Rave-goers and visitors to Amsterdam before December 2008 may be intimately familiar with magic mushrooms, but there’s little scientific knowledge on what happens to the brain while tripping.

Now it appears that more research is warranted. A growing number of studies suggested that perhaps the mushrooms’ key ingredient could work magic for certain mental disorders.

New research in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences sheds light on why one of the mushrooms’ hallucinogenic chemical compounds, psilocybin, may hold promise for the treatment of depression. Scientists explored the effect of psilocybin on the brain, documenting the neural basis behind the altered state of consciousness that people have reported after using magic mushrooms.

“We have found that these drugs turn off the parts of the brain that integrate sensations – seeing, hearing, feeling – with thinking,” said David Nutt, co-author of the study and researcher at Imperial College London in the United Kingdom.

Read more via Magic mushrooms may be therapeutic – – CNN.com Blogs.

At school, 8-year-old Alex Karaszi couldn’t focus his attention and sit still. Soon, his grades began to suffer. At home, he had mood swings and threw tantrums. “I was grumpy at night,” the second-grader explained. The family doctor diagnosed mild to moderate attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and prescribed medication. Beata Karaszi, Alex’s mother, was reluctant, but went ahead at the urging of her husband and the boy’s teachers. She stopped it after a week. “He got horrible nightmares, became very sensitive, very emotional. It was horrible,” she said. Then she read about another option: acupuncture.

Acupuncture has been an integral part of Chinese medicine for more than 2,000 years. It is based on the theory that the body’s energy, called Qi (pronounced chee), flows freely when you are well, but can become blocked or weak. Inserting hair-thin needles into the skin at specific treatment points on the body can restore a healthy energy flow, practitioners say.

Read more via Parents say acupuncture has alleviated boy’s ADHD – Tampa Bay Times.

You could call it a religious war of words, with the West Coast serving as one of its most intense battlegrounds.

The bid to win hearts and minds pits Buddhist meditation against Christian prayer, with meditation, especially so-called “mindfulness,” seeming to be gaining ground.

It’s been the focus of more than 60 recent scholarly studies. It’s being embraced by hundreds of psychotherapists, who increasingly offer Buddhist mindfulness to clients dealing with depression and anxiety. It’s been on the cover of Time magazine.

Even though polls show there are 10 times more Christians in the Pacific Northwest than Buddhists, the forms of meditation associated with those on the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean are rising to the fore in North America.

Buddhist meditators, who tend to think of themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” claim what they do is not “religious.” That’s part of the appeal of mindfulness. Such medita-tors complain that Christian (as well as Jewish and Muslim) prayer over-emphasizes pleading with, confessing to or praising a God.

Read more via Prayer versus meditation? They’re more alike than we realize | Vancouver Sun.

The latest issue of the journal Medical Acupuncture reveals that the United States Armed Forces is incorporating acupuncture, one of the oldest healing practices in the world, to assist in the medical care of its personnel.

First recorded in the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon (黄帝内经), an ancient Chinese medical text written more than two millennia ago, acupuncture is a traditional Chinese method of encouraging the body to promote natural healing and to improve functioning by inserting needles and applying heat or electrical stimulation at very precise acupuncture points.

Before the 1990s, the U.S. military hardly used acupuncture in its treatment of military personnel. In 2001, however, Dr. Richard C. Niemtzow, Editor-in-Chief of Medical Acupuncture and Director of the USAF Acupuncture Center in Maryland, developed an acupuncture technique designed for military use.

Battlefield acupuncture (BFA), as it is called, …

Read more via Use Of Acupuncture By The U.S. Military To Treat Battlefield Injuries, PTSD.

Traditional Chinese medicine has long been used to ease pain and treat disease.

Now researchers have found it can also boost fertility if used in combination with fertility treatments.

A team led by Dr Shahar Levi-Ari from Tel Aviv University compared the success rates of couples using intrauterine insemination (IUI) both with and without Chinese herbal and acupuncture therapies.

IUI involves a laboratory procedure to separate fast moving sperm from more sluggish sperm.

The fast moving sperm are then placed into the woman’s womb close to the time of ovulation when the egg is released from the ovary in the middle of the monthly cycle.

The results, which have been published in the Journal of Integrative Medicine, show a significant increase in fertility when the therapies are administered side-by-side.

Read more via Traditional Chinese medicine ‘makes fertility treatments more effective’ | Mail Online.

While the mortality rate of women with breast cancer is decreasing, the incidence of depression in women who have undergone treatment for breast cancer is on the rise. As many as 50% of all women who are affected with the disease will experience some kind of post-recovery melancholy. Thankfully, researchers from the Sinclair School of Nursing at the University of Missouri have brought to our attention a specific meditation technique, and suggest how it can help breast cancer survivors revive their zest for life.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a type of mindfulness training that uses the mind to combat anxiety and bring about a sense of wellbeing. It includes mental practices that heighten physical awareness, as well as yoga and time spent in quiet, reflective meditation. Developed by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979, MBSR helps people foster their own mind-body connection, as well as create a deeper awareness of how thoughts and feelings can affect physical and emotional health.

Read more via Breast Cancer Survivors use Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.

Say “placebo effect” and most people think of the boost they may get from a sugar pill simply because they believe it will work. But more and more research suggests there is more than a fleeting boost to be gained from placebos.

A particular mind-set or belief about one’s body or health may lead to improvements in disease symptoms as well as changes in appetite, brain chemicals and even vision, several recent studies have found, highlighting how fundamentally the mind and body are connected.

Read more via Why Placebos Work Wonders – WSJ.com.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, an MIT-trained molecular biologist, began meditating in 1966, when the practice was primarily the province of hippies and gurus, not scientists. Now, thanks in large part to his efforts, it has become mainstream medicine. Dozens of studies have since shown the benefits of what he termed Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction MBSR in treating cardiovascular disease, depression, addictions, chronic pain and many other conditions. Kabat-Zinn has authored a new book,  Mindfulness for Beginners that aims to introduce meditation to first-timers.Why did you first get involved with meditation? The one word answer would be karma. Basically, I always felt in some sense, from the time that I was a little, that something was missing in the way life was unfolding. It was almost as if it was all about ‘out there’ but nothing about ‘in here.’ This is a path that I’ve been walking now for over 45 years. It’s been 32 years since I founded the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. I was first exposed formally to it at MIT because of Huston Smith, …

Read the full article via Mind Reading: Jon Kabat-Zinn Talks About Bringing Mindfulness Meditation to Medicine | Healthland | TIME.com.

Differential Impact of Stress Reduction Programs upon Ambulatory Blood Pressure among African American Adolescents: Influences of Endothelin-1 Gene and Chronic Stress Exposure.

Int J Hypertens. 2012;2012:510291

Authors: Gregoski MJ, Barnes VA, Tingen MS, Dong Y, Zhu H, Treiber FA

Abstract
Stress-activated gene × environment interactions may contribute to individual variability in blood pressure reductions from behavioral interventions. We investigated effects of endothelin-1 (ET-1) LYS198ASN SNP and discriminatory stress exposure upon impact of 12-week behavioral interventions upon ambulatory BP (ABP) among 162 prehypertensive African American adolescents. Following genotyping, completion of questionnaire battery, and 24-hour ABP monitoring, participants were randomized to health education control (HEC), life skills training (LST), or breathing awareness meditation (BAM). Postintervention ABP was obtained. Significant three-way interactions on ABP changes indicated that among ET-1 SNP carriers, the only group to show reductions was BAM from low chronic stress environments. Among ET-1 SNP noncarriers, under low chronic stress exposure, all approaches worked, especially BAM. Among high stress exposure noncarriers, only BAM resulted in reductions. If these preliminary findings are replicated via ancillary analyses of archival databases and then via efficacy trials, selection of behavioral prescriptions for prehypertensives will be edging closer to being guided by individual’s underlying genetic and environmental factors incorporating the healthcare model of personalized preventive medicine.

PMID: 22164329 [PubMed - in process]