Yes, kratom does have mild blood thinner properties.
You may need to know about kratom’s action as a blood thinner because you’re about to have surgery. Blood thinners are not good to use when you’re having surgery, because they prevent your blood from clotting. This means that the surgical incisions will not heal up as efficiently as they normally would.
Kratom contains something called ajmalicine.
Similar to yohimbine and rauwolscine, ajmalicine has been marketed under numerous brand names including Card-Lamuran, Circolene, Cristanyl, Duxil, Duxor, Hydroxysarpon, Iskedyl, Isosarpan, Isquebral, Lamuran, Melanex, Raunatin, Saltucin Co, Salvalion, and Sarpan.
Ajmalicine, encountered in kratom and in the bark of Hunteria zeylanica, a plant endemic to Sri Lanka, is an antagonist to the adrenergic receptor, making it anti-hypertensive, which lowers blood pressure. Ajmalicine also is a cerebrocirculant: increases oxygen availability in the brain, which improves thinking and mental focus.
Some medical professionals have used kratom to treat patients with high blood pressure, due to kratom’s blood thinning characteristics.
If you have high blood pressure, this is a topic that should be discussed with your physician. You may need to tell your doctor that you’re taking kratom, but such an admission is generally unwise, as orthodox medicine is currently opposed to kratom and any other unprescribed substances. But high blood pressure is a serious matter and while kratom might be helping to lower your pressure, it probably needs to be known to your healthcare provider.
For those about to undergo surgery, you must make up your own mind about continuing or temporarily pausing your use of kratom. Your symptoms may be so severe and persistent, that halting your kratom use would be unbearable. But one must weigh the risks and benefits of the situation. If at all possible, you might be better off stopping kratom for a while, so it doesn’t interfere with the anaesthesic, hospital administered pain killers, or other medicines.
The good news is that kratom, at this time, according to the small amount of research that has been allowed to be conducted, does not seem to have strong blood-thinning effects. So there’s likely little need to be alarmed. However, it’s good to factor into an assessment of a situation all the possibilities involved.
Customers who use kratom report they have no problems with cuts and wounds bleeding longer and refusing to close up and heal. Neither have there been many stories of individuals experiencing difficulties in surgery due to their continued kratom use.
But your case may be different from the majority.
It depends, as so many things do, on the dose amount, dosing frequency, and each person’s biological system. If you take large amounts of kratom (15 to 30 grams) per dose, and dose more than once a day, you may get more blood-thinning effects than someone who takes much less kratom. In fact, at larger doses, kratom may pose some potential issues with other things, too.
Less is best when it comes to kratom. Always use the lowest possible dose that provides the effects you require. Rotate strains, to avoid developing a tolerance to any particular strain’s alkaloid profile. Skip days to do a reset – which is when during abstinence, temporarily abandoning kratom, your body re-adjusts to not having kratom in the system, so when you return to kratom, the effects will be stronger.
There are a lot of alkaloids in kratom, and very few of them have been studied adequately. So it’s best to use caution. Kratom is a mostly unknown substance. No matter how good any person’s experiences have been so far, plant substances can be somewhat unpredictable. When we don’t understand all the constituents of kratom, it makes sense to move slowly, ask a lot of questions, experiment on a small scale, and see what happens.
Kratom has some blood thinning effects, along with many other actions on our bodies. We can be thankful for the positive benefits of kratom, while scientists and medical professionals continue their research on mitragyna speciosa, our beloved leaf.
