This is your brain on cannabidiol

"TechKnow" visited Colorado to learn more about cannabidiol (CBD), a marijuana extract low in THC that has been helping counteract seizures in patients with epilepsy, including children. According to Epilepsy Foundation, one in 26 people in the United States currently struggles with epilepsy, a neurological disorder that can result in one person having as many as 30 seizures a day. For parents, CBD could hopefully be a way to prevent their children from joining approximately 50,000 people who die from epilepsy complications each year.

To first understand how cannabidiol affects seizures, it's important to know what happens in the brain during an epileptic seizure.

A family medical marijuana operation in Colorado Springs first began by treating patients diagnosed with cancer. They later discovered that CBD had positive affects on seizures.

The are two leading theories on why CBD works so well against seizures. The first is that CBD modulates calcium influx in neurons, controlling electrical excitability in the brain. The other theory is that CBD reduces swelling in the brain, but those theories aren't the focus of current UK trials collecting data about CBD and could take years to truly confirm. 

Watch "TechKnow," Sunday at 7:30PM ET/4:30PM PT on Al Jazeera America to learn more.