I feared becoming addicted to painkillers after knee injury – but CBD saved me, says rugby ace
PRO rugby player Grayson Hart was terrified of becoming addicted to powerful opiates after a knee injury – so he turned to CBD.
Now the retired sportsman is helping thousands of others like him who want natural and safe pain relief.
The ex Glasgow Warriors scrum-half said: “My vision was to create the world’s first fully certified range of innovative natural health supplements to help optimise people’s lives in terms of sleep quality, pain relief, cognitive function, mean system and other different benefits.”
New Zealand born Grayson excelled at sport as a teen and played rugby for a number of teams in his home country. In fact, aged 20, he was the youngest scrum-half ever to play for Auckland team the Blues at Super Rugby level.
After a stint playing in Australia, Grayson headed for Scotland to join pro side Edinburgh in 2013.
But a knee injury left the rugby union pro in bad shape – and he was encouraged to turn his back on his beloved sport.
The now 33-year-old explained: “When I first arrived in Scotland, I had a medical check before they confirmed my contract.
“They said your MRI scan has come back really, really bad. They said ‘there’s no cartilage and you’ve got these bone spurs in your knee and it’s unstable’. The knee specialist recommended that I should retire from rugby.”
Hart got a second opinion and was prescribed strong painkillers to help with his ailment.
He said: “They all agreed that my knee was really b******d and said if I was going to keep playing rugby, I would need a knee replacement by the time I was 40. That was alarming because I was hoping to keep up this active lifestyle as an old man.
“Doing things like running around playing with my kids and chucking a rugby ball around, maybe playing golf or something.”
Grayson started taking strong painkillers – but he soon began to build up a tolerance to the meds and started to explore natural alternatives.
He discovered that NFL players in the US were taking CBD – short for cannabidiol – to deal with pain. This is a chemical found in marijuana which doesn’t the psychoactive ingredient in the plant, which gets people high.
Hart bought some products online to try during the off season – and they helped make him feel like his old self again.
He said: “As the painkillers started to leave my system, due to me being able to function with the CBD, I felt like a new man.
“I didn’t realise that my new normal on these painkillers was actually so sub optimal. Like my energy levels, my sleep quality, my mood, my gut health.
“Once I got away from the pain, I literally felt so clear and so good, just so much healthier. I said then that I couldn’t go back to the painkillers.”
At that point the player approached his club to ask if CBD was something they would allow him to take.
But they refused as the products weren’t third party certified and the club subjects the players to routine drug tests.
He said: “I told them, I really wanted to take these products and I would like to have been able to do more research to understand them, what the risks are, to make my own informed decision that was on my back.”
The club rejection spurred Grayson and he used his savings to create his own wellness brand Puresport targeted at athletes and those who live an active lifestyle who want to manage their pain using all natural ingredients. It sells a number of wellness products such as CBD oil and balm as well as mushroom capsules and lavender pillow spray.
Grayson, who retired just over a year and a half ago, says the business is now thriving and has even been featured in publications like GQ and Forbes.
The business owner said: “It’s really important to us that we have placed ourselves as a distributor of natural wellness products.
“One of our best selling products is our 1,000 milligramme CBD muscle and joint balm.
“It was actually voted for by multiple media outlets as the UK’s number one muscle and joint balm which was really, really exciting for new business like us.
“It’s so important to us that we educate people on how these ingredients interact with the body naturally and help optimise the body’s natural way of functioning by bringing balance, homeostasis interacting with the body’s receptors.”
WEED OUT PAIN
ADDICTIVE opioids, like tramadol, are regularly prescribed to treat pain in Scotland.
In 2019/2020 more than 790,000 people were handed opiates by medics.
Meanwhile, in 2020 opiates and opioids were implicated in 89 per cent of all drug-related deaths in the country, according to a report by National Records of Scotland.
CBD was discovered in 1940 but it wasn’t until 2019 that clinical research included studies related to anxiety and pain.
Products are now widely available in Scotland and, as long as they contain less than 0.2 per cent THC – the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis – they are legal to buy. In fact, they can be purchased nearly anywhere.
The substance is also starting to be used in medical settings.
Cannabidiol in a spray combined now available in some areas by prescription for the relief of multiple sclerosis symptoms, where other medication hasn’t been a success.
Puresport’s CBD is subject to rigorous third party testing to make sure they meet these standards.
The brand has been lauded by critics and consumers alike, with massive sporting names like Finn Russell, Harry Hopkins and Jim Hamilton coming on board as brand ambassadors after originally being customers.
And the business seems only set to grow as people really focus on being aware of what they’re ingesting into their bodies.
Grayson said: “I think that it’s such an exciting time for people because there’s a real shift in awareness now around what we can do to live healthier lives and function more optimally now but also in the future and the rise in popularity of these kinds of products.”
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