Finding Modern Medicines in the Botanical World – Cassandra Quave, Ph.D. : 986

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Formerly Bulletproof Radio, A state of high performance. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Today is a first ever attempt at having a live online audience with the Upgrade collective and a live in person audience with my daughter Anna, because she's so interested in the topic of this episode that how could we not have her here in the room? And I'm thinking about aiming the camera at her right now, and she's giving me very dirty looks like I shouldn't do that. So I won't. But now you guys know we have a live audience. And the reason that she's here is that she's a plant nerd. And we're going to talk about plants, specifically where plant medicines come from. Not just the kind that make you see little robotic machine elves and Smurfs, but all of the different kinds of healing that can come from plants and how we actually figure out what happens. And I want you to learn what botanical remedies you can use to treat infectious and inflammatory diseases. The reason the show is important is that those things work. They have worked for many thousands, if not tens of thousands of years, and they're not patented. So there is an active campaign running right now that's been running since at least 1990 and really since about 1930 with the advent of the AMA, to make sure that no one believes that plants actually can heal people. It turns out they can kill us and they can heal us, and there's a wide variety of effects in between those that you might want to leverage in your ability to be a biohacker. We're also going to talk about how antibiotic resistance evolves and how plants and microbes work together. So actual information for you and just some, like, curiosity, like, whoa, how does this stuff work? Our guest is a leader in the field of medical botany who's traveling across the globe to really weird, remote locations and communities to figure out how we can make modern medicines from the botanical world. And to do that, she also leads anti infective drug discovery research initiatives and at the same time teaches normal people like you and me about medicinal plants, food and health. And the technical term for what she is is an ethnobotanist. Her name is Cassandra Quave, a PhD and she is a associate professor of dermatology and human health and the herbarium curator at Emory University. Cassandra, what the hell? You're an herbarium curator and an associate professor of dermatology. How do those possibly go together?

I Mean, I'm just an enigma. I don't know. I mean, plants have been at the very basis of medicine since the beginning of time, as you mentioned. And we're studying plants used to treat skin disease. So it actually is a really great fit.

What is the worst skin disease you could get that a plant would heal?

Ooh, there are a lot of bad ones, I guess. I guess the one that I'm most interested in right now is atopic dermatitis or eczema.

What is the worst skin disease you could get that a plant would heal?

Ooh, there are a lot of bad ones, I guess. I guess the one that I'm most interested in right now is atopic dermatitis or eczema. This is something that really affects a lot of kids in particular.

I had that as a kid.

Yeah, it's really awful. It's very itchy. It's very red and inflamed. We've been working on plants that can help to dampen that, that, that kind of inflammatory response by targeting some of the bacteria in our skin microbiome with these plant compounds.

So you're lowering inflammatory cytokines in skin by targeting bacteria that also irritate skin, but you're not directly telling skin cells to just behave.

Exactly. We're targeting the skin microbiome instead.

Is the problem that I take too many showers?

I mean, it depends on what you're doing every day. If you know, it's. I think that showers are fine. I think that at the same time, you have a really robust skin microbiome. It's not easy to disturb it. So showering is not going to necessarily put everything out of whack.

You're the CEO of phytotech and you guys are looking at antibiotic resistant infection treatment using botanicals. Okay, how does that work? How would you know? You walk into a jungle and there's a bazillion different colored plants. I've always wondered this, actually, and I'm just going to pick that one because I think it's going to disrupt a biofilm and it seems like an impossible thing. How do you do that?

Yeah, well, first of all, we're studying lots of plants. I have over 700 species in our collection. And we're not picking just random plants. We, we are taking a very targeted approach by looking at plants that are already used by healers to treat these kind of infectious, inflammatory skin diseases. And so the work that we do in phytotech is on a technology that I discovered in, oh, gosh, around 2010 from the Elm leaf BlackBerry bush. Now, I grew up eating blackberries. I don't know if you do. Did as well.

We have all three species on our property here in bc. We've got the European, the Himalayan, and the native ones. Is it one of those?

It's. It's one of the Europeans. But there's like thousands of blackberries species. Yeah, yeah. And this one actually happens to grow in the Mediterranean, where people eat the fruit just like we do other. Other species. But they also would use the leaves. Get this. They would mix it with pork fat and then put it onto the skin to treat kind of oozing, pustulant wounds.

Now, I get we're doing this. We raise pigs, too, on the property. Okay. What kind of pigs did they have to use to get the pork fat from the Mediterranean or the European?

I think it was just a regular pig. I mean, they didn't specify.

Hold on a second here. You're telling me what flavor of BlackBerry I need, but not what flavor of pig? I feel triggered right now. You've discriminated against me as a porko vegetarian, meaning I only eat pork and vegetables. I'm just. I'm horrified. Okay, so they use some pigs. Now, my daughter in the room is like, what is the scientific name of that BlackBerry? Because she knows all the scientific names because she's an actual real plant nerd.

That's awesome.

What is it?

So it is Rubus ulmifolius. And if you say it enough times, you'll sound like a wizard, like in Harry Potter. But, yeah, Rubus omifolius.

Anna, what was the rubus variant that had the rudest name of any plant on the planet? Do you remember that?

Oh, no. You came, you found it. It wasn't me.

Okay, there's one BlackBerry species. It's called Rubus something. And every part of it after that is a seventh grade joke. And I sent it to Anna because it was the funniest one ever. Do you know the one I'm talking about?

No.

If you saw it, you'd remember it, but I'm not going to say it on the air because I'd probably say it wrong and because whatever I would say would sound filthy because the name is that bad. So, all right, so it's a rubus one there. Did that do it for you? All right. She says, of course it was rubus, dad. Geez.

So, all right, all blackberries are rubus. Don't you know that, dad? It's like, pretty much.

Now. You wrote a book called the plant hunter, A scientist quest for nature's next medicines. Which is really interesting because it goes through some of this. How would you go about it? Okay, let me ask you this, though. And this is the scientific part of what I do. There's a thousand kinds of blackberries. And so what you did, though, is you went to the locals and said, what do you do? And like, well, we mix this stuff with pork fat. So you looked at that one. So you didn't just start with every kind of BlackBerry and just do a random thing.

You.

You actually, like, looked at what people did and then you tested for efficacy of a known practice.

Exactly. And that's why it's so targeted. Right. If you. If you wanted to look at all species on Earth, I mean, it's estimated we have somewhere between 374,000 to 390,000 species. That's a lot of plants to test in the lab. Right. And even if you look at the number of species that are used in traditional medicine, but that's still a huge number. Over 34,000 species have been documented as being important in different systems of traditional medicine. So there's still a lot for us to sort through.

Tell me about the Explorers Club. What is that?

Yeah. So the Explorers Club is a club for explorers. These are, like, really interesting people. I joined the local Atlanta chapter and just a few years ago, and it's great. We have these gatherings and go scuba diving and hanging out together. You get to meet people that have been to the Arctic and have rolled the poles, which I had no idea what that meant until this one dinner. They basically fly your airplane upside down over the poles, you know, and over the North Pole. Yeah. So these are just people that share a spirit of celebration, of exploration, and of understanding what's happening not only in the terrestrial setting, but also under the oceans and mountains and outer space. That's what the Explorers Club is all about.

I think it's actually remarkably cool. There's. It's 100-year-old club that's like exploring for science. I didn't know about that till I was doing my research for the show. I'm like, have a club like that. I think I should. I should join it. Part of what that club does, it gets people of all ages together to go, like, do things like that. Just haven't been done before. Okay, and at this point in your career, you wrote a book about this. Why did you decide to write the book? Because writing a book is a really personal thing, and it's a lot of work. So what was the reason why?

Yeah, I mean, especially writing a memoir is very personal. You know, there are a couple of motivating factors. Number one is there aren't that many books that are written by women in science about their life in science. And I felt like that was really a big gap that I could contribute to filling. And I think that I've had a somewhat unusual life. I mean that. And I have some cool stories to share. So when the opportunity came across to work with a literary agent to put this pitch forward, I thought, you know, this is a great way for me to talk about what it's like to be a woman in science, what it's like to be a disabled woman in science and a moment, but also to really share my passion and love for the natural world and share this message of the, you know, the fact that we have this incredible resource in nature that's largely been left untapped when it comes to discovery of new medicines. And I also wanted to raise awareness around, you know, the challenges that we face in medicine, particularly with the antibiotic resistant bacteria. So there were like multiple motivations and multiple kind of angles I was trying to hit in the book. So hopefully it all came together. It's where it makes sense. But that's the reason why I decided to write the book.

There's an interesting thing that happens when people have an interaction with a bacteria or say a microorganism that kind of gives you a good punch in the face or maybe kick in the shin in your case. It can kind of become a personal battle. And I'm thinking about a guest I had who was experiencing recurrent strep infections. And he's in his 70s now and he has kicked strep's ass. He's the research scientist for a company called Bliss, and he's got lozenges that are probiotics you put in your mouth that combat that specific kind of. Also, they stop cavities, but they stop that specific kind of strep that mess with him.

And.

And it kind of, she's like, I will get even with you. Fuck you, right? And then I was really heavily affected, mentally and biologically, mitochondrially by toxic mold. So moldymovie.com is my free mold documentary. My company, Homebiotic, makes a probiotic you can spray on your house that eats mold for lunch. And I'm like, why? Because how dare you mess with me. And I was thinking you might say something like that because you're like, hey, I had mrsa, which is a biofilm bacteria, and you, as you mentioned, you're disabled and as you write about in your book, you had one of your legs amputated, right?

Yeah.

And that's because of this. So are you like getting even? Do you feel like you've, you've gotten even enough with it?

Yeah. There. Yeah. I kind of think of it almost as a vendetta. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think we're all shaped by those experiences in life. And you know, it's also, it's also taught me a lot of lessons and empathy and patience and understanding. Like when I get, and I get a lot of emails and letters from the general public when they read about the work that we're doing. And I get it, man, when people write me, they say I'm battling this life threatening infection and it's so hard and nothing's working. I get it, I've been there. It's. And it really motivates me to keep working on the projects that we, that we work on in the lab. I think we have this almost colonial mindset that the only individuals that can study the natural world must be in white lab coats or in a medical coat. But that's just not the case. I mean, people that live in a connected way to their environment, number one, are constantly observing what's happening. And here's another perhaps shocking thing for many of the audience and that's that many animals use plants as medicine. I mean, if you've ever seen your dog noming on some, like some grass, you know, for upset stomach. We know that primates do this. We know that even butterflies self medicate. So this idea that humans and you know, self medicate shouldn't be that strange. But we're also observing what's happening and what, how these other animals are, are self medicating. And then second, you know, anecdotal evidence and trial and error and over time, I like to compare it to, you know, grandma's best recipe. Let's say if your grandma has an amazing recipe for apple pie, if that's a really good recipe, you're going to keep passing it down from generation to generation. If her pie tastes awful, right, and no one likes it, are they going to share that recipe? No. And so it's the same, same concept with traditional medicine. They're passing down the things that work and at each generation are some slight changes sometimes or they might do a little something extra, add a little bit of this or take away some of that, or prepare it in a slightly different way. But that's how that knowledge kind of Evolves.

It's interesting. So it's thousands of years of observation and then saving what works, passing it down and all that. And what I feel like is there's maybe an 80 to 90% accuracy doing that and then there's 10 to 20%. Oh, we just do it because that's what grandma did. And I think it's one of our family stories. I've heard this somewhere, but the lady who takes the pot roast, cuts the end off of it, sets it next to it and then cooks it. And her husband, when they first married, says, why do you do it that way? She says, oh, that's just how you do it. And then she goes and she asks her mom, why do you do it that way? She says, that's how you do it. She asks her grandma, her grandma says, oh, that's because it wouldn't fit in the pan. So there's been like hundreds of pot roast cut for no reason. So I know we're doing that with plant medicine, right? In fact, you're doing a lot of that.

I'm sure we do to some extent, you know, I'm sure we do. But I think it's also important to keep in mind, especially among scientists that perhaps have some doubts about how or if some of these plant based medicines work. And this is a point I try and tell all of my students is that we today do not have all the right questions. And this is a point I try and tell all of my students is that we today do not have all the right questions. You know, my job is dedicated to finding the right answers what, how things work. But really a scientist job is also finding the right questions. And we just can't even fathom what some of the right questions are today. So I'm very hesitant to discount to different medical traditions out of hand just because I can't provide a laboratory explanation for them. I may say, okay, it doesn't work in this way or that way. But I don't just say, oh, it doesn't work at all unless there's like robust evidence of like trials in humans with this remedy show that there's no improvement.

Yeah, you're a little different that way. And I want to go deep to understand why you think the way you think. Because there are a very large number of people out there highly skeptical and it feels like there's more men who are skeptical this way than women on average. But it could just be a sample size thing. But they go, that can't work because there's no mechanism of action That I know about. Therefore, it doesn't work.

Yeah, that's the arrogance. It's arrogant.

You know, I mean, it is arrogant. Right. But you don't seem like you have that. I always just say, oh, you need a mechanism. Leprechauns. There. Now you have a mechanism, so you can try it and see if it works. Because whatever we think the mechanism is, we're probably wrong. We just have a good story that. That's probably mostly true. Right.

Well, I mean, I think this. This argument that you must know the mechanism, and if you don't know the mechanism, it doesn't. I mean, that's just. It's just nonsense. There are plenty of examples of drugs that, you know, have been used successfully in the clinic for which we've never figured out the full mechanism.

You mean like aspirin? We still don't know some of what aspirin does.

Right. You know, I mean, like, there's. There's lots of different targets, you know, involved in a lot of these processes. And. Yeah. So, I mean, at the same time, I think some of the reasons that there is a lot of skepticism is that there's also a lot of snake oil being pushed in the market, and sometimes there's dangerous information that's pushed out, especially when you have times of crisis. I mean, I had to come out of my comfort bubble during the early days of the COVID 19 pandemic and write about, you know, an article saying, please, please, please don't eat oleander to treat Covid. It will kill you. Because that was something that was being discussed in the media as, like, a possible treatment. No, it's. It will kill you. It's like, so there are. There are. Plants can be very powerful. Yes. There's. There's reason to be cautious of, you know, new things, and we do need to study these rigorously. But I think that's part of my argument is, like, these do merit study. They do merit attention, especially at a time when so much of biodiversity is at risk. We are losing plants across the globe, and we're also losing the languages that hold the knowledge to how these plants are used across the globe as well, at an astonishing rate.

One other thing that. That you've done that's interesting is you studied with a double major of biology and anthropology, kind of separately. So was this your goal? You know, you're in high school. Like, you know what? I want to go study plant medicine in the jungle. Those are kind of disconnected disciplines. Why did you do that?

I didn't even know what Anthropology was, I mean, beyond like seeing National Geographic magazines, you know, as a kid I took it as one of my general ed requirements and I just really got fascinated with it and just kept taking classes until I actually, you know, accumulated enough just out of interest that, that I, I developed a second major. I mean, when I went to college, you have to remember too, I had been having one to two surgeries a year basically from the age of three until I went to college. And then I had another one my freshman year of college. So I'd been in and out of the hospital constantly and my mind was really set on pre medicine. That was, that was my path, that was what I was going to do. Biology was part of the necessity as that course of study, along with all the chemistry classes. And nowhere in my scope of ideas was this idea that I could someday study or discover. Study plants or discover new medicines. And it was really a series of events, right? It started with some of my medical anthropology courses where it, they kind of started to open up my mind to the fact that not all medicines are practiced in the same way. That like, actually people in different countries and different cultures look at health and disease in very different ways. And a lot of this had to do with my recognition of the differences in the disabled identity. You know, in some cultures being disabled is a sign of great fortune and, and almost mysticism, whereas in others it's, it's something that's really to be discarded or trashed. And so that got me thinking, like, okay, from my own kind of perspective, like, where does that put me? And then I took a course in tropical ecology. And that's the course where I first read this book called Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice by Mark Plotkin. I'm an ethnobotanist that worked with a shaman in the Amazon. I was like, whoa, this is cool here. All of a sudden I have medicine, I have my love for nature, I've got science, I've got anthropology, and it's all in one field, which I didn't even know could be possible as a student prior to that. And, you know, I, I decided, I basically turned 21, I got a buzz cut, which I was not super happy about. You know, I told, I told the hairdresser, you know, I was going to the Amazon, I need a cool haircut. And she just gave me a standard buzz cut. I was like, okay, well, I'll stay cool. And then I headed off to the jungle for, for, for six weeks for the initial trip and ended up returning over the winter break. For another six weeks. And that experience really, really shaped my. My, my path. Because when I got my acceptance letter to medical school, which was just brutal to go through that process and get accepted, I wasn't excited. I was like, this is. And that's when it really hit me. This is not my path and I need to pursue a different path. But it took a lot of experiences to get to that stage.

So you actually met with a shaman, and shamans are masters of using plants as part of what they do. And when you ask them, how did you know, the typical answer from a Terence McKenna or even an Alberto Viotto is, well, the plants tell you like you go in, and the plants, like, there is a human. It's an altered state, but a state that humans are capable of, of going in and interacting the plant kingdom according to shamanic states. And then knowing what to do. And that some healers will say, well, hold on, let me just figure out. And then they just know, here, take some of this. And they just. Is that something that you've experienced? Is that something that you know how to do? Is that a part of your practice? Or you just watch people do and go, that's amazing. Tell me what you found. I'm going to go find drugs in it.

Yeah, I mean, I wish I had that level of, like, psychic ability to actually learn directly from the plants, but alas, I. I have not gotten that ability. But, yeah, I, in a very systematic, scientifically driven way, interview a lot of people. I speak with a lot of people. I observe what's happening in different medical traditions. And then, you know, this is done, of course, under appropriate ethical paradigms and with permissions of the community leaders and the people I'm working with. And so through that process of observing their practice of medicine, the ways that they practice medicine, that's kind of the starting point for our laboratory investigations.

When it comes to using plants for healing in humans, there's quite often rituals, right? And this isn't a plant ritual, but if you are looking at clarified butter or ghee, when you make it properly, you do it under a full moon with a crystal, and you're oming the whole time you stir the butter. And that's part of making ghee work in ayurvedic medicine. And when I talk with especially, we'll call them, well, you could say herbalists, but just the more energetic witches, whatever you want to call medicine women or medicine men in some cases, like, oh, yeah, these mushrooms are the best because I picked them under a full moon during the Equinox while I was drinking sake or like, there's all kinds of stuff. I don't even know what all they do. Right. Standing on your left foot. So there's the harvesting and even the time of day and time of season. You get into, like, Rudolph Steiner's work. That's an important variable. And then what do you do when you take them? Do you ask your salad to treat you? Well, because you're supposed to ask your psychedelic mushrooms to give you a good trip. But we never. I mean, with kale, it'd be like, please don't get in my mouth so I don't have to eat you because it's bad for you. There's all these things. So do you study any of that stuff, like how humans interact with the plant when they're using it?

Yeah, I mean, I do. I think it's important to document those factors because what may seem like ritual but has little bearing on the chemistry of something actually might have some influences. I mean, you mentioned time of day. You know, if you think about the. The respiration of plants and when they open their stomata, you might be releasing more volatile compounds during certain times of the day. If you think about interactions between species, if there is a greater pest threat to a plant, if it's being more eaten up by pest, it's actually going to increase its production of certain defensive compounds, which might in turn be useful as medicine. So I think there's definitely reason to document some of these rituals. And, you know, I like to think of it as also an important element of the culture and a way for a group to really recognize the incredible gift that some of these plants are bringing to them. I mean, I would say one of my favorite kind of plant ceremonies is clavocircle with Piper methysticum. It's a member of the pepper family. It tastes kind of peppery when you drink it. And it looks like a bowl of mud water, right? I mean, these are pounded up roots. And it's really important that you actually drink the full solution because it falls out of solution. It's not something you can just sip because all of the active compounds, the cobalactones, kind of settle at the bottom of the cup. That with the. So you go in a circle, you tip up your, you know, your. Your gourd or coconut shell or whatever you're drinking out of fully to drink it during. During the ceremony. And now I've never had the opportunity to participate in, like, a full ritual ceremony, for example, in Polynesia or in Samoa. However, I've done this with other botanists that bring this to conferences. And it. I think one of the nice parts of that ritual too is offering some of the liquid back to the earth. And it's just for me that's, that's special. I think that it really drives home that sense of connectivity not only between the people participating in the ceremony, but also our connectivity with the earth and just stopping and having a sense of gratitude for what we're about to experience. And I think that's something that we can all benefit from is, you know, if you look at other systems of meditation and Buddhist practices, there's a lot of focus on gratitude. And what does that actually do for our mental health in the end? When you have that kind of sense of belonging and a sense of gratitude and a sense of connectivity to the earth, I think those are aspects of health that should not just be discounted out of hand.

I love it. It's funny. The guys from True Kava have been on the show and one of the things we talked about, they'll be at the biohacking conference too, coming up here, serving kava.

Nice.

And one of the things that's interesting is that there's different species of kava, as you would well know, and some of them are liver toxic and some of them aren't. And so they had to go through their sourcing to find the ones that don't cause problems that happened in the 80s from basically people who didn't know what they were doing going in look alike species. And when you go deep in the world, like agave is another one for tequila or just agave syrup. A lot of the agave they're using to make agave nectar, which is very high fructose. Anyway, it's not actually from edible species because the edible species are becoming very rare because it's basically like hippie corn syrup. So when people are taking non plant based species that look kind of like them and are good enough, we end up with these problems where people don't understand what it is. And it. And it's not just plants. You look at sushi. White tuna is banned for sale in Japan because it causes anal leakage. But here they sell it like it's real fancy. Like it. It's actually got toxins in it. Right. But it's like species. How do you, like, how do you know when you look at a plant? Is it just from years of looking like, oh, this is the good one and this is the one that harms your liver. Only a Little bit or the one.

That, well, you can, what's, what's fascinating is like, so you can have different species, but then you can have the same species and have different chemo types.

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What's, what's fascinating is like, so you can have different stuff species, but you can have the same species and have different chemotypes. So it may actually be the same exact species, but has a different level of expression of certain toxic compounds over others. And you see this also with kratom, you know, with, with certain, there's differences across chemotypes. I mean dimension of kava too. And some of the problems that they ran into in Europe years ago weren't just about different chemotypes. It was also about the way that they were preparing it because they were making alcoholic extracts of kava. And in traditional use of kava, it's never prepared in alcohol. In fact, you're, you're really prohibited from consuming alcohol with kava. It's because it's a, it's a, the way it's traditionally prepared is in water or it's pounded up and kind of mixed with water and sometimes with like a hibiscus leaf, that mucilage, kind of like an okra, like mucilage. Right. And that's because you can have a preparation of a plant, prepare it one way, and you're basically concentrating all the toxic components, prepare it the other way, you're concentrating non toxic components or the components that, that might have health benefits for you. We see this in many different, different plants. We did some work, for example, in St. John's Wort, which is used as a supplement also for, for depression and kind of mental health issues. But in the Balkans, they prepare it in oil, like you mentioned, steeping cottonwood buds in oil. They do this with, with the flowers of St. John's wort. And in my lab, we actually looked at the chemical makeup of that oil compared to some of these other preparation methods. And what was really fascinating to us was that the traditional mechanism of preparing it by steeping it in oil reduced or removed the toxic compound that can cause kind of skin reactions, really severe sunburns, but it kept some of the, the antimicrobial properties. So like, I think that's, that's another lesson in paying attention to how they prepare these medicines in different cultures.

So how they, how they do it culturally could make a big difference as well. So it seems, it seems complex as a scientific study because if one of those variables important and not even tracking it, you wouldn't know how to do it. But we do find some really cool stuff. And I wanted to highlight some things that I'm hoping listeners haven't heard of at this point. Anyone who's listened to me probably has heard about turmeric and curcumin, right? Like these are well known things and probably resveratrol from Japanese knotweed and things like that. We've come across these before. What about dragon's blood? Tell me about that stuff.

Oh, dragon's blood's such a cool story. So it can also be tricky because if you Google dragon's blood, you're going to see most likely these big beautiful trees from an island that's located off the coast of Yemen. It's known as Socotra, these big dragon's blood trees. But that's actually a tree that's in a completely different family from the dragon's blood that is used today as a botanical medicine, even as an FDA approved medicine. So the dragon's blood I write about in the book is croton lecherly. It's in the Euphorbiaceae family or the Spurge family. And if you take a machete and you cut into the trunk of the tree, it kind of weeps out this bright blood like resin and so I learned during my time in the Amazon that you can apply this resin to your skin. Skin to treat insect bites and minor skin abrasions and wounds and infections, but they also use it internally to treat diarrhea. And in fact, it was for that purpose that it was developed into an FDA approved drug. It's a mixture drug, so it contains multiple components from the same plant. It's known as a botanical drug under the FDA's pathway. And this is used now today to treat HIV related diarrhea. Started off as a project under Shaman Pharma and now it's, I believe, under Jaguar as the company that developed that. But they also put a lot of effort into sustainable development with local people in Peru and ensuring that there's equitable paths in place for that development, which is, I think, just a really cool example.

I was speaking at an event in Montauk, New York, right before the pandemic shut down. Public events for two years that I still don't understand. And in my room they gave me some Dragon's blood topical serum. I'm like, people give me all sorts of stuff. Like I have bottles and bottles. I know the stuff that works. I use a lot of Alatura and I'm like, I'll try it. And that stuff really worked. And that was the first time I'd ever heard of Dragon's blood. But you could put it on in like in an hour. Like, wow, my face looks better than it did before. What plants do you smear on your face on a regular basis?

Well, that's top secret. I mean, okay, I can. Of the ones that I make in my home kitchen. You know, I like to make. I like to make ointments out of plants like plantain or plantago major, which is like the broadleaf plantain, just for kind of insect bites and things for kids. It's really easy to make with some beeswax and oils. I make a lot of skin creams with calendula. I'm a big fan of calendula, especially for drier, chapped skin that's also really popular in the Balkans.

And Anna makes that from calendula that grows in our backyard.

So it's fabulous. It's such a.

Oh, that's right. In fact, she used plantain ointment she made on a wasp bite. And it worked very well.

It works really well, right? It does. It's really nice. Yeah. So, I mean, I do things like that. I. I grow like, I am decent at growing mints in my garden. That's like the one group of plants.

You can't stop mints from growing. So congratulations, you didn't kill them. Right. It's like an invasive species of mint.

And then, and then they get big enough and I just come in and chop them all up and you know, and dry them. But like, I love like some of my favorite mints are. I definitely like to grow Holy basil or awesome sanctum. It's kind of an adaptogen. It's a great one to throw into different teas. I grow a lot of peppermint and spearmint.

Holy basil is not like Thai basil or Italian basil. Unrelated. Right.

It's. It's also known as. I believe it's also known as Thai basil.

Is like a purple or.

Tulsi. Tulsi, sorry, Tulsi.

Yeah, Tulsi.

Tulsi Basil is a different one. That's a different one. Yeah. Well, and this is where common names get tricky, right. Because if you don't use a scientific name, they can get. Yeah.

Confusing the Tulsi. Holy basil is one of the most powerful anti inflammatory stuff for people who've had toxic mold. So I've used holy basil for many years and there's such a difference in overall inflammation. So it's on my regular. Yeah, I take that most of the time.

Has a nice flavor too. I like it. Yeah.

And I mean, tul ct exists for a reason.

Yeah, exactly. I like lemon balm. You know, I'll like use lemon balm and. Oh, cat hip. A lot of people. Yeah, a lot of people don't recognize the amazing things with catnip. I learned about the uses of catnips with some work I was doing with this ethnic minority group in the Shari Mountains in Albania where they will actually bathe children in baths with like just, you know, throw catnip in there and then make a tea of it for them to drink and it calms them. So if you're having nightmares or anxious. So I'm like, I'm anxious when I have big work deadlines. So I keep some catnip in my office with a little bit of. I do a little blend of tulsi and catnip and. And lemon balm makes a nice tea.

I love that idea though, because it would be calming. And some people smoke it too. I don't think it's probably good for you smoking anything. Is it seems appropriate. Well, I am. I'm a biohacker. And there's a thing you're doing around mrsa, you know, the antibiotic resistant staph Infections and you're disrupting quorum sensing, which is what hackers like me do with computer networks. Talk to me about what quorum sensing is in bacteria and what plants do to it.

Yeah, so, you know, bacteria are single celled organisms, and if you think about it from their perspective, if they are trying to get into your body, they're really weak when they're on their own. And so quorum sensing is a, basically a communication system through which they coordinate their activities. So if you reach a quorum or you have enough of these individual single cells together and they have enough of these secreted signals, these peptides in the extracellular environment, it's like they have an aha switch. Like, oh, I'm not alone anymore. I'm now going to change my behavior because there's enough of us to produce the toxins that are needed to then get in deeper into the body. So what I've found with some of these, these medicinal plants used for the treatment of infectious skin disease is that they don't act like normal antibiotics. Like some of these plants don't inhibit the growth of bacteria at all. And so I started thinking, okay, am I asking the right question? Going back to that, that idea around, you know, should we just dismiss these as not being effective as traditional medicines or should we start asking other questions? And one of the questions I asked was, well, what does it do to the ability of these bacteria to cause harm? And indeed, we found in both the European chestnut. And it's the same chestnut that produces the fruit that you eat, you know, chestnuts roasting on open fire, that chestnut. Right. The leaves of that plant, and then also the Brazilian pepper tree, the fruits which were used, you know, going way back centuries as a topical poultice for ulcers and wounds. And what we found in both of those plants are some interesting molecules. We actually discovered a new molecule in the chestnut leaf, in addition to the known ones in pepper tree, but which their activity was unknown prior to our studies, that they can basically shut down the signaling and they trick the bacteria into behaving as if they're on their own. So if you can imagine if you have a bunch of these bacteria in a wound site and you're telling them, hey, you're not with your group, so don't start producing these toxins, they just kind of sit there. And it also makes them weaker to the immune system because some of these toxins they can produce can actively basically expose, explode your white blood cells. So when you switch that off, it gives your immune system a Better shot at clearing out the infection. I think that's a really cool. It's a really cool example of, like, how traditional medicines work sometimes in very unexpected ways through more nuanced ways instead of just killing things.

It is remarkable to me how our mitochondria also do quorum sensing. A lot of the stuff happening inside our bodies is following those same patterns. And some of the crypto networks follow the same patterns for sensing whether you can trust something that's on the blockchain or not. And Leeman Baird from Carnegie Mellon was on the show a while back. We talked about hashgraph and the algorithm for that. And so it's neat to see it mirrored inside our cells and then to also see it mirrored in the way plants interact with bacteria. And you have to imagine the plants are doing this because they got tired of the bacteria that were eating the plants. And like, okay, we know how to hack these bacteria. And since they do it for their own good, we can steal that ability from plants by making a tea and then do it for our own things so that we don't have a biofilm growing where we don't want it. Which is remarkably, remarkably cool. And you would never know this when you just look at, you know, smearing something on, but that's what's going on.

Yeah.

Now I want to ask you about chestnut because, well, you know a thing or two about them. One of the, the OG biohackers who's been on the show for a while and has since passed is, was pretty well known for talking about taking horse chestnut for vascular health. Have you come across that? Using it so that you don't get. So actually you get healthier blood vessels. So when guys are looking for, like, you know, more, more veins, it actually helps with that because you get thicker, healthier walls in your veins. What do you know about blood flow and chestnut?

Yeah, so this is actually another good example of, like, common names and, like, botanical confusions. So the European chestnut is Castanea sativa. Totally different plant than the horse chestnut. So you're talking about Aeschylus hippocastina. I'm bringing up my wizardry words. Right. And that actually, yes, there's been lots of, of, of records of its use, especially the leaves of this horse chestnut that are wrapped around legs, people that have varicose veins and other kind of vascular problems. This is a very long and old standing traditional remedy for that. But a different species than the one that has the quorums and sea inhibitors. Yeah. But both very cool plants and very Important.

I love it. All right, I'll use both. I'm just. I'm just like, oh, I'm all. I just want all the chestnuts. There we go. So there's a whole world of plants out there. And for listeners, you definitely want to read the book the Plant Hunter if you want to be inspired and learn about the basics of this. But more importantly, you're surrounded by a pharmacy that you don't even know about. And maybe if you live in a high rise in New York, you're surrounded by less of one, but more of one than you might think. And if you live anywhere near nature, there's huge amounts of stuff that actually works and works noticeably. And we're heading into a world where there's supply chain shortages that actually don't make any sense if people were motivated by profit or by helping other people. So I don't know what's going on. Either there's random mathematical fluctuations or there are people who have other motivations besides you and me getting access to the things that we want. Whatever. The deal is, if you can go in your backyard and pick the right stuff and it does what you wanted and you didn't have to pay anyone, it seems like now is a good time to hone those skills. And you should learn a bit of foraging, learn a little bit of herbalism. It's interesting in its own right, and it's fun. And if you use one of those apps, for instance, it actually can be kind of engaging and worthy of social networking, like bonding with people. So on your next hike, just have a question in your mind. Can I eat that? Can I eat that? Can I eat that? And if it's kale, the answer is no, don't do it.

There you go. Well, you know, I think that's why ethnobotany has been described also as the science of survival. Right? Because once we understand how to appreciate and use resources in nature, we can survive in different. In different ecosystems. And I think that's pretty, pretty cool.

Now you run a podcast as well. It's called Foodie Pharma.

Foodie Pharmacology.

Yeah, Foodie Pharmacology. That's just. Your Twitter handle is shorter. So Foodie Pharmacology, where you talk about this stuff, and it's absolutely true. Everything that you put in your body has a medical effect. And that's probably why the Food and Drug Administration tried to lump foods and drugs together, even though they usually now make or try to get you to eat foods that cause you to need Drugs, which wasn't the original intent, but the idea that when you put vanilla, real vanilla in your coffee, if you like to do that to coffee, you bad person, you. The vanilloids in vanilla or the vanilloids activated by vanilla are the same ones activated by capsaicin, which comes from eating spicy peppers. We have spicy peppers. Anti inflammatory. They're good for you. Yeah, they're copying vanilla, which has a very different flavor profile. If you're just putting vanilla in yourself and you don't know that, and some days your joints don't hurt when you have vanilla, and some days they do hurt and you just don't know, you'll never know what's going on. Likewise with the capsaicin, if you're nitrogen sensitive, that might not be the right choice for you, but it may also be really helping you. And so for you to know your biochemical individuality and then to know the palette of plant kingdom things that you probably already eat and to look for an effect, all of a sudden you're going to realize, I'm putting vanilla in there every day because I like my life on vanilla. But if you just don't know because you're totally ignorant and you just open a packaged ultra processed food thing made out of crickets and sawdust, that's not a world you want to live in. It's not a world any of us wants to live in. So it's one of the things you can do. Learn how to eat what's around you and read. Read this new book. It's worth your time.

Awesome.

Okay, Cassandra, it's been fascinating to chat with you. Upgrade Collective. Thank you for your questions. I think I got all of them through here. And I'll see you all on the next episode. If you like this episode, you know, read the book or listen to a different episode. Just do something that's going to keep you on the path of learning cool stuff that's of benefit to you. Because when you do something that improves improves you, it provides dividends forever. Because then you can use that new energy to continue to improve more efficiently or to do something else in the world with more energy so you don't lose when you do that versus frittering your time away. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with listening to one of these episodes while you're frittering your time away. You can do that too. I'll see you soon. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.

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