E-Cigarettes

When vaporizing cannabis or tobacco alone, minimal vapor will appear during exhalation. That which has not been absorbed by the lungs. E-Cigs use vegetable glycerin and Propylene Glycol to produce smoke. Usually with higher ratios of PG, as it is more popular.

PG is runnier than the VG variety, and is more easily absorbed by the polyfill fabric inside the cartomizer. The low density of the juice also means that gunk doesn’t build up on the heating element of your e-cigarette as fast as it does when thicker vegetable glycerin liquid is used. PG causes allergic reactions in some users. These can vary from minor reactions, like a tingling sensation in the throat, to serious irritations on various parts of the body. It also causes a stronger throat hit, more like a regular cigarette. PG-based e-juices are flavorless so produce the highest flavor intensity of the two substances. Also vapor feels warmer since it takes less time and power for PG to reach the level of vaporization. Vegetable Glycerin contains preexisting flavor and sweetness, produces more vapor, and is more natural.

Propylene Glycol and Ethylene Glycol are used to make antifreeze and de-icing solutions for cars, airplanes, and boats; to make polyester compounds; and as solvents in the paint and plastics industries. Propylene Glycol is an FDA-approved food additive "generally recognized as safe". It has no long-term history of human usage but seems to be toxic in excessively large amounts. Excessively high amounts cause Renal (kidney) failure. Correlating with the amounts consumed, Polypropylene Glycol contributes to Acidosis, an increased acidity in the blood and other body tissue. Those with cancer will want to avoid blood acidity. PG may also cause irritation and sensitivity to the eyes, skin and mucous membranes, according to the Scholar Chemistry Material Safety Data Sheet.

source: acute renal failure has been attributed to propylene glycol http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9214414

And the solvents can transform into something even more worrisome: carbonyls. This group includes known cancer-causing chemicals, such as formaldehyde, and suspected carcinogens, such as acetaldehyde.

Earlier this year, a study found that increasing an e-cig’s voltage from 3.2V to 4.8V while using an e-liquid with both solvents produced almost as much formaldehyde as a traditional*[additive] cigarette. While the human body produces formaldehyde as a byproduct of normal metabolic activity in the cells, it is suspected of being carcinogenic when inhaled.

The same study also found that at lower voltages, e-cigs produced up to 800 times less formaldehyde than a cigarette. While this might sound a lot safer, the size of the vapor particles and the delivery method into the lungs heavily impact the risk of disease.

Particles found in inhaled cigarette smoke have a median size of 0.3-0.5 microns. Testing has found that the e-cigarette particles have a median of 0.18-0.27 microns. About 40% of these particles can travel deep into the lungs and become embedded in the alveoli, where gas exchange occurs. Even if the particle itself isn’t toxic, the size alone places a burden on the lungs and can cause disease.

E-cigarettes deliver high levels of nanoparticles, the researchers found, which can trigger inflammation and have been linked to asthma, stroke, heart disease, and diabetes (SN: 7/18/09, p. 26). The levels “really raise concerns about heart disease and other chronic conditions where inflammation is involved,”

The mass of particles in the vapors is about 3 milligrams per cubic meter of air, he says, or about 100 times as high as the Environmental Protection Agency’s 24-hour exposure limit for levels of fine air particles. Thornburg’s group’s analyses predict that some 40 percent of these inhaled particles would deposit in the lungs’ smallest, deepest airways.

In addition to nicotine and solvents, vapors also contain chemical flavorings and food preservatives from the vaping liquid. Although they may be GRAS, or “generally recognized as safe” by FDA, Thornburg says, the designation is based on tests of the compounds when they are ingested. “No one has considered their safety when it comes to inhalation,” he says.

And e-cigarette vapors can even make dangerous germs harder to kill, Laura Crotty Alexander reported May 18 at an American Thoracic Society meeting in San Diego. A pulmonary and critical care physician and scientist with the VA San Diego Healthcare System, she exposed methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, better known as MRSA, to e-cigarette vapors.

In a lab dish, these antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which can cause pneumonia, proved harder to kill using a germ-killing protein fragment — a natural antibiotic that people’s bodies make. One reason: Germs exposed to nicotine-rich vapors secreted a thicker biofilm coating that protected them.

Crotty Alexander also allowed mice to breathe in air containing MRSA that had been exposed to e-cigarette vapors. One day later, mice getting vapor-exposed germs had three times as many bacteria growing in their lungs as did mice that got unexposed germs.

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/studies-reveal-health-risks-e-cigarettes
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/health-risks-e-cigarettes-emerge

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Worst to best
Regular commercial cigarettes>Additive-free cigarettes>electronic cigarettes>TRUE all-natural brands (Seneca's, Natives, Skydancer, Kentucky Select)> Mapacho tobacco> Organic tobacco> Organic Mapacho tobacco>homegrown organic tobacco> homegrown organic mapacho tobacco

Tree Tobacco (Nicotiana glauca) is another species of tobacco which is sometimes available. Not possessed and adulterated by corporate entities. This tobacco gives a similar buzz to n. rustica (mapacho) and was considered one of the strongest domestic tobacco species by native americans. It contains Anabasine, an analog of nicotine. Other forms of administration than smoking, however, would be ill-advised with this species; As Anabasine is more potent than nicotine and will reach toxic levels in the body faster/with lower quantities. Tree Tobacco, tho, is safe for smoking.

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Raw brand rolling papers are organic, raw, unrefined, hemp paper. They are much more natural and produce less material, harshness, and carcinogens when burning. If using paper, be sure to use these.

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Mapacho Tobacco aka Shamanic Tobacco, Sacred Tobacco, Tobacco Negra (Nicotiana rustica) contains up to 18x more nicotine (but freebased nicotine is not added in) and is much higher in harmalas than regular tobacco which balances the effects. Harmalas have anti-depressant effects, anti-tumor properties, and are NMDA antagonists which help prevent addictions. NMDA antagonists also resensitize cells to dopamine. So NMDA antagonists have "brain-resetting" effects.

There was a lecture online about harmalas effects as anti-tumor. I'm trying to find this.

"However, there is enough available evidence that ayahuasca’s active principles, especially DMT and harmine, have positive effects in some cell cultures used to study cancer, and in biochemical processes important in cancer treatment, both in vitro and in vivo. "
http://smo.sagepub.com/content/1/2050312113508389.full

"In conclusion, our study shows that harmine derivatives have considerable antitumor activity"
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.20703/full

Tobacco is a misunderstood sacrament. It's not the nicotine you have to worry about. The real concern is the added chemical poisons and radioactivity.

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Nicotine is not carcinogenic. A carcinogen is any substance that causes cancer.

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"The more you give nicotine to your neurons, the more the DNA they contain activates the construction of nicotinic receptors, within certain limits. Here, I thought, is the almost insatiable hunger of the spirits for tobacco: The more you give them the more they want. I was surprised by the degree of correspondence between shamanic notions of tobacco and neurological studies of nicotine."

"How was it that the shamans saw spirits by ingesting staggering quantities of tobacco.
Before continuing with this question, I will clarify two points. First, the discovery that nicotine stimulates the construction of nicotinic receptors was only made at the beginning of the 1990's; the connection between the phenomenon and the addiction displayed by tobacco users seems obvious, but has yet to be explored in detail."

"Second, there are fundamental differences between the shamanic use of tobacco and the consumption of industrial cigarettes. The botanical variety used in the Amazon, contains up to eighteen times more nicotine than the plants used in Virginia-type cigarettes. Amazonian tobacco is grown without chemical fertilizers and pesticides and contains none of the ingredients added to cigarettes, such as aluminum oxide, potassium nitrate, ammonium phosphate, polyvinyl acetate, and hundreds others, which make up approximately 10 percent of the smokeable matter. During combustion a cigarette emits over 7,000 substances, most of which are toxic.

Public health authorities have classified between 45 and 70 of those chemicals, including carcinogens, irritants and other toxins, as potentially causing the harmful effects of tobacco use. The Lung Association of America states that, "There are approximately 600 ingredients in cigarettes. When burned, they create more than 7,000 chemicals. At least 69 of these chemicals are known to cause cancer, and many are poisonous".
http://www.lung.org/stop-smoking/about-smoking/facts-figures/whats-in-a-cigarette.html

"Some of these substances are even radioactive, making cigarettes the largest single source of radiation in the daily life of an average smoker. According to one study, the average smoker absorbs the equivalent of the radiation dosages from 250 chest X-rays per year. This is the number one cause of cancer caused by smoking commercial cigarettes. Even 'Natura'" American Spirits, which are not grown by Native-Americans. Cigarette smoke is directly implicated in more than 25 serious illnesses, including 17 forms of cancer. In the Amazon, on the other hand, tobacco is considered a remedy. The Ashaninca word for 'healer', or 'shaman', is Sheripiari - literally, 'the person who uses tobacco'. The oldest Ashaninca men I knew were all Sheripiari. They were so old that they did not know their own age, which only their deeply wrinkled skin suggested, and they were remarkably alert and healthy".

There is certainly evidence that Western tobacco products contain many different harmful agents which are probably not present in organically grown plants. I have not heard of shamans developing cancers but that may, of course, be a function of several things, like lack of Western diagnosis, natural life span of indigenous people, magico-religious restriction of tobacco use in tribal societies, ect.

It seems clear that nicotine does not cause cancer, given that it is active in the brain and that cigarettes does not cause cancer in the brain, but in the lungs, esophagus, stomach, pancreas, rectum, kidneys, and bladder, the organs reached by the carcinogenic tars, which are also swallowed."
-Jeremy Narby, The Cosmic Serpent: DNA & the Origins of Knowledge

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"SHAMANIC TOBACCOS

"SHAMANIC TOBACCOS
Tobacco smoking was widespread in North America at the time of the European contact. There are no confirmed reports of materials other than tobacco being smoked.
The high culture of the Maya that flourished until the mid-800s in Mesoamerica had an old and complex relationship with tobacco and the habit of smoking it. The tobacco of the Classical Maya was Nicotiana rustica, which is still in use among aboriginal populations in South America today. This species is much more potent, chemically complex, and potentially hallucinogenic than the commercial grades of Nicotiana tabacum available today. The difference between this tobacco and cigarette tobacco is profound. This wild tobacco was cured and rolled into cigars which were smoked. The trance-like state that followed, partially synergized by the presence of compounds that included MAO inhibitors, was central to the shamanism of the Maya. Recently introduced anti-depressants of the MAO inhibitor type are distant synthetic relatives of these natural compounds. Francis Robicsek has published extensively on the Mayan fascination with tobacco and its chemical complexity:
It also must be recognized that nicotine is by no means the only bio-active substance in the tobacco leaf. Recently alkaloids of the harmala group, harman and norharman, have been isolated from cured commercial tobaccos and their smoke. They constitute a chemical group of beta-carbolines, which include harmine, harmaline, tetrahydroharmine, and 6-methoxy harmine, all with hallucinogenic properties. Nicotine is a nootropic that enhances focus and memory. It stimulates you, helping to keep you awake, and increasing the bloodflow to your brain, while constricting other areas of bloodflow; While also calming you. Harmala alkaloids are anti-depressant, and anti-tumor compounds. Nicotine is a nootropic that enhances focus and memory. It stimulates you, helping to keep you awake, and increasing the bloodflow to your brain, while constricting other areas of bloodflow; While calming you, while also calming you. The harmala alkaloids are anti-depressant and anti-tumor compounds. While to date no native varieties of tobacco have been analyzed for these substances, it is a reasonable supposition that their composition may vary widely, depending upon the variety and growth, and that some of the native-grown tobaccos may contain a relatively high concentration of them.
Tobacco was and is the ever-present adjunct of the more powerful and visionary hallucinogenic plants wherever in the Americas they are used in a traditional and shamanic way.
And one of the traditional uses of tobacco involved the New World's invention of the first enemas. Peter Furst has researched the role of enemas and clysters in Mesoamerican medicine and shamanism:
It has only recently come to light that the ancient Maya like the ancient Peruvians employed enemas. Enema syringes or narcotic clysters, and even enema rituals, were discovered to be represented in Maya art, an outstanding example being a large painted vase dating A.D. 600-800, on which a man is depicted carrying an enema syringe, applying an enema to himself, and having a woman apply it to him. As a result of this newly discovered scene, archaeologist M. D. Coe was able to identify a curious object held by a jaguar deity on another painted Maya vessel as an enema syringe. If the enemas of the ancient Maya were, like those of the Peruvian Native-Americans, intoxicating or hallucinogenic, they might have consisted of fermented balche (honey mead). Balche is a very sacred beverage and it may have been fortified with tobacco or with morning-glory seed infusions. Datura infusions and even hallucinogenic mushrooms may have been taken in this way. Of course they could also have used a tobacco infusion alone."
-Terence Mckenna, Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge; a Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution

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"Tobacco fields in the U.S. have been fertilized with the radioactive
haillings from uranium mines, resulting in a tremendous increase in the incidence of lip, mouth, throat, and lung cancer. If you do not believe it, just look at the incidence of lung cancer per capita before 1950 and compare it to the lung cancer per capita at the present time. Are those who smoke committing suicide, or are they being murdered?"
-William Cooper, Behold A Pale Horse

"For myself, I am a devotee of history and (mostly) pre-20th century literature. I have read a great deal in my 40 years, and I can tell you that I found exactly ONE reference to cancer before the 20th century, and zero linking's of tobacco use to cancer, even in the works of 'natural scientists".
http://enenews.com/scientist-radiation-food-going-be-nationwide-problem-video

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A radiation monitor used on Organic American spirit tobacco.
"'Natural' American Spirit is owned by RJ American, parent company of RJ Reynolds (Big Tobacco).
R.J. Reynolds owns brands like Camel, Pall Mall, Kool, Winston, Salem and Doral, ect. The tobacco that they use are in fact processed from genetically modified hybrid leaves with an ultra-high nicotine content that the Native-Americans had never traditionally used in any of their ceremonies. And if that weren’t enough Native American Spirits is said to use urea instead of ammonia in order to further enhance nicotine absorption."
This video shows that no US corporate, commercial tobacco products are safe and they have duped their customers with bullshit marketing tactics.
American spirits are still much better than regular cigarettes like Marlboro, but if you can't get tobacco that is both additive and radiation free, you're better off quitting smoking.
http://youtu.be/Jdyk--XiuIs

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"Polonium-210 and Lead-21L0 accumulate for decades in the lungs of smokers. Sticky tar in the tobacco builds up in the small air passageways in the lungs (sensitive tissues of the bronchioles) and radioactive substances get trapped. Over time, these substances cause localized radiation doses and can lead to lung cancer. The CDC studies show that smoking causes 80% of all lung cancer deaths in women and 90% of all lung cancer deaths in men.
Polonium-210 (half-life is about 138 days); Lead-210 (Half-life = 22.3 years)."

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"My old chemistry book tells me that the phosphate fertilizers used on the tobacco fields contain trace amounts of Uranium-238. This has been implicated in the link between cigarette smoking and cancer and heart disease. It seems the decay of Uranium-238 produces Rn-222. It also produces the radioactive nuclides Po-210 and Pb-210, (Polonium and Lead). Radon, Polonium and Lead!"
http://www.entheogen-network.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=14426

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"I brought Mapacho (Nicotiana rustica) back with me from Ecuador, and I take Mapacho tea up the nose as I learned to do there. If the head is tipped back when it is taken into the nose, some of it runs down the throat. It burns the nasal membranes at first, then clears the sinuses and lungs, and then produces a powerful rush and a sense of clarity, centeredness, well-being and focused strength, and a mild trance.

But a shaman in training has to drink Mapacho tea - not through the nose, but simply drinking it - which simultaneously produces a sense of being poisoned and an indescribable sense of power. Drinking enough of it is supposed to produce visions. They have to drink those twelve Mapacho logs. Not for the fainthearted".

"The Tobacco shamanism of South America is a secret hidden in plain sight. It is mentioned by practically every anthropologist who has done work with Native-Americans in the Upper Amazon, yet it is invisible to them. Books about Amazonian ethnobotany and entheogen use often omit tobacco altogether.

Tobacco is used as a universal curing plant by some Amazonian peoples. I was reading a book by French anthropologist Philippe Descola about his work with the Achuar. In one part he talks about collecting information on medicinal plants. He was introduced to several dozen medicinal plants. Then at some point, it dawned on him that he never saw any of those plants actually used. The Achuar used Tobacco as the medicine for every sickness. So Descola lost interest in investigating Achuar plant medicines further. "
(Jeremy Narby in The Cosmic Serpent is practically the first anthropologist to question why Tobacco is dismissed this way.)

My friend was initiated as a tabaquero (tobacco-using) shaman in Ecuador. I talked to him today:

'The secret of tobacco is that the less you use the more powerful it becomes. Smoking on a daily basis accustoms the body to tobacco and we do not perceive the message of the plant as clearly when our brain is besotted with one pack a day level of nicotine in our bloodstream. Smoking once a day or less, you will feel the connection between here and now and the spirit world when you have that smoke. You will be a hundred times more attuned to every flavor and aspect of that one cigarette than if you smoked the rest of the pack. If you learn something about your tobacco's and use a pipe or roll-you-own you will deepen your enjoyment even more. Eventually you may become so sensitive to tobaccos power as to experience it while holding a pinch in your hand, and offering thanks to the four directions. Many who pray with tobacco only touch the pipe to their lips and do not inhale. But they look forward to the time they spend praying and making small prayer bundles with tobacco. The less you use, the more powerful tobacco becomes.'

"Amazonian tobacco shamanism is based on the other end of the scale. First, it is good to know about how herbalism in general is learned among Native-Americans of the Upper Amazon. It is learned through what is commonly known as 'dieta' The Napo Runa Native-Americans I lived with call it "sasina," which literally means fasting, although it is not usually a complete fast. 'Dieta' is a practice used throughout the Upper Amazon. It has many variations, but the core is always the same, which is remarkable considering that these are cultures who are extremely varied in other aspects of their culture. Essentially, dieta involves abstaining from foods with flavor, especially salt and hot peppers, and from sex, even with oneself. A person learning herbalism usually begins with a dieta with Ayahuasca, one of whose functions is to teach humans how to communicate with plants (another of her functions is to teach plants how to communicate with humans). Then the person learning herbalism will do a dieta with various plants, living alone in the jungle on a semi-fast drinking huge quantites of a single medicinal plant for a week to two weeks, to the point where they become sick from overdosing on that medicine, and then they know that plant spirit, or really that spirit is like part of them. It is kind of like a vision quest for each medicinal plant.

Tobacco shamanism is learned something in this way - using Nicotiana rustica, Amazonian Wild Tobacco, which is 15 to 18 times as high in nicotine as Nicotiana tabacum. Nicotine can be a deadly poison if ingested into the stomach in sufficient quantity (it would take much less pure nicotine to kill you than arsenic or cyanide). But nicotine also creates a tolerance. Nicotine is a poison, a nerve poison, and that is connected to his power. The tobacco shaman is basically poisoned, and survives this poisoning and comes out changed, with tobacco's power connected to his power. My friend who was initiated in tobacco shamanism compared it to the Sun -- you could get harmed standing out in the sun too long if your body was not used to it, but once your body is adapted, it can take any amount of sunlight. Tobacco shamans can drink quantities of nicotine that would kill a non-initiated person; and no amount of nicotine will kill them, it only keeps increasing their power.

Tobacco is the number one power plant of the world. Tobacco is the plant of power. The name he has told me is 'Power Food'. Tobacco is food for the spirits. That is why we offer pinches of tobacco to herbs when we gather them. Tobacco is nourishment that feeds the spirits and strengthens them. You can use it for protection against negative energies, because if you dedicate it to protection it will feed the energies of protection. Like feeding your watchdogs to make them strong. In the same way, it makes prayer-energies more powerful. If you place prayer intentions and songs in tobacco when it is growing, it absorbs that energy and acts like a kind of spiritual megaphone for your prayers when you release them. You can enlist the help of elemental-type spirits that don't care about you normally by offering them tobacco as a kind of payment. The same thing is said among peoples here in Turtle Island and in the Amazon, that the reason humans were placed on Earth was to cultivate tobacco for the spirits, because they cannot do it themselves.

Tobacco feeds our own spirits when we consume it. We can become addicted to his food, more so if our spirits are starving, then we may crave him and his food. The trouble is, consuming Tobacco unconsciously means that only a little bit of the Power comes in, and, more important, it doesn't reach your Spirit, the depths within you that are crying to be fed. Consuming Tobacco unconsciously is like the unconsciousness of compulsive eating, and it becomes compulsive for the same reasons. Both of these compulsions are manifestations of a starving spirit. (You even see how people who stop smoking often gain weight because they take up overeating instead).

It also, because it magnifies the power of prayer and intention, magnifies the intention of tobacco companies to make people addicted and funnel money to them. The commercial tobacco growers and companies dedicate this intention to the tobacco they grow - to feed the spirit of addiction in us. That addiction is intentional and it is because the tobacco companies put that intention in, both physically (through the hundreds of additive chemicals that can legally constitute 20% of dry weight, not to mention tons of pesticides) and spiritually (through their Intent) dedicate this most sacred of power plants to this purpose, of creating addiction. This is a spiritually powerful plant - you try to get a lettuce leaf to addict people and place them under your command and intention, well, you might not get much results. You take the most powerful of power plants and say, 'addict millions of people and place them under our command so they have to feed us money' - that power plant will magnify your intent and give you powerful results.

Tobacco also shows how when sacred powers are used carelessly and unconsciously, they can cause harm and sickness. There is only one power, which can be shaped and used in different ways, up to us.

Blaming tobacco for how he is used is like blaming electricity for how it is used.

And with some sacred things, most sacred things, the power is fragile and must be protected. Tobacco's power is not fragile. It remains intact no matter how it is used or misused, no matter what other contaminants are also present. This is why ordinary cigarettes can even be used in ceremony. The Intent put in it by the commercial grower and cigarette companies can be cleared by your Intent. (And there are many ways to use tobacco besides smoking).

Tobacco is a plant that involves true secrets in its practice. There are things about his practice that are genuine secrets. What I have spoken of is only the public side of the shamanic use of tobacco, and that is powerful enough. I don't smoke cigarettes, except under certain circumstances, but I can never say "no" when someone offers me a cigarette, because they are offering me something so sacred, even if they don't know it."
http://www.breakingopenthehead.com/forum/showthread.php?t=967

the only way to actually overcome and kill the pain is to make yourself adapt to an even greater level of pain and then the initial injury will barely be felt and the loss of focus on the injury will allow the system to properly heal it for a number of reasons one being because the mind and emotions will not be sapping resources from the body

reminds me of this

I’m quite convinced these classes work by distorting body image so severely that you phase out triggers for the pain.

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/interview-with-ketamine-chemist-704-v18n2

article talks about dissociatives as therapy for removing pains from phantom limbs.

Not recommending anyone do illegal drugs or saying it will help. Just find it interesting, these ideas of tricking the body.
mentally speculating on what a combination of a dissociative + psychological metta-programming could do.

Cannabis; anti-convulsive

http://gnli.christianpost.com/video/when-a-little-girl-gives-marijuana-a-trysomething-incredible-happened-26699

More recognition should be given to cannabis as a remedy for dis-eases involving seizures.

No experience here but I would find acupressure points known to help with infertility. A quick search engine search will bring up pages like this:

http://natural-fertility-info.com/acupressure.html

I have terminated an early pregnancy using acupressure points known to cause contractions. Don't under estimate Kambo + Acupuncture points!

Hope this helps.

sounds like it may be from experimenting with insufflation. Peacewarrior you state that you also tried this method and experienced a similar effect?

usually lymph nodes swell to stop infections from spreading through the body. if there was an infection in the arm, the lymph nodes will swell in your armpit. maybe the lymph node under the chin was stopping a microbial from insufflation method from spreading to the chest and heart?

As far as reading, combing these forums is your best bet on educating yourself on kambo. There's some videos on youtube as well. Some of which are linked to from this forum. Welcome to the forum, nice to have you.