Let me give you one word for your future career, young people. (*Leans in with portentous whisper*): Terpenes.
Terpenes are going to be huge, folks. Have you accepted terpenes into your heart as your lord and savior? Over at my DabConnection gig, I’ve been talkin’ some serious terpene turkey. I started out trying to illuminate this curious corner of cannabis chemistry because I see a lot of questions about them, and not much answers. I ended up falling into a research rabbit hole and starting writing up encyclopedia-type entries on the top terpenes in cannabis. Meet some of nature’s most whimsical organic compounds, after the jump.
Terpenes are fascinating because they’re in the same class with alkaloids, being chemical compounds which plants evolved as a natural defense against predators, parasites, and general pesky critters. Which illuminates, by the way, a very human superpower: All these chemicals produced by plants are either deadly or at least repellent to nearly every other animal on Earth, but along come humans and we can eat them just fine, and even enjoy the effects enough to get a buzz off a dozen or so.
Cocaine, caffeine, nicotine, mescaline, psilocybin, morphine, ephedrine? All alkaloids, and we just rattled off the active ingredients of nearly every street drug we have today. Most of which have a lethal dose for all creatures (even humans can die from too much caffeine at once), but humans have built up an amazing high tolerance that allows us to do something useful with them, or develop a useless addiction to them.
Likewise with terpenes, most of which serve as at least insect repellent, but also form a big chunk of what we call essential oils. They are found throughout the plant kingdom in nature; so common that you’re been eating, drinking, and smelling terpenes your whole life and didn’t know it. In cannabis, terpenes are mostly concentrated in the hairy little bits you find on a nugget – those are called trichomes. Because your defensive chemical in your war on aphids should be stuck out on prickly little hairs where they’ll be dosed from the first bite – Take that, you nasty bug!
Here’s some of the cooler terpenes found in cannabis:
Myrcene – Also found in mangoes, bay leaf, hops, and lemon grass. Has a sedative effect and enhances the absorption rate of THC into your system.
Limonene – Found in most citrus fruit and several kinds of tree. Helps with mental concentration and memory.
Linalool – Found in lavender and half the jars on your spice rack. Antiseptic, anti-cancer, and may help reverse Alheimer’s.
Caryophyllene – Present in half your spice rack again, and is also practically a miracle drug in its own right, being used to treat diabetes, osteoporosis, anxiety, alcoholism, and may even be anti-aging as well.
Pinene – Found in pine-family trees and lots of aromatic plants. Part of the ingredients in turpentine and has shown promise as a biofuel.
Bisabolol – The identical active ingredient in chamomile tea. Pain-reliever and antioxidant, also shows up in skin-care products.
Eucalyptol – Yes, just like the eucalyptus tree. Another near-miracle drug used to treat pancreatitis, bronchial asthma, tuberculosis, and the list goes on.
Nerolidol – Best known in blood oranges. First used as a perfume in the 17th century, has some disinfectant properties.
Humulene – A major terpene in hops, also found in many spices and in tobacco and ginseng. May have mild anti-inflammatory properties.
Carene – Also found in pine and ceder trees, and again in your spice rack. Another turpentine ingredient, it’s also suspected of mild medical properties.
You’ll notice two things about terpenes straight away: They’re so common that there should be a mixture you could make out of household spices – say, oregano, basil, bay leaf, clove, and rosemary – that you could light on fire and make such a convincing pot smell that it might even fool a trained narcotics dog. And if these terpenes are such miracle drugs, we should be getting plenty of them in our diet already. Yes, but the medical properties only come through in large, concentrated doses. The good news is, mass-producing the stuff should be a breeze, since we have such an abundant supply thanks to world cultivation.
And now, of course, cannabis. So if you thought the medical cannabis angle was just hippies trying to make it legal to get stoned, studying terpenes will cure your skepticism.
As for me, I have joined the terpene movement. Notice on those posts I linked to, I was careful to cite only clinical studies as certified findings. There’s centuries of folk medicine behind essential oils in general, but a good controlled experiment sorts the true medicines from the folk legends.
