The "vitamin" you are NOT ALLOWED to take?

Also known as Amygdalin or Laetrile, it is a controversial compound that occurs naturally in the bitter seeds of Apricots, apples, and peaches.

You’ve probably never heard of Vitamin B17. If you think the FDA is a perfectly benign agency acting only for the good of the public, you’ll want to pass on Vitamin B17. If you’re some shade of conspiracy theorist who thinks that the FDA is at least a little evil, you’ll probably want to try it. It’s worth the attention of Biohackers with a higher risk tolerance and those who have cancer.

This article is mostly going to focus on decoding what the human studies are saying about Vitamin B17 and how this squares up with the anecdotal experiences of Biohackers online.

A very personal anecdote...

Years ago, when I was living in South America, I faced quite a dilemma regarding birth control. I was dating this lovely 21-year-old Colombian university student.One night when we had a date scheduled, she told me she was feeling sick, so I hopped in a little taxi that drove recklessly through the streets of Medellin to bring her chocolate.In a moment that brought me back to high school, we were cuddling on her bed pretending to watch a movie while trysting and listening warily for her madre’s footsteps coming down the hallway to make sure she was being a good Catholic girl!

She nonchalantly mentioned to me that she was feeling sick because she had just started taking the pill. Now, this Colombiana will remain forever young and nubile in my imagination. She was eager to please and would purr like a cat in bed. It was truly glorious making love to her. The prospect of her most intimate embrace without protection was truly tantalizing, but as a Biohacker, I knew that the pill was bad news for women’s health. So I found myself in quite a predicament, but I did care for her, and she was a pretty sharp girl, who at least pretended to share my passion for all things healthy. So I resolved to talk to her about my reservations about the pill and my willingness to keep using condoms.

Ultimately, I failed to provide her the emotional rollercoaster that the intoxicating women of that country so crave; we stopped seeing each other, and the dilemma resolved itself.However, if I had known about herbal birth control and Vitamin B17, I would have had a viable contraceptive option that satisfied both my bioethics and my most primal desires. If, like me, you’re prone to sporadic episodes of unrequited hedonism, you’ll want to consider adding this to your arsenal of lifestyle Biohacks.

A dubious contraceptive method

Vitamin B17 and apricot seeds in particular likely prevent pregnancy and can even be used for an herbal abortion (yes, that’s a thing!)

From The Tao Of Health, Sex, and Longevity:

For thousands of years, the young women of Polynesia have enjoyed complete and uninhibited sexual freedom prior to marriage, with no worries about unwanted pregnancy. Their secret is to eat a few handfuls of papaya seeds every day. The active ingredient responsible for their freedom from pregnancy is vitamin B17, more popularly known as laetrile, the controversial drug banned in the United States due to unproven claims that it can prevent and help cure cancer. (4571-4574)

From the queerly named book, Herbal Abortion: the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge:

If you made love with a man during your fertile time (for example, days 10-16 in a 28 day cycle), and you do not wish to be pregnant, here is what you do:1. After unprotected intercourse on a potentially fertile day, begin eating 5-10 apricot kernels 3 times a day. Continue this until your period comes. This prevents implantation. (The same effect can be achieved with high levels of Vitamin C in this way. Use more than 10 grams per day.)

Is this scientifically proven? Not really.

However, there’s a significant quantity of positive anecdotal evidence and a stark lack of Nocebo reports, which you would especially expect for a birth control measure. (If you wear a BrandX condom but yet somehow end up impregnating Jyll, whom you met at the Ladies Night at Sky Bar, you’re going to warn everyone you can for the rest of your existence against buying those damn leaky BrandX condoms!)

Also, consider that, since time immemorial, there’s been a significant economic incentive for those who work in the world’s oldest profession to prevent pregnancy. People have been having sex in exchange for money, probably ever since we invented money, so these herbal medicine traditions arise as a result of pragmatism, not mysticism. Anything that didn’t actually work surely would not have been passed down through ages from madam, to courtesan, to pimp, to streetwalker...

I foresee myself using herbal birth control in the future when I’m in a relationship where pregnancy is undesirable, yet not unacceptable. If I were married or in a serious long-term relationship, I would rather have her use a herbal birth control strategy than the pill, which is going to fundamentally alter her hormones, psychology, and libido.

Depending upon which sexpert you listen to, the pullout method is actually just a little less effective than using condoms.

If a woman uses the birth control pill imperfectly, namely forgetting to take it at the same time every day, its effectiveness in preventing a little bundle of joy decreases detrimentally.

How many stories have you heard of people who had an unexpected pregnancy even while using mainstream birth control methods? Maybe it’s even happened to you!I wouldn’t depend upon herbal birth control alone if I were sleeping with someone with whom I didn’t want to have a child. The amalgamation of the limited science done and the preponderance of anecdotal accounts online doesn’t give me the confidence to bet at least $250,000 and 18 years of my life on herbal birth control working.Conversely, though, given the unreliability of conventional birth control methods, if I were sleeping regularly with someone whom I didn’t want to make babies with, I would hedge my bets and supplement the normal contraceptives with herbal birth control. Specifically...

* Californian apricot seeds

* Queen Anne’s Lace Seeds

* Neem Oil

* Smartweed leaves

* Wild Yam

If I had my partner use all of them properly, the cumulative contraceptive effectiveness would be pretty close to 100%. Especially, if I’m also using the much-maligned pullout method and Taoist semen retention method