https://www.kratomscience.com/2021/03/1 ... ak-sharma/
Dr. Sharma earned his PhD under Dr. McCurdy at the University of Florida and is carrying on with the research Dr. McCurdy began. It's quite interesting how well Dr. Sharma's research lines up with a lot of the "common wisdom" I've seen here. A few examples:
Talking about extracts [and why they are probably a bad idea]:
Use of kratom in treating opioid dependence [and why it might be better than anything else]:So everything, even we drink too much water, that is going to cause a problem. That same rule applies to here. So we have to control what we are taking, and how much should we take? Right? So that’s the concern. Up to a certain concentration, no problem .... you have to think about it. There is a simple way. So we drink our coffee, right? We boiled it and we drink it. But we don’t take coffee capsules. We can take caffeine but that will have a different effect. The same rule applies here. So you boil your tea. It’s absolutely different than the organic extracts available in the marketplace. Those are very highly – I call those standardized extracts because their content never changes. You analyze those, every time you will get the same mitragynine content. We are even using a few of those extracts to isolate our alkaloids, because it is cheaper to isolate those extracts from the leaf in those capsules. So just think about it, those differences there. You will take one kilo of kratom tea, it will be equal to like 20 capsules. So that’s the problem.
Verifying the effect of tree age on leaf potency [yep, it exists]:So if you think about what we need for any opioid dependence or opioid withdrawal symptom – like what kind of treatment do we need? So what is in the marketplace, either they will give you a weak opioid agonist so it will occupy the receptor, but it will not activate that particular pathway which is responsible for the problem. The second treatment is you will go through alpha-2 agonist properties. Like, you do clonidine, you do lofexidine. But when you look at the mitragynine molecule and you look at the mitragynine receptor binding data, so first thing, mitragynine is a partial opioid agonist. You give any amount of mitragynine, the maximum effect you can achieve is 40% of any full opioid agonist like Demerol or morphine. So you will never reach that particular high effect. Then, it shows activity through alpha-2 receptors. The same activity you get through clonidine and lofexidine. And then it acts through serotonin receptors as well as dopamine. So the mitragynine itself is a combination of four drugs given for receptor binding and receptor occupancy, which you need to treat opioid withdrawal. And that is the reward that this molecule has. It’s like you’ve mixed four drugs in a treatment therapy to treat opioid dependence and you can get the same thing with one mitragynine molecule. So that is the basic difference.
On supposed kratom fatalities [the real problem is kratom doesn't go well with fentanyl]:... the study of the trees that were in the greenhouse. It seems like there was not a lot of the alkaloids that are in some of the commercial kratom products. Do you think the young age of the trees accounted for that or were there any other factors?
On the pointlessness of FDA's import ban:don’t remember if you have seen a news report on kratom in 2019 published in USA Today, with a broad headline written, “Herbal Drug Kratom Linked to Almost 100 Overdose Deaths, CDC States”. So if you read that, and you read the whole news, and you come down, and the last line written is “In most of the kratom-related deaths, fentanyl was also a cause of death.”
Now as a pharmacokineticist, if I look at what can happen, if I were to take mitragynine with fentanyl, what is going to happen? So according to the publications mitragynine is a PGP integrator. PGP [P-glycoprotein] is a transporter which cleans certain drugs out of our brain. It does the same thing with fentanyl. Right? So if I took fentanyl along with mitragynine, then what is going to happen? My brain is not going to clear that fentanyl.
Very worthwhile read.I have concern with the import ban. Because of this import ban, kratom is coming into the US market with alleged contaminates. You must agree with that, that makes it a bad thing. If things will come properly, at the checkpoints, kratom has been tested like we see millions of food material and all supplies around the globe, then why can’t we have this product? We do systemic studies,or find those who can do system trials – either allow it, or completely do the full stop thing. I don’t think there’s any way they can do the full stop thing. But I don’t understand the meaning of the import ban. I think that’s the major cause behind all these problems that are happening.
