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.

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 improvements in disease symptoms as well as changes in appetite, brain chemicals and even vision, several recent studies have found, highlighting how fundamentally the mind and body are connected.

Read more via Why Placebos Work Wonders – WSJ.com.

The addition of acupuncture to best medical care for chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) may have a positive effect, according to a pilot study published online Dec. 5 in Acupuncture in Medicine.

Sven Schroeder, Ph.D., from the HanseMerkur Centre for Traditional Chinese Medicine at the University Medical Center in Hamburg, Germany, and colleagues evaluated the therapeutic effect of acupuncture on CIPN by measuring the changes in nerve conduction studies. Six patients were treated with acupuncture for 10 weeks, along with best medical care, and five patients were given best medical care with no specific treatment for CIPN (control group).

The investigators found an improvement in the nerve conduction study after treatment in five of the six patients treated with acupuncture. In the control group, one patient showed improvement, one showed impairment, and three showed no difference in the nerve conduction study.

“The data suggest that acupuncture has a positive effect on CIPN as measured by objective parameters nerve conduction study,” the authors write. “This pilot study shows encouraging results for the application of acupuncture in CIPN, justifying a randomized controlled trial.

Read more via Acupuncture May Help Chemo-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy –Doctors Lounge.

“Am I pretty enough? Am I doing this right? Should I be going to yoga?”

These kinds of anxious, self-judgmental thoughts often run through some women’s minds as they have sex, experts say. But a new study says “mindfulness meditation” training — which teaches how to bring one’s thoughts into the present moment — can quiet the mental chatter that prevents these women from fully feeling sexual stimuli.

Read more via Vitals – For better sex, don’t think about yoga.

Acupuncture helps reduce days with migraines and may have lasting effects, according to a new study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

In the study, almost 500 adults were treated with either traditional Chinese acupuncture or a sham treatment in which acupuncture needles were inserted in nonspecific points. The acupuncture treatment points were previously used to study migraine. Participants did not know which type of acupuncture treatment they were receiving during the four-week study.

Read more via Acupuncture May Be Effective for Migraines.

On a cold Saturday in early 2009, Glenn Black, a yoga teacher of nearly four decades, whose devoted clientele includes a number of celebrities and prominent gurus, was giving a master class at Sankalpah Yoga in Manhattan. Black is, in many ways, a classic yogi: he studied in Pune, India, at the institute founded by the legendary B. K. S. Iyengar, and spent years in solitude and meditation. He now lives in Rhinebeck, N.Y., and often teaches at the nearby Omega Institute, a New Age emporium spread over nearly 200 acres of woods and gardens. He is known for his rigor and his down-to-earth style. But this was not why I sought him out: Black, I’d been told, was the person to speak with if you wanted to know not about the virtues of yoga but rather about the damage it could do. Many of his regular clients came to him for bodywork or rehabilitation following yoga injuries. This was the situation I found myself in. In my 30s, I had somehow managed to rupture a disk in my lower back and found I could prevent bouts of pain with a selection of yoga postures and abdominal exercises. Then, in 2007, while doing the extended-side-angle pose, a posture hailed as a cure for many diseases, my back gave way. With it went my belief, naïve in retrospect, that yoga was a source only of healing and never harm.

Read William J. Broad’s full article via How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body – NYTimes.com.

A fitness phenomenon gaining popularity at gyms and senior centers across the country lets participants exercise to the beat of their own drums — literally.Drums Alive classes combine traditional aerobic movements with the powerful beat and rhythm of drums. Instead of beating on a drum, however, people whack a large exercise ball with a pair of drumsticks, unleashing their inner rock stars.The beauty of Drums Alive is that anyone can do it, regardless of age, fitness level or physical limitations, and drumming in a group fosters a sense of community, proponents say.”Weve never had anybody whos gone to the class who hasnt fallen in love with it,” said Shawn Bannon, a Baltimore group fitness instructor and master instructor in Drums Alive. “Its been competing with Zumba a dance-based workout, but people are finding that its much easier to do than Zumba. And for seniors, a lot of this involves dance moves that they already know.”While drumming is an ancient form of expression, Drums Alive is only getting started in the United States, having been introduced here less than a decade ago.

Read more via Drumming out fat in the new year – CNN.com.

The general is surprisingly good at meditation. It’s not just the impeccable posture — that might be expected of a man long used to standing at attention. It’s his hands, which rest idly on his knees, and his combat boots, which remain planted firmly on the floor. Over the next several minutes, Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Surgeon General of the Army, will keep his eyes closed and his face perfectly relaxed.

via Inside the Pentagons Alt-Medicine Mecca, Where the Generals Meditate | Danger Room | Wired.com.