Drug info - Geranium essential oil,Alkaloids and effects.

[fnord]

Grandma has a few vials of geranium essential oil and was wondering if anyone knows if this would be safe for human consumption,what alkaloids would be present and there effects.

[bravedog]

Psychoactivity of essential oils isn't much pursued because of dangers of toxicity I think. Proceed with caution.

[fnord]

Originally Posted by bravedog

Psychoactivity of essential oils isn't much pursued because of dangers of toxicity I think. Proceed with caution.

What toxicity? Can you elaborate? Grandma has tryed a single drop so far with little to no effect,granny thinks that a slight effect was felt but it was too mild to be sure.

Reputation Comments on this post:

this is very dangerous and as a senior member with a lot of credibility, you set a bad example for the many confused peo...

[bravedog]

"While some advocate the ingestion of essential oils for therapeutic purposes, this should never be done except under the supervision of someone licensed to prescribe such treatment. Some common essential oils such as Eucalyptus are toxic internally. Pharmacopoeia standards for medicinal oils should be heeded. Some oils can be toxic to some domestic animals, cats in particular.[8] The internal use of essential oils can pose hazards to pregnant women, as some can be abortifacients in dose 0.5–10 ml."-wikipedia

I seem to recall many are harmful to the liver. Possible carcinogens? I think Shulgin discusses them, maybe Ratsch in Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants. From books and discussions on ethnobotanical sites such exploration seems a poor idea. Even safrole, the essential oil most commonly discussed as a psychoactive, is generally considered unwise to ingest.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Thanks for the uefull information.

[kerang]

Swim was trained in, and worked for a while with essential oils some years ago. He no longer remember the specifics for Geranium oil, but as a rule any essential oil should not be used undiluted.
When used for a full body massage he would typically use 3 - 5 drops of essential oil in around 100ml. off an inert carrier oil such as grapeseed or sweet almond oil. In other words it was heavily diluted when used on the body to avoid irriating the skin.
Imagine what it could do in the gastrointestinal tract

He never heard about any kind of internal use for essential oil, exept maybe for inhaling vapours from hot water that had a few drops of essential oil.
Swim agree that internal use of essential oils would be really bad for someones liver.

The only time swim heard about undiluted essential oils being used was the oil of the Tea tree.
That oil was used undilutet to treat athlets foot or even of a tampax to treat "womans problems"

Swim did a quick search on Geranium oil, but could not find any reason to do that thing grandma described, so if she knows something about this oil he would like to know about it too.

[fnord]

Well im assuming that geranium oil contains geranimine,for more info on geranamine look here:http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=30801

[kerang]

Ok swim knew there had to be something like that
Geranium oil was something swim only used for old ladies

But still he say grandma should not put essentil oils in her mouth. Like bravedog wrote most any oil contain carcinogens.