no question...just a comment

[tschock]

I just came home from the local grocery store. While I was there I saw the most dismaying thing.
I saw a display advertising these wonderful new herbal pills for anxiety/stress.

I thought " Wow! How cool!"
Until I read the ingredients...poppy seeds.
I would be very leery of taking these, only because I know for a fact that poppy seeds CAN give false drug readings on blood tests.
A few years ago I had a doctor ask me how long I had been taking morphine/opiates for, and what kind of pain was I in where I would risk taking them while being pregnant...I was in shock! I told him that I don't do drugs...he said that the blood work doesn't lie.
It wasn't until another doctor in the same clinic ( who heard me freak out ) told him that ingesting poppy seeds ( even the small amount on a bagel ) can give a false positive, that he believed me.
And that was only after half an hour of "freaking out" and telling them everything I had ingested in the past week.
Of course, it would take eating at least a dozen or more bagels to get "high"...but still.
It was a very scary thing for me...I thought for sure that they would take my baby as soon as he was born or something. I stopped eating the bagels right away once they told me this.
Just thought that I would comment on this, in case anyone decides to take these new pills...and finds themselves in a sticky situation like I was.

[Sullyfish]

I recall going for a drug test and freaking out the morning of because I ate some Kolatch (it's like this poppy seed strudel; eastern European food). I called the clinic and they said that it wouldn't show up unless I ate ALOT. So, you must really like poppy seeds =P I don't blame you though, they are wonderful.

As far as getting high goes, I don't think it would happen. I imagine the metabolite for poppy seeds are similar amongst each other, but not all of them have the same active ingredients that will get you high. So really, it's just the metabolite you need to worry about, because even though it was a different opiate, it's liable to show up as opiate, since that is what it technically is. Many people who conduct drug tests will (or, they ought to) inform people about the similarity of metabolites. The person who conducted mine for a job I was at, asked me to declare any medications I was on because something like an antidepressant can show up as PCP or, in other words, Angel Dust, which is illegal. Ritlan shows up as amphetamine. Cannabis is just... cannabis... But all these you have to be at a certain threshold before the test is declared positive. Anyways, job drug testing is an issue in itself; testing for drugs using blood and urine is a bad idea anyway, because it show that someone might have done drugs within the last week or month, etc. and it does not test intoxication like a mouth swab does. I don't believe in being high at work, but I believe what people do on their days off the job is THEIR business.

Anyway, a few people on here mentioned how their drug tests have been skewed because of non-drug-related circumstances. An interesting one was someone who inhaled iron dust and now they test positive for drugs (can't remember which one though).

Any herbal remedy should be taken with caution. Herbs are powerful and potent and good on you for taking a look-see at the ingredients, because many people just take them frivolously. That is all I will say about that. That and, they really ought to amp up the discriminative abilities of drug testing/blood testing so the sort of thing that happened to you DOESN'T happen to people anymore.

[Paxiled]

The poppy seeds on a bagel are cooked with the bagel, and these aren't opium poppies -- there are lots of poppies out there.  You can't get high no matter how many bagels you ate.  Poppy seeds are in lots of foods.  The California poppy, the state flower by the way, is used widely for relaxation and sleep in herbal form, usually in an alcohol tincture.  It's in many combination herbal formulas as well.  If the tests are that sensitive to pick this up, then we're all in trouble.  A lot of Jewish foods and Eastern European pastries are flavored with poppy seeds.  Again, these aren't opium poppies.  So if the tests are picking this up, the test needs to be litigated and eliminated, because poppy seeds are mighty tasty, and the herb is mighty useful.  Even opium tea, widely used in Asia, isn't very active.  It's like coca tea, widely used in South America -- the effect is very mild.  It takes modern chemistry to transform most of these natural plants into strong drugs.  What a paranoid puritan world we live in!  

[gymdandee]

Beat Spring Allergies with Bacteria

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/beat-spring-allergies-with-bacteria.html

[ChitChatNine]

Thanks for mentioning this about the poppy seeds .. I'm posting to also caution about food allergies ... who would think of poppy in these ?!

[allmymarbles]

Mothers have every reason to be frightened of child protective services. Although they do save children at risk, they are much in love with their authority and can cause unnecessary heartbreak.