Opioids Cats Claw for Opiate Withdrawal/Tolerance Reduction

[lorax]

I am interested to know if anyone here has used cats claw for either potentiation of opiates or to ease withdrawal symptoms and lower tolerance. I know that it is a NMDA antagonist and have seen positive reports from just a few people, mostly for methadone due to its own NMDA antagonist properties. Thanks everybody

 

[AlphaMethylPhenyl]

I haven't but I wouldn't be surprised if it was used as such given all its other uses.

 

[tricomb]

Anything that claims to reduce opioid tolerance can be pretty much written off as snake oil. NMDA antagonism never did me any good with opioids, but a totally different story with methamphetamines.

 

[Swimmingdancer]

Is Cat's Claw an NMDA antagonist? The only source I have been able to find on the topic was a single Japanese study performed on aquatic frog's eggs:

Rhynchophylline and isorhynchophylline [alkaloids found in Uncaria tomentosa, Cat's Claw] significantly reduced the maximal current responses evoked by NMDA and glycine (a co-agonist of NMDA receptor), but had no effect on the EC(50) values and Hill coefficients of NMDA and glycine for inducing currents. These alkaloids showed no interaction with the polyamine binding site, the Zn(2+) site, proton site or redox modulatory site on the NMDA receptor. These results suggest that rhynchophylline and isorhynchophylline act as noncompetitive antagonists of the NMDA receptor and that this property may contribute to the neuroprotective and anticonvulsant activity of the Uncaira species plant extracts.[Source]

Another study says one of the alkaloids in Cat's Claw blocked some effects of an NMDA antagonist:

Uncarine E [an alkaloid found in Uncaria tomentosa, Cat's Claw] blocked the impairment of passive avoidance performance caused by the nicotinic receptor antagonist mecamylamine and the NMDA receptor antagonist (±)-3-(2-carboxypiperazin-4-yl)-propyl-1-phosphonic acid.[Source]

I'm not yet convinced about oral NMDA antagonists lowering opioid tolerance noticeably in humans, but NMDA antagonists do seem to help somewhat with methadone withdrawal IME and can slightly potentiate opioids IME, and they are supposed to at least help prevent tolerance from rising as quickly. I have no way to gauge whether or not they have slowed the rise of tolerance for me.

There are a few threads on using NMDA antagonists to reduce or prevent tolerance. Here's a quote from a thread I started on the subject:

People keep saying that it is impossible to decrease or reverse tolerance, that taking certain drugs/supplements will only slow future increases of tolerance, but what are we basing this on? Just that we personally have not been able to do it?

But what about all these animal studies? Here are just a few:

In these mice, the co-administration of memantine and MRZ 2/579, but not dextromethorphan, resulted in the reversal of morphine tolerance [to analgesia]. [Source]

These results suggest that LY274614 and MK801 [NMDA antagonists] do not alter the expression of tolerance but actually modify the development of morphine tolerance. Morphine-tolerant animals [given a subcutaneous injection of] LY274614 for 7 days regained their analgesic sensitivity to morphine. Furthermore, LY274614 also reversed the development of tolerance and restored morphine sensitivity in tolerant animals that continued to receive morphine.[Source]

A tenfold increase in morphine [tolerance] produced by morphine pellets was completely reversed by ketamine given subcutaneously. Intraspinal morphine produced a 46-fold increase in [tolerance], which was almost completely attenuated by the coadministration of intraspinal ketamine.[Source]

A single acute injection of lithium chloride (LiCl) or magnesium chloride (MgCl(2) at the same doses (5mg/kg) reversed the expression of tolerance to the anticonvulsant effects of morphine (1mg/kg, ip). [Source]

As for Cat's Claw, I haven't tried it yet personally, but it sounds like it has a lot of interesting properties, regardless of whether or not it's mechanisms of action are understood, so I might get some to try (to add to my absolutely enormous collection of supplements/vitamins herbs 8) lol).