AMA #9: Kratom Risks, Does Infrared Sauna Work & Journaling Benefits
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Welcome to the huberman lab podcast, where we discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I am Andrew huberman and am a professor of neutral logy and optimal gy at stanford school of medicine today. Isn't ask me anything episode or A M A.

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And for those of you that are not human and lab podcast premium subscribers, you can still hear the first twenty minutes of today's episode and determine whether not becoming a premium of subscriber is for you. So without for there or do, let's get to answer in your questions. The first question is about cradock, and the question is, what are the short and long term effects of taking cradock?

For those of you that haven't heard of cradock, cradock is a substance that comes from a tree that grows naturally in indonesia. The tree itself is called micro ghana speciosa, and it's been known for hundreds of years or more. We don't really know how long, but at least for a couple of hundred years that when people choose the leaves of this tree, they experience a mild stimulant effect.

And there's also a process of extraction whereby you can take the leaves and get high concentrations of cradock that nowadays is packaged into various supplements, most often consumed in capsule form, although sometimes it's sold in raw powder form. Here's the key thing. Understand about car dom.

Indeed, at low dosages, cradock has a mild stimulant effect. However, at higher dosages, IT has what's called an analogy sic effect, that is a pain killing effect. And IT acts as a sensitive and crates m itself access an opioid in the body.

This is what's making cradock a very controversial topic these days, in particular, because most people have heard of the so called O P O ID crisis. The O P O I crisis has been a turn going to largely center around issues that have taken place in the united states, although these issues definitely extend beyond the borders of the united states. But the opioid crisis is essentially the overconsumption.

And widespread addiction to opioid oppos include things like morphine. Oxy coton, also called oxy content, and there are other obo ID similar to those compounds, all of which have the general effect of being pain killers and seditious. And in some people, again, some people illicit a sense of euphoria, in particular at low to moderate dosages.

However, people quickly develop a tolerance to those drugs and need to consume more and more of them in order to get the effect that they initially got from a lower dosage. And they are not just highly habit forming. They're highly addictive.

And we can distinguish between habit forming and addictive by simply saying that addictive means people will continue to take something or do something despite negative consequences. There are other relevant definitions of addiction as well. I define addiction more broadly as the progressive narrowing of the things that give you pleasure.

And indeed, when people get addicted to opiates, IT is a very bad picture. IT often hammers many, many areas of their lives, and seriously so, so the opposite crisis refers to the overprescription of oppoi drugs that sort of what is generally taken to mean. But IT also includes accessing opposites such as morphine, oxy, COO, IT, set through grey market sources, through black market sources, and on and on.

And of course, the acquisition of the drugs is just one piece, is also the overconsumption of those drugs, and of course, the addiction to those drugs, which has proved to be so pernicious ous. So what is this up to do with cradock? Cradock is also in O, P O, and we will talk about how IT differs in its opioid properties from the drugs I just talked about because IT is different from morphine and hydrocodone, but IT also has some similar properties as well.

But the deal with cradle is that a good number of people out there have managed to win themselves off oppoi, such as morphine, hydrocodone, through the use of cry dom. And that has been used as justification for keeping cradock on the marketing and keeping IT legal. However, and this is a very important however, claim itself has also proved to be not only habit forming but addictive, especially when taken a dosages that exceeded that lower dose that just generally creates a bit of stimulant, a little bit of you four effect when people start taking higher dosages of cradock.

IT is very clear that he does become addictive and itself is very hard to come off of, so much so that people experiences so called IT cradock withdraw. Now, the reason I mentioned that cradock has been used by a good number of people to win themselves off of the more potent forms of prescription opioids is that when I solicited for questions without cradock on social media, IT was a very binary response. In fact, there was one camp, a very rabbit camp, that said, create him as terrible.

I took this stuff. I got addicted. IT was extremely hard to come off of. There were additional comments in there, such as, I know somebody who literally had to go to rehab because of Crystal, who developed a bunch of other addictions because of cradock. Essentially many, many responses of people who had only bad experiences with cradock, meaning they liked enough at first that they continue to take IT, and IT became addicted for them, or somebody that they know. However, there was another camp that was equally void, which kept saying no, if one really add hears to the lower dosages of cradock, cradock itself can be a useful tool for getting off other ops.

And there were even a few bonus fied medical professionals, medical doctors, that is, and I happen to know them and their reputations is quite good, who tried in and sort of reconcile the two camps by saying, indeed, if one kind of void taking create dom at all you should. There is no reason to take the thing thinking that it's couldn't be good for you. You would be wise to avoid because there is a high probability if you take IT at a given dosage or a dosage that is going to get your brain and body into a state of euphoria and algesir and that sort of classic opi effect, that it's going to become a habit forming and addicting for you.

That said, the same medical professionals acknowledged that a fair number of people that they knew manage to get off of the more potent forms of oppoi, such as morphine, oxy code and so forth, using core dom. And they said, well, if it's a choice between being addicted to morphine and hydrocodone versus taking cryo m and addicted to those substances, and cradock somehow allow them to tape off of those substances, that they would look more favorable upon cradock if, and only if, they would also commit to progressively lowering their dose of cradock and eventually coming off of cradock. So the general take away from all of that is if you can avoid taking craig m, meaning if you haven't taken IT already, don't.

And that reminds me of a very important point, which a guest on the huberman lab gas docker, Robert marika, who A M D N P H, my colleague at stanford school medicine, is a world expert on the mechanisms underlying addiction and dopamine and druggy enforcement, among many other things. What he said on the podcast is absolutely true, which is that IT is impossible to get addicted to a substance that you've never consumed. That might seem obvious.

But think about that one again, IT is impossible to get addict or to a substance that you've never consumed. So I think the safer statement to make is if you have not tried cradock, you would be wise to avoid IT because you stand a chance to become addicted to IT. If, however, you are somebody that addicted to other forms of opp, O, S, you absolutely should talk your physician about that and how to get off of those oppos.

But there is evidence that some people have used car dom to successfully win themselves off the more pot forms of oppos that I talked about, namely morph e and hydrocodone as well as a few others. Now if you're somebody who already takes care, dom, you need to be very thoughtful about the dosage that you take, and you also need to be thoughtful about the fact that people differed dramatically in their response to opiate. This is also important, and people do not talk about this enough.

We hear, for instance, that oh, you know, if people are taking anywhere from one to five grams, maybe one to six grammes of cradock to per day, that's keeping IT in the dosage range for which people don't generally tend to get addicted. You'll hear things like that. And by the way, when I say one to five or one to six grams per day, i'm not talking about the individual compounds that are present in cradock. There are couple of different plants alcopops i'll talk about in the moment that are present in, and these have different effects on the opioid system.

So nowadays, some of the companies that sell cradock and by the way, that is sold over the counter as a supplement IT doesn't not require prescription to purchase, at least at this point time in the united states, some of these products will have a higher concentration of one or the other alcohol ids within them such that you can't really compare one gramm of one brand of cradock to one gram of another brand of cradock because they can have wildly different levels of these different alcohol ds. And these different alcohol ds have widely different impact on different aspects of your brain and body biology, in particular, how much they tend to impact the so called in dargental oppoi system. okay.

So when we talk about dosages, we have to keep this in the back of our mind, and we have to keep in the back of our mind that there does seem to be a sub group of people. We don't know how big of a sub group of people is, but we know it's not everyone. But IT, somewhere between ten and forty percent of people seem to respond to opioid in a particularly poor way.

They really like them. And perhaps not surprisingly, people outside of that category don't tend to like oppos. I can certainly say that I am somebody who, when i've been prescribed things like vacate in or any other options ID post surgery for pain.

I hate taking those drugs. I absolutely hate IT. I'd rather deal with the pain.

They make me nauseous. They make me feel terrible. That said, I know people who love O Y. It's like a natural fit for their chemistry. In the sense that IT tends to evoke more euphoria, they just immediately like the feeling. Some of you may remember the episode of the human law cast that I did about alcohol. And there two, I discussed the fact that about eight to ten percent of people who consume alcohol get an increased dopamine response to alcohol, is not observed in other people.

And that particular sub group of people is very, very at risk for developing alcohol use disorder, sometimes called alcoholics m because they can drink in away, and they experience a high from drinking in a way that other people simply do not experience. Now, like everybody else, they consume too much alcohol. They get drunk.

So it's not about the drunk effect. It's about the dopamine and other sorts of chemicals that are released in those people in response to alcohol that other people just don't seem to experience at the same level of potency. So again, with things like cradock and the other opposites, there's a category of people and into much larger category of people, again, ten to forty percent.

We don't know exactly how many because the studies are not really completed and aren't enough of those studies yet, unfortunately. But when those people take an opposite, wo oh wow, do they like IT? And those people in particular are very much at risk for developing an addiction to opioid.

And so those people especially should never, ever go near freedom if they haven't or if they are already taking care. Dom, these are the people that are constantly ratcheting up their dose. These are the people that tell you, no, i'm not addicted.

But if you were to say, hey, all right, well then let's do an experiment where you don't take care, dom, for a week. Those are going to be the people that are suddenly going to get anxious about the mire idea of that. I've also talked about this in reference to cannabis when I did an episode about cannabis, and i'm not putting a blanket statement out there about cannabis being good or bad on that episode.

I talked about the fact that Kenny is doesn't do have various diapered te accuses, but that there are good number of people who rely on cannabis for anxiety control and other ways of modulating their brain chemistry and bodily chemistry, such that if you were to say, hey, are you addicted to cannabis? Theyd say, no, I don't have to smoke cannabis, I don't have to take my edibles but if you were to push them a little bit and say, are right, well then know what's doing. Experiment where you don't consume any cannabis in any form for ten days.

They don't like the idea of that experiment at all. So much so that were they to run that experiment, they would experience a lot of the withdraw symptoms associated with addiction. So I can't, in good faith say that cryo m is safe for everybody because there is simply not now is IT safer than the other opp OS.

And if so, why? In order to address that, lets take a short gLance at the pharmacist of cradock and how IT works in terms of its noral chemistry in the body. I'm going to keep this pretty brief because in the future i'm going to do and extended episode all about O B oids.

And I will include create dom in that conversation. But just to back up a little bit and discuss what O B oids are. B OS are compounds.

They can activate this so called indigenous opposite system. All of us have within our brain body the capacity to release our own opinions. That's right, you have opioid within your body.

They are released from neurons, and they bind to so called opioid receptions. Perhaps some of you have heard this so called the runners high. The runners high is A U fork state.

It's a fairly mild u four state in most cases, but it's A U four state induced by long duration effort A K A, the runner high. The runner high is just a phrase used to explain that when we engage in long duration, repetitive action effort, the body starts releasing these endogenous ous opinions. They buying to receptors, and they trigger things like analgesia relief from pain.

They trigger my euphoria. They tend to change our perception of the outside world, make things look more beautiful, shiny. They give things a little bit of a shine. What I just described is a mild version of what people experience when they take something like morphine. When people take morphine, there's a more of a sensitive effect, there's more of a you four effect and there's more of a dream like effect.

And again, IT will depend on those such cradock and morphine and hydrocodone all have the property of acting like the inauguration of oids, but at much higher potency when you bring them into your system, they cross the brain barrier. So they go into the brain and they bind to a number of different opioid recept tors. There's the new opioid recept, by the way, these names all follow greek alphabet letters s.

So the new O, P, O ID receptor, the capper O P O ID receptor, there are a bunch of different ones. Cryo m binds preferentially to the new opioid receptor and somewhat to the cap opioid recept. There's a big misconception out there.

A lot of people, especially people who are proponents of cradock, will say, no morphine and hydrocarbon, the new opp o ID cept, or whether crayon bines the cap O P O ID septa. So it's a different compound, very, very different. Not true, not true.

Craft, m, morphine and hydro done all bind to the new O P O ID recept. And that's what's largely responsible for its opp o ID like effects, especially when you get the dosage up to a level where you start getting the mile sedation, the analgesia, the pain relief. And keep in mind, a lot of people are taking care dom because they want pain relief.

And when that new opposite reception system is activated, IT indirectly activates a lot of the reinforcement circuitry in the brain that relates to dopamine E N sertorius. This is another area that will go into and more debt t in the future. But there's been a lot of controversy.

People say, oh, you know, cradock doesn't trigger the dopamine in system. Therefore, it's not addictive. But that is simply not true. IT indirectly activate the reinforcement circuitry that includes both dopamine and but its primary effect is to hit this new opiate receptor system that exists in a bunch of places in the brain, but mainly in the brain stem, and the structure called the paraaortic tal grain nucleus, which then provides pain relief that triggers a number of different shifts and cognition. An is what creates that mild euphoria is a.

Now how can we be so confident that cradock is acting so similarly to hydrocodone and to morphine, albeit with lower potency? And the reason is, if you give people a drug that blocks the new opal ID reception prior to them taking cradock, they don't experience any of the classic effects of taking care. Dom, no euphoria, no analgesia, no sedation um even at the low dosage is no mild stimulant effect.

So we really have to look at cradock as an opposite OK. That's just the honest truth. And if you're somebody who doesn't like this message because you like cradock, i'm not telling you that you don't like cradock.

I'm telling you you likely like cryo m because it's an opposite. So again, if you go online and you start asking questions about cradock, again, you're going to see these two camps. You're going to see the creative m is terrible. It's addictive. It's everything bad camp and then you're going to to see the other camp out there very vocal as well talking about how cryo m helped them avoid other things that are worse.

And you know, this is an argument that, Frankly, I don't think we want to lean on, right? The idea that substance a is not as bad as substance b and that making substance a unavailable is just gonna send everyone running for substance be, you know, that's a weak argument, Frankly, right? I heard this argument around cannabis and by the way, I I think pretty baLanced about cannabis.

If you listen the epsom I did on cannabis, I think you agree that I believe that kanna is s has its their reputed applications. I also believe that Young people, especially Young males with a pretty disposition to psychosis, should not be taking high concentration T H. C, because the data tell us they are already at risk of psychosis, and they are a much greater risk of psychosis if they do so.

I think i'm pretty baLanced about the story on cannabis, but I often hear the argument, oh, cannabis isn't bad as alcohol and therefore kenna is is good. That's simply not rational. What we should be saying is whether not it's cannabis or alcohol or cradock or any substance for that matter, what are the potential benefits? What are the potential risks? And again, this is far too much than we can go into in this ama and we will go into in the future fulling episode of the human man lab podcast.

But the other thing to really keep in mind is the lack of regulation over cradock supplements. Now as many of you know, I am a fan of many, not all, but many supplements in certain conditions. I always say behaviors first, the nutrition then, if and only if it's needed, rely on supplementation.

But supplementation is a big category. But when we're talking about supplements that are oppoi compounds, I start to get nervous because of the high abuse potential and the high addiction potential of opioid and cry. Dom is included in that category.

A couple of other key notes about cradock. While death directly from cradock is fairly rare, IT has happened now. Hydrocodone, morphine suppress repetition. Now he is suppressed breathing by way of a mechanism that, if you're listener, the huberman and lab podcast you know about, which is the so called physiological sign, many of you, for me, talk about the physiological size, something that you do voluntarily, the double and hell through the nose, and then a long x sale in order to rapidly reduce your level of stress. As far as we know that the fastest way to deliberately lower your level of stress.

But the physiological size was discovered in the one thousand nine hundred and thirties as a spontaneous pattern of breathing that occurs involuntarily in sleep in order to reinflated the lungs and offload carbon dioxide and bring oxygen back into the system on the subsequent breath. When I interview doctor jack feldman, who is a professor at university, california, s. Angeles, and really the pioneer of the modern neuroscience understanding of respiration.

He talked about some studies in his laboratory that we're expLoring why people die when taking opioid. This is a major issue, associate, the opposite crisis. And what he mentioned was that the opposite bind to particular receptors in the brain stem locations that generate physiological size.

So opioids, when taking as drugs, suppress psychological sign and do so during sleep. And lack of adequate aspiration, meaning people stop reading during sleep, is one of the primary reasons why people die when they take oppos. Now, cradock is not known to suppress aspiration when taken at low to moderate dosages, but when combined with any other oppos, and certainly when combined with alcohol, IT can suppress aspiration.

And while the data on this are fairly scanned, there is some evidence that case dom induce death is caused by suppression of the respiration system. So again, death due to taking cryo m at the dosages that are recommended almost commercial packaging is fairly rare. Although IT has happened, it's unclear if happened because I was taking a combination with other compounds that seems likely.

But we can't forget that a lot of people are taking care dom at much higher dosages and in fact, progressively higher and higher dosages from these over the counter sources. And with increased dosage, there is, yes, an increased risk of respiratory failure. So again, all of this points to the fact that cradock is simply not a benign substance.

So if we're going to be very honest, the addictive potential of cradock is real. IT is exacerbated for some people compared to others, but IT is real. It's very similarities to other more potent forms of opiate or what they get attractive for some people who are trying to come off those more posting form of obvious.

But the goal, of course, is to completely come off all oios. And creating itself can be a bit of a trap. IT can be a trap in the sense that people who have never taken other oppos can become addicted to create them itself.

That is absolutely clear. That can happen. IT has happened in a great number of people. It's also clear that cradock can potentially be a trap.

Notice I said potentially, because if people are trying to come off other more potent forms of opposites, and then they use cradock to do that and then they're rattening up their dosage of cradock such that they're now matching the inaudible response to create them in a way that doesn't really distinguish from the effects that they were getting from machine and hydrocodone. Well, then they're just using a different form of morphine and hydrocodone. And i'm sure that some of you are out they are saying that is ridiculous.

You cannot compare the effects of cradock to the effects of hydrocodone, but the potency is about one six of hydrocodone. And there are people out there who are just increasing and increasing both the dosage and modifying the type of crane m that they're taking so that they're getting the crane m that has a particular the high concentration of one of the alcohol ds that hits that new opp o ID recept hardest. And in doing so, sure they're not getting the pure hydrocodone fect, but they're getting really close.

So my advice would be if you haven't touch cradock, don't touch IT at all ever. If you are taking care, dom, you need to take note of what we just discuss. Thank you for joining for the beginning of this ask me anything episode to hear the full episode and to hear future episodes of these.

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