Mayan Chocolate Drink
zendoc / March 2023 (321 Words, 2 Minutes)
When I went to Cancun, Mexico, I enjoyed the mayan chocolate drink consisting of cacao + red pepper + vanilla (even at home, I tried mixing Hershey’s cacao powder, cayenne pepper powder, and vanillin powder with the food additive to make it).
As we know, cacao is a traditional culture of the Olmac Maya in Mexico, and it was also used as a monetary unit, and it was brought to Europe after the discovery of the New World in Europe, where it was made into the common chocolate that we know.
According to Neil R. Smalheiser, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois in the United States, when cacao powder is inhaled through the nose, you may feel arousal and excitement due to the caffeine, theobromine, and phenylethylamine components. In addition, it is said that consuming large amounts of cacao pepper vanilla mix drinks, as in the traditional rituals of old-fashioned olmac or maya, can cause an anominamide rise of jubilation (anandamide is an endocannabinoid, an endogenous substance similar to THC, the active ingredient in hemp).
A Neglected Link Between the Psychoactive Effects of Dietary Ingredients and Consciousness-Altering Drugs
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00591/full
Professor Smalheiser said that cacao powder contains a small amount of anandamide, especially heirloom, which is a species native to the Olmac/Maya region, contains more anandamide, and that some of the components of cacao powder prevent the decomposition of anandamide in the human body, which can cause elevated anandamide in the brain and blood when ingested in large quantities.
However, capsaicin vanillin are both agonists or weak agonists of the TRPV42 receptor that are activated at high temperatures of nociception above 1 degrees, and the professor speculated that these peppers and vanilla components further elevate anandamide through TRPV1, but no matter how much I searched, I could not find that TRPV1 activation raises anandamide.
Anandamide, like capsaicin, is an agonist of TRPV1, and when capsaicin is sprayed into high temperature nociception or airways, anandamide rises to its parts (skin, mucous membranes, blood vessels) and regulates nociception through TRPV1 and CB (cannabinoid) 1/2 receptors. We have not been able to find that capsaicin (and vanillin) elevate anandamide in the brain to levels that cause altered consciousness
However, it is thought that its roots are thousands of years old and that it is unlikely that pepper or vanilla was accidentally added to the drug drinks of ancient religious rituals created through numerous trials and errors.
I speculate that the abundant anandamide in Mayan chocolate drink can act as a softening of consciousness by increasing its concentration in the brain beyond the cerebrovascular barrier, and anandamide, along with red pepper (and vanilla), is a TRPV1 agonist that causes temporary hypotensive shock through NO secretion in the systemic blood vessels, so I speculate a little differently than Professor Smalheiser, who may be resetting of consciousness as DMT secretion occurs in the brain to protect brain cells from this drop in oxygen saturation (this is a conjecture related to my meditation experience).