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Ep. 435 Gut-Brain Health, Psychedelics & Plants: A Medicine Revolution with Chris Kilham


I am delighted to interview Chris Kilham today. Chris is a medicine hunter and educator with a wealth of knowledge to share as an expert in his field. He has been involved in natural health since 1971 and has written several books.  


In today's discussion, we explore the differences between traditional plant-based medicines and pharmaceutical agents, looking at patents, industry trends, gut health, mental acuity, and inflammation. We touch on medical tourism and infobesity and discuss the limitations of plant-based therapies. Chris also shares his favorite plants for brain and neurocognitive health, his experiences with other experts and shamans, some fascinating details about psychedelic agents, and his work with the global plant exploration program at Groupe Berkem. 


This fascinating discussion on plant-based medicines is full of intriguing insights, and I look forward to having Chris back on the podcast.


IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:

  • How plant medicines, which have been around for millennia, differ from pharmaceutical agents

  • The high cost of bringing new drugs to market 

  • How patents impact pharmaceutical companies

  • How emerging trends in the plant medicine industry are focusing on gut health, mental acuity, and inflammation

  • The benefits and challenges of medicinal tourism

  • The rise of misinformation and the importance of having credible sources of information

  • Chris explains what infobesity is

  • Chris shares his intense and positive Bufo Toad psychedelic experience and a story of a 103-year-old woman he met while traveling around, investigating shamans.

  • How to navigate the purchase of good quality plant medicine products

  • The challenges of regulation and the need for consumer awareness


Bio:

Chris Kilham is a medicine hunter, author, educator, and TV personality who has researched medicinal plants in over 45 countries and lectures worldwide about holistic wellness and botanical medicines.

Currently, he is engaged with Groupe Berkem of Bordeaux, France, a high-quality botanical extraction and science innovation company. Chris works on sustainable supply chains, botanical field exploration, and new product development.

 

“A few decades ago, people would say there is not enough science behind medicinal plants. Those days are long gone.”


-Chris Kilham

 

Connect with Cynthia Thurlow  


Connect with Chris Kilham


Transcript:

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:00:02] Welcome to Everyday Wellness podcast. I'm your host, Nurse Practitioner Cynthia Thurlow. This podcast is designed to educate, empower and inspire you to achieve your health and wellness goals. My goal and intent is to provide you with the best content and conversations from leaders in the health and wellness industry each week and impact over a million lives.


[00:00:30] Today, I had the honor of interviewing Chris Kilham. He's the medicine hunter and educator who's been involved with the natural health field since 1971. He's also the author of multiple books and is an expert in the field of herbal medicine.


[00:00:43] Today, we spoke at length about differentiators between traditional plant-based medicines versus pharmaceutical agents. The impact of patents, trend that he sees in the industry including a focus on gut health, mental acuity and inflammation, issues surrounding medical tourism and infobesity, his favorite plants for brain health and neurocognitive health, information surrounding psychedelic agents and his experience with other experts and shamans, his work with Groupe Berkem Launches Global Plant Exploration Program and lastly, limitations around plant-based therapies. This is a fascinating discussion around plant medicine and I will be definitely bringing Chris back for a second discussion.


[00:01:33] Well Chris, such a pleasure to have you on the podcast. I'm a huge fan of your work and I think that we're going to have a delightful, amazing conversation and I think for many of my listeners this might be their first exposure to your background and the work that you do. 


Chris Kilham: [00:01:47] Well, thanks for having me on Cynthia. It's great pleasure. I always enjoy an opportunity to share whatever I can with a good, intelligent listening audience. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:01:58] Yeah, absolutely. Let's initiate the conversation talking about differentiators between plant medicines which had been around for the millennia, versus pharmaceutical agents, things that are created in a lab and there's a purpose for both. But I think in our traditional kind of modern-day lifestyle we have gotten so divested, so unconnected from the earth and from plants because there's been a large emphasis on pharmaceutical agents to treat every symptom you can imagine under the sun. When for thousands and thousands of years we have been treating ourselves with plants and herbs and things that exist in nature all on their own. 


Chris Kilham: [00:02:43] Well, plants are the most widely used medicines in the world still and a lot of people will say, “Well I don't use plant medicines.” If you've used a eucalyptus cough drop, you've used plant medicines. If you've drunk peppermint tea, you've used plant medicines. And of course, there are about now around 50,000 known medicinal plants for a broad range of health purposes and they form the basis of pharmacy. And the difference between natural plants and most pharmaceuticals, not the ones that come from plants and many do, is that these agents, we've evolved with them over time. We breathe the air that they make, we drink their juices, we eat them, we build homes out of them, we wear their fibers. I mean, we're completely interconnected with plants and that we share biology with them. 


[00:03:40] Even to the extent that, let's say, the antioxidant compounds in plants, protective compounds in plants, defend the plants from premature destruction due to exposure to heat, light, air, moisture, time. And when we take in many of these things into our bodies, they help to protect degradation from a whole variety of factors. When you have a pharmaceutical, most are single molecule substances. Say acetaminophen, that's a single molecule. Not saying it's not effective for relieving pain, but it's a single molecule, say, versus something like hops, for example, which can relieve pain by relieving inflammation, which has about a thousand known compounds and whole groups of compounds that demonstrate, anti-inflammatory activity. The same anti-inflammatory activity you would want from a drug, but typically broader. 


[00:04:44] I travel all over the world and I've been doing this for decades and I always bring Ciprofloxacin 500s with me. Okay. Cipro is the Babe Ruth of antibiotics. If you're laid out by dysentery and you're dying because you can't just stop going and you're losing weight by the minute, this can stop that. So, I'm not a drug basher. I've spoken to pharmaceutical companies, many of the big ones. I've helped startup pharma’s. But for the most part, if you hew to what nature provides in almost all circumstances, you can find plant medicines that will do the job for you and often better and safer than drugs will. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:05:32] Well, it's interesting to me. My whole background is ER medicine and cardiology. And there are certain drugs. There's a drug called digoxin as an example, and there were all these conversations about, had the FDA been astringent as it was when this drug came to pass and they never have actually gotten to market. Because like you mentioned and that's a derivative of a plant Digitalis, and we used it for patients in heart failure, we used it for arrhythmias back in the day. And so, it's really interesting to me that-- there is this synergy, there are plants and then in many instances, and my grandmother was good with this, there was always a tincture of one thing or another that she would give us as children to help us understand that you can bridge this gap between traditional pharmaceuticals and you can still utilize quite a few plants. But Digitalis is one of these drugs that I just recall from-- I think it was probably from an old pharmacology class, the professor saying, “Now we're so stringent about when drugs come to market.” This never would have made it through the process by the FDA, but because it's been around for so long, they just continue to use it. 


[00:06:43] Having said that, when I was prepping for our conversation, just to give listeners a sense, the average cost to bring a new drug to market here in the United States is estimated to be around $879.3 million when accounting for the cost of failed trials and capital, with the direct cost of developing new drug averaging around $172.7 million. So, it is big business and it permeates everywhere. 


Chris Kilham: [00:07:12] Well, and if you look at something like digoxin, the reason that it would confound the FDA is that it is not in fact just a single compound. And they don't know how to deal with multi compound drugs. They never really have. But digoxin didn't fall out of favor because it was dangerous or because it didn't work. It fell out of favor because its patent ran out. Most medicines that we use, not the over-the-counter medicines, ibuprofen, acetaminophen, some others, but most of the medicines, once they lose their patent, the companies behind them lose their interest. We used to have reserpine for blood pressure control. Reserpine comes from a root from Asia. It's very, very effective. It was all over the world in cardiovascular health care for a long time. 


[00:08:08] And when the patent ran out, then it was no longer of use. So, it's funny what people say about these things, multi compound medicines, very hard for FDA to wrap their minds around. They took years to approve the latex of a croton tree for the treatment of AIDS-related diarrhea because it has a lot of compounds and they were totally confused and they didn't know what to do. And even presented with very good double-blind placebo controlled human clinical studies. They were still anxious about it because it's not a single compound. What gets decided in medicine doesn't have anything to do with efficacy or safety. It purely has to do with the money.


[00:08:58] And once the money dries up on a patent, Prozac when it goes from making billions to just being generic and anybody can get it anywhere from Canada or India or whatever, then there's something else that's going to come along. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:09:12] Well, and it's interesting in, listeners may not realize this, but when I was prescribing drugs and cardiology, I would almost relish when a drug went off patent because then it became wildly affordable. There are drugs like, I'll use an example, Zetia, a drug that is used a lot in clinical medicine, is now super cheap. But when it was brand new, I would have to call my drug reps and say, “Can you please drop off a box of samples?” Because a lot of my patients are on 10 or 20 drugs and having to pay an exorbitant fee every month for one drug is silly. The concept of patents, I think is both good and bad. But in many instances, you're right, the pharmaceutical companies will abandon all the marketing and all the money they're putting behind it because then it means any company can produce that drug in a generic form.


Chris Kilham: [00:10:04] Sure, sure. But what I see around the world, I travel investigating medicinal plants everywhere. I mean, Asia, Africa, the Middle east, the Pacific islands, North and South America, Europe, all over the place. And I meet countless numbers of medical doctors, chemists, investigative researchers, entire colleges say, as in the case of Thailand, they have an entire medicinal campus totally devoted to medicinal plants. And the research going on in these places, whether you're talking about some place in Yunnan, China or in Thailand or in Germany, the research is spectacular. And it used to be that especially a few decades ago, “People would say, oh, there isn't enough science behind medicinal plants. Those days are long gone, long gone.” There are many, many exceptionally fine human clinical studies published in peer-reviewed journals, thousands of other studies. 


[00:11:14] The investigation of the compounds in medicinal plants is broader and bigger than the investigation of drugs. When you go on to PubMed, the library of, basically the United States medical library, there's far more on medicinal plants. So, I think that people are starting to be increasingly aware that they can turn to plants first. The problem always is with these types of things, which brands, what to look for, what to avoid. There's a little bit of quicksand in there. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:11:52] For sure. And what are some of the emerging trends that you're seeing within the industry? Areas of either particular focus and research or for you personally, because you've been involved in this industry for such a long period of time, maybe well-deserved trends that are emerging that are going to have a huge impact on health here in the United States. 


Chris Kilham: [00:12:15] Well, these things come in cycles. You know, for a time a particular need will be really huge and then it'll die down. I mean, years ago everybody theoretically had Epstein Barr, so, everything was oriented toward Epstein Barr. We're over that. What seemed to be hot categories are gut health because so many people have digestive problems, so many people have leaky gut syndrome, and much of that quite likely due to GMO canola oil and some big crops that are GMO crops that do in fact adversely affect the lumen of the intestines and create too much permeability. So, we see a lot of emphasis now on those agents that can help gut health, like, let's say certain extracts from grape seed, the polyphenols help to tighten the junctions in the intestines. 


[00:13:16] Another category that has become quite huge and you couldn't solve category 25 years ago, is mental acuity. Now people understand, “Oh, okay, well, if you take, let's say ginkgo, which enhances microvascular circulation and we depend on the circulation of the fine vessels in the brain for adequate brain function, or Ola, which has been used for thousands of years by millions of people throughout Asia for mental enhancement, for energy, endurance and stamina. We know these things work and we have the studies to prove them now. There's a ginseng extract out there that shows two-hour improvement in cognitive function. I've looked at the studies, it's like the real thing. So, all I'm saying is that I think gut health and cognitive function have become big categories. One category that's huge and it's almost completely dominated by one ingredient, is inflammation. 


[00:14:24] People with pain in the joints, especially from overuse or weekend warriors, whatever the case may be. Turmeric really seems to be the world champion in terms of popularity for helping to inhibit inflammatory trouble. Hops is another thing that hasn't really had its day. But there's no question from what we know about the science, both human and animal and in vitro, profoundly anti-inflammatory. So, these are areas that you couldn't have sold them a couple of decades ago, because for inflammation I'm going to go for real medicine. Now we understand “Oh, the real medicine, the broad-acting medicines are actually in the plant category, much more so than in the pharmaceutical category.”


[00:15:14] That said, if you've got pain, the odds are really good that if you take four 200 mg ibuprofens, which is the standard clinical dose, you'll get quicker relief than if you take hops extract or a turmeric extract. That's fair to say.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:15:30] It's interesting as you were going through the trends that you're seeing I was like these are all completely on my radar. When I think about turmeric, I think about curcumin and I think about golden milk and especially for individuals that are dealing with joint pain or they're achy, that beautiful golden-hued drink that for a lot of people is an easy way to get turmeric into their lifestyles. In fact, I met someone recently who just did her PhD in turmeric. I didn't even know that could be a focus. 


Chris Kilham: Oh yeah. 


Cynthia Thurlow: But it was so interesting because she said there's just so much research in this area so it makes complete sense. And I think anti-inflammatory agents, the traditional, whether it's Aleve or Motrin, they can have their time and their space. But I think for people that are looking to do or utilize something that's a bit more natural as opposed to taking chronic NSAID therapy which we know in and of itself has a good amount of side effects. I love that you mentioned the gut microbiome, gut health, leaky gut because that's actually the focus of my next book. 


[00:16:40] And so I do think there's a preponderance of evidence that suggests our modern-day lifestyles are driving, whether it's exposure to synthetic hormones, whether it is chronic stress, ultra-processed food, all these things can damage that very delicate one cell layer, thick lining of the small intestine and then the mental acuity piece, which is what I would love to focus on at least in terms of trends. There's so many things that are out there that it is hard to make sense of what is actually effective. And so, ginkgo is one of the-- I think of it as like an oldie but goodie because I think about that, 10, 15 years ago we were talking about it but now there are all these, nootropic agents that everyone is talking about. And it's hard to sometimes make sense of what is most efficacious when there's a lot of noise in the health and wellness industry.


Chris Kilham: [00:17:31] Well, yes and you can only ride the popularity of something for so long. That's the fact of it. It used to be when I was a kid, it was cars with fins for real. [laughs] You know what car had the biggest fins of? Cadillacs, obviously, they had the biggest fins, but everybody had to have fins on their car. And then somebody woke up one day and went, we don't want fins on our cars anymore and that went away. We see botanicals rise and fall. The really super effective ones hit a plateau and they keep going along. And there are a lot of people, for example, taking ginkgo out there, ginseng, which is the first thing I ever knew about when I was a teenager. 


[00:18:17] Ginseng is still wildly popular globally, but it doesn't get a lot of that exciting, breathless, promotion now because, yeah, everybody knows ginseng, okay? And so there is market fatigue that people have for something that's too familiar. But at the same time as-- one of the things that has happened over the past many years is that we've learned much more about the medicinal plant systems of different cultures. Whether it's Ayurveda, the 5000-year-old system of medicine in India, whether it's traditional Chinese medicine, whether it's Rama I from Malaysia, whether it's the medicinal practices of shamans in the Amazon. We get more and more exposure to what's available from these different cultures.


[00:19:10] Big part of my work is going to these places and helping to establish trade, to say to people like in maca country, what would you think about maca selling in the United States? When I first asked them that in 1998, their eyes lit up. Do you think it's possible? It was like a wonderful idea to them. Now you can get maca all over the United States. It gives you energy and stamina, makes you feel really good, boosts mood. All of the traditional uses people discover are really true for them. But these things do have their times of popularity and then they just basically get out of the news as all things do. 


[00:19:51] So, there is that going on at the very same time that we're learning more and more about the phytochemical constituents of medicinal plants and what they can do and going more deeply into the medicinal traditions that have been around for thousands of years.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:20:11] Do you feel like medicinal tourism has helped with exposure of some of these more unique plant-based properties? I think about the fact that, when I was in college, because this is really before the Internet became a thing. You got most of your information from magazines or the news or you went to the card catalog in your local library, which I'm really dating myself when I say that. But the point of why I'm sharing is that I feel like now there is so much information that you can be exposed to with one click of a mouse that I wonder if that has helped or hindered the process and the evolution of indoctrinating us to new plants or different ways of addressing concerns or health issues.


Chris Kilham: [00:21:00] Well, these are two different things. So, called medicinal tourism. I think if people approach it, intelligently, it's phenomenal. If you go to southern India, for example, and you go to a couple of the Ayurvedic centers there where they do, really elaborate and astonishing types of massage that clear your head and improve your digestion and your circulation and all that, you're going to come away impressed. You're going to come away having learned something, “What is that thing? What can I do at home?” Not everybody, but I think a lot of people and certainly with the proliferation of information, this is very much a two-edged sword because with the proliferation of information comes the proliferation of misinformation. 


[00:21:52] So, at the very same time that you can go to credible references to learn about, name it, schisandra berry, let's say, which shows phenomenal benefits in human studies for enhancing mental function and reflex time and recovery after exercise and mood and a lot of different things, you can get tons of misinformation on it too. So, I think it's hard for people who don't make a career of this to know what information is real and what information is bogus. And then, additionally we have the fact that we live in an era in which people just make stuff up to make money. Bunch of years ago, there was this whole thing about the Acai weight loss plan. There was no such thing as Acai is not a [Cynthia laughs] weight loss product. 


[00:22:48] I mean, when I first ate acai, which was in 1997 in the Amazon, I was living with natives on the river and the women made this purple stuff and I ate it and it was like, “Oh my God,” this is amazing. I didn't lose any weight, didn't expect or didn't even imagine that somebody would come out with something so silly years later. But acai became a real thing because this nutritionally powerful as heck, but we get a lot of misinformation there. Many years ago, [unintelligible [00:23:18] that was marketed as an aphrodisiac and it was by a Chicago company. And to this day, people still think that it is and it's not a sex enhancer at all. 


[00:23:33] So, we have to beware at the same time that it is wonderful that we have so many very, very fine sources of information to turn to. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:23:43] Yeah, I think that I would imagine that you have this info, they call it infobesity, meaning there's just this preponderance of information. Sometimes, it's hard to make sense of what is factual, what is not. You mentioned of the acai bowl that's now turned into this weight loss tool. What's ironic is there's a wonderful smoothie place in our area and I was explaining to my kids, I was like, if you look at this bowl that probably went from being something that's intrinsically healthy is now intrinsically unhealthy because it's like a thousand calories of high carb products all in this little bowl that people are shoveling down because they're looking for the health benefits. 


[00:24:25] And I think in many ways, like the trickle-down effect is, how can I materialize, how can I quantify benefits to make money? And I think that's the mindset where a lot of people will go to. And, people can be very susceptible to that. When we we're thinking about other types of plants that are helpful for brain health. I know you mentioned ginkgo and ginseng. You mentioned the schisandra. I'm going to mispronounce it schisandra berry, which I have tried. And it's a crazy sweet sour. You almost don't know, your brain can't really differentiate what it is that you're eating. You're like, “I think it's sweet, I think it's sour. I'm not sure I like it, I like it. It's this crazy experience to have in your mouth. 


[00:25:12] What are some of the other things that I think are beneficial for neurocognition, things that are helpful, especially as I think for so many people, as they're navigating post pandemic, 40s, 50s and beyond, people are looking for things that are going to keep their brain sharp. What are some of the other things that you like to discuss or focus in on? 


Chris Kilham: [00:25:34] Well, just to comment on what you said, schisandra is now Wu Wei Zi and Wu Wei Zi means five-flavor berry. So sweet, sour, salty, pungent and bitter all at the same time. First time I ever had it, I was at a restaurant in Beijing with some people and I bit into this soft thing and I turned to the guy next to me and I said, “What is it?” [laughs] And he knew exactly what I meant. He said, “Oh, that's a schisandra berry, because it was all plump from. It was in a stew and the flavors just kind of shot across the bow of my tongue. It was a little confusing, actually. Yeah, there's a whole category of botanicals called adaptogens and the adaptogens help us to adapt to all forms of physical and mental stress. 


[00:26:23] Anything that does that brings cortisol, one of the primary stress hormones, into a healthy zone. Cortisol, when it's excessive, clouds the mind. So, if you can bring it down to a healthy level, you need cortisol to live, but if you can bring it down to a healthy level, then you get enhanced mental clarity. So ashwagandha, which is the big adaptogen from India, Panax ginseng, Eleuthero, which used to be called Siberian ginseng, even though it's not from Siberia and it's not a ginseng. Certainly, maca from the Peruvian Andes, schisandra berry, which we mentioned. These things are very, very good for mental enhancement. We also see, for example in green tea, the naturally occurring theanine, which is an amino acid. It has relaxing properties, not soporific.


[00:27:23] Is it not going to put you to sleep, but it just relaxes you. And that relaxation actually is highly beneficial for mental enhancement. We know that Lion's mane, which is a particular type of mushroom, actually helps with the formation of new healthy nerve cells, neurogenesis, so actually extending the number of neurons in the brain. There are many things that enhance brain function and mental function. Lecithin, for example, with its phosphatides, very very good for the mind. I was reading a unintelligible [00:28:02]paper the other day about the studies that have been done showing that different aromas, when we take in those molecules through our sinuses and into the membranes of the sinuses, that many of them can and do cross the brain-blood barrier and enhance brain function. 


[00:28:25] So, sometimes it may be as simple a thing to, if you're just not feeling with it, to get up, go smell some essential oils, or better yet, go out and take a walk in the fragrant woods, if you have that kind of thing at hand and breathe the natural aromatic compounds that all plants are raining down on you at all times, you actually take those into the brain. You have a choice and you alluded to this, you can either take something, let's say like acetaminophen, ibuprofen, or other NSAIDs for pain, or you can lead a pain-free life. These are different things. 


[00:29:09] If you want to lead a pain-free life, you're not eating ultra-processed foods, you're not drinking sodas, you're not gorging on pharmaceutical drugs, you're not sitting on the couch getting fat, playing with your remote control. You're out being active. You get out as much as you can. You do exercise, you do drink pure water, you eat cleaner food, really following the guidance of eating more fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, and whole grains and far, far fewer processed foods and less, less heavy meats overall. If you change your life, which is much harder for people, then you can in fact get rid of much of your pain. I mean, some of the pain just from aging, gosh, I get up, that hurts, whatever, that may never go away, but you can live a lot better.


[00:30:05] So, it's really a choice. Do I want medicines that will take a stab at relieving something that is chronic and ongoing and every day I throw some of those medicines at that pain, at that fire, or do I want to drink good natural juices, drink healthy water, on and on and on and on and just get that whole inflammatory causing bunch of factors out of my life. It's a big difference. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:30:34] Yeah, no, it is. Do you find that-- When you go out into these indigenous cultures or communities, do you have a tough time acclimating to when you come home, coming back to that hustle, bustle, modern day lifestyle? I know we both initiated the conversation talking about how we live outside of, we live in more rural, less suburban, urban places than we did when we were younger. But I would imagine, the piece of imagining being on the Amazon, interacting with friends, just exploring and really connected to nature. I would imagine coming back home-- I don't want to use the term a bumpy ride. I just know, we travel quite a bit and there are sometimes-- it's like a little bit of a jolt to your system when you come back to civilization, if you will. 


Chris Kilham: [00:31:26] Well, yeah, absolutely. I require no time to acclimate to the places I go to. I show up.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:31:35] Amazing. 


Chris Kilham: [00:31:37] I'm happy. You know, whatever is going on, whether it's the mountains of Yunnan, China, or it's Vanuatu, South Pacific, or it's someplace in Central Africa, whatever, the coming back is actually a little stranger. I've spent hundreds and hundreds of days and nights on boats in the Amazon over the decades. I've been down there like 35 times and done long projects there. I always know that I'm going to go home okay. 


[00:32:13] I always know that whatever the discomforts, how many bug bites I get, how much mud I've got in my socks, whatever [laughs] is it going on with that eventually I'm going to go home to like a hot shower and all of that. But it is harder coming back. And part of that is that there's something. Well, for sure, the life in places that are less developed is more raw, if you will. But it also is often, and I don't want to idealize these situations, but it's also often much sweeter. In Vanuatu, which was popularized, survivor-- in Vanuatu, where I've been going for since 1995, you don't see kids unhappy. You really don't. Kids play with each other like you. You give four kids a stick and a coconut, they're good for the day, seriously. 


[00:33:09] You take their pictures, they fall completely apart. They laugh so hard. It's like it makes their week. It's really simple. A kid falls down and gets hurt, any adult picks them up. You resolve conflicts by sitting down and drinking kava together, not getting drunk and smashing each other in the face with bottles or shooting each other. [laughs] It's really very simple. At the same time, there are a lot of dangerous places in the world, and more so now than ever before, especially with the rise in terrorism. I was just in Cameroon a few months ago, and you don't want to go on vacation there. It's unsafe. You can't really just kind of go around freely because it's dangerous. So, it depends on where you go. 


[00:33:55] But in general, it is harder coming home for me, even though I love being home and I love my wife and I love the life we have than going to places. Throw me into Darlac Loc province in Vietnam, I'm a happy camper, great, wonderful, let's go. Coming home, I kind of miss it. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:34:16] Yeah, I bet. Well, you can tell from your writing how much you enjoy the process and the exploration and the experiences that you're going through. And, and just in hearing your experiences of even your most recent travel, having a sense of clearly delineating. There are places I've been to that I feel safe and there are places I've been to where I feel completely the opposite. And I would imagine that blends itself another layer of complexity to the experience itself. I would imagine. Having said that, one of the things that when I was looking at your work and thinking about our conversations today, it's a topic we haven't really discussed in any breath or depth or psychedelics. 


[00:35:01] And so, let's talk a little bit around how we define what psychedelic plant medicine is. Provide some examples. And then I want to hear more about the Bufo toad. Because I went down a rabbit hole about different types of psychedelics. And so, I kind of stumbled upon that and thought, well, if there's anyone worth asking questions about, it would be Chris. 


Chris Kilham: [00:35:25] I'm happy to talk about psychedelics. There are many, many mind-altering substances in the world. Coffee alters your state of mind, but a true psychedelic is something that actually can promote a cosmic experience. And what I mean that is a dissolution of the sense of self, a sense of being one with everything. Generally, thoughts just disappear. You're suffused with love and light. It's an amazing thing. And there are agents like magic mushrooms, like the drink ayahuasca in the Amazon. And I'll touch on these a little bit more, like LSD, which comes from the nucleus of the ergot fungus, which has been around for 100 million years that we know of. Iboga from Central Africa, even oral cannabis, high quantities of cannabis going much further than what happens if you smoke it or something like that. 


[00:36:26] These agents, these substances can promote this kind of experience, this sense of dissolution. And what we know about them is that to back up a little bit, we all have habits of all different kinds. A habit maybe you get up every morning at a certain time and you take a shower. Okay, that's a habit. And at the very same time that you go through this behavior you have mental wiring, if you will, neurological pathways which know you get up out of bed on that side, you go, you walk into the bathroom, you turn on the light, you to [unintelligible [00:37:06] go water. You don't think about it, you don't go, “Okay, hmm, what are the next five steps here?” You just do it because it's wired into your brain. 


[00:37:15] But we also have wired into our brains unhealthy responses, trauma responses, addictive responses, things that basically inhibit the joy in our lives and prevent us from, if you will, kind of being all we can, very broad, can help people to burst out of those narrowly defined reaction responses, we've seen this in brain scans, actually create new neurological pathways. So, let's say you've always been afraid of people wearing red shirts because when you were a kid, you got beaten by somebody who was wearing a red shirt. You're always scared of people in red shirts. After psychedelics, it's just a red shirt. Very often I've been down in the Amazon with a lot of people consuming ayahuasca, which is a nasty  tasting two plant drinks that takes you on a journey for four, six, maybe even eight hours. 


[00:38:20] And I've seen people who have had something that has inhibited them for a long time, maybe due to sexual abuse, maybe due to some trauma in war, something like that, chronic stomachaches that just won't go away, fatigue that nobody can figure out what the cause is. And I've seen these people recover. I've been there and witnessed it. Not everybody has rapid recovery, but today what we're seeing is a diverging path. An increasing clinical interest in psychedelics again, but also far, far, far greater global use of psychedelics. People getting together, “Hey, let's do mushrooms on Sunday, let's go to the beach and do mushrooms or whatever.” Our peyote. “Let's go to a Native American peyote ceremony and dive into that medicine. Or, hey, I'm going to Peru and I'm going to try Huachuma, which is the San Pedro cactus.” 


[00:39:23] These are things that can be used ceremonially, they can be used clinically, and they can be used just purely pleasurably. And in any case, they will still create new neurological pathways, new ways of thinking. You asked about bufo toad. About a year and a half ago, I was down in Sonora, Mexico, investigating bufo toad. It's the largest toad in the North American continent. [crosstalk] 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:39:54] They're massive.


Chris Kilham: [00:39:56 unintelligible] fat toad and they have glands on their backs and on their legs that if they're being threatened by predators, they squirt goop out of them. And this goop is toxic. And all toads have that. But the Bufo Alvarius toad in the Sonoran Desert also has 5-MeO-DMT in its goop and its secretion. And when you collect that and you let it dry, I mean, the first person who did this did it on the windshield of a van like decades ago. But when you collect this and you dry it, then when you smoke it, the toxins, many of which are cardiac glycosides, and you know about those. And you mentioned before digoxin, which is a cardiac glycoside rich compound. Some of these things, if you were to take them orally, if you were to lick those toads, you'd either wind up in the hospital or in a morgue, but they're denatured, they're burned off. 


[00:41:02] So, when you take in this vapor from this bufo toad, you have a very rapid, extremely intense, powerful, almost universally very positive psychedelic experience that may be last 20 minutes. So, it has become popular. Some people are administering this well and correctly, and some people are doing a very poor job, but it's definitely a real thing right now. And I did a couple of articles on bufo. So, I don't know if any of this is what you're looking for relative to psychedelics, but thankfully it's a big burgeoning field again, which it was in the 50s.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:41:46] Yeah, it's interesting to me because I probably a year and a half ago, there was a-- I'm a nerd at heart, I love documentaries. And there was a documentary on Netflix. I think it was organized by Michael Pollan, and it was talking about psilocybin. It was talking about MDMA and in the emerging research that's coming about and how a lot of these psychedelics, well, especially LSD and PCP and a few other things, just kind of really all that information, all that research was shelved. And for many years there wasn't a lot of research ongoing. But I certainly have spoken to enough experts on the podcast that have mentioned things like psychedelics, microdosing, the ability to improve someone's trauma history.


[00:42:34] And we've had Gabor Mate on the podcast. We understand trauma is a wound. Trauma is something that can be big ‘T’ trauma, little ‘t’ trauma, and everything in between. And for each one of us, our experiences are as unique as we are. And so, I think psychedelics from the perspective of therapy and for people treating addiction and trauma history, I find really interesting as a clinician because I think it's giving us an opportunity to utilize these tools in a way that can be very therapeutic, very healing, very helpful. On the other side of that, I have a lot of colleagues that talk about ayahuasca. And ayahuasca, I'll use their terminology, trips. That might not be the appropriate way to characterize it, but talking about the value of ayahuasca and ceremonies and the process of going through that. 


[00:43:24] And as a plant medicine expert, if someone is interested in learning more, experiencing these things, how do they go about finding a reputable person, persons to work with? And I'm speaking more to the plant medicines as opposed to things like MDMA. But NMDA is not a psychedelic. But from that context, how do they go about finding good quality people to work with through these issues?


Chris Kilham: [00:43:52] There are now again, as is the case with information, there are a lot of good, talented, thoughtful people working with psychedelics. And there are some real idiots who know nothing, who went down to the Amazon, did ayahuasca, came back and said, “I'm a shaman,” and these people are dangerous and stupid. But I would say you have to be as critical about it as you would be about somebody doing surgery on you. I wouldn't just go to any lunkhead because they have scalpel [Cynthia laughs] in their hands seriously. You look up, well, who, “Oh, this person has a very good history and excellent reviews of service and a very fine reputation.” That is true for people who are shamans, for people who are leading ceremonies, for people who are administering these medicines in any of a variety of circumstances. 


[00:44:47] And there are also websites that will give you reviews on, if you're going to go down and drink ayahuasca, who to avoid, who's good, who has a great reputation, who's been implicated in cases, sexual molestation, anything that can happen will happen. I think you just plain have to do real homework. I've been very very fortunate in the Amazon to work with very qualified shamans. And, the tip off is it's like going to somebody who is a specialist surgeon, a cardiovascular surgeon. You didn't get that degree in four months, okay. You spent years and years working for that and developing that specialty. Good shamans, for example, whatever they're administering ayahuasca, San Pedro, these people-- they're multigenerational. Yeah, I ask them. 


[00:45:51] I always ask the same questions. “Where'd you learn this?” “Oh, my granny.” “And my granny taught me.” “My uncle, my father, my mother,” whoever. And, “Oh, yeah, I started when I was 14, and then learned for 12 years.” It's that kind of thing. Real deep, profound expertise. I do all this work right now for a French company called Berkem, traveling the world investigating medicinal plants and helping to establish trade. And still everywhere I go or almost everywhere I go, there will either be a psychoactive plant or maybe several psychoactive plants that are part of the culture. And one thing that is almost universally so is that in terms of the regard that people pay to different plants, these plants are always at the top of the pyramid.


[00:46:47] When you go to the Amazon, where thousands of plants are being used and thousands of plant parts and different preparations, when you ask indigenous people, “Well, what's number one?” They say, “Oh, ayahuasca.” That's number one. That's the big medicine and it’s funny-- We can think of medicine in terms of, “Oh, I have diarrhea, so I took Lomotil, okay.” 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:47:14] When you're desperate, your desperate, right? 


Chris Kilham: [00:47:16] When you're desperate, you'll do it. But, that's an idea of medicine. And, yeah, sure, of course, if you need it, you do that. But the other idea of medicine is something that I heard a Hawaiian elder say. He said that, “True healing puts into order the body, mind and spirit with the past, the present, and the future.” If you really consider that definition, that doesn't leave anything out. Okay, that's the whole kit. What are the different things that contribute to your overall strength, energy, proper function of all of your organ systems, helping you to keep a good, vibrant, healthy mind, and giving you those insights and joyful experiences that also propel you forward in a good, positive way in life. These are very different ways of thinking about medicine. I like the second one myself. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:48:23] No, I think it's so interesting. And as you were talking about experts and shamans, I guess it has been my experience that it's a calling. You don't just roll out of bed when you're 30 and say, “You know, I think today I want to be a shaman.” I think it is as intrinsic as each of us, as we are drawn to our areas of service in our lives. I think it is that kind of calling intrinsically, who they are as individuals and how curious it is that, within certain cultures, it's these psychoactive drugs that really are at the pinnacle of, if there's a pyramid, if you will, of the hierarchy of plant medicine and they are at the top because we acknowledge there are multiple properties that allow people to expand beyond the obvious. 


[00:49:15] It's not just one sided, it's multifaceted, it's multisided, anyway. I'm a wanderlust by nature and I love to travel. And so, as I'm hearing your stories, I'm like, “Ooh,” maybe that's going to be, where those next trips will be and the kinds of experiences that we want to have. I'm fairly certain it'll be South America. We were thinking more Chile or Argentina, but who knows? This may inspire us to do something different. Having said that-- [crosstalk] 


Chris Kilham: [00:49:44] Let me know. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:49:45] Yeah. Oh, for sure. Now, when we talk about plant therapies, we talk about contraindications in traditional allopathic medicine, whether it's over-the-counter products or traditional pharmaceutical agents, what are the things we have to be concerned about? Do you have same concerns about plant medicine that's being distilled down into our marketing and R&D with companies here in the United States. Meaning how do we navigate purchasing good quality products? How do we know? Because there's no regulation of ergogenic aids, unfortunately. So, it's almost as if. Let the buyer beware. When they're in a store, they're buying something online, how do they navigate making good decisions? 


Chris Kilham: [00:50:32] Well, this is a complex issue. You can of course look for reviews of different brands. The day of the very well-informed person in the aisle of the health food store is fading. More people are buying online and so they're not necessarily getting. “Yeah, the last 25 people have used this, have said that they went to sleep.” You're missing out on that. Legacy brands, brands that have been around for a good long time, whether you're talking Nature's Way or NOW Foods or Blue Bonnet or some of these that have been around for decades, they've been around for a reason. They put out good products. Anything that promises a miracle, don't buy it. No matter what it is, don't buy it. 


[00:51:21] Other than that, I would say if you have friends who are better informed than you are about these things, ask them. I get asked all the time for things because this is what I do. But it is not a simple matter to separate the good products from the lousy products you can find with many ingredients. Many of your listeners might not know this, but let's say if you have a brand of supplements and they have a lot of different herbal products, they don't make those herbs, they don't grow. They get them from suppliers like the company that I work with now, Berkem, they get them from companies, that's all they do is make ingredients. It's like the glass on your windshield. Somebody makes that glass. 


[00:52:05] There are many ingredients now that have human clinical studies showing efficacy. Some of the high curcumin turmeric ingredients show real efficacy in human studies against inflammation, ashwagandha, showing very good efficacy for reducing stress, and number of other things. So, you can also look up studies on different ingredients and you say, “Oh, this ingredient keeps coming up.” Meriva from Indena keeps coming up. They'll check that out. And then you look for products that contain that ingredient. That is a way to go, but it is amaze out there. There's no question, there's no easy answer to getting the right stuff. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:52:47] Yeah, that's the greatest concern that I have. And even well-meaning patients would say, “Oh, I bought my big bottle of Omega 3s in Costco” and I was like, well, I'm all for getting a good deal, but very likely by the time that came to market, it's probably rancid. And so, helping make decisions like can we get this from the actual piece of fish or do we need to supplement? Because we know we've done lab testing that suggests you're deficient and that's why we need to do this. And so, I think it always goes back to, “Let the buyer beware.” Having said that, where is your next trip, Chris? Because ], as I've mentioned, I'm a wanderluster by nature. I love to hear all these exciting places you've been. Where is your next trip heading off to? 


Chris Kilham: [00:53:34] Well, the next trip I have is pedestrian by any standard. I'm going to France to work with my fellow workmates at Berkem for about a week and then I'm going to London to spend a little bit of time with people at the Kew Botanical Gardens, which is a place I go to a lot and I've got a little project going with them. But I don't know, I've been trying to figure out where's the next sort of exciting place to go and I'm not sure. I haven't been back to the Amazon since the very start of COVID and it's the longest time that I've been away from there. So, it may be that I go back to the Peruvian Amazon where I've done a lot of work and see many of my contacts. That's likely.


[00:54:22] Sometimes I don't know though, in fairness, Cynthia, these things just pop up. Somebody will say, “Hey, we'd like you to go to whatever, Vietnam for coffee.” “Yeah, okay, right on. Love it.” Love two things. Love Vietnam, love coffee, I'm there. So, I don't know is the fair answer. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:54:41] Well, it's such an exciting way to live your life, just being immersed in these cultures and creating friendships and translating that into knowledge around plant medicine. Please let listeners know how to connect you to the outside the context of the podcast, how to get access to your books, and learn more about your work. 


Chris Kilham: [00:54:59] The best thing to do is to go onto my overly gigantic website, which is medicinehunter.com. It really is immense. [laughs] Don't get lost, but there is a section there on my books. You can see the books that I have and where to get them. I do a lot of photography. I'll tell you a quick story. My first time in the Amazon, I went traveling around investigating shamans. And we got to this one woman who was 103 years old. She was teeny, teeny, teeny little woman. And she had a bright, sharp mind. And she looked at me and she said, “you bridge the worlds.” She'd never met me before. There was no communication. We didn't have phones or anything. She said, “You tell people about each other.”


[00:55:55] And then she gave me a little lecture on how that was important to do, to bridge worlds, to foster understanding. So, one of the things I do is I take thousands and thousands of photographs. And there are many photos on my website of people and places and plants so that people can get a sense of what it's like out there. And then there are also plenty of videos too. So, I would say medicinehunter.com is the hub. I am on LinkedIn. I am on Facebook. This work is, it's a dream come true. I'm going to be sorry when it's over. I'm going to be sorry when I age out and I can't do it anymore. But for as long as I can, this is the most wonderful work I can think of doing. I make new friends. I eat some great foods. [laughs] I mean foods all over the world and come back with a better understanding of the plant medicines. And anytime I go someplace I want to learn about a particular thing and they say, “Yeah, we'll do that, but do you know about this as well?” And so, I always come back with more than I expect, which is more than you asked me but medicinehunter.com.


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:57:07] Awesome, such a great conversation. Thank you again for your time. 


Chris Kilham: [00:57:10] Thank you, Cynthia. It's been a real pleasure. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:57:14] If you love this podcast episode, please leave a rating in review, subscribe and tell a friend.



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