Why Kambo before Ayahuasca?
In the plant medicine community, you hear people talk about taking Kambo before Ayahuasca, either the morning of or the day before the Ayahuasca ceremony. When you ask them why Kambo before Ayahuasca, they will often tell you, “To allow Kambo to cleanse their body before the Grandmother comes to do her work.” Many will claim a much more enhanced experience because of this cleansing. Why do they think Kambo is cleansing? Many will purge either north or south or both during a Kambo session, feeling they have been cleansed from the Kambo. It is also because they do not understand what Kambo is and are likely just repeating something someone said or something they heard on a video. Unfortunately, the general knowledge around Kambo is full of misconceptions, and thinking it cleanses your body before Ayahuasca is a huge one. Does Kambo enhance the Ayahuasca experience? Absolutely! Is it because it cleanses the body before Ayahuasca? Absolutely not! So, what’s really going on.
To understand how Kambo enhances the Ayahuasca experience, you first need to understand the physical processes of Aya in the body. Ayahuasca is comprised of two different plants that are brewed together to make the psychedelic concoction. These plants are the Banisteriopsis Caapi (the vine) and Chacruna (the leaf). The Chacruna leaf contains N, N-dimethyltryptamine more famously known as DMT. DMT is responsible for the 6-8 hour psychedelic experience one receives from Ayahuasca. However, if you were to only consume the DMT-rich leaf on its own, you would not experience any type of psychedelic trip. This is because the DMT is quickly metabolized in our body by something called an MAO (monoamine oxidase). Monoamine oxidase is an enzyme involved in removing certain neurotransmitters from the brain. This process makes it impossible for the DMT to cross the blood-brain barrier, therefore not allowing a DMT experience.
So how does Aya work? This brings us to the vine. The ayahuasca vine contains an MAOI (monoamine oxidase inhibiter). The MAOI prevents or inhibits the MAO from metabolizing the DMT, allowing it to cross the blood-brain barrier with ease, thus providing what we know as the ayahuasca experience. This is one of the reasons why Ayahuasca is so magical. With around 80,000 different species of plants in the Amazon rainforest, the indigenous tribes of the jungle discovered that combining these two plants and brewing them down over several days will produce the magical psychedelic tea known as Ayahuasca that has helped countless people improve their lives on the physical, psychological, and spiritual level.
So how does Kambo enhance the Ayahuasca experience? Kambo is comprised of a unique complex cocktail of bioactive and neuropeptides. Two of the bioactive peptides in Kambo are the Phyllokinin and Phyllomedusinpeptides. Both are potent vasodilators, increasing the permeability of the blood-brain barrier for both their own access and that of other active peptides.
As per Wikipedia - The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is a highly selective semipermeable border of endothelial cells that prevents solutes in the circulating blood from non-selectively crossing into the extracellular fluid of the central nervous system where neurons reside. Think of it as a screen with tiny holes only allowing through what the brain needs while keeping toxins out. With Kambo temporarily making the BBB more permeable, think of it as slightly widening these holes to allow more of the good stuff through while continuing to keep the bad stuff out. (Authors note: I am not a scientist, and these are very layman terms to help explain). To sum it up:
when Kambo is taken the day before Ayahuasca, there are peptides in Kambo that temporarily increases the permeability of the blood brain barrier to allow for a greater concentration of DMT to cross the blood brain barrier thus enhancing the Ayahuasca experience or providing for a greater DMT trip.
Some people will take Kambo in the morning after Ayahuasca. In my opinion, this is not a safe practice. Ayahuasca is a purgative that can induce quite a bit of vomiting throughout the night. Kambo is also a purgative and can generate both vomiting and diarrhea. Excessive vomiting and diarrhea can cause a sharp decline of electrolytes in the body, leading to a hazardous condition known as hyponatremia (low sodium concentration in the blood). When sodium levels in the blood become very low, water enters the brain cells and causes them to swell (cerebral edema), resulting in increased pressure in the skull and causing hyponatremic encephalopathy. As pressure increases in the head, herniation of the brain can occur, which is a squeezing of the brain across the internal structures of the skull leading to headache, nausea, vomiting, confusion, seizures, brain stem compression and respiratory arrest, and non-cardiogenic accumulation of fluid in the lungs. Extreme cases of hyponatremia can be fatal if not immediately treated and milder cases can cause headaches, nausea and confusion for many days following the Kambo session. With purging from Ayahuasca all night and then introducing Kambo the following morning in a fasted state without adding food or electrolytes in between and continuing to purge from Kambo, this potentially sets up the individual for a catastrophic scenario from which they may not make it back. Most Kambo-related deaths and incidents have been due to an uneducated practitioner placing their clients into a hyponatremic state. The most tragic thing about this is that it is 100% avoidable, highlighting the importance of sitting with an educated, trained Kambo practitioner that understands how to avoid these dangerous situations.
Due to a lack of understanding, so much ‘woo’ and misinformation has been placed on Kambo. Rather than many practitioners educating themselves or attending formal training, they would instead spit a lot of nonsense that doesn’t make sense biologically but is enough to make them sound like the all-knowing “shaman.” So, before you sit with any medicine ceremony, educate yourself on what’s really going on.
