Comment by Dylan16807
9 hours ago
> The problem is that the gap between a medicinal dose and a toxic dose is very small
What's this claim based on? I don't think it's the rat study linked nearby. I looked through it and they didn't really compare doses.
If it's a linear effect on dropping blood pressure, that seems like an overblown way to talk about it. If it's something else, I'd love to hear more.
If you maintain the pairing with the statement about the concentration in the honey varying, it's somewhat harder to argue that it is overblown.
The concentration varies considerably due to bees harvesting pollen from different flowers and from some batches of honey being mixed and some not.
> If you maintain the pairing with the statement about the concentration in the honey varying, it's somewhat harder to argue that it is overblown.
Those are two separate worries connected by an "and". I'm not arguing worry #2 is overblown.
And it sounds like the problem of variance is that it isn't small. If one batch can be 5x as strong as another (made up number), then even a pretty good medicinal response curve leaves you vulnerable to that much variance.
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I also wondered why, if it has this effect, it has not been purified to a standard concentration (or synthesized) and used to treat high blood pressure. Possibly because accidental overdose can be fatal?
Grayanotoxin is a neurotoxin with a lot of unpleasant side effects. It would make a terrible drug for high blood pressure.
because we already have actual medication that does that in a controllable and well-characterized way
There could be a case for doing it for people that will refuse anything but natural if it doesn't have other problems, assuming not synthesized, but there's a problem of funding the safety studies and standardization process if a patent is unlikely to result.