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Lessons from Chiric Sanango #1: on understanding "superstitions" surrounding plant diets with modern science

ms_manic_minxx

ms_manic_minxx

Esteemed member
OG Pioneer
Plenty of people in the Ayahuasca communities are quick to denounce the importance, purpose, and reasoning behind dieta, adopting specific dietary regimens before and after ceremony, along with behavioral modification, to "open oneself to the plant spirits."

You can absolutely get high on harmalas and DMT without following traditional rules. You can even eat buffalo chicken wings with ranch sauce beforehand at no harm to your health if you like, because the MAOI is reversible. So then why all of these rules?

I am of the opinion that every traditional proscription exists for a valid scientific reason, and due to the complexity of the entourage effect, and systemic multi-target nature of plant medicines - we haven't yet established a level of technology where this can be simply understood. For this reason, I am SUPER excited about what AI can offer in the advances of herbal medicine and the treatments of complex chronic illness, but I digress 🙃

I am also of the opinion that the end result of these dietas is not simply to experience orally active DMT. Harmalas and DMT have a litany of powerful neuroimmunological effects:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

The Therapeutic Potentials of Ayahuasca: Possible Effects against Various Diseases of Civilization

Ayahuasca is an Amazonian psychoactive brew of two main components. Its active agents are β-carboline and tryptamine derivatives. As a sacrament, ayahuasca is still a central element of many healing ceremonies in the Amazon Basin and its ritual ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Dimethyltryptamine (DMT): a biochemical Swiss Army knife in neuroinflammation and neuroprotection?

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Psychedelics as a novel approach to treating autoimmune conditions - PubMed

With a rise in the incidence of autoimmune diseases (AiD), health care providers continue to seek out more efficacious treatment approaches for the AiD patient population. Classic serotonergic psychedelics have recently been gaining public and professional interest as novel interventions to a...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

N,N-dimethyltryptamine reduces infarct size and improves functional recovery following transient focal brain ischemia in rats - PubMed

Our results indicate a Sig-1R dependent reduction of the ischemic brain injury following exogenous DMT administration in rats, presumably through a combined anti-apoptotic, pro-neurotrophic and anti-inflammatory treatment effect.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

and I believe the purpose of dieta is to direct, target and modulate other neuroimmunological effects that are independent of "mainstream" reasons people are drawn to Ayahuasca. You can still have a mainstream experience, drink your "draino of the soul" (heard that one from Marie Claire💀), heal your trauma, experience your oneness with the universe, and whatever. But that is wholly different than practicing as a neuroimmunologist with stone age technology, using Ayahuasca in conjunction with other plants, to heal complex systemic illness, aka, um, shamanism.

Chiric Sanango is part of the deadly nightshade family, and therefore has a dieta with a long list of proscriptions. He, "hates the sweet taste."

Well, it just so happens that the plant is *loaded* with various coumarins that are implicated in diabetes management, insulin sensitivity, and blow advanced glycation end products out of the kidneys to drastically improve their function. It affects enzymes in the pancreas and changes the way the body metabolizes and uptakes sugar.

Inhibitory Effect of Natural Coumarin Compounds, Esculetin and Esculin, on Oxidative DNA Damage and Formation of Aberrant Crypt Foci and Tumors Induced by 1,2-Dimethylhydrazine in Rat Colons

Access full-text academic articles: J-STAGE is an online platform for Japanese academic journals.
www.jstage.jst.go.jp www.jstage.jst.go.jp
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Esculin attenuates endotoxin shock induced by lipopolysaccharide in mouse and NO production in vitro through inhibition of NF-κB activation - PubMed

Esculin, a coumarin compound derived from the traditional Chinese herbs such as Cortex Fraxini, has long been used for treating inflammatory and vascular diseases. In present study, we analyzed the role of esculin against macrophages and endotoxin shock induced by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Coumarins as Modulators of the Keap1/Nrf2/ARE Signaling Pathway - PubMed

The Keap1/Nrf2/ARE system is a central defensive mechanism against oxidative stress which plays a key role in the pathogenesis and progression of many diseases. Nrf2 is a redox-sensitive transcription factor controlling a variety of downstream antioxidant and cytodefensive genes. Nrf2 has a...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

This isn't really relevant to Ayahuasca tourism, but it is extremely relevant to understanding the depth and complexity of South American herbal pharmacopoeia.

n=1, I sat with Grandpa Chiric for 14 days. I kept a very strict diet except on one day when I ate a bit of dried fruit, and it felt like my pancreas was going to explode. It hurt like appendicitis for about half the day. It was truly awful. 0/10 do not recommend.

I am all for connecting the dots between traditional knowledge and medicine. Let's go, Nexus 🥰
 
Hm, aesculin, eh? Does this perhaps mean that horse chestnuts can be used in a similar way to chiric sanango? Clearly there's far more to it than just that - thanks for the food for thought, and the additions to my reading queue!

These insights appear to be highly relevant to understanding use of admixture plants as healthcare allies - something which is becoming increasingly relevant if not pressing for me as time advances.
 
To clarify, chiric sanango is also extremely poisonous. It contains tropanes, but the strychnine analogs will kill you first. So a little different and less casual than horse chestnuts 🙃
But it's also so weird and cool because it has those rare coumarins, and an amazing terpene profile. It has flowers that bloom and change from purple to white over the course of three days. It's also the spirit shamans call for healing illnesses that are difficult to see or treat.

I've heard of people doing abuta diets in conjunction with Aya for diabetes related health issues. I can't find the blog that I read, but someone shared this amazing experience about an abuta dieta where they conquered diabetes in this vision of a war with an army of condors. It was really cool.
 
It’s a lovely plant with if I remember correctly had a very nice sweet smell to it.
Anyway more on topic I’m also looking forward to seeing if and how AI is going to help in identifying more complex systems of medicine, I’m not so sure though that this will result in herbal medicines to return to the pharmacy, more likely a better understanding of mixed active ingredients leads to combinations that are more effective than just one or the other separate. Like we see now already in the treatment of cancers and resistant bacteria.
 
I would love to see TCM and Ayurveda studied in conjunction with AI as a Rosetta stone to restore other systems that were lost to colonization. That would really be something. Someone in IT, please steal the idea 🙃
 
I appreciate your musings on Chiric Sanango. I dieted on the roots under the guidance of someone trained in Chiric. It's a potent and beautiful plant. I've never heard of neuroimmunology but there really is something to the dieta, not just the western "maoi diet" which isn't even a think ime.

The solitude, the fasting, the wilderness all combine to put one in an altered state of consciousness just as it is, I could see this being the backbone of dieta and the plants modulates the experience of that backbone wilderness fast. Fascinating stuff and worthwhile. I've done a 10 day and a 21 day dieta and consciousness ends up so heightened and one becomes so sensitive to little things (in good and bad ways lol hence the restrictions).
 
@Animistic Did you have any dreams? They say he comes to you in a dream on the third night. I had a dream on the third night, but I didn't meet him, I think I received a riddle. That sounds like it must have been a really special time when you dieted.

There was content on the Aya forums (RIP) about this neurologist who did healings for people with neurodegenerative diseases with chiric sanango. I never thought to look him up, but he has a book and a bunch of articles he's written available for free on his website and they look interesting.

ABOUT ME - shamanvalentin.com

Dr. Valentin Hampejs (don Valentino) is an Austrian-trained neurologist and psychiatrist. who did not want to accept that many diseases are supposed to be incurable. his tireless search took him to the shamans of south America, where he was able to learn about the healing potency of several...
shamanvalentin.com shamanvalentin.com
 
Regarding using AI, TCM and Ayurveda as a Rosetta Stone for medicine. China is way ahead in terms of understanding at least TCM biomedically. For example, what we call qi is actually co-op biomedically speaking, gasotransmitters (Nitric oxide, Hydrogen sulphide etc). You look at their biological functions alongside qi and its 1:1. Also herbs that interact with qi affect gasotransmitters.

If I were to aim AI at TCM and Ayurveda I'd start with training it on herb/foods in relation to their hot/cold and damp/dry properties. That I believe is where you'll get biomedicine to talk to other traditional theories of medicine because so many classify illness and medicine in this way, even our medicine predecessor classified things in this way.
 
ms_manic_minxx said:
@Animistic Did you have any dreams? They say he comes to you in a dream on the third night. I had a dream on the third night, but I didn't meet him, I think I received a riddle. That sounds like it must have been a really special time when you dieted.

There was content on the Aya forums (RIP) about this neurologist who did healings for people with neurodegenerative diseases with chiric sanango. I never thought to look him up, but he has a book and a bunch of articles he's written available for free on his website and they look interesting.

ABOUT ME - shamanvalentin.com

Dr. Valentin Hampejs (don Valentino) is an Austrian-trained neurologist and psychiatrist. who did not want to accept that many diseases are supposed to be incurable. his tireless search took him to the shamans of south America, where he was able to learn about the healing potency of several...
shamanvalentin.com shamanvalentin.com
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I had many dreams but I don't recall any one particularly strong. I encountered chiric in ceremony, not super clearly but as a presence that stood at my feet as I was being sung to, but no one was actually there. Ive noticed a strange ability to see things in marecion which aren't typical visions but real life things, like true hallucinations. Whether they be superimposed ontop of people or materialize out of thin air so to speak. Can be pretty intense sometimes physically seeing presences move around the room and interacting with different people and watching people change into different creatures (usually sick or dark looking creatures). This never happened before my dieta.
 
For example, what we call qi is actually co-op biomedically speaking, gasotransmitters (Nitric oxide, Hydrogen sulphide etc). You look at their biological functions alongside qi and its 1:1. Also herbs that interact with qi affect gasotransmitters.

If I were to aim AI at TCM and Ayurveda I'd start with training it on herb/foods in relation to their hot/cold and damp/dry properties. That I believe is where you'll get biomedicine to talk to other traditional theories of medicine because so many classify illness and medicine in this way, even our medicine predecessor classified things in this way.
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You just spelled out my fantasy word for word 😂

There is also severe prejudice in biomedical spaces against plant medicine. I personally don't get it, because alkaloids and chemistry are science? I'm not going to rant, but also short of something like spreadsheets from AI explaining the entourage effect in biomedical terms that are actionable and ideally can be used to create reproducible experiments in lab settings, people are going to stick their fingers in their ears and LA LA LA. Another confounding factor is that herbs are prescribed based on individuals' patterns, which makes constructing standardized trials complicated.

To be fair, criticizing the lack of regulation surrounding herbal products is valid. But draconian regulation *gestures wildly at the list of life saving schedule I substances* is no good either. I have really big feelings about licensed professionals not being able to obtain Ma Huang.

Do you think there were other plants like Caapi that are now extinct, that were responsible for the formation of those original medicine systems? I am fully of the opinion that plants can teach medicine, but their lessons are only as useful as our ability to understand them 🤡
 
ms_manic_minxx said:
You just spelled out my fantasy word for word 😂

There is also severe prejudice in biomedical spaces against plant medicine. I personally don't get it, because alkaloids and chemistry are science? I'm not going to rant, but also short of something like spreadsheets from AI explaining the entourage effect in biomedical terms that are actionable and ideally can be used to create reproducible experiments in lab settings, people are going to stick their fingers in their ears and LA LA LA. Another confounding factor is that herbs are prescribed based on individuals' patterns, which makes constructing standardized trials complicated.

To be fair, criticizing the lack of regulation surrounding herbal products is valid. But draconian regulation *gestures wildly at the list of life saving schedule I substances* is no good either. I have really big feelings about licensed professionals not being able to obtain Ma Huang.

Do you think there were other plants like Caapi that are now extinct, that were responsible for the formation of those original medicine systems? I am fully of the opinion that plants can teach medicine, but their lessons are only as useful as our ability to understand them 🤡
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So much yes to a lot of what you said here. I think entourage effect will start becoming better known and explained because I saw papers recently talking about polydrug approaches to illness being better than single (can't remember which topic is was in relation to). Can't comment on Ayurveda because that's not my background but in TCM the whole system of herbal prescriptions is one big entourage effect lol.

I think it is just big pharmacy stranglehold on western demographics. In China herbs are prized and high quality herbs are very expensive. China saw a resurgence in trust in herbal medicine over covid where herbal medicine helped millions upon millions of people according to my friend who lives there. They're also in a better position to have a strong herbal medicine system because their traditional approaches and diagnostics are mostly still in tact, unlike European which has been desecrated in witch trials etc.

There are so many plants like Ma Huang, Fu Zi (aconite) is also a herb that is irreplaceable. Xi Xin is another. Luckily here if you know the right people you can get these medicines. You've just gotta know the right Chinese people because a lot of the time they dgaf about local import laws, that's at least true here in Aus.

I believe that plants can absolutely teach us medicine. They can sharpen our perception, turn up our sensitivities. I think that without long fasting in wilderness this teaching is slowed because there's so much more noise outside of this setting and in old shamanic traditions the one constant is solo wilderness time that I can see being part of the process of initiation or learning. From this sensitive state we can feel better what is being done in our bodies and our perceptions of our outer world change.

One really obvious one for me is cannabis, I am so sensitive to cannabinoids now that I rarely take them, I feel they've affected my perceptions. I don't think always for the best, I guess you could say I got into a diet with cannabis and broke it lol. But also long term chronic cannabis use can give people cannabinoid hyperemesis or whatever its called. That's obviously the cannabis permanently restructuring someone's physiology. I also feel like that obviously extends to psychology and perceptions too.

I could talk about this stuff all day lol.
 
ms_manic_minxx said:
I would love to see TCM and Ayurveda studied in conjunction with AI as a Rosetta stone to restore other systems that were lost to colonization. That would really be something. Someone in IT, please steal the idea 🙃
Click to expand...
I absolutely love this idea too, and my gut feeling is that somebody, somewhere must already been trying something along these lines. I've long dreamed of collating all the plants, their constituents, and their biomedical effects all into a giant spreadsheet like this - yet another thing languishing in my procrastination pile. Jim Duke went some considerable way in this direction with collating herbal medicine info, minus the AI.
 
Transform said:
I absolutely love this idea too, and my gut feeling is that somebody, somewhere must already been trying something along these lines. I've long dreamed of collating all the plants, their constituents, and their biomedical effects all into a giant spreadsheet like this - yet another thing languishing in my procrastination pile. Jim Duke went some considerable way in this direction with collating herbal medicine info, minus the AI.
Click to expand...
Most large pharmaceutical companies have been building these systems for years now, a couple years back I was in a room filled by employees from one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies, all they could talk about was how AI was going to impact virtually everything in their industry, with some of them talking about polypharmacie, personalized medicine, and virtual molecule selection.

Some really exciting stuff, but I’m pretty sure we’ll not going to see herbs as medicine at a large scale any time soon but new insights and or medicine based on what is found in plants is surely going to continue.
 
Thank you for sharing this. I've wondered for a long time how much was more dogma and how much was efficacious.

I still don't think that one manner of approach is necessarily better within a certain context and frame (ie, not just being willy nilly about it) than another (such as someone who may forgo dieta) because we can observe many different approaches to different things all the time. All the same, I'd have to try this for myself in a variety of circumstances (like with dieta vs without) to be that firm in such an opinion. It's just where I lean at this time.

Relative to the research, it would also be great to see the variance of neuroimmunological effects of different dietas.

One love
 
I'm entirely convinced that several of the traditional dietary restrictions are designed to bring the user closer to death, with death seen as a spiritual experience.

Traditional art indicates as well that if a shaman's apprentice dies during training they are considered to become spirits who are possessed by and which serve the shaman.

Many strict diets and practices that are considered traditional are said to be dangerous and even potentially fatal. The idea that the traditional users are authorities on these things is not well supported. They believed for millennia that the activity was caused by spirit, not chemistry. The notion of potion originates with psychoactive substances, like alkaloids including nicotine and many many others. Death was not seen as an effect of chemistry and biology but rather was viewed as a spiritual effect relating to the spirit of the substance or plant. Thus the idea of avoiding harm was not traditional, rather many methods of training appear to bring the would be shaman as close to death as possible, with a chance of survival.


This matches the manner of obtaining power through things like being attacked by a Jaguar and surviving it. Coming close to death and living was seen as a desirable outcome. Many Ayahuasca traditions and even the traditional language surrounding it, the so called vine of the dead, reflects this.


Be cautious how much faith you place in primitive superstitions based on observations made before the discovery of alkaloids and chemistry. People have died.


Many of the traditional diets induce severe vitamin deficiency. They aren't designed for health or healing.
 
While I largely agree with a lot you've posted I also disagree with a lot of it. Dieta isn't always undertaken with the idea of shamanic initiation in mind, there are dietas for healing as well as for initiation.

Diets meant for healing are much shorter (<10 days) whereas diets for initiation are significantly longer (3 month, 6 month, 1 year diets for example, ive heard stories of longer as well). I think if there is significant fasting involved then initiation type experiences might happen sooner.

I could see an argument to be had for healing diets being a type of fasting protocol where food is still eaten so you have energy but kept to a minimum and the use of strong purgatives is meant to help clean you out more and both of these make you much more sensitive to the subtle effects of the plant. There are many health benefits to fasting and also a nervous system reset by time alone in the wild.

Initiations are an ordeal, I agree 100%. I think they're meant to bring you to deaths doorstep in a slow and controlled manner. Although my diet with Chiric Sanango was only 10 days it definitely felt like an initiation and is probably the closest I have ever come to actually dying in relation to ayahuasca, made all the more intense because of the extreme psychedelic world I was enveloped in.

A brush with death, especially one that drags on, can in my observation be incredibly strengthening for the spirit. They can give you a very clear yes for life. Anyone who has had an NDE and processed the trauma around this properly could attest. Sometimes it takes a brush with death to truly start living. It is the presence and connection to life that is the true healing power of the "shaman" imo. They're strongly rooted in life because they've laughed, cried, howled, screamed, danced and sung at the face of death. This is a person who can treat illnesses of spirit where they believe (and I tend to agree) most physical illness is generated from. Look at how depression can affect someone's physical health long term. All that unprocessed trauma and emotion expresses itself in physical forms.

I would say my brushes with death (diets and otherwise) have been incredibly healing, affirming and invigorating.

Yes, some people may die. This type of initiation was very common in indigenous cultures, even for those not training to become a healer for their community. I think it serves multiple purposes it keeps your gene pool strong and I think it helps clarify who you are and why you're here or at the very least a strong becon of light and strength for tough times not just for yourself but for others too. I believe indigenous cultures are more wise than you're giving them credit for, even if their models for the world are lacking according to yours.

I could say more but time is a thing unfortunately lol
 
I agree from one perspective.

From another, I am aware of the use of slight of hand and ventriloquism in traditional Andean and Amazonian shamanism. Essentially traditional psychedelic shamanism is arguably a form of archaic theater performance where pupils, patients and customers and tourists, lately, have people give them a psychedelic substance and then employ said theatre and suggestion in concert with the psychedelic experience. To be, clear, psychedelics are well-known to make those who take them vulnerable to suggestion. This is likely a core part of the healing power of traditional shamanism. It is also a core part of some modern psychedelic therapy methods. Suggestion and psychedelics can facilitate healing and things like harmine do have several health promoting effects, but deception is still a core part of the traditions.

Certainly, diets relating to casual use of Ayahuasca are distinct from those for initiates. I completely agree. In my experience some of the dietary restrictions relate to avoiding things that are difficult to completely and easily purge out, and things that are highly unpleasant to purge out.

Interestingly, some other traditions that lack the use of psychedelics have nearly identical dietary and sexual restrictions before rites are performed. Those typically involve forms of voluntary possession as part of their belief system, with a person hosting a spirit to allow contact and interaction with it. Avoiding pork and sex are common restrictions in such things.

If one believes in spirits, and it is perfectly fine to do so, or not, then restrictions of some types may serve non-biological purposes.
 
Sleight of hands give the mind an experience of ineffability, they give someone an actual experience, whether objectively true or not, under the effects of psychedelic medications trick us (probably via mirror neurons) into thinking that they actually did purge out their alcoholism, their sexual abuse, their lies, their darkness. This has major implications because certain things aren't physically able to be purged, however through psychedelically enhanced sleights of hand you can experience them to be. What effect does this have on the conditions?

I can appreciate that from a strictly biomedical framework this might be seen as deceit. However biomedicine itself uses sleights of hand, consciously or not

Medicine as performance: what can magicians teach doctors? - PMC

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

I think that traditional shamanic techniques, especially where psychedelics are involved, just strengthen these therapeutic benefits. To take it to the extreme if life long depression, cptsd or perhaps even something like cancer can be cured through such methods I wouldn't care how much I'd been tricked.

I think that this pure experience meditated through psychedelics highlights the importance of narrative in peoples lives. This is also why psychedelics aren't wholly good because they just sensitize one to changes in narrative, it is the set and setting that dictate the narrative change. I've come to see how story literally creates reality and that the most powerful forces in humanity are storytellers, just look at the media for a very toxic example. I think the importance and potency of storytelling and magic in medicine is under explored and that we could learn a great deal from indigenous people about these things.

I agree re dietary stuff and purging. The restrictions definitely loosen the solid sense of identity we can have and they do so in ways that seem subtle until we're deep into the experience or come out of it and realise just how altered we are lol. I did a 4 day, 4 night wilderness fast and felt rather 'normal' while out there but realise just how altered I was when I came back and then ended up doing a lot of post dieta style restrictions on myself because I could see that this would help integrate this state with my day to day state most seamlessly.

PS: Thanks for a stimulating conversation!

Edit: Another way to maybe rephrase what I said above is what one calls sleight of hand another may call metaphor, the different connotations lead to different possibilities.
 
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