Dear Member,
I’ve been in Peru since Saturday. One of my patients, Nina, has a personalized travel business to Peru (www.ancientsummit.com ) and she set me up in a cozy hotel in the Mira Flores district of Lima overlooking the Pacific. Yesterday, I traveled to another part of Lima near the University to meet with my contact and guide Octavio Zolezzi. Octavio lived among the indigenous people for years while he studied their customs and plants. He has promised to show me his Andean sources for higher grade maca.
In case you missed my last letter, maca is a turnip-like plant that grows high in the Andes Mountains. The Incas cultivated and ate the root to adjust to the high altitudes. But maca does more than just help you adjust to the thin mountain air. It has the remarkable property of improving oxygen transport in your body. This increases endurance, energy levels, mental clarity and sexual performance.
I met Octavio for eggs, fruit and some of the richest coffee I’ve ever tasted. Octavio was soft spoken and unassuming. As we talked, I couldn’t help but be impressed. It’s not often you meet a man that can sleep in a dirt-floored hut in the jungle for 4 years with a brutal war going on around him and come out of it with such exceptional demeanor and understanding. Any question I asked about the indigenous medicinal plants and customs he answered like a walking encyclopedia. And I could just tell – he was a “straight shooter”. I could trust him and I was glad to have him on our quest.
I rented a four-wheel drive. After six hours of Octavio driving the mountain road “like a bat out of hell”, paying a bribe to one local cop, arguing our way out of another and outrunning another bribe-seeking police scam, crossing Ticlio Pass at 4818 meters (the highest paved pass in the world), we reached the high sierra growing field shown below.
Octavio learned 2 important features the ancient Incas used in their customs for producing the best effect from maca. This includes selecting the highest altitude maca and slow curing it for 2 months. But secondly, the natives use it as a food. Most of the US imports have it only in capsules. You just can’t get enough into a capsule. I am working to get an effective form and dosage to import. I’ll let you know how that goes. But there is much more to this story.
Thanks in large part to the neighboring Ashanikas – one of the most isolated indigenous people anywhere on the planet – Octavio has improved his maca formula by adding two herbs he gained knowledge about and access to from the Ashanika tribal leaders.
One is called cat’s claw, the other annatto
Today, modern science discovered that cat’s claw is also effective in treating diabetes, prostate problems and fatigue – in addition to its powerful anti-inflammatory effects.
Annatto is a shrub that produces small pods. Inside the pods are seeds surrounded by a reddish pulp. Traditionally, the Ashanika have used this as face paint. In our modern world, annatto has found a use as a food coloring.
But annatto contains powerful antioxidants that when combined with maca and cat’s claw, produces a synergistic effect for a higher-powered energy and endurance formula.
Tomorrow, Octavio and I are descending from the mountains and heading into the Amazon jungle to meet the Ashanika.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD