A Medicine Called Kambo Transforms a Bedbound ME/CFS Patient to Reasonably Fit and Able in 2 Weeks
I recently read some forums posts (see
here and
here) made by an individual named Jox who used the Amazonian Indian medicine
kambo to successfully treat his severe
chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). Jox was bedbound for often months at a time with the fatigue and malaise of ME/CFS, but astoundingly,
within 2 weeks of taking kambo, he was back to near full health (fit enough to go on a motorcycle vacation), and remains that way provided he takes kambo once a week.
So kambo elicited a very significant remission from severe ME/CFS within just two weeks.
I have corresponded with Jox, and I am certain his story is genuine. So I think Jox's discovery of the seemingly remarkable benefits of kambo for ME/CFS is certainly something that needs to be further examined.
Kambo comprises the waxy secretions of the
giant leaf frog (Phyllomedusa bicolor) found in the Amazon. This kambo medicine is usually administered by putting a dab of these secretions onto small circular burns made on your skin. The burns are created using a bit of smoldering wood; you then put the kambo directly on the fresh burns, where it is absorbed into the bloodstream. These burns are not really painful, and if done properly, only affect the top layer of skin; but they leave tiny scars that take 6 months or more to disappear. You can see what the skin scars look like
here.
Kambo can be bought online. It is sold in the form of "kambo sticks", which are flat, thin slithers of wood about 10 cm long and 1 cm wide onto which the frog's waxy secretions are collected. The dried waxy secretions on the kambo stick look like a very thick layer of vanish painted on the wood. One kambo stick lasts a long time: it provides for around 20 kambo trips.
View attachment 4948 . . . View attachment 4947
The giant leaf frog (left), and the dried secretions collected from the frog on a kambo stick (right)
Stomach acids disable the delicate active compounds in the kambo medicine, so you cannot take kambo orally. Sublingually does not work either. Kambo can be taken intranasally, but there are reasons why intranasal administration is not generally recommended (the Amazonian Indians have observed that intranasal kambo can sometimes precipitate a disease, whereas the burn method of administration they say is safe). The Indians also point out that the incorrect administration of kambo has occasionally led to deaths.
Taking kambo is not for the fainthearted, because
minutes after administering kambo, you start violently and profusely purging from both ends (vomiting and diarrhea at the same time) until there nothing left to purge, and even then, you still purge some. Plus your heartbeat races extremely high during this period, and your throat swells, and blood flushes to your skin so you look bright red. It is an extremely intense physical experience. During their first kambo trip, people may ask themselves "am I going to die?" Though aficionados consider the purging to be a purifying and healing process for the body. No mental or psychedelic effects occur with kambo; your state of mind remains unaffected. The whole kambo experience is over quickly: the most intense period lasts for only around 15 minutes or so, and by 30 minutes you are completely back to normal. After a kambo trip, people often report increased vigor, a sharpening of vision, relief from pain, and a reduction of any disease symptoms they may have.
Jox found that it took two weeks on kambo (taking one kambo dose per week) before he was transformed from a bedbound state into being fit and able (fit and able enough to take a motorcycle vacation in Mexico).
You can buy kambo sticks
here and
here. Though I suggest that you fully research kambo, and very carefully consider any risks that taking such a potent substance might pose, before you embark on any experiments. There have been a small number of deaths associated with kambo use, so anyone considering taking kambo is to an extent entering uncharted territory. Given the weak constitution of many ME/CFS patients, it may be inadvisable to take kambo. Note that a kambo trip should only be undertaken on an empty stomach.
Taking Dermorphin Instead of Kambo
I myself am apprehensive about the idea of taking kambo, and of going through this period of 15 minutes of intense vomiting and diarrhea (though Jox tells me that this really is no big deal, and Jox has taken kambo every week for a year now). Plus I don't like the idea of making little burns on my skin whose scars will remain for 6 months, particularly as Jox discovered that you must repeat the kambo dose roughly once a week (so that's a lot of scars), in order to keep the ME/CFS symptoms at bay.
So my idea was to look at the active constituent compounds in kambo, figure out which of these compounds are responsible for the curative effects of kambo on ME/CFS, and then take the pure compounds instead. I hoped that a single compound might be providing the curative effects, and that this single compound on its own would be easier to administer, and would not induce purging.
Kambo contains a number of active compounds (which are all peptides):
Dermorphin — a potent mu-opioid receptor agonist.
Deltorphin — a very potent delta-opioid receptor agonist.
Phyllomedusin — a tachykinin which affects the salivary glands, tear ducts, intestines, and bowels; it contracts the smooth muscles, and contributes to violent purging.
Phyllokinin (and phyllomedusin) — potent blood vessel dilators that also increase the permeability of the blood-brain barrier.
Phyllocaerulein — which stimulates the adrenal cortex and the pituitary gland, causes a fall in blood pressure, causes tachycardia, and has a potent action on the gastrointestinal smooth muscle, and stimulates gastric, biliary and pancreatic secretions.
Sauvagine — which stimulates the adrenal cortex, causes a long lasting fall in blood pressure, and causes intense tachycardia.
Adenoregulin — acts on the adenosine receptors.
Dermaseptin — a potent antimicrobial for both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, and antiviral for herpes simplex virus.
My hunch was that the mu-opioid receptor agonist
dermorphin in kambo may be playing a large part in this apparently effective kambo treatment for ME/CFS. So I decided to experiment with taking some pure dermorphin on its own.
What now follows are the details of my experience and methodology in taking
pure pharmaceutical grade dermorphin as an experimental treatment for my ME/CFS. This experimental treatment gave very promising results.
My Dermorphin Experience
I began by taking a single 100 microgram (mcg) dose of of dermorphin intranasally.
As Jox found that a once weekly dose of kambo worked well to treat his ME/CFS symptoms, likewise, my expectation was that a once weekly dose of dermorphin would work in a similar manner. So I took this single dose of dermorphin, and then in the subsequent days, I was expecting improvements in my ME/CFS symptoms to manifest as a result.
Interestingly, there were virtually no physical or mental effects whatsoever arising in the period immediately following this 100 mcg dose of intranasal dermorphin (unlike kambo, which induces profuse vomiting, diarrhea and significant tachycardia minutes after taking it).
However, very noticeable beneficial effects did appear by the next day, and in the 3 days that followed this single dermorphin dose. These effects were as follows.
Effects of Dermorphin on my ME/CFS Symptoms
Positive Effects from taking dermorphin:
• My chronic inflammatory sinusitis disappeared.
• The constant sense of inflammation in my brain and head disappeared.
• Chronic fatigue syndrome symptoms such as the brain fog (mental confusion), sensory hypersensitivity (the horrible autism-like over-sensitivity to sounds, light, etc) were noticeably improved.
• My energy levels increased, but this was just a mild increase.
• My generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) symptoms disappeared (I have GAD as a comorbid condition with my chronic fatigue syndrome).
• A large patch of psoriasis I had on my leg for years substantially cleared up around 24 hours after taking the dermorphin, which was quite remarkable.
• After taking dermorphin my constantly cold hands and feet (bad blood circulation and vasoconstriction) became warm. So dermorphin seemed to temporarily improve my blood circulation, though this only lasted a day or so.
Negative effects from taking dermorphin:
• In the 3 days that followed my single dermorphin dose, I felt emotionally and intellectually a little flat, especially the first day after taking dermorphin, but this mental flatness slowly wore off as the days went by.
• Some mild insomnia.
So for the first three days after taking this single 100 microgram dose of dermorphin, things were going quite well, and many of ME/CFS symptoms were noticeably improved. The only real downside was the emotional and intellectual flatness.
•
However, on the forth day after taking dermorphin things turned bad, as I developed a state of mild psychosis, with severe emotional flatness, which was very disorienting. I have experienced days with mild psychosis symptoms before (I have anxiety disorder, and mild anxiety psychosis is not uncommon in people with anxiety disorder). However, I had not had an anxiety psychosis attack for a long time, and dermorphin seemed to bring this anxiety psychosis back.
On the fifth day after taking dermorphin, most of these mild psychosis effects disappeared, and I was back to normal. But the good effects of dermorphin on my ME/CFS also wore off by the fifth day, so it was back to square one at that point.
So the effects, both good and bad, of a single 100 mcg intranasal dose of dermorphin seem to last for around 4 days.
The unpleasant anxiety psychosis experience on the forth day was off-putting, and the general emotional flatness symptoms of dermorphin were not so nice. Though I think this bad experience may just be something particular to me, as I have had some mild psychosis symptoms before, due to my anxiety disorder, and I also suffer from a bit of anhedonia and emotional flatness in general. So these negative effects of dermorphin probably will not manifest in other people; they are probably just peculiar to me. Nevertheless, I have halted my dermorphin experiments for the moment.
All in all, it seems that pure dermorphin may be a viable means of treating chronic fatigue syndrome.
I am not sure how dermorphin compares to kambo in terms of effectiveness as a ME/CFS treatment, because I have not tried kambo as yet.
Though dermorphin certainly has the advantage of being much easier to administer than kambo: you can easily snort dermorphin, thus no skin burns are required; there is no nasal irritation at all during or after snorting dermorphin; and there are no adverse physical or mental effects at all when you take dermorphin — you don't really feel anything when you take a dose of 100 mcg of dermorphin (the beneficial effects of dermorphin on ME/CFS only appear on the next and subsequent days).
Important Note
Note that dermorphin can cause
fatal overdoses in microgram amounts, so you need to know exactly what you are doing before experimenting with pure dermorphin, and you need to be able to measure out tiny microgram doses very accurately, else you may accidentally kill yourself through overdosing.
Intranasal doses of around 500 mcg dermorphin have been used recreationally (see the "trip reports"
here and
here), and these higher dose levels apparently do have psychoactive effects. Intranasal doses above 1000 mcg will likely prove fatal (remember, dermorphin is an opioid like morphine and heroin, and the lethal dose is not that much higher than the therapeutic dose). If administering dermorphin by injection, this drug becomes more potent still, and the lethal dose will be even smaller.
Note also that dermorphin is a compound untested and unlicensed for human use. Chemical laboratories that sell dermorphin do so on the understanding that it is not to be used for human consumption or for human research. Thus the details given here are for information purposes only, and I do not advise anyone to take dermorphin.
Having said that, several human studies with dermorphin have been performed (see
here), and of course dermorphin is contained within the kambo Amazonian medicine.
Preparing Dermorphin for Intranasal Administration
I took dermorphin by snorting 100 micrograms of it intranasally. Full details of how I was able to measure out and snort this precise and tiny amount are as follows.
I bought 5000 micrograms (mcg) of dermorphin powder from a chemical supplier (cost was $200). 5000 micrograms is about the weight of 50 tiny grains of sugar.
To prepare this dermorphin for taking intranasally, what I did was mix my 5000 micrograms of dermorphin powder with a second inert powder, in a ratio of 250:1, so that each 25 mg of my powder mixture will contain 100 mcg of dermorphin. This then makes it easier to weigh out doses for snorting. For the inert powder, I used inositol powder (a B vitamin), as in my tests, I found inositol could be snorted without any irritation to the nose.
Because dermorphin is a opioid like morphine, it is easy to overdose on dermorphin and kill yourself if you take the wrong amount. As little as 1000 mcg taken intranasally may kill you.
Thus I was concerned that if my mixture of dermorphin powder plus the inert powder (inositol) was not very well mixed, I might run the risk of snorting up an overdose of dermorphin, as a result of having a non-uniform mixture. I took this possibility seriously, and came up with the following system to mix the powers very thoroughly:
I placed my 5000 mcg of dermorphin powder, and 1245 mg of inositol powder, as two separate piles on the surface of a flat mirror. Then, to the dermorphin pile, I added 16 pipette drops of distilled water (about 1 ml of water), which turned my little pile of dermorphin powder into a tiny puddle of water on surface of the mirror. Dermorphin is highly soluble in water, and dissolved into these drops of distilled water immediately. I gave the water in this tiny puddle a good stir anyway, to make sure the dermorphin was fully dissolved in it.
I then pushed the adjacent pile of inositol powder into this tiny puddle of water + dermorphin, using a Stanley blade. There was just enough water to soak into the inositol powder and turn the pile of inositol powder into a damp sludge. I thoroughly mixed this damp inositol powder sludge, so that the inositol powder was evenly damp. This ensured that the dermorphin dissolved in the water was evenly soaked into the inositol powder.
Then, using the Stanley blade, I spread the damp inositol powder sludge very thinly over a large area (say 20 cm by 20 cm) of the mirror surface. I placed a weak fan next to the mirror to blow a very gentle breeze over this area of damp powder, in order to dry it.
After an hour or two, the powder seemed completely dry, and I used the Stanley blade to gather up this power into a pile. Just to be doubly safe, I mixed this pile of dry powder for while, using the Stanley blade.
So now I had 1250 mg of a perfectly mixed inositol + dermorphin powder combination. I placed this powder mixture in a small container for storage.
To administer dermorphin to myself intranasally, I just weighted out 25 mg of this powder mixture (I have a digital scales that measures down to 1 mg), and snorted it up the powder using a wide drinking straw. This 25 mg of powder mixture gives me a dose of 100 mcg of dermorphin.
Speculation on the Mechanism of Action of Dermorphin as a ME/CFS Treatment
Dermorphin's half life is extremely short: 1.3 minutes (ref:
1), so this drug will be pretty much completely out of your system 15 minutes after administering it. Yet from my observations it was clear that dermorphin created some potent, unequivocal effects that lasted up to 4 days after taking it. So somehow dermorphin is precipitating some long-term actions in the body, even though dermorphin completely leaves the body within 15 minutes.
One speculative explanation I have for the long-term action of dermorphin in the body is based on the fact that opioids modulate NMDA receptor-mediated neurotransmission:
this study indicates that morphine alters NMDA receptor-mediated neurotransmission in the nucleus accumbens, and these effects persist one week after morphine withdrawal. So morphine can create NMDA receptor effects in the brain that persist many days after the drug has left the body.
Note that chronic NMDA receptor overstimulation is thought to play a role in chronic fatigue syndrome; thus the fact that opioids drugs exhibit NMDA receptor effects may help explain why these drugs benefit ME/CFS.
Indeed, many ME/CFS patients have observed that mu-opioid pain relieving drugs such as oxycodone and hydrocodone noticeably reduce their neurological ME/CFS symptoms (see this thread
here); so this beneficial effect is not unique to dermorphin, and this means that some of the benefits of dermorphin / kambo might conceivably be obtained by taking other opioids such as oxycodone, hydrocodone or morphine.
