Research

Statement: It (Maca) is traditionally used to increase energy, mental clarity, support sexual functions and muscle tone.

Maca Is An Amazing Root Vegetable

Although Maca is related to the potato family, it is like no potato in the world. Maca grows in the mountains of Peru at altitudes of 9 to 11 thousand feet. Native Peruvians have used Maca as a food, and a medicine, since before the times of the Incas.

Herbs Botanic's Dictionary
Peru useful herbs by Antonio Brack Egg & PNUD & The Regional Andean Studies
07.07.01 ISBN 9972-691--21-0

1 "Physiological studies and Determination of Chromosome Number in Maca, Lepidium meyenii" by Carlos Quiros, A. Epperson, J. Hu, and M. Holle. Econ Bot 50 (2) 216-223, 1996. “According to folk belief, maca enhances female fertility in humans and domestic animals which tends to be reduced at higher altitudes.

Chemical analysis by Johns (1981) suggests that this property may be due to the presence of biological active aromatic isothiocyanates, and specifically due to p-methoxybenzyl isothiocyanate, which is also found in Tropasolum tuberosum, another species reputed to increase fertility in humans. Today, dried maca roots are ground to powder and sold in drug stores in capsules as a medicine and food supplement to increase stamina and fertility. Because of these properties, it is also known by the name of Peruvian ginseng.”

Statement: Huanarpo – is a Peruvian wild herb that has historically been used as a tonic for the nervous system and to nutritionally support organs involved in healthy sexual function.

1 French Institute of Sexology, 1997, Original research, Jacques Wayneberg. Male Sexual Asthenia – Interest in a Traditional Plant-Derived Medication: “Huanarpo.” Dr. Wayneberg’s research tested the effects of Huanarpo in 100 men, 92% with impotence and 18% with loss of libido. Subjects were given 1-1.5 gm of the herb in powdered form per day. “Frequency of intercourse was significantly increased for 62%. Thirty-two percent indicated a strengthening of their libido. 12% noted morning erections that were improved. 52% noticed reestablished stability of erections during intercourse.

2 Notas Sobre Plantas Brasileiras by M. Penna, A. Penna, Rio de Janeiro, 1930. Muira Puama is recommended on a basis of confirmed experience, in the treatment or disorders of the nervous system.YZEUCIDVNO

THE BLACK HOLE BETWEEN COCA AND DRUGS

I think thatit is necessary to stress and the fundamental difference between chewing coca in the Andean setting and the unlawful use of cocaine in the West. In a speech made in 1992 before the annual Assembly of the World Health Organization, the President of the Republic of Bolivia, Mr. Paz Zamora referred to these confused and contradictory interpretations and observed that "coca is an Andean tradition while cocaine is a Western habit" (Tribune de Geneve, 7 May 1992).

Undoubtedly the consumer countries deliberately assimilate the leaf with its profound significance and the reviled drug, condemned by indigenous peoples but avidly consumed by westerners in the form of cocaine, whose perverse effects are destroying the health of present and future generations in the consumer societies. In the view of the adversaries of coca, trapped by their own logic of supply and demand, coercion is sufficient to control drug addiction: i.e. eradicating the plant to the detriment of the survival of an ancestral Andean tradition.

However, there is one irrefutable observation that needs to be emphasized: was it not the gringo, the white man, for whom gold, plants and even cultural artifacts embody mercantile and monetary value who disembarked on Indian land and transformed the coca leaf, which contains 1 per cent of cocaine among its 14 alkaloids, into an illicit commodity. The chemical processing of the leaves of the plant, with their extremely varied therapeutic properties, into a hard paste and the preparation and consumption of cocaine in the West is part of the logic of the renowned market economy, and like any commodity, is determined by capitalism's economic laws of supply and demand.

Eradicating

which has been developed by the Drug Enforcement Administration of the United States Department of Justice includes a vast program to eradicate the Andean shrub by abusively and unlawfully employing herbicides such as hexazinone and tebuthiuron which have devastating effects on vegetable life. Apart from definitively eradicating the coca plantations, the arbitrary and unilateral use of defoliants and other chemicals would render vast areas of Andean land sterile and transform them into a desert.

Even more significant, by its perverse effects, this coercive measure is a de facto violation of the spirit of the Rio Conference on safeguarding biodiversity
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The Therapeutic Value of Coca in Contemporary Medicine
The Journal of Ethnopharmacology
Vol 3, 1981, 367-376
by A. Weil
----------------------------------------------------------------------I have lived among coca-using natives of the Andes and the Amazon basin in Peru and have not seen any signs of physical deterioration attributable to the leaf. I have never seen an instance of coca toxicity. Nor have I observed physiological or psychological dependence on coca. Even lifelong cheaters seem able to get the effect they want from the same dose over time; there is no development of tolerance and certainly no withdrawal syndrome upon sudden discontinuance of use.