This Podcast Will Kill You - Ep 13 Don't Tread on my Monkshood: Crossover w/ IDOP

Episode Date: February 27, 2018

What's the difference between a physician and a pretender, a magician and a poisoner? That's a question we'll try and answer in today's episode! We are very excited to bring you our first botanical poison crossover episode with our good friend Matt Candeias of the awesome podcast and website, In Defense of Plants. This week, we'll talk about Wolfsbane, or Monkshood, or Aconitum, or any of its various common names. The point is, get ready to learn about a pretty gnarly poison, its history, how it affects your body, and why on earth a plant would make such deadly compounds from an ecological and evolutionary perspective. Don't forget to check out our guest spot on In Defense of Plants where we talk about two plants commonly used in herbal remedies. You can find it on itunes or wherever you are listening to this pod. Check out Matt's website indefenseofplants.com and follow him on twitter @indfnsofplnts! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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with built-in AI for real-time insights. Learn more at Intuit.com slash ERP. Hi and welcome to this podcast will kill you. Crossover edition. Boundapal. I'm Aaron Welsh. And I'm Aaron Alman Updike. And this week, we are joined by our good friend

and fellow podcaster, Matt Kandaias. Say hi, hi, Matt. Hi, Matt. I should never have done that. Hi. I'm ashamed of myself already. No, it's perfect. So Matt is a fellow grad student.

student and host of the incredible podcast In Defensive Plants. Thank you. Matt, can you introduce yourself a bit and talk a little bit about what your podcast does? Yeah, I'm Matt Kandaius, and I host In Defensive Plants. It is a weekly podcast that essentially is there to cure what we call plant blindness. And by we, I just mean people that like plants. We suffer from plant byness. Yeah, big time.

A lot of the world does. And it's not a fault. It's just the way our species is programmed. But that's why the podcast exists, and I think that's the niche it's filling, is to celebrate plants and get people excited. Maybe not obsessed. You don't have to become obsessed with them. But excitement and just appreciate the botanical world because really we wouldn't be here without it. Yeah, that's very true. It's awesome.

And everyone go and check it out in defense of plants. Well, especially because there's going to be another episode. Yes. That will exist. Because this is a crossover. Cross over. Reciprocal transplant. where we're going to be on Matt's podcast.

That's what I do. That's what I study. Thank you. So Matt's joining us this week. And then upcoming, we will be joining Matt on his podcast to talk about herbalism things. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a lot of, I'll call it mysticism and folklore surrounding herbal remedies.

And though I'm not a practicing herbalist, I know there's merit to some and a lot of misinformation about others. So who better to bring on than some disease ecologists to talk about the wild world of plant medicinals. Totally in our wheelhouse. A hundred percent. Not. We're going to try. We'll research it. Yeah.

We're smart people, right? Yeah, exactly. That's the hope. That's the hope. That's the hope. So Matt is here because this week, as we said, we're doing something a little bit different. This is part one of a crossover. series on poison.

We have at least a four-part series. I feel like we could expand it eventually too. Yeah, totally. But at a minimum, we've got a four-part series. And each week we're going to talk about a different poisonous plant. It's used throughout human history, the effects it actually has on your body, and then the evolutionary ecology of the plant, meaning why does it produce the compounds that make you sick? It's going to be super duper fun.

Yeah. I am so pumped. Yeah. I can't even contain, like, we were messaging back and forth about this. And I was like, I'm like bumping up and down my chair going, yes! I know. It was really hard to not go, oh my gosh, guess what I just learned? You have to know about this.

It's so cool. Yeah. We're very excited. Yeah, this allows me to stretch some muscles that I don't ever get to stretch. It's not a wheelhouse I frequent. So thanks for being open to this idea. I love it. We're pumped.

Okay. So because this is an episode of this podcast will kill you, guess what we have? A quarantini time. A quarantini time. What do we have this week? This week we're drinking the Wolfsbane potion. Yeah. Because we're talking about what plant?

Well, it's a bunch of plants, but monkshood, essentially, in the genus a conodum. Fabulous. Which also contains the plant Wolfsbane, right? Or is that a different plant? No, well. Was it the same plant? Plaint blindness at work. Yeah.

First lesson, common names are kind of a pain in the ass. A lot of plants can be called the same thing and be called many different things throughout different cultures. So essentially, this is in the buttercup family. So the best example is a buttercup in the United States is different than a buttercup in England. But when you say Wolfsbane, you're generally referring to a group of plants in the genus, Aconidum or The Monkshoods.

Okay. Fabulous. Awesome. So, but what is in the Wolfsbane potion this week is it's basically an aviation. Yeah. Which, if you haven't heard of it, it's a really delicious drink. It's purple. It's beautiful.

It's really. I just thought we could nail the Jakes too, but we came really close. Yeah. And so we'll post the recipe and all that online along with some cool pictures. So. Well, cheers. Cheers. Cheers.

We do need. Clink, clink. There we go. That was an okay sound. It wasn't quite crystal, but, you know. Now that that's out of the way. Yep. Intro is over.

Yeah. I'll get started. So since we're doing a four-parter on this topic, I figured I would kind of split the history of poisons into four parts. So ancient, middle ages, Victorian, and modern. I don't know if that's going to be how it ends up being. The boundaries are a little bit fluid, but in any case, this week I'll be talking about the ancient history of poisons. So who first decided to use them? How were they used?

What was their reputation? And then I'm going to talk specifically about the history of the chosen poison of the week, Wolf Spain, aka aconite, aka monkshood, etc. Turns out, this beauty is not just the name of the werewolf preventative in Harry Potter. and our quarantini. So what's the difference between a physician, a pretender, a magician, and a poisoner? Ooh. The answer is that it depends. Those lines have always been blurred in the history of medicine and medicinal plants,

many of which have a dual nature of healing and harm. And those lines continue to be blurred in modern times, which is something we'll get to talk a lot more about in the herbal medicine crossover episode. Yeah. But this week we're here to talk about poisons. So poisons have been around for, I thought this was really cool, all of written human history. Dang, dude. So, yeah.

And also probably millennia before that. I wouldn't doubt it. Yeah. I mean, you got to respect the fact that there's something there in human nature. You don't just invent writing and then start poisoning people. Yeah, exactly. That's a really interesting part. Because, like, in order to determine what plants are poisonous, what plants are helpful, what plants are food, it's going to involve a lot of trial and error, a lot of barfing, a lot of numb mouths, hallucinations, and death along the way.

And a big plug for rampant diarrhea. Oh, damn. A lot of rampant diarrhea. Did I not mention diarrhea? Yeah. Can't believe I didn't talk about it. To those who came before us. Yes.

Thank you. How is anyone alive? It's really the big question. Imagine that you're one of those early humans. You can't resort to Google like you can nowadays to tell you everything about a plant. You can't just watch what you eat, but you have to remember how it made you feel. And you didn't just rely on first-hand experience for this knowledge. If you saw a cluster of dead birds or foxes or something next to a bush filled with red berries,

maybe you'd make a note not to eat those berries. We would hope. Yeah, one would hope. And then also, you know, if a friend told you about a digestive experience after feasting on a new salad creation, maybe you'd ask them to point out which plants they use, just like which Taco Bells to avoid. Because there are good ones and bad ones. But the answer is you should avoid them all. Yeah, I mean, we're weak.

Yes. Yeah. I'm only human. And before written language, this knowledge couldn't be stored in physical form. it had to be disseminated in a much different way, through storytelling, from one village to another, from one generation to the next. And slowly this knowledge spread, but one person's knowledge is another person's weapon. And it wouldn't have been long before someone would have snuck some parsley-looking hemlock into their rival side salad. The first written records we have of the use of poisons

comes from just a little bit after writing itself was thought to be invented, so around 5,000 years ago. Wow. And we see around that time descriptions of poisonous and medicinal plants pop up all over around the same time, which is kind of weird. In Egyptian papyri, Chinese and Indian texts, and Mesopotamian clay tablets. I mean, is it weird or is it just humans were doing that? And then they wanted right in. They're like, well, we might as well write this down. Well, and like what's more important than like we need to eat every day a certain amount?

We need to eat the things that we collect. And this is how you kill your enemies. Well, and this is how you... I mean, hey, we live in a valley. There's two families and enough food to support one of them. Yeah. So sorry. You guys are going straight to the How to Poison Someone's section of that tablet.

Yeah. That's where our heads are. I mean. Yeah, so and also poisons featured prominently in Greek and Roman mythology, where it seems like the reputation of poison as a woman's weapon had taken hold. which is really fun. So Dianera, the second wife of Heracles, aka Hercules,

killed him with a poisoned shirt for being unfaithful to her. Deserved it. You go, go. Yeah. File that under stuff Disney left out of the movie, along with the fact that Hercules driven mad by Hera,

I love, I love like Disney did not tell you, Hercules killed his first wife and children. As you do. Mm-hmm. We'll get to that later. Anyway, side note, Hercules' second wife, the one who killed him, her name, Dianera, means man-destroarer or destroyer of her husband. Okay, if I ever have kids, that's their name. Also, in the Odyssey, Circe, which, you know, she's got to be evil, right?

We know everything about her already. A goddess of magic uses mind-altering drugs to turn all of Odysseus's men into pigs. although to what end I have no idea. Just for fun, I would assume. For fun, bacon? I don't know. It's really weird though. Yeah, I couldn't find a reason for that. But jumping from myth into history, we see poisons play a huge role in the legal and political system of ancient Rome, which isn't as boring as it may sound. Poisons were widely used to carry out death sentences, and that's what happened with the famous philosopher Socrates.

So he was convicted of moral corruption and impiety, and he was ordered to drink a hemlock infusion. And there are some great paintings of this. So there's one where he's like, angrily in a, I don't know, bath sheet or toga, I assume. Same difference. I mean, my experience with Toga is frat party only, so it's got to be a bath sheet.

Yeah. Yeah, so I'll post some of those paintings because they're really fun. That's amazing. But from this time, which is around 399 BC, Around that exact date. Give or take. Poisons seem to become increasingly popular in ancient Rome. The Hippocratic Oath, Aaron, I'm looking at you.

I'll take that someday. Written around then includes the phrase, Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Interesting. Yeah. It's pretty clear that poisoning was a problem in physicians as well. But even then, it goes back to what you.

you originally said about blurred lines. Right. I mean, how do you define, I mean, chemotherapy. It's pretty poisonous. But doctors do that. Is it dose? Is it intent? What defines a poison, really?

This is philosophy questions. I mean, too bad Socrates was killed. Buy a poison. Getting though. Galen, who was another famous Greek physician and scholar, instructed doctors to collect herbs and prepare potions themselves, rather than buying them at the market, where one plant could be sold under the wrong name,

leading to a deadly, quote, a mistake. Yeah. And to protect themselves also the wealthy hired tasters, which is one of the otter status symbols I've heard of. They did, like, to taste their food, right? Yeah. So it became such a popular practice that there grew to be an official society of tasters. I don't know what we demand rights.

Yeah. Did they unionize? Is that a union? They did? Awesome. Yeah. that they protect your family if you died, that'd be great. Ooh, good question.

I don't know. Which, to be honest, you're going to die. You're going to die. You know that job is going to kill you. Well, but the thing is, like, having a taster wouldn't have done much good, probably, because if you were going to poison someone, you wouldn't choose a fast acting poison because that would be very obvious, particularly if someone had a taster. And you would also probably be more accumulative poison.

Well, you could do a fast-acting poison. as long as no one knew it was you that put it in the food. Right, but the thing is, if your intent was to kill your target and the person had a taster. Yeah, yeah, you're right. If they had a taster. Because the person's going to be way too hungry. That's poisoning one o'clock.

I mean, come on. If your poison subject has a taster. We're not telling you how to poison someone. But we're just telling you. But if you needed to. We're talking hypotheticals here, everyone. So, anyway, poisonings happened frequently. and, as per usual, the law had to catch up with the popular trends.

Eventually, cultivating certain poisonous plants became a capital offense. Really, a capital offense. Wow. And entire legal institutions were responsible for dishing out punishments for poisoners. Wow. As a gardener that upsets me. Why? Oh, the cultivation part.

Yeah, the cultivation side of it. I don't get arrested. Well, I guess there's still our plants I could get arrested for having the garden. But. In Illinois. No one should come after my monkshood. Don't tread on my monkshood. Don't shred on my monkshood.

Oh, my God. Oh, that's funny. So, yeah, these entire legal institutions were responsible for dishing out punishments for poisoners, and those punishments weren't far from the crime itself. At one point in 331 BC, a whole slew of women, 170, actually. Is that the unit of a slew? 170 women is one slew.

It's kind of like... Sorry, I'm so sorry. It's like three pecks. And a bushel? No, one and a half bushels. Anyway, these poor slew were accused, tried, and convicted of mass poisoning of men, husbands, lovers, people who stood in their way, etc. And during the trial, some were told to drink their prepared potions as, proof of innocence. As I've said, there's a fine line between poison and medicine with dosage as one

of the deciding factors, and all the women died. Whoops. Or were put to death. Yeah. So though poisons continued to be used in battle, whether through poison-tipped arrows or intentionally contaminating water supplies, which did happen multiple times, they maintained their reputation as a woman's choice for murder. And in fact, the star of today, episode, Akinite, was referred to as stepmother's poison or the mother-in-law's poison.

So poison has this reputation for being a woman's weapon, right? And some women leaned into this, making lives for themselves as professional poisoners. She's a witch. Or poison consultants. Oh, my. It's a good business card name. I mean, it's great.

So La Custa, I don't know if that's how you say, her name, L-O-C-U-S-T-A, was a former slave-turned consultant for Nero, Roman Emperor Nero, later emperor, who was so thirsty for the emperor position. Seriously. And so she helped him kill the current emperor, Claudius's son, and then helped Claudius' wife to kill Claudius himself, clearing the path for Nero. And with the fall of the Roman Empire, the field of poisoning, toxicology, and medicinal plants, both in research and practice, seem to retreat to the shadows in that part of the

world. But it would continue to be built upon and much expanded by physicians and scientists like Avicena in the Islamic Golden Age. Dinner shows up every night, whether you're prepared for it or not. And with Blue Apron, you won't need to panic order takeout again. Blue Apron meals are designed by chefs and arrive with pre-portioned ingredients so there's no meal planning and no extra grocery trip. There, assemble and bake meals, take about five minutes of hands-on prep. Just spread the pre-chopped ingredients on a sheet pan, put it in the oven, and that's it. And if there's truly no time to cook, dish by Blue Apron meals are fully prepared. Just heat them in the oven or microwave, and dinner is ready.

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Quince.com slash this podcast. Okay. All right. So early history of poisons, check. We're done. But where does aconite fit into all of this? Yeah. Well, to answer that, we're going to dive back into some mythology briefly.

Are you ready for this? Always. Yes. All right. Let's take a trip back to the summer before 10th grade. I don't want to do this. Like your 10th grade? My 10th grade.

Okay. So in between doing really cool. cool, hip things, like rereading Harry Potter 1 through 5. I worked on my summer assignment. Edith Hamilton's mythology. So Edith Hamilton's mythology and Harry Potter is where my love for Harry Potter met my love for trivia and origin stories. You do love those things. I do, I do.

Every movie I've ever watched with this, Aaron, usually has a segment for trivia somewhere between halfway through and the end of the movie. It's why we love her. All right. So this is basically, when I read Edith Hamilton, I learned about Cerberus, who was the three-headed dog that guarded the entrance to the underworld and served as inspiration for Aaron. Can you tell me? Yeah, you've got it, girl. Fluffy was.

The dog that guarded the place where they kept the philosopher's stone, the sorcerer's stone. Yeah, at least somewhere along that. pathway. Yeah, exactly. You got it. Anyway, so I was really excited to to see that crossover there. Okay, so it turns out that Hercules, remember I was going to, I told you that we were going to circle back to this. Right. In order to repent for killing his wife and kids. The first time. As you should. The first time, his first wife and his five kids, I think five. Whoa. Well, yeah. It was okay if he killed two. I don't know. I mean.

Five just seems extreme, doesn't it? He was crazy by Hera. Who knows? Yeah. Well, in order to repent for this, he had to perform various feats of strength, including capturing Cerberus and bringing him to the surface. While he was up there, Cerberus got all foamy-mouthed because he wasn't used to sunlight. Rabies?

Sound like rabies, too? Season two. Is he afraid of water? Spoilers. You're doing a rabies episode. Yeah, it's going to be our first episode of season two, everybody. Get excited. In any case, Cerberus's spit flew everywhere.

And where it landed, Aconite grew. And from these humble beginnings, Aconite gained a reputation as one of the deadliest poisons in ancient times. Seriously, forking deadly. Wow, yeah. Hecatee, goddess of witchcraft and also in Shakespeare's Macbeth, one of the wishes, discovered its use as a poison, and Greek shepherds would smear aconite juice on arrows or mix the plant with raw meat to protect their sheep from wolves,

hence the name Wolfsbane. Oh, so they would put it on, so that the wolves would die. They would mix it with the, yeah. Interesting. So like a lot of, what I learned in some of this, like reading about ancient poisons, is that anything with wood after it, if it was wormwood, use to treat worms. hensbane, wolf's bane, you are trying to kill whatever. The bane of your existence.

So what is monk's hood? You try and kill monks? No, no, no. Munk's hood is the shape of the flower, which we'll get to, which we'll get to. See, I haven't looked at any pictures yet. Which I'm so excited. Yeah. Other species in the aconite genus have been used to poison arrows in Japan, in the Himalayas, in China, and in Alaska. So all over, basically. On one Greek island, aconite was put in the drinks of old men when they were, quote, no longer of use to the community.

Early references to aconite emphasize its extremely potent nature. If you were going to use aconite, you should be wearing protective clothing while gardening and avoid breathing in any of the aconite powder during preparation. Wow. Preparation for poisons apparently. Well, of course. continue to this day. Yes, oh, absolutely. I can't wait to hear more about the plant itself.

Oh, yeah. Okay, I'll get to it then, Aaron. Excuse me. That was just a, I'm excited. We're all. Thank you. Yeah, we are. The smell of the plant alone was thought to be strong enough to cause illness or death.

Whoa. Somewhere along the way, though, the language around aconitis. changed. It turned from poison to medicine. You name it, aconite will treat it, seemed to be the motto. And that happened around the mid-1700s. It was prescribed by many doctors when a good sweat was needed. This is back when the ancient concept of various bodily humors still held sway in the medical field. Oddly enough, aconite didn't prove to be a particularly reliable or safe treatment and gradually fell out of favor in the medical community after the treatment didn't agree with one too many patients. And by agree we mean like it killed one too many patients. Thank you.

Exactly. Exactly. But that didn't mark the end for aconite. Where it initially failed to gain support in the orthodox medical community it found in homeopathy. Under the concept of like cures like, drugs such as aconite were used to treat diseases which had similar symptoms. Aconite was used for acute diseases, especially those characterized by fever and pain. It gained reputation as a substitute for bloodletting. Probably it's treating one evil for another. Drain my blood or poison me? Right, I mean, you know.

Party time. Which in these times, people were always looking for an excuse to bloodletting. Apparently, aconite worked best on fearful, nervous patients, and it was used to calm women down during nasty periods. Oh, I'm about to rage. Death is the ultimate calm. Are you in your period? You might, you might need an aconite. To calm myself down during my rageful period.

She's raging. Better killer. I'm raging. I should mention, though, that the actual amount of aconite in many of these remnants of was so teeny, tiny, small that it was negligible. Homeopaths were publishing on aconite left and right, and around the mid-1800s, orthodox physicians started paying attention, which is kind of interesting. Aconite, in certain carefully measured doses, seemed to be effective as a neural suppressant,

meaning a drug that inhibits activity of parts of the nervous system, particularly in controlling inflammation. Don't worry, I'm not going to stop on your toes. Don't worry, I'll talk so much more about it. Wonderful. I might dabble in that as well. Perfect. I love it. But so when it was found to actually have these effects, it became all the rage.

So throughout the 1800s and into the early 1900s, aconite or aconite mixed with other things like chloroform and belladonna. Oh, good Lord. Yep. Was used as a painkiller or to treat infection, lung conditions, nerve pain, and so on. Wow. The adoption of aconite by orthodox physicians from homeopathy was also a big deal. But we're still talking about a poison here. And just because something alters your physiology in a way that does not kill or maim does not make it good for you.

Word. Yeah. And so we circle back to the question I pose at the beginning of a moment. this, what is the difference between a physician and a pretender? A magician and a poisoner. Yeah. The answer lies somewhere

between ignorance and intent. Oh. So, Aaron, tell us what exactly does Aconite do that makes it a poison? Anyone who works long hours knows the routine. Wash, sanitize, repeat.

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munkshood etc etc all right so yeah these plants because we know there's multiples yes contain a compound

called a conatine this is the compound that actually makes you sick and later in just a few minutes because I'm going to be quick Matt is going to tell you about why these plants actually contain this compound to begin with? Like, what's the point of having something that

kills people in you as a plant tissue? Which is a really fun question. I can't wait to hear about it. I have so much to say. But first, let me tell you so that I have a point to being here. What actually happens to your body when you ingest this plant? Like, what is actually making you sick? I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's not pleasant. It's not at all. Okay, so aconotene affects a bunch of different parts of your body, but the effects that are most important are what it has on both your heart tissue and your nervous system. But the effects are pretty widespread, so it can affect your GI tract, your nervous system, your heart. It has a pretty widespread effect. So what actually happens when you take a bite of wolf spain, for example, or you take a pill that someone gave you that's like full of it.

A wee little sip. Just a sip of a tincture or something, right? Within a really short amount of time, like as little as 10 minutes or maximum, like two hours. Whoa. Right. It's really fast acting. You'll start to see symptoms that include numbness in your face or limbs. Parasetia, which is a fancy word for you feel a tingling or a burning sensation.

Could be fun. Could be until it's not. You might have some muscle weakness. You'll become hypotensive, which means your blood pressure drops really low. Uh-oh, that's not good. It's never good. And then your heart, and this is important, it might begin to race really fast, or it might slow way, way down.

I don't like that. It could go either way. It could go either way. It could go either way. And that's the scariest way to be confused about whether or not you've been poisoned. We'll talk a lot about it. You don't worry. You flip a coin?

You flip a coin. No, no. We'll talk about why. Don't worry. This is why I don't wild forage. That's a good reason not to. And then on top of that, you might also have things like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea. of course.

You sound like a peptobismar commercial. I was going to say. Naja, heartburn, indigestion, stomach diarrhea. Yep, all of that. Hey, peptobismar. All of that. If you manage to get to a hospital and you don't die.

I love manage. If it's possible and you get to a hospital, the good news is that within 24 hours, you'll probably be fine. Because this is very fast acting, but it's also, it's a pretty quick recovery. So it has a very short half-life in your body. Exactly, right.

Your body digest it very quickly. Okay. But, and I didn't look up enough detail probably about the actual mortality rate, but at least in this article that I found, even in hospital cases, the mortality rate is over 5%. So even if you manage to get to the hospital and get treatment, you still have an over 5% chance of dying. Well, so that's really interesting because that mortality,

rate would have to do with modern cases. So either intentional poisoning or I ate way too much of this really weird thing. Which happens. Which happens. This is also a very common thing that's used in a lot of herbal remedies. Okay, good. I was going to ask you about the current status of aconite. Yeah. So it is definitely a thing. And there's a lot of information out there about what people tend to do to treat this, either the leaves or the roots that they're using in order to make. it less toxic but still have less toxic. Yes, exactly. I think you'll probably talk more about that.

And the fact that this is a crossover, this is a subject, we'll be covering probably a little bit more in depth online. Exactly. But yeah, so it's, it is still very commonly used in a lot of sort of traditional medicine type things. So here's the question, though. How on earth can just Eating a plant cause so many different symptoms, everything from numbness or muscle weakness to the general cause of death is actually heart failure. Your heart just fully stops. It can't handle it. It gives out. Wow. That's terrifying. So how can a plant actually cause something that a lot of these symptoms, nausea, muscle weakness, these seem very disparate, right? So the question is, Right. What on earth is happening? Are you going to tell us? Let me tell you. I love it if she didn't.

I'm just like, go ahead and Google it. Here's what happens. The major compound that's in these plants, aconatine, attacks your sodium channels. Here's what you need to know to understand how this compound, aconotene, attacks your sodium channels. actually affects your system. Number one, you all know, hopefully, that your nervous system is generally in charge of your body, right? It sends signals to different parts of your body that say things like, contract this muscle or release this hormone, etc. Or go to the bathroom now.

Exactly. That's what it's telling you. So the way that it sends these signals is by moving ions, which just means a charge molecule across. membranes. Okay. Sodium, which is a positive ion, is one of the most important things involved in sending these signals. So sodium tends to be really high in concentration outside of cells and lower inside of cells. With me so far? Sure. Great. So the other ion that's important is potassium. Potassium is higher inside of cells and lower outside of cells. And lower outside of cells.

The opposite of sodium. Exactly. Sodium, outside, potassium, inside. And overall, the insides of your cells are negatively charged compared to the outside of your cells. I did not know that. There we go. We're learning new things. That's why I love you too.

All right. So ions, these charged molecules cannot cross your cellular membranes because they're charged. and your cell membranes are basically fat globules. Okay. More than my cell membranes. Fat globules is this. So these charged molecules can't cross the fat. They don't like each other.

Okay. So the way that they cross is by channels, which are like doors that open and close and allow these ions to cross this membrane. With me? Mm-hmm. Totally. Excellent.

So the way that your nervous system actually sends these signals to tell everything else in your body what to do is by propagating what we call action potentials, which basically just means that they open a channel and it's a channel that is specific to sodium, which we know is at high concentrations outside of your cell. And then a bunch of sodium rushes into the cell and then they close that channel and they're like, okay, now we've got a bunch of sodium inside of the cell. cell and then they open another channel and they're like potassium it's your turn and potassium rushes out of the cell okay okay so that is how they propagate these signals as they go that's how it transfers down

exactly so that's you for example you touch something that's hot right and your skin feels that and it's like this thing is hot so then that sends a signal that says sodium go and then your sodium channels open. Sodium rushes into your cells. Those doors close and then they open ones that say potassium, it's your turn, potassium rushes out, etc. You can Google some really great YouTube videos of this. But essentially what you're saying is this is holding to the whole universal constant of things move from high to low concentrations. Precisely, Matt. And so... I did something in another day. And so this means that if you touch that hot stove, that action potential or that whole sequence of events is telling you. Right. Or is allowing you to move or

telling you to move. Right. So it tells your nervous system something bad is happening here. That action potential travels all the way down your nerve to your brain, which goes something's bad is happening. It travels all the way back to your muscles, which go move and then you move. So it's like a two parallel domino system going in the opposite direction. Right. And it happens instantaneously, right? So these sodium channels have to be able to open and close extremely rapidly for these signals to be able to propagate so that you can do literally anything. Right? Okay. So sodium channels are really, really important in you literally being able to survive.

Being a living thing. Right. So what's the point of me telling you all this? Why did I just give you like an intro to physiology? I have my suspicions. As it turns out, aconitine, the compound that's in monkshood, wolfsbane, etc. All of the above. Binds to sodium channels and it forces them to stay open.

No. Oh, that's not good. It's not good. So what happens is you end up with a huge influx of sodium that comes into the cell, but then you can't close that channel in order to continue to propagate the signal. Right? Okay. So that means that anytime you get a future signal, you can't react to it because your sodium channels are already open.

Oh, I love, that was such a good reaction. Understanding is dawning. Yes. Okay, so what does this mean in real life? So you take a big bite of wolf's bane and you're chewing on it and now your sodium channels are open. It's a nightmare. What's happening?

In your nervous system, you're not getting any new signals being passed. You have this one giant influx of sodium and then that's it. You can't make any new signals because your sodium channels are stuck in the open position. They can't basically reset themselves, which they have to do to be able to detect a new signal. So it's like you're trying to get a call, but every time you pick out the phone someone's just screaming and you can't hear what's happening. Or like back in the old days when there was like a busy signal because someone's like, left your phone off the hook. It's like that. The old days. The old days. Like our ancestors, 10 years ago did. That's a great, it's just like that. Yeah. Yep. So that's why you end up with

things like numbness or tingling because your nerves are not propagating signals the way that they're supposed to. Hyperfiring. Exactly. Well, not really hyperfiring. They're not able to pick up any new signals. So they're not firing the way they're supposed to. But then the question is why is this affecting your heart, right? Because like that's weird, except it's not that weird because it turns out your heart doesn't actually need any nervous input in order to beat. So you can take a heart out of a human body and it will still beat. I've seen that on ER. You should Google it. It's fantastic. Oh, yeah. And that's because your heart actually generates its own action potentials. Right. Right? It's very cool. And the way that it does that is,

a very similar mechanism to your nervous system. It's the same sodium channels, etc. So that means exactly. If you're opening the sodium channels in your nervous system, you're also opening them in your heart cells. And so your heart cells normally all communicate with each other almost simultaneously. And that's why your heart beats as if it's one thing, right? You never knew that.

Yeah, it's a bunch of little cells, right? but they communicate with each other so seamlessly that your heart can beat as if it's one thing, even though it's these billions of little cells. So when you open a whole bunch of sodium channels, that screws everything up. So you can end up with what we call fibrillations, which means your heart is no longer beating in sync with each other. Different fibers are firing at different times. It's not good.

You also can end up with your heart not being able to beat, as effectively because these sodium channels are open, so it can't, again, just like your nervous system, get a new signal to tell it to beat, right? So that would slow your heart rate down. Oh. Exactly, right? On the other hand,

though your heart doesn't need nervous input in order to beat, the nervous system, your central nervous system, like your brain, controls via what's called your vagus nerve, how fast your heart beats. So it can tell your heart if you're scared or something. It'll say, beat a little quicker. This is scary. Okay.

Or if everything is okay, it'll say, just relax, man, beat a little slower. So that nervous system is impaired and it actually blocks your parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest and digest nervous system. So it blocks the signals that are telling your heart, aconotene specifically, is blocking the part of the heart. your nervous system that tells your heart chill out. Everything is fine, which makes your heart beat faster. Oh. So it's whichever one wins out in that battle. Exactly. Wow. Right? So that's why you can have all these various cardiac symptoms. You can have fibrillations, your heart's not beating in sync.

You can have bradycardia, your heart's beating too slowly. You can have tachycardia, your heart's beating too quickly. And literally all of this is because of its effect on sodium channels. That's really interesting. I know. So then like how, If someone, this might be jumping the gun, but like if someone had aconite poisoning, how would you know that it was aconite and not something else? It's a really great question. And so I will say that from what I've read, I have no, like, okay, because I'm going to be a future physician, right? Like, I have no idea how you would diagnose this.

I want to ask some, does anyone know who works in like an ER? It's like, okay, they've told them. us so far that one of the most important things that you can do as a physician is get a really good history. And I think that this is the type of thing that you would really be able to diagnose based on history. If someone said they ate something weird or they took these pills or they're a forager or they're a forager, exactly. So this is the type of thing that it's really important to talk to your patient or talk to a person and get that history from them because yeah, the symptoms are kind of all over the place and they can be so varied. But at the end, what you die from is your heart just

basically giving out. That's really sad. I know. And this is why when people say plants are boring, I just want to slap them. Just slap them silly. Yeah. So yeah, that's how it affects your body. That is terrifying. So then the question is, why on earth do these plants make this compound to begin with? Like, what's the point? Are they just trying to kill people? Do plants hate people? Yeah, they do. That's all it is, actually.

They, despite being around for many millions of years before we even came onto the scene, they had it out for us. They knew it was coming. Listen, Matt, it's all about us. Evolution has a point and is predictive. It's hierarchical. It's directed. No.

And that's a really good question. And I'm really happy to be here to talk about that because it's something I hold near and dear to my heart. But I think with all this talk about the plants, it would be worth. kind of mentioning what these plants are and what they look like. And to do that, I think you might have noticed this ginormous, unnecessarily large book I brought. This is called the Illustrated Treasury of Cultivated Flowers by Anderson. Beautiful illustrations.

And there's a whole section on Monkshood, or the econundum genus. And it's because they are extremely popular till this day as horticultural specimens. I mean, I can count four or five houses within a few blocks of where I live. that have them prolifically seeding into their gardens. It's still extremely popular. So I figured I would bring this book to show both of you, because one of you at least had mentioned, you hadn't Googled what the plant looked like.

That's California area. And California. But essentially, these are perennial plants, so they come back year after year from mountainous regions around the globe. There's about 250 different species of them. And they all have these beautiful, what they call, palmately compound leaves. So essentially what that means is the stem of the leaf,

comes up like your wrist and attaches to your hand. And if you picture the dissection on these leaves, they're like a hand with just over 20 fingers. It's just a very dissected thing with a single attachment point where your palm would be, essentially. So palmately compound. But the real showstopper about these plants are they're flowers, right? So you get these tall spikes, and I mean tall. These plants can come up to about, you know, my chin. And I'm not a tall person by any means, but, you know, four or five feet tall is pretty big for an herb.

That's tall. And some can get taller. But their real selling point is their flowers. And these are gorgeous plants. They are popular for a reason. And their flower color ranges from yellows to deep purples. But essentially, the name Monkshood comes from the fact that their petals are highly derived for bee pollination. So kind of setting up the stage for the shape of a bee to come and visit their flowers.

And two of the petals come up to the top and form a hood over the reproductive parts. So it kind of looks like a beautiful blue knight wearing a hoodie. blue-hitty. They're gorgeous plants, right? I mean, this is a beautiful picture. This is of a conodum napellus, but there's plenty of others. Like I said, there's about 250 different species of these plants. Now, it's worth mentioning that they are members of the Buttercup family. And most of that family, which is renunke-lacey, have a lot of alkaloids. They're known for their alkaloid production. And they're toxic. They're very toxic. And for good reason, we'll get to that. But the Wolfsbane we've probably been most referring to,

is Aconidum Lecoctinum. And that one's native to most of Europe and northern Asia. So that's the one that most of what, you know, white European history would have probably been writing about. But that's not to say that there aren't others. Like I said, this is a genus of 250, give or take species. Right. All of them extremely toxic to humans.

There's also, within the guise of herbalism, wolf Spain, there is a cononym chasmantum, or sorry, Khesmantam. There's a cononym heterophyllum and a cononym violacium. And these are all largely Himalayan in their distribution. So India, Pakistan, Nepal, and I think a little bit into Iraq, but I could be mistaken about that. And they have been very important in all of those cultures. So you talked a lot about the history, but essentially all of the history you gave has been used in various cultures throughout history. So more than one group of humans stumped. on to the fact that you eat these and you're going to be in tough shape. You can kill your enemies.

And you mentioned a conodine, right? And that's really the one that a lot of people focus on with Wolf's Bain, but it's worth mentioning that they produce lots of alkaloids. Yeah, I didn't even talk about all the very, they all act in similar ways. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I didn't even mention all the other names. Yeah, and alkaliates come in many forms, but in the context that we're talking about tonight, they're what we call secondary metabolites in plants.

And what that means is that these are compounds that plants produce that aren't involved in growth and reproduction. Oh. Okay. So secondary. Right. Yeah. Not necessary. Right.

Yeah. What are they for? Secondary compounds are largely defense compounds. And there's a lot of different ways a plant can go to defend itself. And you got to think about it from a plant's perspective, right? They're not animals. They can't run from danger. Right.

Plants are stuck where they are for the most part. there's exceptions to that rule for anyone listening that's a plant person here. We don't need to talk about those. But yeah, if you're stuck in a place and you're a tasty nitrogen-filled plant, things are going to want to eat you. And you, in the plant sense, are going to need to defend yourself. And one of the many ways that plants do that are through very toxic chemical compounds. And that's where most of secondary metabolites come in when we talk about the collagen survival of plant species. They're to either make you so distasteful that nothing wants to eat you, or if something makes that mistake, it's the last mistake it ever makes.

Very cool. Yeah. Very cool. The thing to keep in mind about alkaloids is that they're nitrogen-rich compounds. So these are usually plants that come from good soils, right? And so a connoom is largely a plant species in the northern hemisphere that's native to temperate areas, mountainous areas, but generally pretty rich soil types. Okay. Okay.

Because it takes a lot to produce these compounds, right? You don't need to do it. Evolutionary speaking, why would you produce them if you didn't have to? Yeah. And the amount of energy and vital compounds that go into making them kind of bleeds into the fact that they are very necessary for these plants long-term survival. So the big thing with these plants is that they just simply don't want to be eaten. And that's what's amazing about plant compounds.

And that's something that humans have used for centuries is the fact that the compounds that they're producing have to be biologically active. And this is why I love your idea of like, it's all in the dose, right? What's a poison and what's a medicine? Well, how much are you taking and why are you taking it, right? And that's key to this, is that these plants don't want to be eaten. Plants are trying to kill whatever's eating them,

or at least make them never want to eat it again. And that's where these alkaloids start to come into place. So ecologically, evolutionarily speaking, these are all defense compounds, at least in the context of this. There's probably other functions that we don't quite understand. Because again, the science is truly in its infancy in a lot of ways. But it's fascinating to think about what these plants are doing just to keep things from budding off pieces. And that brings up a really good point here is that there's variations in the composition and concentration between species, between individuals within a species, and even between parts of the same plant.

Yeah. That was a big thing I saw when they were like talking about people that use this in different. remedies was like, are you using the root or the stem or the leaves? Yep. Does it also, does the species variation, does that depend on like what organism is the primary consumer of that plant? It very much can. So you will often see plants that get into areas where, say, islands where there aren't

large predators or mammals don't make it too quite easily. Yeah. You still have to deal with your insect constituency, but you see kind of a reduction in a lot of compounds because why would you produce something if you didn't have to? These are expensive products to produce. So why make something that's strong enough to kill a mammal if all you have to kill is like a grasshopper? Right. Which it probably, it doesn't take nearly the concentration or whatever to kill a grasshopper as it would like a fox. It always into the whole energy budget. Yeah. Yeah. What am I spending my, my energy on? This is so fun. Yes. I know. I love that the

ecology side is coming out right now. Yeah. But exactly. You've hit the nail on. the head. And we'll talk about insects and just that evolutionary arms race in which you get around those sorts of things. But again, all of these are to deter herbivores to any extent possible. Yeah. So as far that we know, from what we've been able to establish at this point, of the 54 phytochemically investigated species of a conodum. So essentially that's just saying of the 54 species that we've decided to, you know, analyze the chemical composition, uh, they all contain acotene-like alkaloids, which are neurotoxic as we decided, cardiotoxic for mammals and

insects. And it's important to note that you're talking about sodium channels, right? Rade, our favorite bee spray, also opens up those sodium channels, and that's the way in which it works. Yeah. These sodium channels are highly conserved across evolutionary tax. Right. That's a very effective way to kill any sort of living animal.

Yeah, definitely. Or, again, make it never want to eat you. Yeah. So the fact that different organs can vary is pretty interesting because the localization of these secondary metabolites says a lot about, from a survival standpoint, what these plants really are trying to protect. So most of what you, most of the stuff you want to avoid with a conodom, although I recommend avoiding the whole freaking plant in terms of digestion, are the gruelessing. are the growth tips, so any part that's actively growing, so a leaf bud, the flowers, right? So reproduction is the key to any sort of species. That makes sense.

Yeah, so you want to protect the parts that do that. So they should be the most dangerous. Yes. And the roots, because essentially a plant is nothing without its roots. And most of the deaths that I encountered in my trying to avoid encountering them were from people eating the tubers. Yeah. What's left over at that point? Stem.

So if you are going to use aconite, use the stems. Right, but also don't use any part of it. Just don't. Just don't. If you're going to use it, think of twice and don't. Think of twice and don't. Okay. Right.

But that brings up a really interesting point because it's not just herbivores that are interacting with these plants. They're flowering plants. They're an angiosperm. And what do we know about angiosperms? Lots of flying bees. Pollinators. Pollinators, right? Polinators.

Aaron got there somehow. He was doing like a wing thing to give us a hint. He was flapping his hands. Flapping his hands. We got there eventually. So when people started looking at the levels of these toxic alkaloids, which again, a conatine is just one of them, there's at least 10 different, very toxic alkaloids to consider when considering this plant, I don't know why we just focus on one of them.

Regardless, when people looked at it. which parts of the plant were producing that, it made a lot of sense because the highest levels you see are in the roots. I brought a graph. I saw there's a graph on your notes. First, with the highest concentration are the roots. Second is the pollen. Third is the flower. So the flower being the sepals and the petals. Yeah. The pollen, which is really interesting because that's a floral reward, right? It's a gammy. You need it to get from one plant to another for sexual reproduction. But there's within reason. Okay.

But why would a plant want to protect its pollen when that's the key, you know, something needs to pick that up and take it, usually a bee in this case, because it's worth mentioning that most ofconidum are bee pollinated. To the point that in Europe, at least, and in Asia, too, I think there are bees that pollinate nothing else. Right. That their entire life history overlaps only with the blooming period of that specific monks with species.

So this question became, why the hell are these plants putting this in their pollen? And why is that second to, you know, the root, but then beats out the flower and the leaf, which are parts you generally assume are pretty important for a plant. Well, that brings up a really weird idea of the fact that, you know, certain insects start to benefit from these compounds. Oh. What? Yeah.

And this is still largely hypothetical and remains to be tested. but think about it this way. Everyone's really familiar with the monarch butterfly. It eats milkweed, and part of what it does is that milkweed is full of other alkaloids, which we can talk about it in a later episode, but they sequester those poisons, and all that means is that they're storing them in their tissues, and that keeps birds from wanting to eat the caterpillars and the butterflies.

Oh my God, this is so exciting. Yes. It's extremely exciting because someone, Goslin and others in 2013 put this. idea to the test. And this was a really cool, one of the coolest papers I found in researching this. And it kind of comes down to this idea of attraction versus protection. You want to protect your parts that are really important to you, but you also need to attract insect pollinators in this case. Right. So could it be that these bees are collecting the pollen, feeding it to their offspring and it's sequestering at least some of those alkaloids and their tissues? And what they found is

that, yes, it's happening. They do not know if it's enough to do. deter potential predators on the bees. On the bees. But this concept of potentially reinforcing the fact that you're bolstering and protecting your flowers, but also kind of encouraging your pollinators to keep coming back. That is so cool. There's enough evidence to suggest that further work should investigate this to a highly green. That is really cool. And so just to like recap.

Yeah. Like so we're talking about these bees being able to. take these poisonous things, which are poisonous to so many vertebrates, so many arthropods, so many animals, and use that to also be toxic or poisonous. So that if something eats them, then they're going to get poisoned by that same poison that the plant made. Exactly. That's super cool.

This is evolution at its best and why I'm in the field that I'm in. Yeah. That's really exciting. So you've got this dual benefit, right? you've got this poison in your very sensitive tissues that are protecting you from generalists, not to say things don't feed on these plants. They do. I came across the list of plenty of butterfly and mothal larva that will feed on these plants.

Specialization goes both ways, right? Yeah, yeah. But it reduces the amount of animals that could potentially feed on you, but then this also added benefit of reproducing to reproductive fitness by kind of helping out your so-called symbiont in this case. That is so-assive. Awesome. These are really neat plants and I'm so happy these are the ones that we're covering. And that's not to say that like the species we mentioned are the only ones here that we're considering. I mean, Aconidum is a northern hemisphere species. We have them in North America. Unfortunately, a lot of ours are endangered. Why are they endangered? The ones in North America are largely due to habitat loss. I mean, that's the number one reduction of any species on this planet. It's the one thing we should be fighting is just gobbling up habitat to preserve it instead of. to build malls on it. But so the IUCN Redlist, which is the International Union for Conservation of Nature,

lists at least a handful of a conodum species as critically or at least endangered on one level or another. Whoa. So a lot of them are the ones that are native to the Himalayan region of India, Pakistan, and Nepal. And what ends up happening there is this is where a lot of the contention with herbalism practices comes from, right? So I'm not trying to crap on anyone's culture. that's not what I'm doing here. I'm simply stating the facts is that a lot of these species are important to cultural practices. But any plants that become very popular are very important in those cultures are obviously sought after, right?

So the IUCN red list, all of the species of a connoom that they listed are endangered because of over-harvesting for these medicinal practices. Oh, wow. So it's not like they're growing their own to be harvested. They're going out in the wild and harvesting. Yes. And that's a sad fact about at least Western herbalism is the fact that they value naturally sourced product over a product that has been grown horticulture. They're at least in an agricultural setting. Wow.

Which is very counterintuitive. Yeah. Because one thing is that despite the fact that these plants are producing these compounds, the fact that natural selection is what it is and you're not going to have the same pressures everywhere, these compounds are not always in the same doses. Yeah. So what ends up happening is like we mentioned, not all parts of the plant. are as equally toxic. And if you want to get the most potent, generally that means harvesting the roots. So all of these plants are taken roots and all.

There's no regenerative capabilities once you've harvested the root of a plant. So that's why a lot of these are end up being put on the endangered species list is because you've harvested every chance this plant has of coming back. And that's, to me, kind of tragic. I mean, it seems like one of the things that we keep coming back to in this podcast is the impact of urbanization. And so like that in a vacuum, overharvesting cannot be possible without the like habitat reduction at the same time. And so it's a one-two punch where we have these urban communities spreading into areas and we have a lack of conservation, which in so many cases it's not

financially feasible to conserve that areas. And so like I yeah, it's, It's like this is, it's almost an inevitable factor of urbanization. The question then becomes as, A, is this is an effective way of treating? Yeah. And is there educational ways of getting past that? But then, as you mentioned, and I'm really happy you did, is this idea of diminishing returns. And that is where my contention with a lot of the foraging community comes from. It would be awesome if everyone could adopt foraging practices if we had enough land to support that.

But unfortunately, this largely becomes a practice of people that. are comfortable in areas where there isn't a lot of natural areas left. So as our natural areas shrink and people take up this practice and go into the forest and treat it like the bulk been at your grocery store, this is something we're going to see time and time again. And it's really important to mention that you do not have to take every last individual of a species to doom it to extinction. Yeah. You can reduce its genetic diversity or its population numbers to levels in which they're just going to stagnate and die anyway. And that's the fear with a lot of these medicinal plants.

Ooh, that was fun. Yeah, that was. I learned a crap ton, including what Monkshood actually looks like. Again, once next fall comes around, I will happily show you all of the Monks Hood in our neighborhood. That would be so fun. Hood in the Hoodie time. Well, I learned a ton. Me too.

Thank you for letting me exercise a set of muscles that I don't generally get to exercise. This was really great. Super fun. It lived up to all of the expectations. Yes, absolutely. And we have multiple more episodes. Yeah, we have more coming to you. So, I guess.

Is that all we have? I think so. We don't really need to tell you to wash your hands this time. Wash your plants. Who? Boil your plants. Don't eat everything you were growing. I think is probably the better thing here.

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