[ WHAT is KAMBÔ? ]

Frog only ask us to trust, allow and surrender. Kambô is said to help aid in removing anything that does not serve us and helps to bring a person back to his/her natural state of harmony and balance.
Kambô is a secretion collected from the Amazonian tree frog, Phyllomedusa Bicolor, found in the jungles of South America. It’s also known as Sapo, Kampu or ‘vacina da floresta’ (vaccine of the forest). It detoxifies the body and offers a natural way to empower and boost your immune system; it has potent anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, and anti-viral properties. It’s one of the strongest natural antibiotics and anesthetics found naturally in the world. At a mental level, your mind becomes more focused and still, with increased resistance to stress. Everything feels calmer and becomes easier to manage, you feel lighter. Kambô is legal in most countries, and it is NOT a hallucinogenic.

Benefits of Kambô
Kambô is said to remove “anything that does not serve us” and bring the person back to their natural state of perfect harmony and highest physical, emotional, and spiritual potential, reconnecting one to self.
Kambô offers full-body detoxification and a natural way to empower and boost your immune system. It also has potent anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, and anti-viral properties, being one of the strongest natural antibiotics and anesthetics found naturally in the world.
Immediate and short-term effects include enhanced mood; focused mind; energy; and increased resistance to stress, tiredness, hunger, and thirst. The mind becomes still and you feel lighter. Everything becomes easier to manage. In the long term, Kambô empowers the immune system by rousing the body’s defenses to their natural functions so that existing health problems are improved or resolved and future ones are less likely to occur. At a mental level, your mind becomes more focused and still. Increased resistance to stress. Everything feels calmer and becomes easier to manage. You feel lighter. In spiritual terms, Kambô works in a mystical fashion as a light that opens the way, helping to overcome obstacles and release blockages on an emotional level. It clears the energy field and realigns the chakras enabling one to break negative habits and think more naturally.
The properties of the peptides found in Kambô also cover a wide range of potential medical uses ranging from cancer, addiction, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Candida, fibromyalgia, depression, PTSD, anxiety, chronic fatigue, acute pain, migraines, blood circulation problems, vascular insufficiency, organ disease, skin and eye issues, fertility problems, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, Lyme’s, autoimmune disorders, etc.
Kambô in its original, natural form is a holistic treatment that works on the mind, body, energy, and spirit at all levels in ways that we still do not completely understand. The natives are quite right to use the word ‘magic’ when describing this substance.
Traditionally Kambô is used by many tribes such as the Matses, Katukina, Yawanawa, and Maruba. The use of Kambô differs amongst tribes, but the main traditional uses revolve around lifting panema (an indigenous name for dark or negative energy) and for hunting magic (by increasing speed and energy during hunting and making the hunter invisible by temporarily eliminating human odor). Amazonian tribes also use Kambô medicinally for malaria; snake bites; fevers; infections; fertility problems; to cleanse, detox, and strengthen the mind and body; to increase energy and stamina, and to reduce pain.

The Kambô Frog
The Scientific name of this frog is the Phyllomedusa Bicolor, meaning “two-colored leaf guardian”. The frog is also known as the “Giant Green Monkey Tree Frog” and it is found abundantly throughout the Amazon Rainforest in areas of Colombia, Perú, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, and the Guianas.
The Phyllomedusa Bicolor is a nocturnal, arboreal frog with no natural predators. They are large frogs, the males being around 10 cm and females 12 cm in length. Their bodies are bright glowing green on top and a creamy white underbelly. It also has dark spots on the chest and legs.
Reproduction occurs all throughout the year. Working together, the male and female construct a beautiful hanging tree nest above the forest pools. A single frog spawn contains on average 1,000 eggs, from which tiny tadpoles emerge within 11-14 days.
When the Kambô secretion is harvested by the natives in the Amazon, the frogs are treated with the utmost care and reverence, all the tribes have a deep respect and love for them, as they are considered teachers, healers and the carriers of sacred medicine.
The IUCN Endangered Species database lists them in the category of “least concern”. The only threat to this species of frog is the potential destruction of their habitat, the Amazonian Rainforest.
Kambô Treatments
The Science Behind Kambô
Kambô is an incredible and unique chemical cocktail that contains dozens of Peptides (short chains of amino acids). Some of these Peptides are bioactive which means they have an affinity and selectivity for binding to cell receptor sites in humans. A receptor is like a lock that, when opened with the right key, the bioactive peptide triggers a chemical reaction in the body.
As far as we know, Kambô contains around 139 peptides known to be crucial to the health, function, growth, and repair of our systems; from breathing, circulation, digestion, nervous system functions to cognitive function, like attention and memory, Kambô contains a truly remarkable spectrum of building blocks.
The properties of the peptides found in Kambô also cover a wide range of potential medical uses ranging from cancer, addiction, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Candida, fibromyalgia, depression, PTSD, anxiety, chronic fatigue, acute pain, migraines, blood circulation problems, vascular insufficiency, organ disease, skin and eye issues, fertility problems, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, Lyme disease, autoimmune disorders, etc.
Vittorio Erspamer, of the University of Rome, an Italian pharmacologist, and chemist, known for the identification, synthesis, and pharmacological studies of more than sixty new chemical compounds was the first to analyze Kambô in the laboratory. He was twice nominated for a Nobel prize and was also responsible for first discovering the well-known neurotransmitters serotonin and octopamine.
Erspamer concluded that Kambô contains a ‘fantastic chemical cocktail with potential medical applications, unequaled by any other amphibian’. His findings brought great attention to the area of peptides which have since become very important to the medical field.
Some of the neuropeptides contained in the secretion of the Phyllomedusa Bicolor
History of Kambô
The Kaxinawá Legend
There is a Kaxinawá legend tells that the natives from a village were very ill and their Pajé (medicine man in Brazil) had done everything that was possible to cure them. All medicinal herbs known were used, but none helped his people. Under the effect of sacred plant medicines, he entered the forest, and whilst there received a visit from a female spirit of the forest, The Grandmother. She brought in her hands a large green frog from which she took a white milky secretion, and taught the Pajé how to apply it. Returning to the tribe and following the guidelines that he had received, the Pajé was able to cure his people. From then on he was known as Pajé Kampu and after his death, the tribe believed that his spirit passed into the frog and they began to use its secretion to stay active, healthy, and strong. After his death, his spirit lived on in the frog where it continued its mission to protect the health of those who defended the forest. The natives continue to use its secretion to stay active and healthy. The secretion became known as Kambô but in some tribes, it is called Sapo, Kampu, or vacina da floresta. Its usage spread, and it is still used widely amongst indigenous people in the Amazon to this day although the rituals vary from tribe to tribe.
Kambô in Western Cultures
Father Constantin Tastevin, a French missionary, made the first recorded observations about Kambô in 1925 while he was staying with the Kaxinawás in Brazil. In the 1980s the American anthropologist Katherine Milton described Kambô use among the Mayoruna tribe in Brazil. Soon after, Peter Gorman experienced Sapo with the Matses tribe in Perú. In the 1990s, rubber trappers learned about the properties of Kambô from the indigenous tribes and began to take it out into the towns and apply it themselves. Francisco Gomes from Cruzeiro do Sol was one of the first westerners to pioneer the use of Kambô outside of the Amazon. In 2014 the International Association of Kambo Practitioners was founded by Karen Darke.