With all the hormones and whatnot inside. Dopamine, adrenaline, melatonin, whatever. Also, there’s this Hunter S. Thompson bit on the… pineal gland?

If it had an effect on you, wouldn’t it be a really messed up high, all over the place? With uppers, downers etc mixed? (Not including the emotional implications of eating raw human brains.)

  • GingaNinga@lemmy.world
    65·
    1 year ago

    no your stomach acid would denature most of the proteins, then they’d be conjugated at the liver so whatever goes in will be transformed by what comes out. A lot of those hormones are tightly regulated so I’m thinking even if they make it into circulation they’d be eliminated fairly quickly. Only exception would be if they’re acid stable, not impacted on their way through the gut/metabolised by microbiota, absorbed in tact and still active after the first pass effect. Also theres enzymes like trypsin in your stomach that are specifically for degrading proteins so I doubt it would make you anything other than a canibal.

    • Sethayy@sh.itjust.works
      15·
      1 year ago

      Would smoking raw human brains make you high?

      Wait no thermal degredation

      Would nebulizing raw human brains make you high? Especially of I got a little brain-diffuser in the corner that just filled the room with the aroma

      • medgremlin@lemmy.sdf.org
        3·
        1 year ago

        It would still go through the liver for metabolism. The only thing “boofing” effectively does is skip the stomach part of the digestive process. To take up anything from the digestive tract, it gets transported through the intestinal lumen and into the mesenteric and hepatic portal system. The liver filters everything that gets into the blood from the gut before it goes into the inferior vena cava and into the rest of the circulatory system.

        Correction to clarify: the lower gut/colon mostly only takes up water and certain vitamins that are released by gut bacteria, and very small molecules like ethanol can sometimes get through as well. The very lowest part of the colon does have a vascular supply that can bypass the liver, and there are some medications designed to take advantage of the select receptors and transporters down there. However, neurotransmitters and peptide hormones (which is what OP was asking about) would likely not get taken up until it was much higher up in the digestive tract, and at that point it would go through the hepatic portal system.

        Thank you to those that corrected me. Intestines are actually fairly complicated.

        • Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world
          1·
          1 year ago

          I don’t think that’s correct.

          Does rectal have first-pass effect? In general, drug absorption in the upper part of the rectum is transported to the liver via the portal system and thus undergoes first-pass metabolism, whereas drug absorption in the lower rectum is transported directly to the systemic circulation

          • medgremlin@lemmy.sdf.org
            1·
            1 year ago

            The lower colon really only transports water and a couple of vitamins released by gut biota, so if they’re getting far enough in that more complex molecules would be taken up, that would probably be up into the hepatic portal system.

            The reason “boofing” works for alcohol is because ethanol is actually a rather small molecule, all things considered.

    • set_secret@lemmy.world
      4·
      1 year ago

      you’re mostly right, however trypsin is produced in the pancreas and excreted into the duodenum, so not in the stomach. I think maybe you’re thinking of pepsin?