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Ask HN: Are there any studies on vaporizing herbs other than marijuana (CBD)?

7 points by leoossa ↗ HN
Recently I bought vaporizer and I've read a lot websites claiming there are health benefits from vaporizing herbs like damiana, eucalyptus, lavender, peppermint, etc. Are there any scientific study on that? I've only found a few that covers marijuana vaporization but none of other herbs.

5 comments

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ggm
I would be wary of routine ingestion of eucalyptus or lavender. Both are pretty potent irritants to fragile tissue and should not be overdone. Lung tissue is sensitive.

A nebuliser might be overdoing it. A water vapour misting machine with a few drops? No biggie.

Vaporising trivially alters chemicals because it changes the surface area to volume ratio. Higher surface area makes them more reactive per unit volume. They penetrate airways further because smaller, and are more likely to be absorbed.

Some conditions such as asthma can be made worse by irritants. You may feel better short term but do harm.

Yes.. my mum used to smear Vicks menthol on my nostrils too..

leoossa
Thank you for your answer. Does that apply to every herb? E.g. that site: https://kingpenvapes.com/kpv-blog/what-kind-dry-herbs-vapori... names over 50 herbs you could vaporize and precise temperatures you should use to vape them. I wonder how they got info about vaping temperatures and health benefits. Precise numbers they use are suggesting that there's something behind to support their claims.
raquo
Honestly that reads like essential oils for "progressive millennials". Of course you should vape everything if you ask a vape salesman.

"Nobody knows anything" is the best case you can hope for. Do you want to be the guinea pig and find out what the long term effects are in 20 years? Go ahead. Vaping is not an established field of medicine, it was only popularized fairly recently, and that was mostly for smoking tobacco and marijuana, not camomile or garlic or whatever.

leoossa
I'm not defending their claims. I'm just asking, and I really do think that could be useful to have some study on that. Studies on vaporized marijuana says that are some benefits of that form of application: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4456813/ While not having any research paper to deny nor support thesis about health benefits of vaporizing other herbs it's hard to have strong opinion on that. It's probably safer to avoid it - as you said - not being guinea pig, until there's some paper published.
Chunklight
I once smoked mullein (verbascum thapsis) rolled like a cigarette. I was surprised how light and soothing the smoke was. It is said to act as an expectorant (helps you cough up gunk) and, topically, is soothing to skin.

I think that would be a good candidate for vaporization. Maybe you could get the expectorant effect without taking in carcinogenic smoke.