Tyramine is considered a "false neurotransmitter", as it enters noradrenergic nerve terminals and displaces large amounts of norepinephrine, which enters the bloodstream and causes cerebral vasoconstriction. Migraine, hypertensive crisis, and much worse consequences could be caused by Tyramine.
Tyramine is contained in many foods [54].
In regular situations, we can eat Tyramine-rich food without consequences because our body has got monoamine oxidases, an enzyme that metabolizes (with other enzymes) Tyramine, making it harmless.
When Tyramine-rich foods are assimilated and in the body there is presence of inhibitory substances of the monoamine oxidase enzymes (called MAOIs), Tyramine causes cerebral vasoconstriction.
Cerebral vasoconstriction due to Tyramine's effect, may cause dangerous consequences but generally it is perceived with secondary symptoms, which are very subjective: from simple headache to migraine. Thus, if one is having a strong physical experience and at the same time one's body is processing Tyramine and MAOIs, that person might not be able to realize that is having those major dangerous consequences. That could likely be the case of Yage shamanic ritual.
As we have seen in The Mystery of the Origin of Yage (⇒), MAOIs substances must be taken in order to have an entheogen experience by ingesting DMT-rich substances; that's exactly what happens when Yage is taken, which is a combination of MAOIs (Ayahuasca) and DMT-rich substance (Chacruna).
Taking MAOIs causes not only the non-metabolization of harmless DMT, but also the non-metabolization of Tyramine, which has harmful consequences as mentioned before. Therefore it is extremely important to follow a proper Tyramine-free diet for a few days prior ingestion of MAOIs.
Even though the harmful effects of the combination of MAOIs and Tyramine is fairly new to science, there is a culture that has known that since several centuries: the Shipibo.
The Shipibo shamans, one of the oldest shamanic cultures on Earth, have gained many peculiar knowledge acquired, in according to what they declare, through Entheogenic Ceremonies, better known as Yage shamanic rituals. We have already seen one of those shamanic knowledge in The Mystery of the Origin of Yage (⇒), but there is a further mystery that belongs just to the Shipibo culture.
Before attending an Yage shamanic ritual, a real Shipibo shaman requires that the attendees observe a diet ("dieta") for a few days, usually from 2 to 7 days. Usually that diet consists of rice, yucca, and banana.
Many other shamanic cultures that provide DMT-based substances do not require any diet.
Why do Shipibo shamans expect that Yage ritual attendees follow such a diet? What does that ancient culture know that other shamanic cultures don't know and that science ignored till a few years ago?
Rice, yucca, and banana are ones of few Tyramine-free foods available in the Amazon jungle.
The origin of shamanic knowledge of Tyramine will pass once again as a random event for those people who don't want to think rationally. Let's analyse why that shouldn't be so.
Whoever has tried Yage is well aware of how tough experience is for the body: strong nausea, often vomit and diarrhoea. A Yage shamanic ritual is a mindblowing spiritual experience but also a tough physical experience.
Tyramine's body effects due to MAOIs presence, although potentially very dangerous, have symptoms generally limited to a headache, and also they are subjective. Attendees of an Yage shamanic rituals cannot clearly differentiate the Tyramine's effects perceived during (or after) the ritual from Yage's physical side-effects.
Due to those above facts, most of the people who have extended Yage rituals experience with different shamanic cultures, both with diet and without diet, cannot draw a clear distinction line about the physical side effects of those two different experiences.
Presence of a high quantity of Tyramine in the body during Yage shamanic ritual is physically dangerous, although it is almost not perceivable.
There is an extensive list of Tyramine-rich foods.
If the combinations of MAOIs and Tyramine-rich foods have almost non physically perceivable symptoms while taking Yage, how have Shipibo shamans found those Tyramine-free foods?
Why have other shaman cultures either not found, ignored, or forgotten the importance of following a certain Tyramine-free diet before taking Yage?
The recent scientific discovery of Tyramine's effects when associated with MAOIs had been a fortunate one (find literature on the Endnotes).
Before that scientific discovery, when anybody experienced migraine while taking Yage (or afterwords) for scientific purposes, DMT of Yage used to be accused for that migraine, being DMT a psychoactive substance... Why didn't Shipibo shamans do that as well?
Shamanic knowledge has been gone down always like the following: when science ignores a certain thing, the shamanic knowledge about it is just a silly superstition; while when science discovers that thing, even thousands years later, that shamanic knowledge is considered as result of an extremely statistically-unlikely finding based on a coefficient of randomness that would embarrass the probability of universe formation from the Big-Bang.
The rational thinkers and scientists should now give some well deserved credits to real Shipibo shamans, and mostly to the importance of experiencing non-ordinary states of consciousness.