A Quick Look into Cannabis Flavonoids

Purpose of Flavonoids

Flavonoids are phytonutrients in plants and fungi that serve a number of functions. Most notably, they are responsible for the spectrum of pigmentation that occurs in flowers, fruits and vegetables. This pigmentation serves to attract insects for pollination purposes. If you are familiar with varying strains of the Cannabis plant, you may know that they exist in a variety of different colors. There are purples like Purple Kush and Purple Diamond, and blue strains like Blueberry, Blue Dream and Blue Cheese; oranges like Orange Cream, yellow strains a la Golden Ticket and Lemon Haze, and even reds and pinks such as Panama Red, Red Diesel and Pink Panties. Black strains like Black Tuna and Vietnamese Black are known to exist as well.

 

Flavonoid Benefits Abound

Researchers have discovered roughly 6,000 types of flavonoids. Aside from pigmentation, some of the other functions that flavonoids perform include serving as chemical messengers, UV filtration, cell cycle inhibition and nitrogen fixation. These functions serve as protection from disease and encourage optimal health and growth of the plant. The benefits extend in some ways to animals and humans who consume them as food sources due to their antioxidant activity, and can also have other beneficial effects such as:

 

Anti-inflammatory

Anti-allergic

Anti-cancer

Anti-viral

 

Research on Cannflavins

Cannabis shares roughly 20 flavonoids in common with the aforementioned members of the plant kingdom such as apigenin, luteolin, quercetin, kaempferol, vitexin, isovitexin and orientin, among others. There are, however, flavonoids that are unique to the cannabis plant, and they are known as cannflavins. Information on Cannabis flavonoids is sparse due to cannabis prohibition, yet some research exists on the subject.

 

There are several key studies related to the topic of cannflavins. In 1985 and 1986, Dr. Marilyn Barrett, a pharmacologist from California, and her team isolated the first two known Cannabis flavonoids during research studies and named them Cannflavin A and Cannflavin B, respectively. The studies, “Isolation from Cannabis sativa L. of Cannflavin – a novel inhibitor of prostaglandin production” and “Cannflavin A and B, prenylated flavones from Cannabis sativa”, determined that Cannflavin A and B had 30 times more potent anti-inflammatory effects when compared to aspirin.

 

Following those findings in the eighties, there weren’t many other documented studies on the subject until 2008, when Dr. Mahmoud ElSohly and his team discovered what’s known as Cannflavin C in their study “Non-cannabinoid constituents from a high potency Cannabis sativa variety”. Cannflavin C was among six of the new non-cannabinoid constituents that were isolated from Cannabis. The isolates were tested for certain properties like analgesics and displayed a range of efficacy from weak to strong antileishmanial, antimicrobial, antimalarial and antioxidant activities.

Dr. ElSohly is head of the Marijuana Research Project at the University of Mississippi, the US government’s sole legal research program on Cannabis. This underscores the need for more research into the Cannabis plant overall, and cannabis flavonoids in particular. With the advent of new laws governing the sale, use and research of Cannabis, it is likely that in the coming years many more researchers will share their findings and increase the medical community’s understanding and acceptance of the plant’s healing properties.

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