The Pharmacology of California Poppy

[Alchemica]

Keen to know people's California Poppy experiences. I want to grow these a bit larger scale one day.

 

"California poppy has been recognized on a mental, emotional, spiritual level for enhancing vitality and warmth surrounding the heart and providing self-acceptance and self-awareness "

 

These contain alkaloids and extracts have affinity for 5HT1A and 5-HT7 receptors and GABAergic activity.

 

The California poppy is known in folk medicine for its sedative, anxiolytic, and antinociceptive effects. These effects have been traditionally assigned to protopine and allocryptopine. Both alkaloids act as weak stimulators of the binding of GABAA receptor agonists in the rat brain, as anti-inflammatory agents and as acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. Another aporphine alkaloid isolated from this plant, namely, N-methyllaurotetanine (NMT), was reported to act as antagonist at the serotonin 5 receptor (EC50 = 155 nM, nM). Protopine and allocryptopine were also found to block human serotonin and noradrenaline transporters (hSERT and NERT) and possess antidepressant-like effects on animal models. However, it is not clear whether typical pharmacy preparations (i.e., 300 mg of dry plant material per capsule) contain sufficient quantities of these alkaloids required to induce desired biological effects. Even though the presence of NMT in this plant has been clearly established, its content in the aerial parts of this perennial herb is currently unknown.
 

It is evident from HPLC analysis that protopine and α-allocryptopine levels in the aerial parts of this herb are too low to modulate significantly the chloride-ion flow across the GABAA receptors at traditional doses. You have to go beyond the 300mg doses... in order to achieve important medicinal effects (regarding relatively low alkaloid levels determined in aerial parts of this plant), one would need to increase the dried plant dosage above 1 g

 

From: Modulatory Effects of Eschscholzia californica Alkaloids on Recombinant GABAA Receptors

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/bri/2015/617620/fig1/

 

 I find they're quite nice, a decent calmative at higher doses. The typical dose of 300mg doesn't do much of anything... You can't just puff away on leaf, you want the root and stem exuding 'orange opium' IMO. These are calming and emotional without being numbing.