Magic mushroom ingredient psilocybin can lift depression, studies show

A single dose of psilocybin, the active ingredient of magic mushrooms, can lift the anxiety and depression experienced by people with advanced cancer for six months or even longer, two new studies show.

Researchers involved in the two trials in the United States say the results are remarkable. The volunteers had “profoundly meaningful and spiritual experiences” which made most of them rethink life and death, ended their despair and brought about lasting improvement in the quality of their lives.

The results of the research are published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology together with no less than ten commentaries from leading scientists in the fields of psychiatry and palliative care, who all back further research. While the effects of magic mushrooms have been of interest to psychiatry since the 1950s, the classification of all psychedelics in the US as schedule 1 drugs in the 1970s, in the wake of the Vietnam war and the rise of recreational drug use in the hippy counter-culture, has erected daunting legal and financial obstacles to running trials.

“I think it is a big deal both in terms of the findings and in terms of the history and what it represents. It was part of psychiatry and vanished and now it’s been brought back,” said Dr Stephen Ross, director of addiction psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center and lead investigator of the study that was based there.

Around 40-50% of newly diagnosed cancer patients suffer some sort of depression or anxiety. Antidepressants have little effect, particularly on the “existential” depression that can lead some to feel their lives are meaningless and contemplate suicide.

The main findings of the NYU study, which involved 29 patients, and the larger one from Johns Hopkins University with 51 patients, that a single dose of the medication can lead to immediate reduction in the depression and anxiety caused by cancer and that the effect can last up to eight months, “is unprecedented,” said Ross. “We don’t have anything like it.”

The results of the studies were very similar, with around 80% of the patients attributing moderately or greatly improved wellbeing or life satisfaction to a single high dose of the drug, given with psychotherapy support.

Professor Roland Griffiths, of the departments of psychiatry and neuroscience who led the study at Johns Hopkins University school of medicine, said he did not expect the findings, which he described as remarkable. “I am bred as a sceptic. I was sceptical at the outset that this drug could produce long-lasting changes,” he said. These were people “facing the deepest existential questions that humans can encounter – what is the nature of life and death, the meaning of life.”

But the results were similar to those they had found in earlier studies in healthy volunteers. “In spite of their unique vulnerability and the mood disruption that the illness and contemplation of their death has prompted, these participants have the same kind of experiences, that are deeply meaningful, spiritually significant and producing enduring positive changes in life and mood and behaviour,” he said.

Patients describe the experiences as “re-organisational”, said Griffiths. Some in the field had used the term “mystical”, which he thought was unfortunate. “It sounds unscientific. It sounds like we’re postulating mechanisms other than neuroscience and I’m certainly not making that claim.”

Ross said psilocybin activates a sub-type of serotonin receptor in the brain. “Our brains are hard-wired to have these kinds of experiences – these alterations of consciousness. We have endogenous chemicals in our brain. We have a little system that, when you tickle it, it produces these altered states that have been described as spiritual states, mystical states in different religious branches.

“They are defined by a sense of oneness – people feel that their separation between the personal ego and the outside world is sort of dissolved and they feel that they are part of some continuous energy or consciousness in the universe. Patients can feel sort of transported to a different dimension of reality, sort of like a waking dream.”

Some patients describe seeing images from their childhood and very commonly, scenes or images from a confrontation with cancer, he said. The doctors warn patients that it may happen and not to be scared, but to embrace it and pass through it, he said.

The commentators writing in the journal include two past presidents of the American Psychiatric Association, the past president of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, a previous deputy director of the Office of USA National Drug Control Policy and a previous head of the UK Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority.

The journal editor, Professor David Nutt, was himself involved in a small trial of psilocybin in a dozen people with severe depression in the UK in May. The ten commentators in the journal, he writes in an editorial, “all essentially say the same thing: it’s time to take psychedelic treatments in psychiatry and oncology seriously, as we did in the 1950s and 1960s.”

Much more research needs to be done, he writes. “But the key point is that all agree we are now in an exciting new phase of psychedelic psychopharmacology that needs to be encouraged not impeded.”

The studies were funded by the Heffter Research Institute in the USA. “These findings, the most profound to date in the medical use of psilocybin, indicate it could be more effective at treating serious psychiatric diseases than traditional pharmaceutical approaches, and without having to take a medication every day,” said its medical director George Greer.

Magic mushroom ingredient psilocybin can lift depression, studies show

Has the Minister for Magic Jeremy Hunt gone too far?

For Mr Hunt, it seems, could be seen to be quietly endorsing TCM: fellow Tory MP David Tredinnick, chairman of the all-party group for integrated healthcare, obviously thinks he is: “He has clearly looked at it,” he says, “and thinks that where it is safe, it should be used in conjunction with Western medicine, which is what they do in China.

“Herbal medicine is not quackery – it has been used for thousands of years in China. In my experience, and I have used it, it can be really effective and reduce the amount of conventional medicine needed.”

Of course, Mr Tredinnick isn’t offering Cochrane Collaboration-level evidence – just hearsay and an anecdotal report – but is he right? Are we ignoring a wealth of medicine for no good reason? After all, our medicine doesn’t go back millennia.

“Nor does TCM,” says Professor David Colquhoun, pharmacologist, Fellow of the Royal Society, and scourge of evidence-lite medicine on his award-winning blog DC: Improbable Science.

“Traditional herbal medicine was banned in China in 1822 for being superstitious nonsense by the then emperor,” he adds. “TCM, as we know it, was reintroduced by Chairman Mao as part of the great proletarian revolution and to stir up nationalism.” (Although Mao’s own doctor practised Western medicine after studying in Australia.)

Today, Prof Colquhoun says, there are plenty of excellent Western-style doctors in China. “If you can afford it, you go for real medicine there, not the traditional way,” he adds.

He claims this is because traditional Chinese medicines – even if they are safe to take – have not been shown to be efficacious. “Even where there has been a placebo effect shown, that has mostly been too minor to be noticeable,” he says.

Prof Colquhoun is frustrated to hear talk of TCM coming into the NHS when there is a likelihood that its close cousin – acupuncture – may be on the way out. Acupuncture is based on the belief that a “life force”, called qi, flows through the body. “Like TCM, there have been thousands of studies into the use of acupuncture, but none show any real effect,” he says.

Colquhoun continues: “It is baffling that Nice [the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence] currently recommends acupuncture for some lower back pain, though that guidance is likely to change. Nice made a bit of a cock-up on that one.”

Nice hasn’t shown any interest in approving TCM. Not that this will comfort our hard-pressed GPs, who will be the ones fielding requests from patients for the Secretary of State’s alternative medicine.

“We are in the middle of one of the biggest funding crises ever,” says Dr Thomas Round, a GP in Tower Hamlets, east London. “Millions have been cut from budgets – so we have to focus on where to get best value on everything we spend. Given that there is a complete lack of evidence for TCM, it really wasn’t a helpful thing for the Secretary of State to say. And it’s not just the lack of evidence. Most GPs would have no training in TCM, so it would be outside our competency to offer it.”

_{Jeremy Hunt, with his Chinese wife Lucia, faces opposition from medical experts}

Nor are any of the TCM products licensed or listed with the British National Formulary, the publication that provides doctors with up-to-date information about all prescription drugs. “We would have no idea about contraindications or possible interactions,” says Dr Round.

The doctor insists he is speaking not with a closed mind, just a sensible one: “If the evidence came out, then of course I’d revisit it. And if someone wants to explore TCM privately, I wouldn’t stop them, although I would point out that we don’t know what active ingredients are used in Chinese medicine. For example, a recent report that looked at TCM herbal skin creams found they contained steroids.” Side-effects of using steroid cream unchecked can include skin thinning, allergies, bruising, and it can suppress the adrenal glands.

Concerns about TCM don’t end with effectiveness, cost or side-effects. The Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority (MHRA) warns that some products pose a “direct risk to public health”.

It is an ongoing concern for the teams of MHRA investigators who examine and test every product or device that has alleged health claims. Last summer, it reported finding heavy metals, including mercury, which can cause tremors, memory loss, kidney and even brain damage, in TCM products. It also flagged up advice from the Swedish National Food Agency (SNFA) of “extremely high” levels of arsenic in various products used to treat mumps, sore throat, tonsillitis, toothache, skin infections, anorexia and fever in infants. The items may not be on sale in the UK but can be found online, the MHRA warns.

Last April, the authority also highlighted the fact that a herbal product for migraine called Zheng tian wan contained aconite – a herb known as “the queen of poisons”, which can cause potentially fatal adverse reactions if consumed. And in February 2013, it warned against traditional headache tablets that had been found to contain lead – the toxic effects include abdominal pain, anaemia, changes in blood pressure, miscarriage, insomnia, dizziness and kidney damage.

Side-effects are not merely theoretical, however. Between November 2003 and June 2004, doctors at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham treated four patients who had developed severe acute liver injury within two months of starting to take a TCM slimming aid called Shubao.

The lack of labelling in English, the unregulated ingredients, the additional illegal ingredients, the paucity of trials, the absence of evidence of efficacy: isn’t it astonishing to think that anyone in the NHS might think TCM could be useful in the GP’s surgery any day soon?

It certainly won’t happen in Dr Round’s practice. “I am the gatekeeper to finite resources and I wouldn’t feel comfortable using something with dubious clinical evidence,” he says.

If the Secretary of State for Health wants to explore TCM, he may have to go private this time.

Has the Minister for Magic Jeremy Hunt gone too far?

NBA"s Magic Johnson, Alonzo Mourning Newest Celebs To Market ObamaCare

The Obama administration, in its most current push to boost the quantity of Americans signing up to enroll in well being positive aspects below the Inexpensive Care Act, mentioned NBA legends Magic Johnson and Alonzo Mourning who are effectively familar with making use of the health care care method will appear in adverts starting tonight.

The adverts will appearing nationally on ESPN ESPN, ABC, TNT and NBAtv in the course of NBA games and in “local markets that have higher concentrations of the uninsured,” the Centers for Medicare &amp Medicaid Solutions explained in a statement. They will run through the finish of the open enrollment time period on March 31.

“As portion of our sustained, aggressive outreach to young adults, today we are launching new television ads featuring Magic Johnson and Alonzo Mourning to help increase awareness about the Health Insurance Marketplace,” said CMS spokeswoman Julie Bataille. “We know the younger and wholesome audience responds well to sports figures, and these 30 2nd advertisements characteristic two NBA legends that each have a compelling health story.”

Johnson, who led the Los Angeles Lakers to 5 NBA championships in the 1980s prior to retiring in 1991 soon after currently being diagnosed with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has been outspoken for the need to have for Americans to obtain accessibility to health coverage. Mourning, who battled kidney condition and survived a kidney transplant, helped the Miami Heat to an NBA championship

In his advertisement, linked below, he stated Americans can get “side by side comparisons” to name brand ideas. He says it may sound like “Magic,” but “it’s actual.”

Neither Johnson, nor Mourning are currently being paid for their appearances in the advertisements, the Obama administration said.

Here’s a link to the ads:

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NBA"s Magic Johnson, Alonzo Mourning Newest Celebs To Market ObamaCare