did you know that we offer all sorts of yummy knowledge on cannabis and health?

• Medication Options: If you want to learn more about your marijuana medication options, our guide on cannabis medicine can give you some ideas.
• Cannabis News and Updates: For more recipes, health tips and medical weed news, follow our blog — we update it frequently.
• Find a Doctor: To speak directly with someone versed in medicinal marijuana, find a local cannabis doctor today.