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Dennis McKenna
is "I have a long-standing interest in natural products, and in the potential for plant-derived medicines leading to the discovery of new modalities in health and healing. The integrative,cross-disciplinary perspective that characterize the Center make it the ideal venue in which to pursueresearch and education in the area of botanical medicines and natural products." Dr. McKenna bringsmore than 25 years experience in biosciences, biochemistry and pharmacognosy to the Center forSpirituality and Healing, where he is a senior lecturer on topics that include ethnopharmacology andbotanical medicines in health care. Dr. McKenna earned his Master's degree in botany at theUniversity of Hawaii in 1979 and his doctorate of botanical sciences at the University of BritishColumbia in 1984. Since that time, his wide-ranging experience includes serving as the Director of Ethnopharmacology at Shaman Pharmaceuticals and as senior research pharmacognosist for AvedaCorporation in Minneapolis, Minn. He is the founder and executive director of the Institute forNatural Products Research and editor-in-chief of two publications: The Natural Dietary SupplementsPocket Reference (INPR, 2002) and Botanical Medicines: The Desk Reference for Major HerbalSupplements (Haworth Herbal Press, 2002). He serves on the Advisory Board of the AmericanBotanical Council and the Editorial Board of Phytomedicine, the International Journal of Phytotherapy and Phytopharmacology. he is the author or co-author of more than 35 scientificpapers in peer-reviewed journals. Dr. McKenna has special interest Ethnopharmacology, botanicalmedicines, natural products and drug discovery and medical applications of psychedelic agents.
A Neurobiological Theory of ‘The Fall’
ByDennis McKenna• Aug 16th, 2008 • Category:Neurosciences,Pharmacology, Biochemistry,Physiology, Medicine,Psychology, Psychiatry
 
The foreword of the book
‘ Left in The Dark‘
, edited for Ayahuasca.com
 The progress of science, and indeed, of human knowledge, requires a dynamic tensionbetween the mere accumulation of observations and “dusty facts” and a synthetic process inwhich the accumulated results of scientific observation and inquiry are woven together intoframeworks that, in the ideal case, create revolutionary paradigms that enhance humanunderstanding of apparently discrete and unrelated aspects of nature.The history of science and intellectual inquiry teach us that, as is so often the case with trulynovel syntheses, established scientific and intellectual institutions are too ossified, and tooinvested in the conventionally accepted worldview, to allow the introduction of a newparadigm without putting up considerable resistance. One is reminded of the famousobservation of philosopher Arthur Schopanhauer: All truth, he said, passes through threestages. First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; third, it is accepted as being self-evident. We should be wary of rejecting out of hand the premises of a hypothesis that mayone day seem self-evident.Evolutionary biologists have long been puzzled by what is perhaps the chief mystery of human origins: the explosive and rapid expansion of the human brain in size and complexityover a vanishingly small span of evolutionary time. There is also the mystery of hemisphericlateralization and the apparent de-integration of the right- and left-hemispheric functions thatwe humans suffer. In the book ‘Left In the Dark’, a culmination of over fifteen years of independent research into human evolution, the authors postulate that it was not always so;the universal myth of a pre-historic Golden Age, they maintain, is a racial memory that
 
reflects our primate evolution in an arboreal, rainforest environment in which humanspossessed mental and psychic abilities that have since become lost or atrophied in the profaneages that followed.Changes in the dietary patterns that were forced on the population by this migration put anend to the rapid evolution of the human brain and triggered its devolution, ultimately resultingin the damaged human neural architecture that we suffer from todayThat rainforest environment favored a frugivorous diet rich in flavonoids, MAO inhibitors,and neurotransmitter precursors, and relatively low in steroid containing or inducing elements.This dietary regime both mimicked and fostered a state, reinforced by positive feedbackloops, in which pineal functions, including neocortical expansion and hemispheric integration,were potentiated; moreover, these neurochemical feedback loops were amplified insucceeding generations via the regulation of gene expression in the developing foetus,independent of conventional evolutionary mechanisms of mutation and natural selection.Climate changes or other environmental catastrophes forced several lineages of hominids aswell as archaic/early humans out of their forest-dwelling ancestral home into much harshersavannah or grassland environments. As a consequence dietary regimens shifted toward roots,tubers, grass seed and a greater proportion of animal protein, triggering a reversal of thepositive feedback loops that had sustained pineal potentiation and hemispheric integration inthe paradisiacal, forest-dwelling Golden Age. Pineal dominance was disrupted by steroid-mediated, testosterone-driven functions primarily due to the reduced consumption of flavonoids and other steroid-inhibitory dietary factors.Changes in the dietary patterns that were forced on the population by this migration put anend to the rapid evolution of the human brain and triggered its devolution, ultimately resultingin the damaged human neural architecture that we suffer from today, and the myriad mentaland physical deficits that are the legacy of our biological ‘fall from grace’.What is alluded to here is only the barest outline of an elegant hypothesis that plausiblyelucidates many baffling aspects of human evolution, brain science, and physiology into acoherent explanatory framework. Ecologists have realized for several decades that thecomplex interrelations of plants and insects are largely mediated through plant chemistry, andthat the interactive dynamics we can observe in these processes is a reflection of millions of years of plant-insect co-evolution. Evolutionary biologists have long suspected that similarco-evolutionary processes, mediated by interactions with plant secondary products, haveinfluenced the evolution of vertebrates, including primates. The hypotheses presented in thisbook are incomplete, and are even now being refined and developed; however, even in theirpresent form they present a credible foundation on which to build a better understanding of who we are, and how our puzzling human species got to be the way it is.© 2007 Dennis J. McKenna, Ph.D.
http://leftinthedark.org.uk/ 
 
Tagged as:
 diet,evolution 
Ayahuasca and Human Destiny
 
ByDennis McKenna• Mar 21st, 2008 • Category:Mythos,Overviews
 My good friend and colleague, Dr. Charles Grob, has extended a kind invitation to submit acontribution to this special edition of the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, devoted to the topicof ayahuasca, for which he has been selected as guest editor. I’m pleased to be asked andhappy to respond, particularly since I have collaborated for many years with Dr. Grob andother colleagues who are represented here, on various aspects of the scientific study of ayahuasca. For most of the last 33 years, ayahuasca has been one of the major preoccupationsof my life.In that time, I have written extensively on the botany, chemistry, and pharmacology of ayahuasca, on its potential therapeutic uses, and on the need for more, and more rigorous,scientific and clinical investigations of this remarkable plant decoction. Working withcolleagues such as Dr. Grob, my good friends Jace Callaway and Dr. Luis Eduardo Luna inFinland, my mentor Dr. Neil Towers, my late and beloved brother Terence, Dr. Glaucus deSouza Brito, and others, to investigate the myriad mysteries of ayahuasca, has been as richand rewarding an experience as any scientist could ever hope for.Partly as a result of our collective efforts, over the last few decades ayahuasca has becomeone of the most thoroughly studied of the traditional shamanic plant hallucinogens. We nowhave a firm understanding of the plant species that are utilized in its preparation, including thediverse pharmacopoeia of ayahuasca admixture plants, a shamanic technology unto itself thatbegs additional investigation. We understand the chemistry of the active constituents of itsprimary botanical components, and have better insight into its remarkable synergisticpharmacology.We have identified potential therapeutic applications for ayahuasca and the role that it maysome day find in healing the physical and spiritual wounds of individuals, if it is ever affordedits rightful place in medical practice. Ethnographically, my colleagues and I have madecontributions to an understanding of the central role that ayahuasca already has in the contextof Amazonian shamanism and ethnomedicine. We have described, and written about, itsstatus as a window into the sacred cosmology of magic, witchcraft, transcendent experience,and healing that permeates and defines the practices of Mestizo ethnomedicine.The visionary paintings of Peruvian shaman and artist Pablo Amaringo, brought so beautifullyto the attention of the world by Dr. Luis Eduardo Luna, has helped to make that traditionaccessible to many who would otherwise have seen it (if they were aware of it at all) as alien,exotic, and incomprehensible. To an extent, our work has shed some small light on the morecontemporary role of ayahuasca as the sacramental vehicle of syncretic religious movementsthat originated in Brasil and now are reaching out globally, if incrementally, to embrace a sickand wounded world that desperately yearns for the healing that this mind/body/spirit medicinecan offer.The story of ayahuasca, and our evolving understanding of its place in the world, and of itssignificance for medicine, pharmacology, ethnobotany, and shamanic studies, is far fromover, and in fact, it may have just begun. I would like to believe that is the case. But for thepurposes of this contribution, rather than submit yet another dense and lengthy review on thebotany, chemistry, pharmacology, &c., of ayahuasca, I have chosen to adopt a broaderperspective, and to indulge in some reflections, and speculations on the past and future of 
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