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Anxiolytic Effect of Erythrina mulungu extract

H

Hamm-ill-ton

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Note to Mods- I'm still having problems logging in, and my wife's car and laptop are stuck in the median of I-94 3 hours north of me, and I don't know when she'll manage to get towed because the State Trooper says they have to wait until he says the weather and traffic levels are low enough. She's been stuck in a rest stop for 6 hours now :( Anyway, not knowing when she'll finally get out, I thought I'd just post this here, and if one of you could be so kind as to forward it to ADD it'd be much appreciated!

E. mulungu, popularly known as mulungu, is a medium well-branched tree native to Southern Brazil, where it is appreciated for its beautiful reddish flowers. Since its flowers have the same color of corals, sometimes this species is also called coral tree.10 In popular medicine, a tincture prepared from the leaf or bark decoction from E. mulungu is used to calm agitation and other disorders of the nervous system, i.e., insomnia and depression.11 It has been demonstrated that acute and chronic treatments with aqueous alcoholic extracts from E. mulungu produce anxiolytic-like effects on a specific subset of defensive behavior in rats exposed in the elevated T-maze (ETM) and in the light-dark transition model (LDTM).12,13 These antianxiety effects were similar to that provoked by the well-known anxiolytic compound diazepam.12,13
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Fulltext is available here: http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/jnprdf/2007/70/i01/html/np060254j.html

I've been trying to find the structure of erythravine, but I've been unsuccessful. One website has what I think is the structure, but it's really tiny, and the link taking you to the full sized image opens a blank page (with a "Close Page" button on it).

Is anyone able to pull it up? It's not in PubChem either.

It doesn't seem like there's been much research into which alkaloid(s) present is responsible for it's anxiolytic effect or even what sort of binding properties the alkaloids have.

Whatever is responsible seems to have an unusual dose-dependent effect, as well, and I don't really buy their hypothesis that it might be due to a change in primary mechanism of action. If I read it right, it says that 200mg/kg = roughly 4mg/kg of diazepam, po.

I'm at home for the holidays and far from my access to institutional accounts, so I'm sure I'm missing a lot of really important info about this plant, but does anyone with more info or experience know if Erythrina mulungu or it's alkaloids are potentially recreational?

I sorta think no because of the diminishing returns, but really, I dunno.
 
Sorry I don't have much to add, but why would diazepam be measured in the ratio of 4mg/kg?
I mean, I weigh 75kg..... thats a lot of diazepam (300mg) to even consider comparing any other drug to...
Maybe its a typo? Sorry, like I said, I don't have much to say here.
 
Goddamn tet lett, always seems to do that! Can log in through athens now though so it doesnt matter.
erythravine.gif

Theyre tetrahydroisoquinoline derivatives, probably quite likely to be psychoactive in some way.

Hope your mrs isnt stuck for too long, breaking down sucks.
 
these trees are used all over the place as an ornamental here in southern california. there are probably 100 on my campus alone
lets hope this blows up, i wanna see hippies fighting cops for some tree scrapings!
beautiful structure though...my simple plant IQs seems to be at work...
 
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Reminds me a bit of thebaine, too. Very interesting.
 
Mulungu... I've always wanted to try this plant.
It sounds like an underrated equivalent to Kava Kava and maybe the only worthwhile herbal alternative to benzos (Wild Lettuce, Hops and all that are shit) ....
 
Not sure why they used 4mg/kg... Are rats less sensitive to it's effects on a mg/kg basis?

I'm kinda surprised no one's tried it here. We're just bunch of nervous geeks, right? ;) lol

I kind of wish there was a binding study done. would be interesting to know if they're selective in their binding, or more like barbs.
 
^ that equates to a dose in humans on the order of 20-35mg

a strong dose is used to elicit a sound effect o gauge off
 
Do you think it has any recreational effect? At high doses does it produce drunkeness?
 
Possibly, I can feel the effect even with only a table spoon of the raw product. But it could ruin the therapeutic benefits ofcourse,
 
i think that constitutes a large dose so i hope you'd feel something at that level and obviously should expect to, though i doubt it is quite akin to EtOH intoxicated
 
I've started using a couple of teaspoons of powdered bark for my anxiety, it is quite effective. A couple of teaspoons is roughly 5-6g. The study mentioned above, says they got 5g of resin, from 300g of bark (i've not actually checked your link, but I think there has only been one actual study of this plant?), so that works out at about 200mg of the extract they were talking about.

I'd say 5-6g has a relaxing effect, much like 5-10mg of valium. 7-10g really helps me with my sleep, I don't really have a need for sleeping tablets anymore (recreation aside ;) ). 7g and 3mg of melatonin and I get some of the best sleep I've had in years; have awful insomnia otherwise.

As a little side note/query, about 6 months ago, I purchased 500g of the bark form a vendor within my country, this bark made a red tea after simmering for roughly 30 mins, a very dark red, almost brown. I hardly used this stuff, don't get me wrong, it worked, but brewing up a red bark tea every night whilst living in a shared house, isn't the easiest thing in the world, so it went in the draw.

About a week ago I ordered 500g from a Brazilian/US vendor, this stuff was pre-powdered, which meant I could either cap it, or simply shovel it in and wash it down. The strange thing is, this new powdered stuff, is a pail green sort of colour.

Both seem to have slightly differing effects, both sedating, both anxiety relieving, but the red one is more effective at putting me to sleep, whereas the green one is slightly better at relieving my anxiety. Not sure what the difference between the 2 of them may be... Perhaps one is erythrina velutina, and one is erythrina mulungu? Who knows...

I remember reading somewhere, that it has no addiction potential, but I'm not sure if that can be possible if it is gaba recpetor agonist (I have no idea if this is correct terminology; google researcher =D ), so shouldn't that make it pretty damn addictive? Even if not pyshically, anything that relieves anxiety is going to be habit forming (neccessity more like).

In all, I haven't found a huge potential for recreation, but there is huge benefits in relation to anxiety and sleep. The price of it makes it cheap enough to try even if your not to sure, I got a plb (~453g) for $24, shame the shipping cost me $30, still very cheap in comparison to valium/ lorazepam/zolpidem and a whole host of other stuff for anxiety and sleep.

Having said all this, I've only been using it intermittently for about a week , I'll try and to remember to write an update in a couple of weeks, hopefully things will still be looking rosy.
 
Careful looking at erythrina species, in case one makes a mistaken ID, some contain some fairly nasty toxins IIRC.
 
I use this for sleep.
I did two acetone washes of the bark and reduced it down 40x (2grams from 80 grams). I take 100-200mg of this in a capsule to sleep, and it is the best thing I have ever taken apart from MMQ (with that if I took a small dose orally, could sleep right through the night, and woke up feeling so amazing and energetic in the morning).
I found you can smoke the extract that I made, again for a similar effect to MMQ, a sudden sedating rush, with the same bizarre incredibly fast blur of concepts and images, it also made me some slight co-ordination, but nothing anywhere near as severe as MMQ itself. The high itself isn't that euphoric, but it is pleasant, it lasts for a very short period of time.
 
How long did the acetone washes take? Do you think it removed all of the goodies?

Limpet_Chicken said:
Careful looking at erythrina species, in case one makes a mistaken ID, some contain some fairly nasty toxins IIRC.
Click to expand...

I got both varieties from ethnobotanical suppliers, I can't see either of them sending me anything dodgy, there both quite big and fairly reputable.
 
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Mmm, I could order 50 grams of this quite cheaply. 'I crash here', you compared 5-6 grams to 5-10mg of diazepam; how similar was it to valium?
 
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