🍄 The New Health Club #45 - Christmas is coming! Here are my top 5 NON psychedelic-related products..
In this crazy year we are all experiencing, a lot of things are happening and are coming together. Many of these are completely new to us, which I love, to be honest: 2020 brought us a culture and yes, a lifestyle, that is growing around the psychedelic world and the idea to treat and look at mental health very differently.
Here are my five fancy favorite products, that are NOT psychedelics, but are kind of psychedelic-related, in a broader sense. Or just related to taking care of mental wellness.
How I protect my immune system...
The Four Sigmatic Mushroom Elixir Mix with Chaga helps me to support my immune system. It’s adaptogenic, which means if I am nervous, it will calm me down and if I am tired, it will make me a little more awake. Chaga is a mushroom, but not a magic, psychoactive mushroom. You could say it is like a CBD version for mushrooms and Four Sigmatic has turned it into an amazingly modern supplement.
How I shower...
Of course with the peppermint soap from Dr. Bronner’s! I was always a fan of Dr. Bronner’s before I even knew what the company really was and what they stood for. When I lived in LA, I always bought a bottle of their peppermint soap. And as you might know, Dr. Bronners is also our sponsor for The New Health Club podcast these days and it’s so nice how it’s all come full circle.
With their Heal Soul! campaign, Dr Bronner’s is supporting groundbreaking initiatives that are decriminalising psychedelic therapy like Decrim Nature DC, Initiative 81/Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative/Heroic Hearts Project/ VETS: Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions, Inc.and of course MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) . Aaaand stay tuned, more “decrim” collaborations with Dr. Broners are coming. In the meantime, get their Peppermint Treatment!
BTW, David Bronner will be on our show again soon!
How I sleep/work….
… in pyjamas! Yes, you heard it right :) I never owned some before, but in these times one needs a cozy uniform while being at home or in bed, but not feeling like you will live forever in your jogging or yoga pants ;) So what to do? Well I just discovered Olivia von Halle, the amazing silk pyjama and tracksuit design genius from London. I love walking around in them at home, they feel amazing!
How I sleep: Part 2
About 20 minutes before I close my eyes, I take 4 pumps of the Moon, Rest, Cosy, Back Dose Spray with Hemp and Melatonin by VAAY. I wake up really rested, that’s great in a time when we all have so many things constantly on our minds…
What I Read...
The Book “Love Drugs- The chemical future of relationships" by Brian D.Earp and Julian Savulescu is one of my favorite books I read this year and I’m already planning to read it again. I got really inspired by their theories and research on love. We also had Brian on the podcast so if you missed it, catch up now!
Also I really recommend anything by the amazing Dr.Gabor Maté, the Canadian doctor, who is such an inspiration for all things trauma and addiction. I was touched by his conversation with Tim Ferris.
A Research Round-Up by Ewan Waddell.
In psilocybin news: A new study out of Johns Hopkins Medicine found that just two sessions of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy resulted in “rapid and large reductions in major depressive symptoms”.
But how long for? These changes tended to last for at least a month, with half of the participants still no longer considered to be experiencing major depression after one month.
In MDMA news: a randomized, double-blind study found that MDMA-assisted psychotherapy alleviated the symptoms of anxiety following a diagnosis of a life-threatening illness three times as effectively as with psychotherapy alone. These findings align with a similarly structured study from 2016 which used psilocybin-assisted therapy to alleviate anxiety in cancer patients.
What’s next? Well, although these findings are promising, the study size was limited (18) and notably undiverse, therefore more research must be done before firm conclusions can be drawn.
In (more) psilocybin news: anon-profit medical research organization, Usona Institute, is offering eligible researchers psilocybin for free.
Why? Despite the fact one can easily find the substance in nature (if you know where to look), access to consistently high-quality psilocybin is a key obstacle in clinical trials. A short supply of the compound was highly restrictive to some initial psilocybin studies and resulted in some researchers being forced to use decades-old psilocybin. Usona’s pledge, therefore, seeks to enable clinicians to more efficiently secure the clinical evidence that will lead to the type of medicalization that might help us fight our mental health crisis.
In psychedelic business news: Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel recently led a $125 million funding round into Berlin-based psychedelic research start-up ATAI Life Sciences.
What does this mean? Well although the idea of big money being involved in psychedelics rightfully makes a lot of people uneasy, the reality is that our governments have been wholly unsupportive of psychedelic research. Clinical trials cost money, and a billion people today are currently suffering from mental health disorders. The free market might not be the most perfect route to arrive at a psychedelically medicalized future, but it might be the best chance we have at getting there soon.
All for now - talk next week! :)