opiates in food - what science says about it?

[asecin]

i was trying to find natural alternatives to synthetic opiates and how to get off them and i thought, what first came to mind, is milk. from what i gather long ago milk has opiates and sedates the baby. i couldnt really find much useful information on this though except its actually milk processed products like cheese that extract the product maximal to the point they actually concentrate higher amount of any opiates available. and still, if thats true, cheese will be banned off the shelves so i couldnt find any information on this either. here is this article i found tho and i sure hope some people who understand biochemistry put some thought into it; http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/do-hidden-opiates-our-food-explain-food-addictions1

interesting how so many popular (some healthy) foods have some opiate or another. any take on this?

 

[Weltmeister]

1. You mean opioids not opiates
2. How would a giant molecule like this pass through the blood brain barrier ?
3. That site isnt a credible source of information

 

[sekio]

Caseomorphins, gluteomorphins and friends from milk are peptides that posess opioid affinity but because of their easily hydrolysed nature they act as crap drugs, pharmacokinetics-wise - obviously cheese and yoghurt and the like aren't analgesics in vivo. Protiens are notorious for being tricky to get from the stomach to the brain in one piece.

There are other opioid peptides out there like DAMGO, DADLE, DPDPE etc that are used as 'tool compounds' to determine opioid receptor binding in vitro but I've never heard of them used as drugs.

 

[asecin]

i guess you missed the point. i wasnt delusional enough to think that foods will get you high (even though it seems people can be addicted to cheese in articles) but i was more interested in how those opioids affect an individual, like do they bring constipation and various allergic rections to someone who cannot tolerate synthetic opiates?
and how can they work to help somehow block withdrawal symptoms in high quantity if you are quitting synthetic opiates, of course not mentally, but physically like reduction of neusia, diarrhea and stomach cramps and muscle ache?

like im thinking a litter of spinach juice with the highest content of casein cheese when withdrawing, might AT LEAST lower physical withdrawal.
and add benzos and antidepressants for psychological problems, is this a bad idea?

anyway, feel free to move this to the narcotics based part of the forum, i was mostly interested in professional opinions on this thats why posted here.

 

[sekio]

I guess if you consume high concentrations of opioidergic peptides you'd get local activity as it bound to the gut mucosa. Presumably it's all peripheral activity like loperamide because the protiens themselves are labile to enzymatic degradation and are too big to diffuse into BBB on their own.

It certainly couldn't hurt anything to eat foods with opioidergic peptides in them in w/d, foods that are high in protien are good for ensuring your body can supply enough of its own endogenous neuropeptides.

 

[Hodor]

i guess you missed the point. i wasnt delusional enough to think that foods will get you high (even though it seems people can be addicted to cheese in articles) but i was more interested in how those opioids affect an individual, like do they bring constipation and various allergic rections to someone who cannot tolerate synthetic opiates?
and how can they work to help somehow block withdrawal symptoms in high quantity if you are quitting synthetic opiates, of course not mentally, but physically like reduction of neusia, diarrhea and stomach cramps and muscle ache?

like im thinking a litter of spinach juice with the highest content of casein cheese when withdrawing, might AT LEAST lower physical withdrawal.
and add benzos and antidepressants for psychological problems, is this a bad idea?

anyway, feel free to move this to the narcotics based part of the forum, i was mostly interested in professional opinions on this thats why posted here.

I don't think you're going to be able to keep down a lot of fatty cheese when you're going through opioid withdrawal. Or to keep it in your bowels for a prolonged amount of time so the casein can be broken down into opioid peptides, for that matter.
(Edit: I agree with sekio that it probably couldn't hurt to eat stomach-friendly dairy products though, if only to keep yourself supplied with the necessary amino acids to make all sorts of neurotransmitters).

Based on my knowledge of the subject, the casomorphin story is pretty much exactly like all those stories about people getting addicted to chocolate because of its phenylethylamine content - in order to get "high" off of chocolate, you'd have to be eat a pound of dark chocolate AND be on an MAOI. In reality, the most "addictive" chocolate tends to be milk chocolate. Know why? Because it's got the "optimum" balance between sugar, fat and flavor, and is thus simply the most pleasant to eat.

Likewise, "cheese addiction" is very unlikely to result from the actual opiopeptides, and much more likely to be the result of cheese being an excellent source of fat and easily digestible protein.
After all, our brains continuously evolved to reward us for supplying our bodies with the proper nutrients, and so it is only natural that eating something that supplies us with energy and nutrients would make us feel good.

See also:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cheese-is-not-addictive-like-crack_us_562ad63de4b0443bb5641eb1 (and yes, I am aware that is HuffPo being the voice of reason)

 

[polymath]

If there were significant quantities of active opioids in foods, you'd find naloxone/naltrexone causing precipitated withdrawal in people with certain dietary habits, but this is not found to happen.

 

[asecin]

well, interestingly enough i didnt take my pain meds daily as i should and i was struggling with minor cold sweats and anxiety and having a thick slice of cheese pizza put me in a very warm mode. not sure how this acted, but its hard to say its placebo when you withdrawal from opiates and you can definitely feel some change. and thats quite crazy to recommend to opiate addicts to just start munching on pizzas, but it worked for me that day and im shocked it did. still, it was a very minor dope sick feeling, something maybe even anti inflamatories could have helped and some tea. regardless im still curious about opiates in food helping with withdrawals now. specifically curious about spinach, how the hell do rubiscolins act??

 

[brexit]

you could use Kratom to control opiate withdrawal. But the important thing to remember is that there is such thing as Kratom addiction ( we actually do treat patients that have become addicted to Kratom) and the plant is an opioid agonist, which produce similar effects to morphine.
Having a drug replace anther drug, could be a dangerous plan. You don't want to change an addiction for another. There are a number of ways to fully detox from opiates, without a replacement drug such as Kratom.

 

[asecin]

i know i used to do kratom until i developed hepatitis but i was drinking too so it could be the mixture effect that caused it. since then im afraid of kratom and i try to avoid but there is always this exotic attraction to it that i want

 

[Limpet_Chicken]

The curebie howler monkey brigade have been gobbing off about this in autistic folk for years. Some of us apparently do benefit from a casein-free or gluten free or both diet, but otherwise, I've been largely inclined to dump this one in with the Hg as curebie bollocks.

That said, not so much because it was autism speaks and the like that promote stuff like this, but that hardly helped the case