• N&PD Moderators: Skorpio

Salvia for Parkinsons?

Super potent muscle relaxant activity? No. If they're indeed being considered for such an experiment, it would be because of their affinity for various dopamine receptors.
.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3082450/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3089685/

It appears that S. divinorum is used to cause tremors, not to inhibit them.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ptr.1898/full

This review deals with the entire Salvia genus, of which there are many species containing various active compounds (thujone, e.g.). Its claims are not specific to S. divinorum nor the salvinorin diterpenoids. As such "antiparkinsonian" may be a different plant entirely, such as S. miltorrhiza:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1357272507002610

This latter plant may provide new avenues for treatment of Parkinsonism beyond dopamine replacement. Nice find; too bad none of us could figure out what it was. It appears the authors of the book may have been the victim of a hasty generalization. Or what one might call a game of scientific telephone.
 
Last edited:
If they're good quality, yes. I tried with dried leaves once. Not fun, took forever to get the leaf bits or if my teeth.

I have done this with extract before, but it always worked better with tincture. I'd consider soaking that 20x in a bit of ethanol and apply bits of that under your tongue.

Not fan of smoked S. divinorum, nor of peppering ADD (eh,'scuse me, NPD?) with subjective reporting, but the chewing of fresh leaves is actually a worthy experience. Around the turn of the millennium I was picking Psilocybes in Oaxaca, and made the obligatory trip to Huatla de Jiminez....aside from the idiotic dreadlocked backpacker contingent, the place was quite interesting. After some poking around found a few people with patches of S. divinorum growing amongst the herbs in their gardens. It is (or was, maybe things have changed) considered a cultigen, as the story back then was that viable seed from such was basically non existent, and the plant survived only from cuttings. Remarkable to see the plant growing in such a cultural context.

Anyways, I had a few trials with chewing and making a quid out of 40-100 fresh leaves. A vastly different experience than smoked, much more palpable, not just a thundering clusterfuck. I got cuttings later in the states and always had a few plants on hand. I don't know enough about the KOR, nor the interplay between such and the Mu and delta receptors, but later trials in much smaller doses had a strange effect during acute opioid withdrawal....vastly different than taking a MOR agonist, yet it ameliorated the symptoms somewhat in an entirely unique way....

Curious about that D2 agonism as well...
 
So it must be this paper - Seeman's lab - I know that the validity of his results have been questioned on here before, so not sure how much I trust this?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19391150

He certainly has a vested interest in pushing the D2 agonism stuff. No one else has repeated his results AFAIK. It's not mentioned in any of the more recent salvinorin A review papers (e.g Cunningham 2011 and Casselman 2013) which suggests other people find it suspicious too.
 
Oneirogens (kappa-opioids) are suspected to alter the sensitivity of the reward pathway and may have other effects on dopamine function.
Awesome, where can I read about the last part of that statement?
 
Top