Hello everyone! It's been another crazy couple of weeks as school has wrapped up for my daughter and all the fun end of the year activities that needed to be done. Now we're at the official start of summer and let's not pretend, it will probably be a busy one as well, but hopefully far more fun haha. I'm hopeful to be able to be more involved in the cannabis community here in Oklahoma by attending events or spending time in dispensaries to provide cannabis education. I've been invited to attend an event in Shawnee Oklahoma at the Beyond the Pines Dispensary next Friday the 19th from 4-8 pm. This dispensary is owned and operated by an old friend of mine that I know from my college days and I'm really excited to see their setup. Their website has a nice collection of educational articles and videos to help start or guide you on your journey with cannabis. Definitely check it out: https://linktr.ee/beyondthepines It will be an interesting time, so please join me there and bring your cannabis questions!
But now on to the next terpenes on the list. The next couple of terpenes that we're going to talk about are humulene and terpinolene. These two terpenes may not always be found in cannabis strains in high amounts, but they have some interesting properties that allows them to potentially be useful in several different situations and with several types of symptoms.
Let's chat about humulene first. In my experience, I've seen higher amounts of humulene in the cannabis strains in the dispensaries near me than I have seen terpinolene. But due to the fact that cannabis strains are being crossbred like crazy and there's no real standardization in testing, there's every possibility that there may be strains with more terpinolene in them than what I see around my area. The terpene humulene can also be found in plants such as clove, sage, ginseng, black pepper, and hops1. Humulene has been described as having a "hoppy" aroma, similar to that of beer. Its aroma has also been described as earthy, woodsy, and spicy1. Humulene apparently was the first terpene found in hops according to the cannacon.org website and has had some research completed on it from the hop plant. As a side note, research on terpenes that are in other plants are easier to undergo since cannabis remains in a Schedule I status and while we can probably safely assume that they work similarly on the body, it's always good to notate that the research was completed on a different plant other than cannabis. Strains that can have a higher humulene amount are some of the old school strains, like Girl Scout Cookies, White Widow, and Sour Diesel2. Research completed on humulene from the hops plant has shown that humulene can be useful in several different ways: such as for pain, inflammation, bacterial infections, to suppress the appetite (sign me up for this one 🙋🏼♀️), and as an anti-proliferative2. An anti-proliferative helps reduce the spread of cells, especially malignant ones in the surrounding tissues3. There's a really interesting article in the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology that looked at how humulene acted upon cancer cells specific to the liver. It showed a huge possibility for humulenes use in reducing or stopping the spread of hepatocellular carcinoma cell proliferation4. This fact alone is amazing to learn about and while the possibility is there to help in situations like this, the research isn't quite yet there to tell us how to make sure that this effect would happen with each individual person consuming the terpene. There are so many possibilities when it comes to cannabis terpenes and hopefully as research continues we'll be able to find standardization in its use.
Now let's move on to terpinolene, which is a really interesting terpene in my opinion. This terpene is most often found or associated with cannabis strains that would normally fall into the "sativa" category5, if we continue to use the old form of labeling cannabis. Meaning that it typically has a more energizing effect than a sedating effect. Interestingly enough according to research, terpinolene is actually sedating in mice, but will be more energizing for humans in terpinolene rich chemovars6. The aroma for terpinolene has been described as piney, herbal, and floral1 and due to its strong scent has been used in soaps, perfumes, and body products7 for quite some time. Terpinolene can be found in other plants such as allspice, juniper, parsnips, pine, rosemary, sage, and tea tree1. Terpinolene has been reported to have anti-anxiety effects, to increase cognitive clarity, and to potentially be an anti-cancer agent1. While doing the research for this post I found two different articles that are worth mentioning. The first article I found was from 2020, where researchers examined the effect of terpinolene on the sometimes antibiotic resistant Staphylococcus bacteria. According to the Minnesota health department, 20% of the population are always colonized with staph, about 20% of the population may never get staph, and about 60% of the population will be colonized off and on throughout their lives8. Staph is similar to cannabis in that there are many different strains of staph and some staph strains can cause severe and life-threatening diseases, think pneumonia, sepsis, and endocarditis9 (nobody has time for those). The staph bacteria has also developed resistance to many of the first line antibiotics that providers prescribe, so in order to take care of an infection people may be required to be hospitalized to receive heavy duty antibiotics that could take a serious toll on the body while getting rid of the infection. The purpose of the article from 2020 was to see if terpinolene could assist in reducing the bacteria's resistance to first line antibiotics. This article showed that terpinolene by itself was not able to reduce resistance, but terpinolene in combination with Oxacillin was able to "turn off" the mechanism staph has to become resistant to antibiotics about half the time10. As heavy duty antibiotics, like Vancomycin, can be really hard on the body, this is really amazing information. There is still a lot of research that would need to be done to verify that terpinolene does this for anyone who takes it, but wow this would have a far reaching effect. The other article I found is from 2018 and these researchers were looking at terpinolene and it's response to help heal wounds. When a person gets a wound, the body sends fibroblast cells to the area to start the healing process and knit the tissues back together11. The researchers for this article found that terpinoline had a positive effect on the body by stimulating fibroblast proliferation and migration to the wound to help the healing process11. Research still needs to be completed to make sure that it can do this with everyone, but I could definitely see terpinolene being used similarly to how we use antibacterial ointment on small cuts and wounds at home.
So, to wrap this up: there is still so much to learn about cannabis and lots of research that needs to be done, but the potential uses cannabis has is amazing. Humulene and terpinolene are two terpenes found in various plants that have demonstrated potential health benefits. Humulene has been shown to potentially help as an anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, and anti-proliferative, while terpinolene has potential as an antioxidant, sedative, and anti-proliferative. These terpenes have also been found to work synergistically with other compounds found in plants, helping to enhance their therapeutic potential. While further research is needed to fully understand the mechanisms behind their effects, the potential health benefits of humulene and terpinolene make them promising targets for future medical research and drug development.
References
Clark, C.S. (2021) ‘Cannabis Pharmacology’, in Cannabis: A handbook for nurses. Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer, pp. 126–127.
CannaCon (2023) 15 cannabis terpenes explained: The magic of cannabis, CannaCon. Available at: https://cannacon.org/15-terpenes-cannabis-explained/ (Accessed: 11 May 2023).
Antiproliferative definition & meaning (no date) Dictionary.com. Available at: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/antiproliferative#:~:text=of%20or%20relating%20to%20a,malignant%20cells%2C%20into%20surrounding%20tissues. (Accessed: 12 May 2023).
Chen H, Yuan J, Hao J, et al. α-Humulene inhibits hepatocellular carcinoma cell proliferation and induces apoptosis through the inhibition of Akt signaling. Food Chem Toxicol. 2019;134:110830. doi:10.1016/j.fct.2019.110830
Backes, M., Weil, A. and McCue, J.D. (2017) ‘Cannabis as a Medicine’, in Cannabis Pharmacy: The practical guide to medical marijuana. New York, NY: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, pp. 47–48.
Sulak, D. (2021) ‘Other Phytoconstituents in the Cannabis Entourage’, in Handbook of Cannabis for Clinicians: Principles and Practice. New York, NY: W.W. Norton et Company, pp. 95–96.
Parsons, A. (2022) Terpene profile: Terpinolene - cannaconnection, CannaConnection.com. Available at: https://www.cannaconnection.com/blog/19047-terpene-profile-terpinolene (Accessed: 12 May 2023).
Diagnosis and treatment of Staphylococcus aureus (2023) Diagnosis and Treatment of Staphylococcus aureus - MN Dept. of Health. Available at: https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/staph/treat.html#:~:text=aureus%20in%20their%20noses%20and,almost%20never%20colonized%20with%20S. (Accessed: 12 May 2023).
Otto M. Staphylococcus colonization of the skin and antimicrobial peptides. Expert Rev Dermatol. 2010;5(2):183-195. doi:10.1586/edm.10.6
Scherf, J.R. et al. (2020) ‘Effect of terpinolene against the resistant Staphylococcus aureus strain, carrier of the efflux pump QACC and β-lactamase gene, and its toxicity in the drosophila melanogaster model’, Microbial Pathogenesis, 149, p. 104528. doi:10.1016/j.micpath.2020.104528.
de Christo Scherer, M.M. et al. (2019) ‘Wound healing activity of terpinolene and α-phellandrene by attenuating inflammation and oxidative stress in vitro’, Journal of Tissue Viability, 28(2), pp. 94–99. doi:10.1016/j.jtv.2019.02.003.
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