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Harmal : The Genus Peganum.

Abstract

Harmal, as an entheogen, may also help to make the impossible true by enhancing the power of the deep imagination to make alterations, to modulate the physical structure of the body. This may sound far-fetched, but given the cascades of psychoneuroimmunology, plausible. The possible ability of harmal to tune the putative lympho-neuric syncytium through a carefully orchestrated modulation of scores or hundreds of different serotonin receptors, with even a single dose or just a few doses, is clinically appealing. Such occasional or “intercurrent” treatments with harmal as a tuning agent may target both the lymphatic and the neurological aspects of the syncytium in a single tuning or reset to facilitate global modulation in order to lower oxidative tension and inflammation throughout the network, to relax and help allow to heal both the psyche and soma. At low doses, harmal also has potential as a daily supplement, as a nutrient, antibiotic, antiparasitic, and antiviral, or as a preservative for the foods themselves. Low doses would be one way to avoid systemic toxicity, while still having some possible sufficient antidepressant, antidiabetic, or antiparkinsonian effect. Low doses of other drugs, for example ketamine (Bauchat et al. 2011), have revealed the potential for very low doses, lower than the pharmacologically expected therapeutic ones, to stimulate clinically meaningful responses. Low doses, for example of LSD (White and Appel 1982), may provide pharmacological cues to organisms to help “remember” or ease future therapeutic interventions. Such cues may act by hormesis-based mechanisms to aid in the process of activating and tuning lympho-neuric circuits to carry and sustain healing responses in brain and soma in support of disease resistance (Calabrese et al. 2016; Raefsky and Mattson 2017). Technically, hormesis refers to a biphasic dose response of a drug with stimulation at low doses and inhibition at high doses (Calabrese et al. 2016), and it is critical to keep in mind when thinking about the phyto-metabolome (the totality of small compounds, i.e., the totality of metabolites,) of a plant. The proper study of metabolomes is metabolomics, which employs chemical analysis by nuclear magnetic resonance, chromatography, mass spectrophotometry, and related methods to help define the totality in terms of both principal components and general features, i.e., gestalts. Drug developers can exult in P. harmala and the entire Peganum genus for the many interesting leads they provide. Certainly the race is on to synthesize the next super-harmine or super-vasicine—one that is bigger and better, more specific, potent, and well-tolerated. Harmine and the harmala alkaloids are important not only for Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer, but also in the broader context of psychiatry. The serotonin 2A receptor (5-HT2a), to which these compounds’ strong binding is common with psilocybin, and which is also implicated in the action of antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs, may serve as convergence point (Howland 2016) of different streams and philosophies of psychopharmacology, and with help from within, to psychopharmacognosy as well. Interactions of serotonin with opioid receptors, and in cross-talk with opioid pathways, is an emerging area of research as 2017 gets underway and will demand a translational approach to help enable clinical benefit from these latest findings (Graeff 2017). Indeed, antipain synergy between harmal and opium (Papaver somniferum) may point the way to advances in clinical dolorology and end-of-life issues (Shoaib et al. 2016). Letting go is an important precept of most healing. Frequently we “hold on” to patterns of thought and behavior that run counter with the needs of our bodies, mind, spirit, soul, and overall health. If we want symptoms and diseases to “go away,” we, the patients, must first let them go! They will never go unless we let them go. In the end, of course, we also need to let go of life itself before we embark on the “ultimate journey” (Grof 2006) due us all. When the time comes, harmal also has the potential for yeoman’s service in facilitating the passage.