FDA Warns Of Kratom Harms Including Death

[Never Give Up]

When proven treatments don’t exist desperate people try the unproven. Be careful what you try.

https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm584970.htm

The FDA is warning consumers not to use Mitragyna speciosa, commonly known as kratom. There are currently no FDA-approved uses of kratom. Moreover, there’s clear data on the increasing harms associated with kratom. Calls to U.S. poison control centers regarding kratom have increased 10-fold from 2010 to 2015, with hundreds of calls made each year. FDA is also aware of reports of 36 deaths associated with the use of kratom-containing products. We’ve learned a tragic lesson from the opioid crisis. We must pay early attention to the potential for new products to cause addiction & we must take strong, decisive measures to intervene.

 

[frozenborderline]

This is absolute bullshit. the FDA has never found one death to result from kratom alone. Saying that someone had kratom in their system along with benzodiazepines, alcohol, and benadryl, say, doesn't really implicate kratom. If they were really interested in evaluating the actual risk, they'd fund better studies.



There is no convincing and solid evidence that kratom is toxic in normal doses. (i've looked at the evidence, there's one unconvincing study showing cardiotoxicity in vivo, in weakened embryonic heart cells). The anecdotal evidence suggests that people have been using it safely in southeast asia for years.

The FDA is wrong on this. Kratom is not a perfect drug, has some mild side effects, but is highly effective at treating chronic pain and depression, among other conditions.

Don't believe the negative hype here, folks. I'm going to bed and too tired to post the research, but if anyone finds a study showing actual toxicity from kratom, feel free to tag me because I'd be incredibly surprised. Kratom is a good medicine which can have mild tolerance/dependence effects and can cause some mild, negative effects on testosterone. Besides that I don't think it has any side effects.

 

[Never Give Up]

If there haven’t been any good studies we don’t know if it effectively treats pain, depression or anything else, nor do we know the full extent of it's negative effects. The FDA is passing on information that has come to their attention to temper potentially dangerous blind faith in this poorly understood product.

 

[Wayne]

FDA is also aware of reports of 36 deaths associated with the use of kratom-containing products.

I consider anything coming from the FDA about Kratom to be highly suspect. -- They reported last year that there had been about 18 deaths from Kratom, but when asked to produce information on that, they refused. Meanwhile, there are apparently thousands of deaths per year associated with methadone.

Why don't they seem to be concerned about that? More than likely there's a special interest group that wants to keep methadone profitable, and keep any low-cost competition away. That's my take anyway.

Here's a blurb from THIS ARTICLE:

Kratom advocates point out that nearly 55,000 people are believed to have died from other opioids in 2016 alone: about 20,000 from fentanyl -- legal for some medical uses -- and its analogs, about 15,000 each from other legal prescription opioids and illegal heroin, and more than 3,000 from methadone, a legal treatment that allows opioid addicts an off-ramp from cravings.​

 

[frozenborderline]

If there haven’t been any good studies we don’t know if it effectively treats pain, depression or anything else, nor do we know the full extent of it's negative effects. The FDA is passing on information that has come to their attention to temper potentially dangerous blind faith in this poorly understood product.

There have been studies that tested some of the alkaloids in kratom and they have opioid agonism, so clearly it can treat pain. They also have more affinity for the delta opioid receptor which makes them less likely to be extremely addictive. I doubt that all of the alkaloids in kratom have been identified yet, but isn't the experience of the thousands of chronic pain patients who use it enough?

 

[frozenborderline]

If there haven’t been any good studies we don’t know if it effectively treats pain, depression or anything else, nor do we know the full extent of it's negative effects. The FDA is passing on information that has come to their attention to temper potentially dangerous blind faith in this poorly understood product.

Their "information" is highly suspect. This is like saying there has been 50 deaths associated with marijuana, when the fifty deaths involved dangerous drug cocktails plus marijuana. I'm not saying kratom is perfectly benign, but for people who don't have preexisting heart conditions, I see no risk.

 

[frozenborderline]

If there haven’t been any good studies we don’t know if it effectively treats pain, depression or anything else, nor do we know the full extent of it's negative effects. The FDA is passing on information that has come to their attention to temper potentially dangerous blind faith in this poorly understood product.

They are essentially doing this because they failed utterly in their attempt to get kratom banned, because it caused an uproar among the thousands of chronic pain patients that had been able to get off opioids using kratom.

 

[Kenshin]

This is absolute bullshit. the FDA has never found one death to result from kratom alone. Saying that someone had kratom in their system along with benzodiazepines, alcohol, and benadryl, say, doesn't really implicate kratom. If they were really interested in evaluating the actual risk, they'd fund better studies.



There is no convincing and solid evidence that kratom is toxic in normal doses. (i've looked at the evidence, there's one unconvincing study showing cardiotoxicity in vivo, in weakened embryonic heart cells). The anecdotal evidence suggests that people have been using it safely in southeast asia for years.

The FDA is wrong on this. Kratom is not a perfect drug, has some mild side effects, but is highly effective at treating chronic pain and depression, among other conditions.

Don't believe the negative hype here, folks. I'm going to bed and too tired to post the research, but if anyone finds a study showing actual toxicity from kratom, feel free to tag me because I'd be incredibly surprised. Kratom is a good medicine which can have mild tolerance/dependence effects and can cause some mild, negative effects on testosterone. Besides that I don't think it has any side effects.

Agreed, they've been doing this to Marijuana for almost a hundred years, now science has proven it to be benign
(as in non toxic, it can still f$ck you up...)

Kratom indeed is not a perfect drug, I beleive its main drawback is nausia, and even stomach cramps and pain if you eat the leaf powder straight (instead of making tea and straining the powder out).

Marijuana can be very effective at alliviating nausia (many chemo patients use it for this purpose).

If the pharma companies extract the main active ingredient/s of Kratom into a pill I bet it would be very powerful pain reliever, probably with much less digestive stress.

Overall, Kratom is effective against pain and deppression and deserves more study.

 

[panckage]

If there haven’t been any good studies we don’t know if it effectively treats pain, depression or anything else, nor do we know the full extent of it's negative effects. The FDA is passing on information that has come to their attention to temper potentially dangerous blind faith in this poorly understood product.

With all do respect do some reading on the issue. It is the modern day witch hunt that occurred with cannabis

 

[Kenshin]

Their "information" is highly suspect. This is like saying there has been 50 deaths associated with marijuana, when the fifty deaths involved dangerous drug cocktails plus marijuana. I'm not saying kratom is perfectly benign, but for people who don't have preexisting heart conditions, I see no risk.

It was common here in the 90's to see newspaper articles entitled something like "Man dies from marijuana" or "Teenager commits suicide while on Cannabis". Only at the very end of the article would it state he was also on antideppressants and speed etc.

 

[valentinelynx]

Please don't believe the FDA's hysterical anti-kratom campaign! They are trying to play the "opioid epidemic" card (don't get me started on the nonsense being perpetrated there... ) by getting people to believe that Kratom addiction will contribute to opioid addiction. There is zero evidence of this. In fact, if you even glance at the Kratom community's (why does spellcheck insist on capitalizing the word Kratom, it's not a proper noun...) communications, you will see it is comprised mainly of people who have used Kratom to get off of opioids. Yes, there are no doubt some who have trouble with addiction to Kratom, just as there are those addicted to any mind altering substance, but the anecdotal evidence, from a large cohort of previous heroin addicts, is that Kratom withdrawal is far and away easier to get through that heroin addiction, and there is little evidence of medical harm from Kratom. Again there will be exceptions, as with anything.

I have long suspected the FDA of being in the pocket of the pharmaceutical companies, and I'm not a conspiracy-mongering type. Look into the history of aspartame as an example. (Here's one description of the very warped set of events leading the approval of aspartame).

The DEA tried to ban Kratom last year by making it a Schedule 1 controlled substance under an emergency edict. This caused such an outcry from the public (good lobbying by the American Kratom Association and others) that they actually withdrew the emergency declaration! See here for a discussion of this.

Note that using the fact that "there have been x number of calls to poison centers re: Kratom" means nothing, except that people treating folks with problems who have listed Kratom as something they have used in the recent past don't know anything about it and are calling for information. It does not mean that Kratom caused the problem. E.g. "I'm having trouble breathing and my tongue is swelling. I used the following medications: penicillin, aspirin & Kratom in the past week." The first two are common causes of medication allergies, but well known to emergency medical personnel. Kratom is less likely to be an allergen, but largely unknown to the medical field. So, they won't call to ask about penicillin or aspirin, but will about Kratom, thereby creating a data point.

 

[Wayne]

(don't get me started on the nonsense being perpetrated there... )

Hi Valentine,​

Thanks for your post. Just have to mention, I agree with your assessment of the FDA. My "naughty side" even starting scheming on how I might just "get you started". Not only that, but I got a good chuckle out of your post besides. ​

 

[valentinelynx]

Hi Valentine,​

Thanks for your post. Just have to mention, I agree with your assessment of the FDA. My "naughty side" even starting scheming on how I might just "get you started". Not only that, but I got a good chuckle out of your post besides. ​

Glad to make you chuckle... BTW my reference to "nonsense perpetrated" is to the so-called opioid epidemic, not necessarily the FDA per se, though they are complicit. The anti-opioid hysteria is largely due to a certain political group of so-called doctors ("Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing") finally getting the ear of Powers-that-Be such as the CDC and the FDA and, alas, the media. They are fully committed to throwing all chronic pain patients who benefit from long term opioid therapy out the window and under the bus if it supports their puritanical beliefs that no one should take a drug that might possible cause a feeling of well-being. That the true crisis is almost entirely due to the flooding of the heroin market with cheap fentanyl (50-100 X more potent than heroin, so that when heroin is cut with it, the dealers can save massively on heroin costs at the risk of killing their customers) is being ignored by the media and the government, and physicians who are trying to care compassionately for their pain patients are being persecuted and terrorized out of practice. There is even a movement to stop offering opioids for post-operative pain! (There, you got me started. But I should stop, because it's bad for my blood pressure.... )

 

[RogerBlack]

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02791072.2017.1371363 may be of interest.

Kratom is a traditional drug from Southeast Asia that has been an emerging new substance in the United States. On August 30, 2016, the DEA announced the intention to emergency schedule kratom into Schedule I. To support this decision, the DEA cited an increase in drug seizures of kratom and an increase in calls to poison control concerning kratom. However, a short time later, on October 12, 2016, the DEA withdrew the intent to schedule kratom after public and congressional backlash. The withdrawal by the DEA was somewhat unprecedented. To better understand both decisions, the current article examines the evidence the DEA cited to support their decision to emergency schedule kratom and the degree and type of media coverage of kratom to determine if a media-driven drug panic occurred.

Full paper at https://www.researchgate.net/public...cheduling_of_Kratom_and_Selective_Use_of_Data

In short, it goes through the various evidence for harm (near zero) and news around the event, which was only driven by governmental actions, and comes up with nothing significant driving 'rational' intent to ban it.

There was no large public outcry, reports of deaths, or anything else.
It seems solely driven by prohibitionist type activity, rather than anything meaningful.

 

[calsi]

who here has tried kratom? Thanks

 

[Wayne]

I consider anything coming from the FDA about Kratom to be highly suspect.

Just ran across THIS ARTICLE on Mercola.com. Below is the introduction to the article, which is entitled,

Government Falsifies Warning on Kratom to Protect Opioids

Story at-a-glance

• Rather than cracking down on the prescription opioids that are the root of the opioid epidemic, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is going after a natural plant called kratom
• Leaves from the kratom tree have been used for pain relief for hundreds of years, and it has become an increasingly popular opioid alternative in the U.S.
• The American Kratom Association (AKA) states the FDA’s public health advisory “contains numerous unsubstantiated and inaccurate statements … and therefore must be rescinded immediately”

 

[flitza]

When proven treatments don’t exist desperate people try the unproven. Be careful what you try.

https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm584970.htm

The FDA is warning consumers not to use Mitragyna speciosa, commonly known as kratom. There are currently no FDA-approved uses of kratom. Moreover, there’s clear data on the increasing harms associated with kratom. Calls to U.S. poison control centers regarding kratom have increased 10-fold from 2010 to 2015, with hundreds of calls made each year. FDA is also aware of reports of 36 deaths associated with the use of kratom-containing products. We’ve learned a tragic lesson from the opioid crisis. We must pay early attention to the potential for new products to cause addiction & we must take strong, decisive measures to intervene.

I've recently seen reports (CDC, CIDRAP) about salmonella infections linked to kratom. Seems legit. Just a warning.

 

[Kenshin]

I've recently seen reports (CDC, CIDRAP) about salmonella infections linked to kratom. Seems legit. Just a warning.

Scary, but only using thouroughly boiled tea should make it safe (not a doctor but I believe boiling will kill salmonella).

 

[barbc56]

Just ran across THIS ARTICLE on Mercola.com. Below is the introduction to the article, which is entitled,

Government Falsifies Warning on Kratom to Protect Opioids

Story at-a-glance

• Rather than cracking down on the prescription opioids that are the root of the opioid epidemic, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is going after a natural plant called kratom
• Leaves from the kratom tree have been used for pain relief for hundreds of years, and it has become an increasingly popular opioid alternative in the U.S.
• The American Kratom Association (AKA) states the FDA’s public health advisory “contains numerous unsubstantiated and inaccurate statements … and therefore must be rescinded immediately”

I would tend to believe the FDA over mercola who espouses non scientific treatments. But hey, it’s personal choice, so go for it, but let the buyer beware.

Yes the FDA is not perfect but let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. They are far more scientific. We need to use the same critical thinking skills for any issue .

My other concern is that Kratom is a supplement/herb and these type of products have very little oversight which means they have the potential to cause great harm. Supplemental sellers are getting rich selling these products. Because they aren’t regulated, they make a higher profit. I want quality control for the products I use. That’s why I will only use prescription supplements and only with a deficit or scientific evidence shows they are beneficial.

http://www.businessinsider.com/supplements-vitamins-bad-or-good-health-2017-8

While I agree that pain management and the “opioid epidemic” focuses on the wrong issues, it’s really a separate issue and doesn’t mean Kratom is safe nor does it mean the FDA is only is only cracking down on it and not opiates. Nor does it necessarily mean the opposite. Where is the evidence? Personal opinions are just that, opinions.

Scary, but only using thouroughly boiled tea should make it safe (not a doctor but I believe boiling will kill salmonella).

This is potentially dangerous medical advice. You believe boiling water will kill salmonella. This may or may not be true and if not it could be deadly.

Salmonella has been found in Kratom. Furthermore, the company refused a voluntary recall which is unconscionable.

http://www.businessinsider.com/supplements-vitamins-bad-or-good-health-2017-8

 

[Ema]

This is potentially dangerous medical advice. You believe boiling water will kill salmonella. This may or may not be true and if not it could be deadly.

The CDC says boiling water will kill salmonella too. I guess it's not such deadly advice after all.