Latest news with #LouiseHecker
Yahoo
16 hours ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Magic mushrooms live up to their name by appearing to slow ageing
Psychedelic mushrooms are sometimes called 'magic' for their hallucinogenic effects which some proponents believe make them think more clearly and see things they would never ordinarily perceive. But going by findings published in Nature Partnering Journal Aging, the easily-harvested and widely-available wild fungi could be called magic for another reason: they appear to have anti-ageing properties. According to Baylor College of Medicine and Emory University in the US, the active psychedelic compound in the mushroom, known as psilocybin, "may extend both cellular and organismal lifespans." The team said that psilocybin "reduced multiple hallmarks of ageing in cells" and, depending on the dosages, "extended cellular lifespan up to 57%." The researchers also carried out tests on mice that showed psilocybin improving survival in older rodents. The mushrooms, and psilocybin in particular, have been shown to help depression patients and, but the physical effects outside the brain have gone uncharted. According to the research team, there are around 150 studies ongoing or recently completed looking at psilocybin's potential to treat not only depression but also cognitive disorders such as dementia. Last month, the American Cancer Society published findings of a second phase of tests that showed a "significant" reduction in depression among more than half of participants two years on from receiving a 25-milligram dose of psilocybin. "Our findings suggest that psilocybin has potent effects on the entire body, including anti-ageing properties, which also may contribute to the plethora of observed beneficial clinical outcomes," said Louise Hecker, associate professor of medicine – cardiovascular research at Baylor. "Our study provides the first experimental evidence demonstrating that psilocybin impacts hallmarks of ageing," the team said.
Medical News Today
18 hours ago
- Health
- Medical News Today
Slowing aging: Psilocybin helps extend life span in human cells by over 50%
Psilocybin is a chemical that is found in a wide variety of mushrooms known for their euphoric and hallucinogenic effects. Over the past few years, there have been a number of studies investigating the use of psilocybin for the treatment of mental health disorders and medical conditions. A new study says psilocybin may help delay aging by increasing the cellular life span of human skin and lung cells by more than 50%. Scientists also reported evidence psilocybin may help protect the body from age-related diseases through several health-protecting qualities, via a mouse is a chemical that is found in a wide variety of mushrooms. Also known as 'shrooms' and 'magic mushrooms,' psilocybin is known for its euphoric and hallucinogenic effects. Over the past few years, there have been a number of studies investigating the use of psilocybin for the treatment of mental health disorders such as treatment-resistant depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and substance use disorders, as well as medical conditions like migraine, Alzheimer's disease, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and Parkinson's disease. 'The overwhelming majority of what we know about psilocybin is from clinical outcomes (with >150 clinical trials ongoing or completed) and impacts on the brain,' Louise Hecker, PhD, associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine, told Medical News Today. 'Psilocybin is well known for its hallucinogenic properties. However, we know very little about what it does otherwise, particularly its impact systemically on the rest of the body.'Hecker is the senior author of a new study recently published in the journal npj Aging that has found indication that psilocybin may help delay aging by increasing the cellular lifespan of human skin and lung cells by more than 50%. Scientists also reported evidence psilocybin may help protect the body from age-related diseases, such as neurodegeneration, heart disease, and cancer through several health-protecting qualities, via a mouse helps extend life in cells by over 50%For this study, researchers first used a cellular aging model of human lung cells to see how psilocin — the active ingredient in mushrooms that causes hallucinogenic effects — would impact them. Scientists reported that psilocin helped to extend the cellular lifespan of human skin and lung cells by more than 50%.'The significance is that psilocin-treated cells do age, however they age at a slower rate, while maintaining the properties of 'young' cells longer,' Hecker, who was an associate professor at Emory University at the time of the study, said. When moving to a mouse model, Hecker and her team also discovered that mice at the equivalent of 60-65 human years given psilocybin lived longer than those who did not receive it. Additionally, these mice displayed healthier features, such as fewer white hairs and hair regrowth.'We designed this experiment with the clinical relevance in mind — wouldn't it be great if we could give an intervention to elderly adults that helps them to live healthier longer?,' Hecker explained. 'Our study suggests that this is possible.'Psilocybin helps maintain telomere length, helping with agingAccording to researchers, their findings suggest that psilocybin assists with slowing aging by reducing oxidative stress, improving DNA repair responses, and maintaining the length of telomeres. Telomeres are the 'end caps' of chromosomes. By helping to preserve telomere lengths, the researchers believe this may help protect the body from age-related diseases like heart disease, neurodegeneration, and cancer. 'Psilocybin appears to reduce the 'wear and tear' that accompanies aging. Although psilocybin is well-known for its psychedelic effects, our study suggests that psilocybin has potent impacts on the entire body. Psilocybin holds great potential for promoting healthy aging — this is just the starting point, as much more research is needed.'— Louise Hecker, PhD'We need to better understand its mechanisms of action, in particular how it works outside the brain to impact systemic aging and other processes,' Hecker said. 'More research is needed to optimize dosing/frequency protocols as well as monitor for the potential of adverse effects before it is ready to be used clinically as an anti-aging agent.'More studies needed to translate findings to humansMNT spoke with Jack Jacoub, MD, a board certified medical oncologist and medical director of MemorialCare Cancer Institute at Orange Coast and Saddleback Medical Centers in Orange County, CA, about this study. 'Cell aging is a key feature to overall health and illnesses and cancer,' Jacoub said. 'And so there's a lot of therapies now that are looking at things like senescence, which is normal cell aging, how to slow it down, and how to repair the damage that happens with aging. Sometimes issues related to cancer are due to the inability to repair damage, and it becomes a cancerous cell.' Jacoub commented that while this was a very interesting and notable observational study, it's a big leap right now to say these findings will translate to human illnesses, including cancer. 'It's too general right now to say anti-aging — that's an incredible umbrella. For it to really make an impact, and for you to see it available and recommended, it's going to need to be advanced further, obviously in humans, but then in particular areas to be able to say, yes, there really is merit to this, we should be recommending this to patients, etc.' — Jack Jacoub, MD'Like for example, could it help repair injury quickly?,' Jacoub continued. 'That would be (an) interesting thing to observe and study. And so let's say it's stroke patients, heart attack patients, whatever it might be — is there some role there to use it and accelerate healing from events like that? (And) a good one would be cellular repair. Can you recover and heal faster if you took this? That would be an example of it.'
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Evidence Grows That Tripping on Shrooms Might Increase Your Lifespan
In a new study, scientists have uncovered evidence that magic mushrooms just might be an effective anti-aging treatment. Published in the Nature Partnering Journal Aging, a new paper by researchers at Emory and Baylor's medical schools suggests that psilocybin, the active compound in psychedelic mushrooms — there are a range of species that produce it, but the best known is probably Pisolocybe cubensis — might extend the lifespans of both mice and potentially humans. The two-part study tested medium-sized doses of psilocybin on older mice, and later introduced similar amounts of the compound to human cells to see how it affected their telomeres, which shorten as organisms grow older and are viewed as a hallmark of aging. In both the mice and the human cells — half of which were fetal lung cells, the other half from adult skin — the introduction of psilocybin was linked to preserved telomere length. In other words, the study appears to show that telomeres shortened more slowly after being given psilocybin than they would have without, and that mushrooms may increase cellular lifespan. In addition to the telomere findings, the researchers also noted that the psilocybin-treated mice showed increased survival skills and had "improvements in overall fur quality," which may suggest further anti-aging properties as well. According to Louise Hecker, a Baylor medical and cardiovascular researcher and the senior author of the paper, she and her colleagues were compelled to look into the potential lifespan-enhancing effects of psilocybin because, for the most part, it hasn't really been studied directly. "The overwhelming majority of what we know about psilocybin is how it impacts the brain," Hecker said in a press release about the study. "Our findings suggest that psilocybin has potent effects on the entire body, including antiaging properties, which also may contribute to the plethora of observed beneficial clinical outcomes." However, some previous research has suggested that psychedelic drugs could be linked to positive health outcomes. A study in 2021, for instance, found that people who used hallucinogenic drugs including psilocybin, LSD and mescaline had a lower risk of developing heart disease and diabetes. Some other studies suggest that people who have periodically used psychedelics recreationally are less likely to be overweight or obese. While Hecker's colleague and paper coauthor Kosuke Kato urged caution when establishing a causal link between shrooms and increased lifespan, he pointed to the results in the aged mice as perhaps the most important part of the research. "This is a very exciting and clinically relevant finding that suggests that even when [psychedelic] intervention is initiated late in life, it can have dramatic impacts," Kato said in the press release. While there's "still a lot to understand, including optimal dosing protocols that will lead to maximal efficacy," Kato said that further study will hopefully help researchers and medical practitioners alike figure out how psilocybin treatment can work. Hecker, meanwhile, enthused that her team's findings "open an exciting new chapter in psychedelic research" — a field that's already shown lots of promise in recent years when looking into the ways these drugs can help with mental illness and dementia. "Psilocybin may represent a disruptive agent that promotes healthy aging," she said. "The next steps need to explore the therapeutic effects across multiple age-related diseases." More on psychedelics: People Are Taking Massive Doses of Psychedelic Drugs and Using AI as a Tripsitter
