Banisteriopsis caapi, also known as ayahuasca, caapi or yaje, is a South American jungle vine used to prepare a decoction with a long history of entheogenic uses as a medicine and "plant teacher" among the indigenous peoples of the Amazon Rainforest. It has unique properties found to treat Parkinson's disease and other neurogenerative disorders.

If you are one of those people who pops an aspirin every night or tend to have a pill for the smallest of ailments, you might be doing more harm than good to your body. While aspirin has been touted to be the one drug that can help stop the onset of heart disease, author of 'All About Bacteria', Ravi Mantha has a different take on the phenomenon. Here are excerpts from his book.

There have been so many studies on the role of aspirin in reducing heart disease that there is a medical community consensus on this issue: a daily dose of aspirin can reduce your risk of heart disease by - wait for this - 15 per cent!

There are two problems with this consensus. First, 15 per cent is not very high. Second, no one actually knows why aspirin reduces heart disease. Is it because it is a blood thinner, and thin blood is good for the heart? Does aspirin somehow slow down hardening of the arteries? No one knows.

But let me lay out a conjecture and challenge the medical community to disprove it. I have argued that excess iron increases cortisol and promotes plaque formation. This is the reason why men are more susceptible to heart disease than women in their thirties, forties and fifties. Post-menopause, women's iron levels gradually increase, and they catch up with men in the heart disease stakes in their seventies and eighties. Enter the humble aspirin. Aspirin has been shown to increase microbleeds in the brain according to a well accepted Dutch study. But where else in the body are we bleeding when we take regular aspirin?

We know that in larger doses, aspirin causes full-scale bleeding in the stomach and in the gastrointestinal tract. But what about microbleeds in the stomach at lower doses? I conjecture that the reason aspirin reduces the incidence of heart disease is because even in low doses it causes microbleeding in the stomach and gastrointestinal tract. Unlike the Dutch study, where MRI scanners were used to look at microbleeds in the brain, no one has yet looked at the stomach and intestinal tract of aspirin users using MRI scanners.

A meeting at the FDA on experiments to create GMO humans has brought disturbing information to light.

Today, the US Food and Drug Administration held day one of a public meeting outlining the creation of genetically modified humans. These experiments won't take place in the distant future. In fact, GMO embryos have already been created via in vitro experiments.

Specifically, the FDA is discussing the genetic manipulation of human eggs and embryos in order to prevent inherited mitochondrial disease and treat infertility. The GMO techniques under consideration include manipulation at the mitochondrial level to replace or augment mutant rDNA and methods that could create babies with three parents.

While the FDA has stated that the agency "recognizes" that there are "ethical and social policy issues" to be considered - and despite the fact that forty-four countries have already banned this kind of genetic manipulation - the FDA won't bother to discuss if human clinical trials should take place (that's considered to be "outside the scope" of the meeting). Instead, they'll outline how such trials should be conducted.

Meeting participants will deliberate on what animal and in vitro studies (experiments that take place outside of a living organism) will be necessary before human experimentation, as well as the potential risks for study participants and "any children that result from such studies."

For now, the desired genetic outcomes discussed will be limited to the prevention of inherited mitochondrial diseases (e.g., LHON) or infertility due to abnormalities in the quality and quantity of mitochondria in female eggs - though there is no scientific consensus on how important mitochondrial factors are to female infertility.

A heretofore inexplicable fatal, chronic kidney disease that has affected poor farming regions around the globe may be linked to the use of biochemical giant Monsanto's Roundup herbicide in areas with hard water, a new study has found.

The new study was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

Researchers suggest that Roundup, or glyphosate, becomes highly toxic to the kidney once mixed with "hard" water or metals like arsenic and cadmium that often exist naturally in the soil or are added via fertilizer. Hard water contains metals like calcium, magnesium, strontium, and iron, among others. On its own, glyphosate is toxic, but not detrimental enough to eradicate kidney tissue.

The glyphosate molecule was patented as a herbicide by Monsanto in the early 1970s. The company soon brought glyphosate to market under the name "Roundup," which is now the most commonly used herbicide in the world.

Nicolette Hahn Niman, author of Righteous Porkchop, just coined a new catchphrase that ought to go viral: "Sugar is NOT just an empty calorie."

Her statement contradicts the notion we've had for years that the worst thing about sugar is its lack of nutrients. Either you're eating sugar in addition to all of the calories you need to stay healthy, or you're eating it instead of them. In the former case, you're getting too many calories; in the latter, you're getting too few nutrients. This idea is so dominant it was recently cited in an anti-sugar op-ed in the Guardian.

Even if that was the case, we're eating too much sugar. Or, more specifically, too much added sugar. Sugars that are naturally present in whole foods like fruit are okay; it's the sugar added to whole foods that we must worry about. Previously, the World Health Organization said we should limit consumption of added sugars to 10 percent of calories. Even then, more than seven in 10 Americans ate too much sugar. On average, about 15 percent of our calories came from added sugars.

But now WHO is considering cutting its recommendation in half. That means limiting sugar consumption to five teaspoons, the amount found in half a can of soda. The American Heart Association has long recommended that women limit added sugars to six teaspoons and men stick with nine or less. (For those looking for a loophole, this means all added sugars, including so-called healthier sweeteners like maple syrup, agave, honey, or even fruit juice.)

Didn't the modern miracle of vaccines eradicate the plague and pestilence our Paleolithic ancestors succumbed to? Think again...

Paleo-oriented researchers, foodies, and clinicians seek to honor a wisdom in evolution that has been forsaken in the modern food era.

The human genome is best expressed under conditions of plentiful macro and micronutrients, an absence of foodborne and manmade toxins, and an acknowledgement of our coevolution and inextricable interdependence with other animals, plants, and microbes. If we get out of our own way, and follow ancestral practices, we can hope to optimize the genetic potential of our bodies to produce a robust and sustainable state of health and vitality.

Does that mean that those with ancestral dietary aspirations are glorifying a time long gone that was in actuality riddled with pestilence and plague? Weren't people dying prematurely of diseases we have long since eradicated through the miracle of vaccination? Isn't vaccination the best way to have it all - Paleo principles plus suppression of those nasty bugs that threaten our very lives from the moment of birth? Are we cherry-picking modern epigenetic exposures - yes to a traditional diet, no to evolutionary immunity - in favor of 'high tech' medical interventions?

Paleo Immunity

Why are we eating ancestrally in the first place? Isn't it to evade or undo the immune-disrupting, inflammation-generating, and infection-promoting effects of the modern grain-based diet, also featuring genetically engineered vegetable oils, synthetic additives and flavorings, grain-fed meats, and processed dairy? Our present dietary trajectory was initiated around 10,000 years ago in the transition from 2.5 million year old Paleolithic to the so-called Neolithic periods. Our Neolithic predecessors were the innovators of today's grain-based, animal breeding and milking, sedentary, city-dwelling mode of subsistence, whose glorious technological innovations (written language, science, engineering, pyrotechnology, pottery, etc.) came with an ultimately steep price: epidemic levels of so-called 'diseases of affluence,' including metabolic syndrome, heart disease, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, and cancer.

"Sprouted" garlic - old garlic bulbs with bright green shoots emerging from the cloves - is considered to be past its prime and usually ends up in the garbage can. But scientists are reporting in ACS'Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry that this type of garlic has even more heart-healthy antioxidant activity than its fresher counterparts.

Jong-Sang Kim and colleagues note that people have used garlic for medicinal purposes for thousands of years. Today, people still celebrate its healthful benefits. Eating garlic or taking garlic supplements is touted as a natural way to reduce cholesterol levels, blood pressure and heart disease risk. It even may boost the immune system and help fight cancer. But those benefits are for fresh, raw garlic. Sprouted garlic has received much less attention. When seedlings grow into green plants, they make many new compounds, including those that protect the young plant against pathogens. Kim's group reasoned that the same thing might be happening when green shoots grow from old heads of garlic. Other studies have shown that sprouted beans and grains have increased antioxidant activity, so the team set out to see if the same is true for garlic.

Suicide among young men is a major public health concern in many countries, despite great efforts to find effective prevention strategies. By interviewing close relatives and friends of apparently well-functioning young men who unexpectedly took their own life, Norwegian researchers found there had been no signs of serious mental disorder. This contradicts previous research which suggests that depression or other mental illness is an important risk factor in suicide.

In Norway, there is still scant scientific evidence of effective prevention strategies, and suicide rates among young men remain high. Most studies of suicide are based on clinical populations, and the detection and treatment of mental disorder is the main focus in suicide prevention strategies in many countries.

Researchers at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health interviewed close relatives and friends of ten young men who, in spite of accomplishments and successes, had unexpectedly taken their own lives in young adulthood about how they knew the deceased and understood the suicide.

A University of Liverpool researcher has shown that thoughts of suicide, sexual difficulties and emotional numbness as a result of anti-depressants may be more widespread than previously thought.

In a survey of 1,829 people who had been prescribed anti-depressants, the researchers found large numbers of people - over half in some cases - reporting on psychological problems due to their medication, which has led to growing concerns about the scale of the problem of over-prescription of these drugs.

Psychologist and lead researcher, Professor John Read from the University's Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, said: "The medicalisation of sadness and distress has reached bizarre levels. One in ten people in some countries are now prescribed antidepressants each year.

"While the biological side-effects of antidepressants, such as weight gain and nausea, are well documented, the psychological and interpersonal effects have been largely ignored or denied. They appear to be alarmingly common."

Can't get a good night's sleep? You're not alone. In surveys of what would improve people's lives, a good night's sleep frequently comes near the top of the list.

Poor sleep results in worse cognitive performance, including degraded memory, attention, performance and alertness. And in the long term insomnia is also associated with anxiety and depression. And people's sleep gets worse as they get older. After 65 years old, between 12% and 40% of people have insomnia.

All sorts of methods have been tried to combat poor sleep, from drugs through psychological remedies to more outlandish treatments.