The lengths to which CH'ers are willing to go.....

[razorPP]

use a 1 oz shot glass, cheers

[razorPP]

My CH does know about the time change, yesterday evening I was hurting bad, will I figured it out this morning, there was a time change, so my CH hits an hour earlier by the clock, but really at it normal cycle time. I take the mamajuana 1 oz mixed with v8, at 5:30 clock time but its 6:30 CH time. Mamajuana does it's thing, it blocks the pain, that is what Mamajuana does. MAN I'm slow, from day one, three weeks and two days ago, Mamajuana has blocked the PAIN....I still have Chronic CH. We need the good Dr. H to take a look at why Mamajuana has the ability to turn the CH pain receptors off. We always talk about a non hallucinogenic, maybe Mamajuana is it. I did trip over my mom once and she said, Juana watch where your going. Denny, I feel like I'm going places I have not been to in 6 years.

[spiny]

Hey razor,

Where on the net are you finding the info? I received my herbs Friday and plan to start a batch today. Just need to know/decide what kind of alcohol to use. White wine is definitely out!!! Pain from that stuff, CH or not! The only alcohol I drink is potato vodka.

Can't wait to see if this works for me!!!!

thanks,

spiny

[razorPP]

I'm on my third batch, which is all rum and half finger of honey. I think any clear alcohol would work. I almost used gin. I think they use wine in the first batch, because they throw it out and it's cheaper than rum. If you can drink seed water you can drink the first batch. Also, I think the herbs counter act the alcohol effect has on us. It's just able to block the pain. You could mix a pint of Mamajuana herbs with vodka and see. Good luck.

[razorPP]

I found info on YouTube. Search YouTube mamajuana. Also, google search Mamajuana a few links showed honey, wine and rum. The measurement just seemed like you cannot mix it wrong.

[CHfather]

We need the good Dr. H to take a look at why Mamajuana has the ability to turn the CH pain receptors off.

  Agreed.  Or someone else smart, knowledgeable, and highly curious -- Les Genser might be a perfect candidate.  Maybe I'll try emailing Les and see if s/he can be reached.  Or maybe the Italian doc who's new to the board might be curious.

  I'm also wondering whether a blood test (of you) might reveal anything.  Elevated or decreased levels of such-and-such, as compared to your last blood test (if that was fairly recent), or something?

   Again, thanks so much for your diligent reporting and your thinking about this!

[CHfather]

BTW, has anyone posted about this over at ch.com?  The more the merrier, it seems, with regard to folks trying it out.

[DrTy2]

I copy-paste my answer from my other topic here as well:

I actually read through that Mamajuana article already, and the only idea I had it is that this concotion is some kind of hormonal replacement therapy, as most of the herbs included possess effects that are quite clearly imputable to sexual hormones activity.

Alcohol itself is probably required to extract the active ingredients from the herbal products (in other words it's an alcoholic extract), wich is quite reasonable, as many hormones are quite idrophilic, but still very much lipophilic at the same time, so alcohol it's probably the best chemical to extract them.

There are some recent studies pointing out how testosterone supplementation may help subside CH pain for a very short period:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16732838

This could also explain why having an active sexual life may help reducing CH attacks (not the orgasm thing tough, that's probably due to the massive oxytocin vascular effect).

So all in all Mamajuana activity could be related to the male hormones it contains, or because it helps your body produce/regulate them, much like soy milk/extracts help women reduce menopausal side-effects.

Also it could explain why its effect is so much short-term, as it only helps easing the pain momentarily, but then hormones are very rapidly metabolized and eliminated from the system in just a couple of hours.

[didgens]

it might be expensive but worth the time to find and split out each herb in its own bottle with the rum and see if any one specific one is the "cure" or its the combo

just a thought

[razorPP]

DrTy2, I looked at my recent lab report and Testosterone, Free, BIO and Total, LC/MS/MS, are all within normal range. Good call, some folks are going to have low hormones. I've asked my neurologist many times, "What's out of balance in my system?" So, maybe mamajuana is helping with the balance. Still having positive results.  peace

[DrTy2]

Actually didgens nailed it: there's no way to understand what's workin, unless we start taking them one by one.

Trying to give an explanation in a concotion of 10+ herbs, is really like finding a needle in an haystack.

[Bejeeber]

Herbal combinations are definitely known to work synergistically, so I wouldn't be surprised if one single herb in there is NOT the "cure".

I'm also not exactly holding my breath for an explanation via current medical science of exactly how or why mamajuana works, as last time I checked, the state of the science isn't yet quite up to understanding or explaining everything a single herb will do, let alone the needle in haystack scenario DrTy2 mentions regarding herbal combinations.

Still, that would be an interesting experiment to split out each herb - several major universities should be launching extensive mamajuana studies right now.  Still not holding breath.  ;D

[CHfather]

there's no way to understand what's working, unless we start taking them one by one. 

  Well, I figure it's either possibly considerably easier than that, or considerably harder.

On the potentially easier side, there really are people who know the likely, or most common, effects of many, or even most, herbs. (Again, Les Genser comes to mind.) So you could look at the properties of the stated ingredients and make a hypothesis about which might be affecting CH, based on what we know about other things that affect CH, from triptans to tryptamines.

(For those of you who don't know, Les Genser is a homeopathic practitioner who developed the licorice root protocol for CH that has been used successfully by many people. S/he used to be active at this board, and wonderfully helpful, but has subsequently pretty much disappeared.)

For example, I just looked up one of the ingredients, listed as "ocimum basilicum."  Here's what Wikipedia says about it:

>>>Basil, Thai basil, or sweet basil, is a common name for the culinary herb ocimum basilicum ... Basil is used for their medicinal properties in Ayurveda, the traditional medicinal system of India and Siddha medicine, a traditional Tamil system of medicine.<<<

At a purely superficial level, I say "Hmmmm, might be interesting." I'd have to know a lot more, which I don't, to say more than that ... I'm just saying here that maybe some likely positive agents could be identified by a truly knowledgeable person, and the search might be quickly narrowed.

(And we might say, "Who cares!?!  If mamajuana proves that it works, people can just drink that." But the possibility of an actual medicine derived from the specific element(s) that do work is pretty darn appealing to me.)

On the more complicated side [edit -- which I see Jeebs has already addressed], it could be that it's not an individual ingredient that makes mamajuana work (if it continues to show that it does work), but some combination of the ingredients, in which case you'd be looking at a very, very vast number of things that you would have to test.  Again, herbal science might be able to narrow down the most likely combinations, but it'd still be a lot of testing.  And of course given the vastness of the testing, no person/no group is actually likely to undertake that.

I've written here before about my friend who has developed a spectacularly effective new antidepressant that's likely to come on the market in 2016.  (You can read about it in many places, including here: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDMQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnaurex.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F01%2FNaurex_GLYX-13_ACNP_2013_poster_news_release_FINAL2.pdf&ei=F-chU-XiKsPuoASS7ILACg&usg=AFQjCNGj0qs3dsRtC-_Skyr42nOna3JEjQ&sig2=TrrDJT0kjDat9-5rKBzT7A&bvm=bv.62922401,d.cGU.) On one hand, what he said to me once is the bad news: "Too bad you can't give lab rats cluster headaches, because then you could just do what pharma does and test everything you can think of until you find something that stops CH."   On the other hand, his example, in which he figured out a different mechanism for treating depression and now it's just a matter of implementing that mechanism, is an inspiration to me about what might possibly happen with CH if the key mamajuana ingredient(s) could be isolated.

[DrTy2]

About Basil... well in Italy basil (we call it "basilico") is a very common spice used for cooking. I ate tons of basil since I was a child, and I still eat it even fresh in significant quantities, so well, no. It's not basil that cures CH! 

About the opportunity of synergic effects well... It could be, but it's an alcoholic extract, so my educated guess is that they're not interacting very much among themselves, it's probably something included in more than one herb, that has more or less a similar effects on the body.

So, it's worth trying one by one, at least we could define important parameters like:

1- If there's just one herb wich is working, and the rest is just there for the show

2- If there's one or more herbs working a little, but they're much more powerful when combined

3- If no single herb is working at all, and we need a special sinergy.

Then the next step should be testing it on various CH individuals and see on how many of them it works, and start to define a pattern, i.e. if all of them do respond to D3 treatment, if their testosterone levels are all normal, if they're refractory to other treatments etc.

[Dallas Denny]

BTW, has anyone posted about this over at ch.com?  The more the merrier, it seems, with regard to folks trying it out. 

Jerry, Razor PM'd me regarding this question.....

.....I thought long and hard before I posted the thread here.....I thought about posting it to CH.com at the same time but was concerned that it wouldn't be recieved well there (another snake oil cure so to speak)....one of the reasons this board came about is that the cluster buster treatment caught a lot of flak there I think.

Also, we do have numerous members here who are long time CH.com members and who are supportive of CB and refer folks here frequently.....although many of them don't post here, they follow this board on a daily basis so I feel confident that continued success from experiments documented here will be shared in that community as well.

Just my 2 cents worth but not sayin that anyone shouldn't post there regarding Mamajuana if they're prepared for any negative comments it might get!!

All that bein said, it's really great to read your posts of continued success Razor and if it doesn't help anyone else, I'm really glad I finally decided to post the thread!!

I will also say that I can't wait for Ricardo's brew to get done and see what kind of results he gets.....I see Spiny is now included among the participants so we'll have her input soon as well!!

DD

[CHfather]

I ate tons of basil since I was a child, and I still eat it even fresh in significant quantities

  Nothing's as good as a fresh caprese salad, if you ask me!

It's not basil that cures CH! 

Well, then we've eliminated one element from the test -- assuming that the root or stick or whatever part is in mamajuana, when treated with alcohol, has the same effect as the untreated leaves you're typically eating (an assumption I'm not willing to make and am unable to evaluate).

If we assume that Ayurvedic and other medicine traditions might know something that we don't (and what buster could assume otherwise?), then we have to pay attention, if we would want to pursue this with true discipline.  Here's what one site says about basil:

>>Often referred to as holy basil, Tulsi [basil] is a potent herb that has been used in India for thousands of years to treat colds, coughs, and flu. According to Ayurveda, tulsi promotes purity and lightness in the body, cleansing the respiratory tract of toxins and relieving digestive gas and bloating. Tulsi leaves offer a rich source of essential oil, containing eugenol, nerol, camphor, and a variety of terpenes and flavonoids. The oil is a strong antiseptic against many kinds of disease-causing organisms, including bacteria, fungi, and parasites.<<

it's an alcoholic extract

  Do we actually even know this for sure?  It's sold in alcohol, but maybe that's just because people prefer drinking funny-tasting alcohol as opposed to weird-tasting water.  I got no chemistry knowledge to help me here, and of course I know that the licorice root and many homeopathic items are alcohol extracts . . . just wondering whether other mediums (like water, or boiling water, or Pepsi-Cola) might also work for extraction.

[CHfather]

not sayin that anyone shouldn't post there regarding Mamajuana if they're prepared for any negative comments it might get!!

Heck, I'll post it.  http://www.clusterheadaches.com/wwwboard2/index.html

[Bejeeber]

While CHf is strapping on his flak jacket, I think it's interesting to note how long this mamajuana goes back in native culture (several thousand years, like the use of RC, mushrooms, etc.,) without the alcohol component for much of it's history.

I guess whether the original non-alcoholic version could still be effective for CH would be another of the bazillion and three things we're coming up with here to test out. 

I'll paste some background info below (copied from this site): http://www.natural-safe-hormones.com/mama_juana.html

"This herbal combo has several thousand years of use in the native culture. The traditional use of this tonic combination takes several forms. About half use it as tea. About a quarter of the use is as tincture made with the local rum. (This is the form when the herbs are used as an aphrodisiac: the men commonly drink several shot glasses at a time.) The third way of using these herbs is to ferment them in water with sugar or honey. This "mabi" is sold from vendors carts like soda pop."

Meanwhile I'll go out on a limb and predict not much flak will be received at ch.com.  8-)

[DrTy2]

Just a few cents thrown in there coming from my very general knowledge of pharmaceutical botanics:

1- Many, many herbs do possess antiseptical/antibiotics properties. That's because these substances are more or less some kind of "immune system" of most plants: they actually passively prevent microorganisms from over-proliferating.

So it's not unusual at all to find herbs whose properties are to be preservants, and/or antiseptics of some kind.

Some studies back in the past, suggested how many migraines (including CH), were provoked, in some individuals, by yeasts or other patogens widespread colonization through the body (like candida), and expecially in the digestive system. So any kind of herb wich may help re-equilibrate natural bacterial/fungine flora, may help against headaches, at least in some individuals.

2- If some recipes tell you to let them ferment, they're actually extracting some active principles with alcohol: it's just natural alcohol produced by the bacteria/yeasts/fungi. Other than that, what really matters, is the way the active substance is carried through the medium.

For what we know, this could even be completely irrelevant, and just chewing or swallowing these herbs could be enough.

3- The more I read about it, the more it says "sexual hormones replacement/regulation therapy".

Another option is instead of just trying one herb after the other, you can try to remove just ONE herb from the "potion" and see if it still works, and then remove each one of them until you see some difference, in order to see wich one of them do really synergize.

[Purple]

But the possibility of an actual medicine derived from the specific element(s) that do work is pretty darn appealing to me.

really? why? I have to wonder... do we really need to undo millennial knowledge and process it and...

If it works, I say let's just use it as is...

As the elder said... just drink da dam thing, you'll see the light.

I'll order a pouch as soon as I can 

[Marc]

Herbal combinations are definitely known to work synergistically, so I wouldn't be surprised if one single herb in there is NOT the "cure".

I'm also not exactly holding my breath for an explanation via current medical science of exactly how or why mamajuana works, as last time I checked, the state of the science isn't yet quite up to understanding or explaining everything a single herb will do, let alone the needle in haystack scenario DrTy2 mentions regarding herbal combinations.

Still, that would be an interesting experiment to split out each herb - several major universities should be launching extensive mamajuana studies right now.  Still not holding breath.  ;D

Important points to remember.....

Marc

[razorPP]

IÂ’m celebrating 4 weeks of Chronic CH relief with Mamajuana. When I found Clusterbusters over 4 years ago I was lost, hurting and unsure of what I was going through and why. So, I say thank you to all you for letting me lean on you and hold on for change. Peace

Ok, thatÂ’s a warm fuzzy from me to youÂ…now back to Mamajuana and its pain blocking ability. They are refinishing the floors at work and used lacquer yesterday afternoon. Instant CH, wtf, barely made it home.  I looked at my Mamajuna bottle and thought no way itÂ’s going to squash this one, mixed 1 oz of MJ, 45 minutes later IÂ’m fÂ…ing great, cooked a nice dinner for the wife, acted like a normal person the rest of the eveningÂ… I would have been down for the evening and night. Just saying, get you some MJ.

[spiny]

Starting my batch tomorrow. So, results start in a week!! My reading says it is an alcohol tincture. I hate rum, so will be using vodka.

[Bejeeber]

Now that you mention it, I have some of that Russian potato booze laying about here, too, and wouldn't mind using it instead of rum.

Does anyone know of a reason why the actual rum type of hard liquor might be important to use vs vodka?

[Atlas]

Is anyone else getting a "body buzz" feeling from mamajuana?  After two to three shots of MJ I feel a buzz that's very similar to lower doses of vitamin M.  It doesn't happen when taking a single shot.