Peppermint - Pure-Castile Magic Soap: Cool, Refresh, and Awaken with Invigorating Peppermint
https://www.drbronner.com/products/peppermint-pure-castile-l...
Dr. Bronner invented the peppermint oil soap for soiled diapers
https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/1978/nov/02/cover-look-f...
Created in California: How Dr. Bronner’s became the soap for every subculture
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-07-12/dr-bronner...
>Perhaps inspired by that experimental ethos, customers have discovered their own unusual uses in the years since Emanuel started mixing gallons of peppermint castile soap out of his Pershing Square tenement apartment in 1948. [...]
>David, Mike and Lisa Bronner grew up in Glendale, not giving much thought to the prospect of one day taking over the family business and generally regarding their grandfather as a bewildering figure.
>“My granddad was always talking about uniting ‘Spaceship Earth,’ and it was kind of sailing over our heads,” David said.
>“He’d be talking to us as if we were all PhD students in religious studies,” Mike said of visits to Emanuel’s home when the siblings were in elementary school. “He was blind, and every once in a while he would say, ‘Are you there?’ and we’d be like, “All-one, Grandpa!’ And he’d be like, ‘Very good. OK, I want you to recite the peppermint bottle.’”
Lisa Bronner: The Poetry of the Lavender Label
https://www.lisabronner.com/the-poetry-of-the-lavender-label
>The label on the quart size of the Lavender Pure-Castile Magic Soap holds the greatest insight for me into his motivations and goals. The Peppermint label records the tenets of his Moral ABC, his guidelines for humanity to find unity and a path forward. But it is the Lavender quart that hosts his poetry, and in that I see his heart. [...]
>"To keep my health! To do my work! To love, to live!"
>"Great peace is found in little busyness."
>"Work well yourself and work for all."
>"Til we rally, raise, unite!"
>"All-One-God-Faith, All-One! Unite!"
>"Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime."
>"Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal."
>"Let us then be up and doing ... still achieving, still pursuing"
>"In all we do, let us be generous, fair & loving to Spaceship Earth and all its inhabitants."
>"We're ALL-ONE OR NONE! ALL-ONE!"
pretty tiny amount of peppermint was consumed
FWIW, I had an Indian co-worker who took peppermint oil frequently and said that it was very good for his upset stomach.
that said, there is a GRADE-assessed systematic review and meta on mint (PMC11587584) and this linked study's results are 7x the pooled effect size (SBP -8.5mmHg vs -1.2mmHg) of the other RCTs. the review also concludes that more high quality RCTs are needed before anything approaching clinical significance
the wildly disproportionate effect size indicates to me that this is one going to be one of those outlier studies that future reviewers will either likely omit or clearly state that it is an outlier result and if they're super duper honest they'll provide the new pooled results with and without this outlier study
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009042950...
> We performed this study because of major complaints in our area from men about the adverse effects of these herbs on male reproductive function.
How do people even become like 60-70 or 80 around me without all this magic?
tztztzt
What people don't know is that it was just peppermint oil + glucose. I.e. a mint candy in a pill form.
Perhaps it actually did help people just acting as a placebo / distracting from their panic. "I did something now I should get better".
But a concept of a panic attack was not widely known. I guess doctors believed it's easier to prescribe Validol which "prevents heart attack" than to explain people that their panic attack symptoms are caused by their brain
The worst part will be the idiotic news outlets publishing the stupid headline followed by the pseudoscience peddlers pushing peppermint oil supplements onto an ever-increasing boomer population by AI-generated Instagram ads. Lovely times we live in.
/s?
The fascinating part is that your anal tissue has that level of sensitivity and insight.
I think they've pooped out the difference.
It is important to remember that herbs are difficult to study in this setting compared with isolated compounds -- likely because their pharmacological and chemical compositions are sensitive to many factors: hour and season of harvest, form consumed (raw powder, alcohol extract, cold water infusion, fat emulsion, hot water infusion, combustion, pyrolysis, essential oil), part consumed (leaf, root, flower, seed), among staggeringly many others. Anyone with experience consuming cannabis or coffee can probably testify to the above
Not to mention that the pharmacologically active compounds in many plants are far from being comprehensively understood, let alone their interactions and dynamics
This isn't to say that every claim about herbs is to be taken seriously. My point here is more that there is no good reason to dismiss the herb itself as a cause yet simply because it's an herb and a fairly mundane one at that. There are easy examples of herbs which have pronounced physiological effects, used for recreation, performance enhancement, as literal poison, to induce labor, to thin the blood -- among others.
Mints are closely related to pennyroyal (Mentha pulegium), which was traditionally (and dangerously because of toxicity) used as an abortifacient. Its mechanism of action is still unknown, so hormone modulating effects seem plausible to me.
This particular path isn't that crazy, but it would only be for a subset of folk. From the study there is something simpler: menthol acts as a natural calcium-channel blocker, triggering vasodilation to reduce blood pressure.
This is what I sound like when I talk about analogue electronics, isn't it?
Thing is I know I could look all those terms up and learn enough to be dangerous in a subject you're clearly very good at.
Lightly edited from Wikipedia:
"Menthol's [agonism of] the cold-sensitive Transient Receptor Potential cation channel subfamily M (melastatin) member 8 or TRPM8 receptors is responsible for the well-known cooling sensation it provokes.
Menthol's analgesic properties are mediated through a selective activation of κ-opioid receptors. Menthol blocks calcium channels and voltage-sensitive sodium channels, reducing neural activity that may stimulate muscles.
Some studies show that menthol acts as a GABAᴀ receptor positive allosteric modulator and increases GABAergic transmission in PAG neurons."
…and! Check this out:
"Menthol has anesthetic properties similar to though less potent than propofol, interacting with the same sites on the GABAᴀ receptor."
Propofol. PROPOFOL. The -ol in propofol is the -ol in menthol, haha.
"Menthol may also enhance the activity of glycine receptors and negatively modulate 5-HT3 receptors and nAChRs."
Aaaaand:
"Menthol also lowers blood pressure and antagonizes vasoconstriction through TRPM8 activation."
At least this study says the activity was reduced, not significantly though: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02786...
If we cue university student volunteers on Toothpaste -> Selfcare -> Weightloss I wonder what happens.
I also wonder what placebo was used, and to what effect. The typical flavoring agent to make something peppermint-flavored is peppermint essential oil (or cornmint, spearmint, etc), and I don't know how you'd make it convincing without also including a bunch of hypothetically active compounds. The paper lists Schweppes Peppermint Cordial, without mint on the ingredients label. "Peppermint cordial" used as flavoring was historically 10% peppermint oil, and today the Schweppes product they cite just lists "flavourings" as ingredient.
Because the FDA regulates beverages separately from food (or at least alcoholic ones - not sure where the dividing line lies), you can sell booze flavored with things that you cannot put in snacks.
Lead and live tapeworm eggs are still out, though - for now.
New word of the day!
Also, peppermint oil is unpatentable. Neither Merck nor Novo Nordisk can hope to make billions from it, and without the profit motive, the list of institutions with both the budget and the will to fund a 500+ participant study is pretty short. This might be the best we can get.
And yes, I get that a small trial has less of a value...
My point was exactly the hope to indicate how much knowledge there exists. That's the truly wild thing. Or yeah, how unread most of it lays.
The EGCG is probably what is reducing the blood pressure.
Transient receptor potential vanilloid type 1 is vital for (−)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate mediated activation of endothelial nitric oxide synthase
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mnfr.201400699
Cardioprotective and Anti-Hypertensive Effects of Epigallocatechin Gallate: Novel Insights Into Biological Evidence
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jch.70036
Anything with EGCG in it causes me extreme bladder pain, even peppermint tea. While taking tons of Ricola cough drops (high in mentol) once when I had covid I found my bladder pain vanished. I then learned how the TRPV1 receptor is involved in my bladder pain.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-24056-0
I
Peppermint as a scent is usually thought of as stimulating, raising heart rate and blood pressure. The lore, with some research supporting it, is that other oils that are more sedating can bring down blood pressure if you use them, say, in a diffuser.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3521421/
I find the sensuality of Ylang Ylang to be distracting so I mixed in Lavender and got this wonderful floral smell that filled my office but an hour later I notice the sedation and I am nodding off and can't concentrate on work at all. It was like the scene in the Wizard of Oz where the Wicked Witch of the West put (most of) the protagonists to sleep with a field of scarlet poppies.
http://phenol-explorer.eu/contents/food/869
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jch.70036
https://academic.oup.com/chemse/article-abstract/40/1/27/290...
yumraj•22h ago
I wonder if mentha arvensis has the same effect. Supplements vs mint tea would be another interesting thing to study in future.
kzrdude•20h ago
tclancy•17h ago
trueno•17h ago