The Reports Are In: You Should Know More About CBD Lab Reports

Onyx & Rose believes natural, 100% organically grown American hemp has the power to help promote wellness and bring balance back to people’s lives. When you open an Onyx & Rose product, you can be sure that if it was sealed, packaged and delivered, then it’s a product of the highest standards backed by a team of scientists, wellness experts, veterinarians, formulators and people just like you who truly care.

But we get it: Not everybody is a scientist.

Still, there are some basics to reading a CBD lab report that will help you understand what you’re getting (and in the case of some other brands, what you’re not.)

And Now a Word from the FDA.

The Food & Drug Administration actually approved the first pharmaceutical product containing CBD in June 2018. Since then, while the popularity and mainstream consciousness of the potential benefits of CBD has taken off and seen a rush of competitors flood into the market, not many of them have adhered to such rigorous quality standards. Without industry standards in place, the quality of CBD products is a wild west of sorts. Unlabeled CBD products are far too common, and there are even reports of harmful synthetic knock-offs. As a consumer, this means you need to be very mindful when shopping around and have a level of trust in the brand you buy. You understand the potential therapeutic benefits of CBD, but you’re not likely to get them from every tincture, capsule, or other product with those three little letters on it. The better the brand, the better the potential benefits, and a lab report is your key to sorting it all out.

We’ve Got Style. But We’ve Also Got Science.

If you’re going to be an industry-leading consumer brand (like yours truly), you should be proud of what you make. Onyx & Rose backs that up with total transparency and third-party lab reports.

Lab reports empower you by providing the opportunity to discover exactly what is in each and every product you purchase, and Onyx & Rose provides lab reports for each and every product we sell. We’re obsessed with your wellness and peace of mind, including the peace of mind in knowing you bought the highest quality product on the market.

Okay, Some Basic Stuff.

“To CBD, or not to CBD? That is the question!”

To be honest, those three letters can identify lots of different products, each with different cannabinoids in different combinations and with different expected results. Let’s run through them:

Isolates:  Isolate products can fall short (more on that here). CBD at its best, is a plant-based, natural product, and isolate CBD is CBD in its least natural form. These products contain the pure CBD molecule, sure, but usually only in crystalline form. In that form, research indicates isolate is possibly less effective than the two other types of CBD. The dozens of compounds naturally derived from the hemp plant that may work synergistically with CBD to amplify and extend its potential benefits are lost in the process of “isolation.” That’s why you won’t see other cannabinoids present in the lab report for an isolate product. Health, well-being, tranquility: whatever you’re seeking, you are getting less of it if all you are purchasing is an isolate.

Broad-spectrum CBD: This is more like it. Broad-spectrum CBD contains a variety of terpenes (you can read more about individual terpenes and what they do here) and cannabinoids besides just CBD. Broad-spectrum products have everything hemp should have but THC. A lab report for a broad-spectrum product should show 0% THC but should have active amounts of other cannabinoids such as CBN, and CBG, good things that won’t necessarily show up on a drug test (if that’s a thing where you work).

Full-spectrum CBD: Everything the hemp plant can get you, except high. Full-spectrum CBD is essentially the same as broad-spectrum CBD oil, but with minimal levels of THC amounting to less than 0.3% of the total volume of the extract. All the beneficial terpenes, cannabinoids, and botanicals of the hemp plant, with only trace amounts of THC. These levels of THC may make CBD more effective in a phenomenon known as the entourage effect. Again, if this is a concern for you in your professional environment, a proper lab report will let you know what you’re getting upfront. Best not risk it with any old CBD you pick up.

We told you there’d be science. Here comes the science.

The cannabinoid profile is arguably the most important section of a CBD lab report. You can typically find this at the top of a CBD lab test and use it to understand detailed data on the levels of the various cannabinoids that are naturally present in hemp oil.

Lab coats on: In our third-party lab reports, you see information on the total percentage per volume, milligrams per gram, and total milligrams is provided for each major cannabinoid. In a lab report for our 1000mg Broad Spectrum Oil, for instance, you’ll find that this batch of our tincture formula contains 1081mg of CBD per 2 mL unit. So, to answer the question: Am I getting what I paid for? The lab report confirms that you are. This tincture also includes 6.3 mg of CBG, 6 mg CBN and 36 mg of CBC, which shows that the product cannot be mistaken for an isolate. Without trustworthy lab results, it’s impossible to tell whether the product you’re buying contains the amount of CBD advertised. How sure are you about those other brands?

CBD versus WTF?

A number of commercially available “CBD products” are known to contain… “not CBD.” At Onyx & Rose, we take the purity and quality of our CBD very seriously, and we test for residual solvents, pesticides, mycotoxins, mycotoxins, and heavy metals in every batch of CBD we produce. It’s not enough to test only the CBD oil that goes into our products; we test every single batch of every product that we produce.

We’re picky that way so that you’ll pick us for your daily CBD needs.

What you won’t get:  Low-quality CBD products contain mold, mildew, heavy metals, pesticides, and other substances you don’t want in your body. We only use organically grown, domestic hemp to produce our products and ensure their quality with rigorous quality control and testing.

Congratulations! You’re now a Ph.D. in CBD.

Honestly, you really don’t have to be a biochemist to understand: you should know what you’re buying. And with Onyx & Rose, everything we do, make, or say is upfront, certifiable and backed by those scientists, wellness experts, veterinarians and formulators we mentioned earlier. Our commitment to honesty, quality, and transparency are all right there in black and white on our lab reports. If you use other products, see if theirs hold up to that scrutiny.

If you have any questions at all about what goes into our CBD products (and what doesn’t), you can read more at onyxandrose.com