Scientists Gave Rats Dosages Of Kratom 100X Higher Than What Humans Take, And It Still Did Not Cause Death, Proving That Kratom Is Extremely Safe
Scientists sought to determine the fatal dosage for Kratom, i.e. the dosage which would cause death, and in order to do this they gave rats extreme doses of Kratom. The study is titled ‘Acute Toxicity Study of Standardized Mitragyna speciosa Korth Aqueous Extract in Sprague Dawley Rats‘.
Ultimately, this study found that no dose of Kratom, even doses 100X higher than what a human could possibly take, caused death, and this a testament to Kratom’s safety.
Diving into the details, scientists gave the rats 175 mg/kg, 500 mg/kg, and 2,000 mg/kg of Kratom extract. Notably, this Kratom extract was roughly 5X stronger than regular Kratom leaf, so the dosage of 2,000 mg/kg given to the rats is equivalent to 10,000 mg/kg of regular Kratom powder.
To put this in perspective, a heavy dose of Kratom for a human is 10 grams, and most people don’t even take this much at once, and usually take 5-8 grams for a strong dose. Humans have body weights generally ranging from 50 kg to 150 kg, and splitting the difference and assuming an average human weight of 100 kg, and a dosage of 10 grams, then a strong dose of Kratom for a human is 100 mg/kg.
Comparing this to the 10,000 mg/kg that was given to the rats, this means the rats were given a dosage roughly 100X higher than what a human can handle.
Notably, the scientists who conducted this study originally believed that a dose of 175 mg/kg of the extract would be deadly, but found that it was not, which is why they ramped the dose up to 2,000 mg/kg of extract.
Ultimately, even at these insane doses 100X higher than what a human could handle, no rats died. Therefore the scientists conclude they cannot calculate an LD50 for Kratom, with LD50 being the dosage that would cause death.
Further, even at these astonishing doses, the only result was that the rats were fatigued and sleepy. Food and water intake for the rats stayed the same, and practically all biochemical and blood related parameters remained unchanged.
Zooming out, this means Kratom has an extremely high therapeutic index, which is the ratio of the deadly dose versus the therapeutic dose. From this study a deadly dose could not even be ascertained, since no rats died even at insane doses 100X higher than what a human could handle, so the therapeutic index for Kratom is over 100, and possibly much higher. Indeed, in reality the therapeutic index for Kratom is infinite, since a human could never take enough Kratom to die; a person who tried that would vomit at a dose around 20-30 grams, and even if they got past the vomiting somehow, there’s not enough room in the stomach to take a deadly dose of Kratom.
Thus, this scientific study has proven that Kratom is incredibly safe, and that even doses 100X higher than what a human could handle are not deadly. This corroborates the fact that there have been zero scientifically proven Kratom deaths in history.
