Why Psychedelics May Work Better Than Antidepressants (But You Must Know This First)

I want to talk briefly about psychedelics and mental health, which is a big topic right now. There's actually training through American Academy of Anti Aging and Regenerative Medicine, which is where I did one of my board certification trainings through in psychedelic medicine. It's a big deal. I think part of the reason why it's a big deal is because so many people have trauma, so many people have limbic kindling issues, have vagal nerve dysfunction. It's basically trauma brains. We have trauma brains. Whether it's from the pandemic or from. I think the numbers right now are something like 20% of women have been sexually abused and 10% of men have. So that's a lot of people that have had stuff happen to them. Then you throw like life on top of that. Medical illness, medical trauma. You know, we got a lot of stuff going on in the culture right now. And so what happens is when you get these trauma brains, your brain gets stuck in fight or flight. Now if you had bad things happen to you when you're super young, you can have disassociation and you can't really remember stuff. And so it's almost like you have this mind body split. Other people, they get older, they just get stuck in these panic cycles they can't get out of. And so how do you get out of these things? And that's where psychedelics can be helpful. But the caveat I want to start with is1, these are not FDA approved. You should never try these without. Actually, you should never try these based on the fda, the government. So you should always listen to your government and the fda. Of course, I would never recommend you doing that because you should never do anything your government that the FDA says you shouldn't do. And now we keep on moving on. So the psilocybin is one that's been researched a ton. And actually, I think Timothy Leary back at Harvard back in the 60s, maybe was one of the original pioneers in this. There's been a lot of interesting research actually with this benefit, even microdosing. There's one interesting study looking at microdosing of psilocybin, like 500 milligram, with actually using brain tap with some pretty significant impact on people. But the thing with, is like the psychedelics allow you almost like to, you know, as one of my patients described it, you know, with one journey, you get the equivalent of like two years of psychotherapy and a journey. And that's kind of when you kind of reset your brain. That's kind of what happens. Psilocybin is one of the more common ones people know about iuasca. Ketamine actually is the only FDA approved psychedelic right now. And you can get actually the iv, there's IV clinics that do it. And basically, you know, ketamine actually causes a split. You actually go have a disassociated state. When it comes back together, it affects your brain's neural networks. There's these things called the relay mode network in your head and you're placed in your brain where stuff kind of integrates. And when you use the psychedelic, it actually helps reset these centers. The issues with psychedelics can be however that you can have pretty crazy experiences, particularly with some of the ones like Ibogene or Iowasca. And you have to be careful if you do it. My patients experience have been that when they do that you need to be in the right situation with the right like guy because if you do it, you don't have that. You can actually have a horrible experience that can make your trauma worse. That's the one thing you don't hear people talk about a whole lot is people who go do this kind of willy nilly do IASCA and they have a horrible experience doing the psychedelics trip with lsd, whatever. And the thing about these allies are laced as well. And there are certain ones that actually have caused people to have Parkinson's like stuff. So we really need to make sure that you're working with someone who's experienced in the usage of these things. There are practitioners that are trained in and you also want to use the safest thing you can use possible. I meant one of these little short things before talking about medical errors, the third most common cause of death in our country. And so some things have been around forever, like psilocybin means mushroom. Ketamine has a lot of research behind it. There are ones that are safer and there are ones that are more available. But the thing about it is you need to make sure if you decide to do that, you're working with a trained practitioner guide psychologist who can deal with someone if you have an event. Because when those happen, they can be traumatic on their own. But psychedelic medication, if you look at the literature and how well they actually work, they work better than most drugs in the market we have. We don't have drugs that work as well as for PTSD as psilocybin and ketamine and ibogaine and some of these other really potent psychedelics. So that's something to keep in mind as well. Hopefully in the near future it looks like we have some pipeline that'll be approved soon. Until then, these are not FDA approved, which means you're not supposed to use them, obviously. Having said that, a lot of people have had great results with them, particularly military people with ptsd, concussions, and so things to think about. And some of my patients that I've used them have had pretty profound responses with so hopefully I answer some of your questions. This was actually posted to us, asked by someone, so I decided to take a little deep dive into this. This is helpful. Please share. If you have other questions, things you'd like to talk about, share those as well, and we'll take another deep dive in this topic with you. Take care and we'll talk to you soon.