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'Mad honey' that can stop your heart is being sold online

73 pointsby samizdislast Friday at 9:17 AM52 commentsview on HN

Comments

robotnikmantoday at 9:46 PM

>Eat a teaspoonful, and you might feel pleasantly warm and slightly lightheaded. Eat more than a few tablespoons, and your heart rate can drop to life-threatening levels.

Reminds me of the Futurama episode with the space bee honey. Wonder if the writers got the inspiration from this.

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pigbearpigtoday at 9:52 PM

This is the original article and has better images IMHO.

https://theconversation.com/mad-honey-that-can-stop-your-hea...

NDlurkertoday at 9:06 PM

Old Vice documentary about it. This is where I had first heard about it. Used to be really hard to find the honey online, like only one or 2 places that sold it

https://youtu.be/wDOvmhqvIA8

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daedrdevtoday at 9:09 PM

I imagine the native also built up tolerance over generations, not just knowledge as the article contends . Dying from a specific action is quite the evolutionary motivator

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liaymtoday at 10:06 PM

If anyone's interested there's also this recently released documentary in french by Hit the Road, where they show the process of collecting the honey and also the ritual side of it.

https://youtu.be/r-jZyTP4K4g

Dylan16807today at 9:45 PM

> The problem is that the gap between a medicinal dose and a toxic dose is very small

What's this claim based on? I don't think it's the rat study linked nearby. I looked through it and they didn't really compare doses.

If it's a linear effect on dropping blood pressure, that seems like an overblown way to talk about it. If it's something else, I'd love to hear more.

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nkrisctoday at 9:21 PM

They mention the toxin comes from the rhododendron flower. I remember camping in North Carolina once and one of the people I was with warned against burning anything from the rhododendron in the area, as supposedly the smoke would give you the runs.

I mostly thought they were joking, and I have no idea what specific type of rhododendron would be there (if any), but maybe there’s a glimmer of merit to it? Or maybe they were thinking of a different plant?

This was somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains, if I remember correctly.

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AngryDatatoday at 9:23 PM

If you buy psychoactive honey/drugs online, it is on you to find out what it is and what kind of dosage you should take.

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measurablefunctoday at 9:57 PM

Joe Rogan endorses consuming mad honey according to the copy on this site: https://realmadhoney.com/products/mad-honey-us. So there is an entire supply chain from Nepal to the consumer.

meindnochtoday at 9:21 PM

A lot of things sold online can stop your heart.

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mock-possumtoday at 9:36 PM

Metta Beshay, my new favorite drug explainer, has a neat video on the subject: https://youtu.be/5X3dCBQYdek

anonreeeeplortoday at 9:49 PM

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