Castaneda Antidepressant

Indian psychedelic decoction used to treat depression

Anna Kaznadzei, N+1

In a new study of the effects of psychedelic substances on depressive human states, Brazilian scientists have found that ayahuasca (aka ayawasca or liana of the dead), a hallucinogenic drink traditionally made by shamans of Indian tribes, can positively affect the mood of people who are depressed, even a week after ingestion. This is the first double-blind randomized test of the therapeutic effect of Ayahuasca, which shows a significant advantage over placebo drugs. Preliminary publication of the article by Palhano-Fontes et al. Rapid antidepressant effects of the psychedelic ayahuasca in treatment-resistant depression: a randomized placebo-controlled trial can be seen on bioRxiv.

Ayahuasca is a twelve–hour herbal decoction, common among the tribes of the Amazon basin and used to communicate with spirits. In Brazil, it is legal, which is often used by visiting tourists. Its main component is a vine Banisteriopsis caapi. Leaves of other plants are added to its decoction, including shag and, for example, Psychotria viridis or Diplopterys cabrerana, which contain dimethyltryptamine (DMT). DMT is a powerful psychoactive alkaloid that would dissolve along the gastrointestinal tract if the vine did not contain the alkaloids harmines and harmalines – monoamine oxidase inhibitors, thanks to which DMT successfully enters the human brain. It works for about six hours, the maximum effect is observed two hours after ingestion.

The drink is very unpleasant to the taste and causes nausea. Traditionally, it is used in religious sacraments and supposedly promotes spiritual healing and cleansing of the body. In part, this is interpreted literally: thanks to the aforementioned harmine alkaloids, ayahuasca is an excellent anthelmintic. Before and during the rituals, shamans fast, excluding fatty, spicy and alcohol from food, considering that the effect of these products is opposite to the effect of Ayahuasca, and also abstain from sexual activity. Such fasts can last up to two years, and during this time some shamans use ayahuasca every day. Restrictions in food partly make sense, since when eating certain foods in the body increases the content of tyramine, which is formed from the usual amino acid tyrosine. In the absence of monoamine oxidases necessary for its oxidation, blocked by harmine alkaloids, the level of adrenaline in the blood can rise much higher than normal and cause panic attacks, hypertensive crisis, myocardial infarction, aneurysms and even death.

In Europe, Ayahuasca was learned in detail only at the beginning of the twentieth century, although in the sixteenth century Christian missionaries described it as the result of the devil's providence. In Russia, as in a number of other countries, including the United States, ayahuasca is banned, while the Peruvian authorities consider liana Banisteriopsis caapi is a national treasure, and the drink from it is a source of natural knowledge.

It has already been shown that harmines individually and ayahuasca as a whole are able to have the effect of antidepressants on experimental animals and even on humans, but no placebo tests have been conducted up to this point. Scientists from the Institute of Brain Activity of the University of Rio Grande do Norte conducted a double-blind randomized test with people suffering from monopolar clinical depression aged 18 to 60 years who had never used ayahuasca and other psychedelic substances before. Initially, they filled out a standard medical questionnaire of the Dissociative States Scale, which allowed them to assess the degree of their depression, and after that they were in a calm, quiet environment and under the supervision of scientists for eight hours. At the same time, they received either a placebo or an Ayahuasca decoction containing 0.36 mg / kg of DMT, the effect of which was calculated for approximately four hours. To enhance the similarity, the placebo was prepared similar to a psychedelic decoction – it was tasteless and brown. Neither the subjects nor the observers knew which of the subjects had taken the placebo.

It is known that when testing for new antidepressants, the placebo effect can be so good that up to forty percent of patients feel positive changes from it alone. At the beginning of this experiment, some subjects who took a placebo also felt even better than those who took a decoction with a psychedelic. However, a week later, the alignment changed, and 64 percent of the subjects who took Ayahuasca felt at least twice as good as their initial indicators on the Dissociative States Scale. Only 27 percent of the subjects who took placebo achieved such an improvement, which once again emphasizes its healing role, but also demonstrates the undoubted advantages of ayahuasca, scientists say.

The Ayahuasca effect turned out to be stronger than the observed effect of ketamine in most well–known experiments (ketamine is another psychedelic, with which many studies have been conducted recently in the context of depressive disorders). However, the placebo effect in this study was also more than usual. Perhaps an important factor of the conditions of the experiment affected here – some of the subjects, often living in a bad social environment, were in a calm and clean hospital for several days. The researchers also recorded electrophysiological data of patients, including encephalographic, electrooculographic, electrocardiographic and others, and promise to publish them later.

Colleagues of scientists from the Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of California believe that the observed effects can help in the development of antidepressants, especially in cases where patients do not respond to treatment with known means. About 350 million people on the planet have depressive disorders, and at least a third of them are not helped by modern medicines. However, they note, for a full-fledged analysis of the action of ayahuasca, longer experiments are needed, allowing for a long time to observe the condition of the subjects.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  18.04.2017