Rave-goers and visitors to Amsterdam before December 2008 may be intimately familiar with magic mushrooms, but there’s little scientific knowledge on what happens to the brain while tripping.
Now it appears that more research is warranted. A growing number of studies suggested that perhaps the mushrooms’ key ingredient could work magic for certain mental disorders.
New research in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences sheds light on why one of the mushrooms’ hallucinogenic chemical compounds, psilocybin, may hold promise for the treatment of depression. Scientists explored the effect of psilocybin on the brain, documenting the neural basis behind the altered state of consciousness that people have reported after using magic mushrooms.
“We have found that these drugs turn off the parts of the brain that integrate sensations – seeing, hearing, feeling – with thinking,” said David Nutt, co-author of the study and researcher at Imperial College London in the United Kingdom.
Read more via Magic mushrooms may be therapeutic – – CNN.com Blogs.
At school, 8-year-old Alex Karaszi couldn’t focus his attention and sit still. Soon, his grades began to suffer. At home, he had mood swings and threw tantrums. “I was grumpy at night,” the second-grader explained. The family doctor diagnosed mild to moderate attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and prescribed medication. Beata Karaszi, Alex’s mother, was reluctant, but went ahead at the urging of her husband and the boy’s teachers. She stopped it after a week. “He got horrible nightmares, became very sensitive, very emotional. It was horrible,” she said. Then she read about another option: acupuncture.
Acupuncture has been an integral part of Chinese medicine for more than 2,000 years. It is based on the theory that the body’s energy, called Qi (pronounced chee), flows freely when you are well, but can become blocked or weak. Inserting hair-thin needles into the skin at specific treatment points on the body can restore a healthy energy flow, practitioners say.
Read more via Parents say acupuncture has alleviated boy’s ADHD – Tampa Bay Times.
January 16, 2012
You could call it a religious war of words, with the West Coast serving as one of its most intense battlegrounds. The bid to win hearts and minds pits Buddhist meditation against Christian prayer, with meditation, especially so-called “mindfulness,” seeming to be gaining ground. It’s been the focus of more than 60 recent scholarly studies. [...]
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January 16, 2012
The latest issue of the journal Medical Acupuncture reveals that the United States Armed Forces is incorporating acupuncture, one of the oldest healing practices in the world, to assist in the medical care of its personnel. First recorded in the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon (黄帝内经), an ancient Chinese medical text written more than two millennia [...]
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January 16, 2012
Traditional Chinese medicine has long been used to ease pain and treat disease. Now researchers have found it can also boost fertility if used in combination with fertility treatments. A team led by Dr Shahar Levi-Ari from Tel Aviv University compared the success rates of couples using intrauterine insemination (IUI) both with and without Chinese [...]
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January 16, 2012
While the mortality rate of women with breast cancer is decreasing, the incidence of depression in women who have undergone treatment for breast cancer is on the rise. As many as 50% of all women who are affected with the disease will experience some kind of post-recovery melancholy. Thankfully, researchers from the Sinclair School of [...]
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January 16, 2012
Say “placebo effect” and most people think of the boost they may get from a sugar pill simply because they believe it will work. But more and more research suggests there is more than a fleeting boost to be gained from placebos. A particular mind-set or belief about one’s body or health may lead to [...]
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January 16, 2012
Internal Medicine News Digital Network Acupuncture Flops as Relief for Muscle Pain From Aromatase Inhibitors Internal Medicine News Digital Network SAN ANTONIO – Acupuncture for the reduction of aromatase inhibitor–related musculoskeletal symptoms in breast cancer patients proved a disappointment in an interim analysis of a double-blind, randomized, sham-controlled, multicenter clinical trial. …and more »
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January 16, 2012
Jon Kabat-Zinn, an MIT-trained molecular biologist, began meditating in 1966, when the practice was primarily the province of hippies and gurus, not scientists. Now, thanks in large part to his efforts, it has become mainstream medicine. Dozens of studies have since shown the benefits of what he termed Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction MBSR in treating cardiovascular [...]
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January 15, 2012
Differential Impact of Stress Reduction Programs upon Ambulatory Blood Pressure among African American Adolescents: Influences of Endothelin-1 Gene and Chronic Stress Exposure. Int J Hypertens. 2012;2012:510291 Authors: Gregoski MJ, Barnes VA, Tingen MS, Dong Y, Zhu H, Treiber FA Abstract Stress-activated gene × environment interactions may contribute to individual variability in blood pressure reductions from [...]
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Keywords: Mark Melchiorre, IIQTC, Roger Jahnke, NQA, National Qigong Association, Supreme Science, SSQF, Tai Chi Workshops, Tai Chi Workshops, Taiji Workshops, Qigong Workshops, Chi Kung Workshops, Energy Medicine, Institute of Integral Qigong and Tai Chi, Integral Wisdom Qigong, Zhineng Qigong, ChiLel Qigong, Pang Ming, Healer Within Foundation