#334 World Ayahuasca Forum: What the Latest Research Reveals About Plant Medicine

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions. Dr. Donni Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself. And in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donni Stress Recovery Protocol. On this show, you're gonna hear from doctors, nutritionists, and experts along with Dr. Donni who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is How Humans Heal.

Hi and welcome to How Humans Heal. I'm Dr. Doni Wilson. In this episode, I want to share with you about a conference I just recently attended called the World Ayahuasca Forum in Girona, Spain. And this conference was the first of its kind and so remarkable and amazing that I really want to be able to share it here with the How Humans Heal audience. And so then you can look more into this information if you would like. So ayahuasca is in the name of the conference, and it's a plant medicine from Central and South America. I'm going to be talking more about that here in this session, and I'm going to be talking about why this particular forum was so transformational and so unique. It was a conference where It had both indigenous groups from Central and South America, especially from Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and it also had attendees who were researchers who've been researching ayahuasca as well as other plant medicines or what might be considered psychedelic plant medicines. And so there were scientists present as well as practitioners and shamans and those who have been supporting others to access and use ayahuasca in a safe and effective way. The conference actually had 1,700 attendees, and I'm so grateful that I was able to attend. It was a conference where there were 4 different rooms going for 3 days, so that meant that we were Choosing between 4 different sessions from 9 AM to sometimes 8 or 9 PM over 3 days. So there was a lot of information presented, including 2 really well-known keynote presenters, Dennis McKenna and Paul Stamets, and I'll tell you more about their presentations here in a minute. It also included I don't even know how many research presentations. So there were researchers who were coming to present their latest research related to ayahuasca as well as some research on psilocybin, and which is from magic mushrooms. And so it really was a forum bringing together the latest on the science of psychedelic therapy, especially related to ayahuasca and psilocybin, and also the indigenous people who were present. Oh my gosh, the indigenous people opened the whole event and closed the event with their prayer, song, and chants to bring the spirituality to the event that is consistent with how the indigenous people use ayahuasca as a medicine. So Just to describe a little bit more what is ayahuasca and then I'll— and how it's used. And what I wanna present to you is some of the research studies that really caught my attention and made me wanna share with you and make sure you're aware of it. And then also I'll share with you a bit about what Dennis and Paul brought to us with their presentations. So, The presentations during the conference covered everything from the latest on ayahuasca to legalities of use and conversation and dialogue about how to integrate indigenous use with modern use so that more people can benefit from this herbal plant medicine called ayahuasca. That's really the core that brought us all together is that Everyone sees that there's so much potential benefit for the use of ayahuasca, and it's about how to make access safe and also how to integrate what these indigenous people have learned about using ayahuasca after hundreds of years of use. So ayahuasca, and I'll spell it down here in the notes, it's A-Y-A-H-U-A-S-C-A. I want, and it's also Named different things in different countries and different indigenous groups sometimes use different terms for ayahuasca. It is considered a psychedelic brew in that for the most part, it's the way it's produced is a vine. Ayahuasca is a vine that grows in the Amazon jungle and it, you cut the vine and you boil it in water for many hours and it creates kind of like a tea, but it's thicker than a tea. Now, most use of ayahuasca, we also add another plant in a leaf form, and it's the plant called chacruna is used because the leaves contain DMT. So when you combine ayahuasca, the vine, with the properties of chacruna leaves, then you get the combination that's known as ayahuasca. Although there are some indigenous groups that only use the vine and some groups that may add other ingredients to the brew, but the majority of ayahuasca is known to be ayahuasca vine and chacruna leaves combined together, boiled together for hours to create this. It's more like a, what I would call a solid extract of the plants that you drink in ceremony. It's used in a ceremonial or group setting, which is very important because ayahuasca is considered to be a medicine that helps us as humans to connect into the spiritual realm and to connect in with ourselves, as also to connect in with our spirit guides. And, and people talk about connecting in with their intuition and their ancestors. Ayahuasca is used by many different religions, actually. It's I like to point out that it's— the use of ayahuasca is not a religion in itself. People of different religions feel comfortable using ayahuasca because it's a way to connect with your spirituality, whatever that is for you. And there are, especially in the US and also other countries, churches that have been established that recognize the use of ayahuasca as a way to connect with one's spirituality. So, you may be familiar with those churches, or you could look into them if you're interested, because that can make it an accessible way to use ayahuasca in this spiritual way in the United States. Because currently in the United States, ayahuasca is not legal, although it has been decriminalized in Colorado, and it is legal in places like Peru and Brazil and Colombia. And that's where the indigenous people are located and offering access to ceremonies, although there's a lot of challenges they're facing because of the criminal use of the Amazon territory in terms of some of the cocaine activities as well as mining, illegal mining activities that are pushing the Indigenous people out of their spaces and out of their access to ayahuasca. So that also was brought up at the conference and is an ongoing concern of how to protect the Amazon jungle and how to protect access to ayahuasca and how to protect the indigenous groups who've been using this beautiful plant medicine for hundreds, if not thousands of years. So as you notice, I'm referring to ayahuasca as a medicine while it is referred to as a psychedelic.

Mm-hmm.

Because it does have psychedelic properties. When the indigenous people talk about it, including at this event, they clearly explained that they don't think about it as psychedelic. They think about it as a medicine. They referred to it as medicine because to them, that's what they see, is that this substance that is ayahuasca is a medicine in so many ways. So let's go into that and talk about the ways that it can be beneficial to humans. Of course, with any substance, any plant or other substance that we take in as humans, we always have to consider the potential benefits and the potential risks. And at this conference, there was also representation by, uh, the ICEERS. ICEERS actually was a major organizer of this event, um, I-C-E-E-R-S, and they shared about their Ayahuasca Safe Kit. They have created a safety documentation to help protect use of ayahuasca outside of the indigenous groups because of course indigenous groups have their own means and guidelines. But for anyone who might be, you know, leading ceremonies with ayahuasca outside of indigenous areas, there is this Ayahuasca Safe Documentation Kit to show what should it look like. Like for screening for use of ayahuasca, for preparation for use of ayahuasca, for during a ceremony of ayahuasca, and after post-ceremony, and it was referred to as integration. All of this has been documented, outlined. So if you're interested in that, I will put a link down below so you can go find out more about exactly what has been outlined for safe use of ayahuasca. And that was definitely covered at this event as well. So I was really interested in some of the research that was presented, the latest, latest, because there's been research on ayahuasca for years. I've been reading this research, everything from helping with things like cancer, migraines, PTSD. And so to see even the latest research is really amazing. There was a study that was presented at this event that showed 71% remission in in treatment-resistant depression after 1 year of use of ayahuasca. And that's huge. That's so significant because right now there are billions, millions, there's so many people suffering from depression as well as anxiety. And the current treatment, standard of treatment in the United States and around the world is using medications that do not have that percentage of success. So there are people right now who are being being told to take medications with a much lower success rate than 71%. And so for anyone who's struggling with depression and not finding that the current approaches are helping, then I definitely recommend you read this research and, and consider ayahuasca as a potential medicine for you. And you'll notice that ayahuasca is not something that people take every day ongoing. Ayahuasca is And a plant medicine that you take in ceremony, maybe 1, 2, 3 times, depending on the scenario, and can get that kind of benefit from a relatively single use or, you know, potentially a couple times, but it's not something you have to take every day. And it has been shown in research to help with PTSD, stress in general.

Yeah.

Anxiety, history of abuse and abuse recovery, as well as addiction recovery. And this is something that I've also observed. I'll share a little bit more about my observations in, in a minute. It has been shown, especially as presented at this conference, how it can help to reset the vagus nerve, which is also something that I observed. And it's very interesting because ayahuasca is Ayahuasca is categorized in herbal medicine as a purgative, meaning it can cause vomiting or it could cause the bowels to move. And it's not in an uncontrollable form. It's usually, from my observation, you might, if you consume ayahuasca, you may or may not experience vomiting. If you do experience vomiting, it might be just a single episode of vomiting. It's not for endless hours. Like sometimes when we think of vomiting, Say with food poisoning, we think we're gonna be vomiting for 24 hours. But with ayahuasca, it, as with many other purgatives that exist in nature and in history, is that you would use it and it may, you may experience an episode of emesis, which is vomiting or bowel movement, or sometimes the purging can occur as tears. You know, it could be crying, it could be breathing, it could be sweating. So it's a way of— think about it as like a detox. We're detoxing. The plant substance helps us, our body, to detox all the different ways that we detox, whether that's, you know, through the vomiting or bowel movement or through sweating or through tears. It's also at the same time helping us to process emotions. So there's A process of, of going through whatever emotions may be coming up for you. And it's, it's so amazing because it, to me, is because it, it's not like, like some people who've gone through PTSD or abuse, for example, we, we tend to be afraid to revisit these experiences. We tend to be afraid of, of feeling sad or feeling angry or feeling our feelings in general. And the thing that happens with ayahuasca is It allows us to feel our feelings, but not in a scary way. It allows us to move through them and actually process the feelings, process the experiences we've been through, whether with ourselves or with other humans or with other experiences in our lives. And so we get to actually process in a way that helps it to move forward instead of causing it to become more stuck, especially when a person's in a very supported environment, which is why the preparation and support in the community and and after is so important. Another study that I found to be very interesting because I also research cortisol. So this was a research on how they measured cortisol levels in the participants before they took ayahuasca and after. And what they found is that if a person has low, like they found a lot of people who had been under stress had low cortisol before taking ayahuasca, and then after taking ayahuasca, their cortisol levels were optimal. So they showed that the ayahuasca was actually able to re-optimize cortisol levels. And a lot of times we think of cortisol as being high, but I also find that there's a significant number of people who have low cortisol. And so this was very interesting to me to see that ayahuasca could— should improve cortisol levels. And we know that cortisol is related to fatigue and mood and, you know, whether depression, anxiety. It's also related to so many other health issues. So being able to correct cortisol levels is huge. And as you As those of you who know me, you know how much I really aim to always improve cortisol levels as a way to improve overall human health and wellness on every level. That same study also researched levels of BDNF, which is brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and BDNF has been researched for other psychedelic substances, so they decided to measure it for ayahuasca, and they also found that the BDNF levels levels increase, which BDNF is known to support neuroplasticity, neuroregeneration. So it means that it's signaling to our nervous system to heal, to repair, to repair the nerves, both from potentially something like neuropathy and pain disorders, but also heal from other stress and trauma, emotional stress and trauma. So I think that is this really significant study showing improvement in cortisol and BDNF with I've done a lot of detoxes over the years, and many of them made me feel a lot worse. Not only that, but I've had a lot of patients come in and tell me how after doing a detox, they have a stomachache and headache, and they can't sleep, and they're feeling anxious. And I'm like, I can't just recommend that my patients do a program that's gonna make them feel worse. So I finally decided to design my own detox program. It's a 14-day detox program that's not like other detox programs out there in several ways. One is that I'm focused on helping you to get the toxins out in a safe and effective way using nutrients, antioxidants, and supporting our natural Also, I'm helping you to decrease your exposure to toxins by learning the ways that you've been exposed to toxins and how to change your day-to-day lifestyle to decrease your toxins over time. And I'm helping you to look not just at chemical environmental toxins, but also emotional and energetic toxins. Toxicity. And yes, it's possible to accomplish all of this in 14 days. I have so many patients who have done the 14-day detox and report back to me how much better they feel. And I think it's also because I help you to know what to eat. You are getting adequate food that tastes good, plus protein shakes that I developed that are good for your body, that your knows how to use these nutrients and take them in and use them to help you safely detoxify without feeling worse. Also, I help you to balance your blood sugar levels, get better sleep, and introduce things like meditation, biofeedback, and other types of stress recovery into your day-to-day routine. So I just am so excited about it. I want to make sure you know about this 14-day detox. I'm going to put the link. You can find it at drdoni.com/detox-program, but I'll also put the link below so you can find the 14-day detox program at drdoni.com. I look forward to guiding you through this detox so that you can actually feel better on your way Another study that, let me see, that it was shown had to do with the purgative effect of ayahuasca and how when a person goes through the experience of vomiting and that that actually can be a reset to the vagus nerve. And I was very excited to hear that from the researcher because that's what I perceived through my experience of personal use of ayahuasca. I have shared in other episodes that I have traveled to Peru and Amazon multiple times to take ayahuasca myself. And through my experience of ayahuasca, I've found that it really can be helpful for resetting the vagus nerve. So I was really excited to see that research being presented exactly based on my observations of ayahuasca. And resetting the vagus nerve is so important because it's so key to the— to our nervous system. And what happens when we're under a lot of stress is that our vagus nerve— vagus nerve is communicating the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the reset, the calming part of our nervous system. So we have the sympathetic, which is the stress response like fight or flight, and parasympathetic, which is communicated for you, the vagus nerve. And so when they— when we're under a lot of stress, the vagus nerve can get into— it gets stuck. It's not able to process correctly, and we get stuck in a fight-or-flight mode. Maybe some of you can relate to that. When we can— we can use different tools to reset the vagus nerve, even breathwork, mindfulness, time in nature, many things like this. And How amazing to find that this plant substance can help to reset the vagus nerve through its activity that we can we call purgative effect, but to me it's really a resetting of the vagus nerve because the vagus nerve is completely related to the signaling for vomiting as well as for bowel movements and for and for crying for that matter. So when we can stimulate purging in our body that actually helps reset our vagus nerve, which is so powerful for healing from stress and trauma and addiction. So, so much possibility here with this plant medicine. And I'm so excited that this event is creating more awareness, more dialogue, more conversation about how this plant substance can be accessed and used and and made to be legal. And at the same time, as we create ways for it to be more legal around the world, we also want to make sure that it's being used effectively, safely, and for more people to benefit from it. Because as I've, I've shared, I have greatly benefited from the use of ayahuasca. When I first went to Peru to to work with a shaman, to a dieta, what's called a dieta, to experience ayahuasca, which, you know, it was clear to me then that this was the medicine that I had been looking for, for myself and for my patients, because I immediately knew it would help me with my chronic migraines. I no longer have migraines. It would help me with chronic pain. I have joint hypermobility syndrome known as Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. And so I was in chronic pain. Now I do not have pain. It also helps with depression, anxiety, PTSD, all of which I had and no longer experience those. So from my personal experience, it has been life-changing. And so I always want to share with all of you what has— what I've discovered in my research around the world of what's helping humans heal and what has helped me heal. And now what is being shown in research that actually can help others heal as well. So I wanted to share when Dennis McKenna, who is known as a botanist, he's a scientist, and, and he speaks on, you know, especially psychedelic substances and how they can be beneficial. And he started the conference by saying that as humans, we've unfortunately become so disconnected from nature, and we end up as humans thinking that we're running the show. And lo and behold, it's nature that's running the show. And it's— and that we as humans are part of nature also. We've forgotten that nature has such intelligence, and we've forgotten that we're part of nature, and that we've forgotten—

That's right.

How important it is for us to connect with nature and that we can use nature to help us heal. Here we are talking about plants from nature that can help humans heal. So that was echoed throughout the conference by both the researchers and the Indigenous people. The Indigenous people, really, their messages about how we, we, when we disconnect from nature, we, we can get become what they refer to as contaminated by civilization. And so it's really this, this remembering, it's reminding us that we are nature and that when we connect to nature, it can help us heal. And Paul Stamets took it even another step to really remind us that nature has intelligence. Actually, this came from both Dennis and Paul Stamets. You know, Dennis talked about how science— here he is speaking as a scientist. This is Dennis McKenna speaking as a scientist, saying that as scientists and in science, we tend to think of nature as dead, like of not having any spirit or intelligence. And science can be very reductionist and analytical, which there's some benefits to that. But we also— Him speaking as a scientist and me as a scientist saying, We're starting to recognize that we're— what we've— what we misunderstood or what we didn't understand about science. And science is now starting to realize the intelligence of nature and how to honor that and how to bring that into the research, how to bring that into our understanding of the world. And so just really feeling that sense of, wow, things are changing, if science is are changing their view of how we do science and the value of science and how to look at nature as intelligent and how to bring that to the research that we're doing to understand how to help humans heal and how to understand the world we live in. So then Paul Stamets, who's a known mycologist, spoke at the end of the event, and he spoke about how In the universe, whether you look on Earth or other planets on Earth, which we now can look at because of 2022, 2023, when, when we've been able to retrieve substances from other— from the moon, from, from other places in the universe, we are able to see that the universe includes the same molecules, the same nucleotides, and including tryptophan and tryptamine, is found throughout the universe. And those same molecules, tryptophan and tryptamine in particular, is what is found in all humans, in all of nature, including in ayahuasca and in psilocybin. And the tryptamines are what help us heal. They have found that that's the active substance in both ayahuasca and psilocybin is tryptamine. And so his point is that it's all around us already anyway, right? We're made of tryptamine. Nature is made of tryptamine. The universe is made of tryptamine. So we can— because we so often feel disconnected and separate from each other and separate from nature and separate from our existence. And Paul's point is that We're all— is— we're all part of the same thing anyway, and we all have been back in time and into the future. This is, this is simply our time of a human existence. When this lifetime that we're in right now is our human existence. However, we're really part of such a greater whole, and such— and that greater whole comes down to, if you break it down to the tiniest pieces, it looks like tryptamine. And it's so interesting that that same tryptamine has been found to be so healing for humans. In fact, what Paul stated is that there's now over 300 institutions and universities that have registered research on psilocybin right now. That means we're going to have hundreds more research studies coming out in the very near future about the benefits of psilocybin. As well as I don't know how many more studies on ayahuasca. I'm sure many more to come. And Paul stated that there's over 700,000 people who are currently taking psilocybin around the world. So this is something that's being used more and more often and for good reason, because there's research showing that psilocybin can be beneficial for some of the same things I mentioned for ayahuasca. For depression, for anxiety, for PTSD, for addiction. Addictions like tobacco, alcohol, and even opioid addiction have been solved, resolved with the use of psilocybin. So this is huge because right now in the world, these are epidemics, these addictions, and especially the opioid epidemic. And we need solutions that are safe and effective. And here we have right in front of us plant and fungi substances like ayahuasca and psilocybin that can help our— help us as humans heal, help us recover from the stress and trauma we've been through, and help us to, to eliminate addictions, and also help us to resolve many other health issues that we currently are turning toward pharmaceuticals for. And instead of needing to take a pharmaceutical substance every day for the rest of our lives. We could be using a plant substance even once or twice. This is what the studies are showing. Sometimes one or 2 doses can actually create such a resolution that the person now has freedom from the health condition and freedom from needing to use pharmaceuticals, right? Freedom from addiction. So powerful. But it is important As, as I've mentioned, and as was mentioned at this forum, the importance of how to use these substances and how, who to get help to help you use them. Because especially with ayahuasca, there's, you want to make some diet changes before, there's diet changes after. You want to be able to integrate the experience into your life to get the most benefit from it. And that's exactly why, as a practitioner, I decided to to go through becoming certified in psychedelic-assisted therapy. So, uh, in— I started in 2024. I completed a certification in psychedelic-assisted therapy with IPI, Integrative Psychiatry Institute, about 1 year ago in 2025. And I then applied for licensing in Colorado, where, where licensing is offered currently. For facilitators of psychedelic-assisted therapy of plant substances like psilocybin. And so I'm now finishing my facilitator-in-training credentials, and in the very near future will be fully credentialed as a facilitator of psychedelic, especially psilocybin. But this also can lend itself to other psychedelic substances, including ketamine. And in the near future, when it becomes more accessible and legal, it would include MDMA as well as, as, I mean, ayahuasca, I look at it as something that is a substance that needs to be used to, from my opinion, with a shaman, with indigenous experience, in a, in a group ceremony. So that's something that I have a lot of training in. And yet, If you're interested in experiencing ayahuasca, then I recommend that you reach out to me, and this way I can guide you toward shamans and facilitators of ayahuasca in a legal setting and a safe and effective setting that I, you know, I can give you a couple examples of groups that were present at this ayahuasca forum. So that you can investigate for yourself and make sure you get to a safe and effective place to access ayahuasca because it is such an amazing plant medicine that has helped me and has helped— I've observed it helping hundreds of other people, let alone going to this conference of 1,700 people to talk about how we can continue to make it more available to more people. So you can ask me if you're interested in more about ayahuasca and if you're interested in access to psilocybin or other psychedelic substances, you can feel free to ask me that as well. And know that at the current time, here we are in 2026, I have my licensing and facilitating for psilocybin in Colorado. That will be expanding. We're expecting New Mexico to make it legal for psilocybin. Probably by the end of this year. And we anticipate more states to continue making access in the United States as well as around the world. Because, of course, when we have this much research showing benefit, then we're gonna, we're gonna see there's gonna be more and more access. But again, I encourage you, if you're curious and you, and you've been in emotional and physical pain and you're looking for other solutions, Please, you know, take this as a starting place to read more, research more, and have— you can have conversations with me, talk to other people, talk to your practitioners, and start down the path of thinking about if this might be something that you may want to try for yourself. It's not meant to be one size fits all, and it's not meant to say that everybody needs to take these things. These are medicines. that it's important to know, hey, what are— there are potential contraindications for certain substances, including ayahuasca. So we need to look at your specific case and your scenario. All of this needs to be part of the screening process. However, if someone is dealing with severe symptoms, then this is something to consider. And where I want to put my work and attention is into looking at ayahuasca as well as psilocybin for the use of helping women, especially women who are dealing with high-risk HPV virus and risk of cancer caused by high-risk HPV. These women who are experiencing depression, anxiety, and have experienced PTSD, abuse, or an addiction. When I— what I see in my practice is that oftentimes it's women who've been under a lot of stress, trauma, and abuse who become more susceptible to HPV. And so my, my theory, my thinking is that if we help women to recover from the PTSD and the abuse, they're going to be able to clear the HPV and protect themselves from HPV. So that's where I'm— that's my interest in going to this conference. And following up from the conference, I'm going to be having more conversations, and, and I'll bring it back to you as I discover more about specifically how we can help women heal from stress, trauma, abuse in general, and how we can help women heal from susceptibility to high-risk HPV virus. Because it's well established in the research too that when women are exposed to trauma, abuse, even back to childhood, that they're more susceptible to cervical cancer and other HPV-related cancers. And there's There's studies that are encouraging us to look at this and to help women heal from the stress and trauma because we know that that can help reduce the risk of cervical cancer and other HPV-related cancers. So that's a lot of where my interest is going, and I look forward to being able to be part of the continued ayahuasca community and share my insights. And support for women's health. Actually, that was one thing at the conference as well. Some of the Indigenous leaders that were present were women, and they were really emphasizing how important women are in this time period of growing interest in ayahuasca and growing support for Indigenous groups in Amazon, And, and also these dialogues and conversations about how do we integrate Indigenous use with, with what the science is showing to be beneficial with these medicines. So it was really beautiful to observe these female leaders from the Indigenous communities and how they were represented and how they communicated about the importance of women's health. In the use of ayahuasca. So that gave me so much hope, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the future of this movement of access to ayahuasca and support for women's health happening side by side. So thanks so much for joining in, and I'm so glad to be sharing this information, and I look forward to hearing from you if you would like more, if you'd like to hear more from me about this. I'm happy to share more. And in the meantime, if you haven't— or if you're new, then I welcome you to subscribe to How Humans Heal so you don't miss my next episode. And I look forward to connecting with you all very soon.

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