One Dose of ‘Magic Mushroom’ Drug Reduces Anxiety and Depression in Cancer Patients, Study Says

One Dose of 'Magic Mushroom' Drug Reduces Anxiety and Depression in Cancer Patients, Study Says

A single dose of psilocybin, a compound found in “magic mushrooms,” provides long-term relief of anxiety and depression in cancer patients, a new study finds.

In fact, cancer patients who were given psilocybin reported reductions in anxiety, depression, hopelessness, demoralization, and death anxiety more than four years after receiving the dose in combination with psychotherapy.

“Our findings strongly suggest that psilocybin therapy is a promising means of improving the emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being of patients with life-threatening cancer,” said Dr. Stephen Ross, associate professor of psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at NYU Langone Health.

The findings build on improvements first reported by the team in 2016, in which 29 patients with cancer-related anxiety and depression were given either a single dose of psilocybin or a vitamin placebo called niacin. Seven weeks later, they were given the opposite. This was in combination with nine psychotherapy sessions. By 6½ months, after all patients had received psilocybin, about 60% to 80% showed clinically significant reductions in depression, anxiety and existential distress and and improved attitudes toward death.

Fifteen of the original participants were then followed up 3.2 and 4.5 years later and showed sustained long-term improvements, with more than 70% of them further attributing “positive life change’s to the therapy experience, rating it among ‘the most personally meaningful and spiritually significant experiences of their lives,” according to the study published Tuesday in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

“This approach has the potential to produce a paradigm shift in the psychological and existential care of patients with cancer, especially those with terminal illness,” Ross said in a statement.

‘Magic mushroom’ drug lifted ‘cloud of doom’ for cancer patients Ross believes an alternative means of treating anxiety and depression among cancer patients is urgently needed, stating that a third of people diagnosed with cancer will developing anxiety, depression and other forms of distress.

Though his team does not fully understand how psilocybin has such effects on the mind, they previously suggested it could be because our brains have a level of neuroplasticity — the ability to adapt and change with various experiences.

“These results may shed light on how the positive effects of a single dose of psilocybin persist for so long,” said Gabby Agin-Liebes, lead investigator and lead author of the long-term follow-up study, and co-author of the 2016 parent study. “The drug seems to facilitate a deep, meaningful experience that stays with a person and can fundamentally change his or her mindset and outlook.” The study has its limitations, such as the small number of patients monitored in the latest study and its overlap with the previous trial.

“The conclusions that can be drawn are limited because the original trial was a crossover design,” says James Rucker, who leads the Psychedelic Trials Group at the Centre for Affective Disorders at Kings College London in the UK. “This means that in the original trial every participant eventually received psilocybin. Because of this, there is no control group in this current study. This means that we do not know whether the participants might have improved long term anyway, regardless of the treatment.”

The findings do, however, build on growing evidence supporting the benefits of psilocybin on mental health. “This trial provides some useful reassurance to ongoing clinical trials, particularly in treatment resistant depression,” added Rucker, who was not involved in the study.

Multiple studies to date have found benefits in using psilocybin to treat people with depression when combined with supportive therapy.

There were an estimated 18 million cases of cancer globally in 2018, according to the World Health Organization, and research has shown depression to be more common among patients with cancer than the general population.

“This could profoundly transform the psycho-oncologic care of patients with cancer, and importantly could be used in hospice settings to help terminally ill cancer patients approach death with improved emotional and spiritual well-being,” Ross said.


Contributors: Jacqueline Howard and San

Coronavirus: California Update After Second US Case Announced

Coronavirus: California Update After Second US Case Announced

In California, health screenings of incoming passengers at Los Angeles International and San Francisco International airports are underway.

As health officials around the world respond to the outbreak of the new — and potentially deadly — coronavirus, the California Department of Public Health is doing the same.

As of Friday morning, two cases of coronavirus 2019-nCoV have been confirmed in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control reported. The first case was confirmed Tuesday in the state of Washington. A second case was reported Friday in Illinois. In both, the patients had been to Wuhan, China, according to the CDC.

In California, health screenings of incoming passengers at Los Angeles International and San Francisco International airports are underway to identify people who have symptoms that could be due to coronavirus infection. The two large airports have the most arrivals into the state from Wuhan, Hubei Province, China — the region where an outbreak of the respiratory illness began last month and “continues to expand in scope and magnitude,” according to the CDC.

Los Angeles International and San Francisco International are the only California airports where coronavirus screenings are underway, a CDPH spokesman told Patch Friday morning.

Worldwide, there are more than 830 confirmed cases of infection, and at least 26 people have died. A total of 8,420 people are reported to be under observation, according to a report Friday from the Washington Post.

A traveler landing at Los Angeles International Airport was hospitalized this week after exhibiting symptoms consistent with coronavirus, Patch reported Thursday. However, as of Friday morning the CDPH told Patch it had no coronavirus cases to report in California, but screenings and tests are continuing.

Additionally, in Alameda County, which is near San Francisco International Airport, Patch reported that while health officials continue screening people, there were no confirmed coronavirus cases in that county.

“The state will continue to monitor the situation, work with partners to identify any possible cases, provide information and consultation to ensure that possible cases are managed safely, support laboratory testing, and implement recommendations from the CDC,” according to the CDPH.

While originally thought to be spreading from animal-to-person, there are growing indications that limited person-to-person spread of the virus is happening. “It’s unclear how easily this virus is spreading between people,” the CDC reported. The agency is recommending that people avoid all nonessential travel to Wuhan, China. Chinese officials have closed transport within and out of Wuhan, including buses, subways, trains, and the international airport.

Information for travelers to other parts of China is available at:

wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/destinations/traveler/none/china.

Contributor: Toni McAllister, Patch.com Banning-Beaumont, CA

Avoid These Five Risk Factors and Live Longer, Study Says

Avoid These Five Risk Factors and Live Longer, Study Says…

How would you like to add seven to 10 healthy, disease-free years to your life as you age?

Try eliminating these five bad health habits: smoking, not exercising, being overweight, drinking too much alcohol and eating an unhealthy diet.
That’s the takeaway from a new study that analyzed the impact of those behaviors on the chance of living a longer life free of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer and other chronic diseases.
“We found that following a healthy lifestyle can substantially extend the years a person lives disease-free,” said senior author Dr. Frank Hu, who chairs the department of nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
“In particular, women who practiced all five habits gained over 10 years of disease-free life, and men who did so gained almost eight years,” Hu said.
Additional data
The research is an extension of a study published last year that followed more than 38,000 men for 28 years and 73,000 women for 34 years.
That research found women who adopted all five healthy habits at age 50 lived 14 years longer than women who did not; men who were following all five lifestyle factors at age 50 lived 12 years longer than men who followed none.
This new study, published Wednesday in the journal BMJ, examined the same data to see how chronic disease affected the quality of life during the study period.
The research was designed to see how five healthy behaviors interacted to affect disease risk: never smoking, keeping a healthy BMI below 25, doing at least 30 minutes of physical activity each day, drinking alcohol moderately and eating a good quality diet.
Women who practiced four or five of the healthy habits over the next 20 to 30 years, Hu said, had an additional 10.6 years of disease-free living compared to women who adopted no lifestyle changes. When broken down by disease, the healthier women gained an average of eight years free of cancer, 10 years with no cardiovascular disease and 12 years without diabetes.
Men who practiced four to five healthy behaviors gained 7.6 years’ longer life expectancy; an average of six more years without cancer, almost nine more years free of heart issues and over 10 years without diabetes.
The results held true even after adjusting the data for age, ethnicity, family medical history and other potentially influential factors,
Not surprisingly, men who were heavy smokers — defined as 15 or more cigarettes a day — or obese men and women with a BMI of 30 or more had fewer years without disease.
What happened if a person was diagnosed with a disease during the study? The data showed half of people diagnosed with cancer lived an additional 23 years if they adopted four of five healthy practices. Among those who didn’t change, half only survived an additional 11 years. The same patterns were seen for both heart disease and diabetes.
“This is a positive health message because it means healthy lifestyle habits not only prolong life, but also improve the quality of life and reduce sufferings related to chronic diseases,” Hu said.
The study had some limitations, including that the data on adherence to the five lifestyle factors were all self-reported, making an outcome vulnerable to measurement errors.
What if you’ve not eliminated these five bad habits from your life?
“it is never too late to adopt these habits,” Hu said. “For smokers, the single most important thing that one should do is to stop smoking. For nonsmokers, eating a healthy diet and being physically active are important for keeping a healthy weight.”

Contributor: Sandee LaMotte-CNN Health

Calories Per Serving or the Whole Package? Many Food Labels Now Tell Both

Calories Per Serving or the Whole Package? Many Food Labels Now Tell Both

For decades, consumers have often been puzzled by what a “serving” means on Nutrition Facts labels on foods.

Well, things might have just gotten a bit clearer. New labeling regulations went into effect in January, and on many products, you’ll now see the total amount of calories (and various nutrients) per serving, as well as for the whole package.

“With the introduction of the new Nutrition Facts label, a variation that consumers are seeing is the dual column label for some foods that can reasonably be consumed in one meal or snack,” said Claudine Kavanaugh, director of the Office of Nutrition and Food Labeling at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The new label has “two columns, one for listing the nutritional facts related to a single serving and one listing the nutritional facts for the contents of the entire package,” Kavanaugh explained in an FDA news release.

“We know that Americans are eating differently, and the amount of calories and nutrients on the label is required to reflect what people actually eat and drink,” she said.

Not every food manufacturer has to adopt the new labels right away, but many of the products consumers buy will be affected, since the January deadline applied to all manufacturers with $10 million or more in annual food sales. Manufacturers with sales below that amount have an extra year to adopt the new labeling. The changes to the Nutrition Facts label were first finalized in mid-2016.

Nutritionist Audrey Koltun applauded the changes, saying they’ll “make the nutrition information much clearer to consumers.”

“Some small packages of chips, pretzels, cookies, crackers, etc., look like one serving but the label may say it has 2 to 3 servings per package. Many eat the whole thing assuming it is an individual serving package,” Koltun explained. She’s a registered dietitian in the division of pediatric endocrinology at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park, N.Y.

And Koltun noted that the Nutrition Facts panel has changed in other constructive ways.

“The serving sizes listed on the old Nutrition Facts labels can be confusing. Sometimes the serving size was listed in grams or ounces. Also, the print can be so small, one cannot read it,” she said. “The new Nutrition Facts label shows the serving size (and for some foods, the serving size has been changed to reflect what consumers are really eating), and the calories in larger, darker font, which is helpful and it stands out more.”

And there’s one more important addition for folks watching their waistlines and their health.

“Another feature of the new label that I like is the addition of ‘grams of added sugar,’ which means how much sugar is added during processing versus the natural sugar already found in the foods, such as milk and fruit,” Koltun said.

But she stressed that all this new information is helpful “only if one is interested and actually looks at the label.”

If millions more Americans did so, however, it might “really allow them to see how much they are actually eating and make educated decisions about what and how much they desire to eat,” Koltun said.

Contributor: E.J. Mundell-HealthDay.com