Paul Stamets Neurogenesis Stack

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Paul Stamets Neurogenesis Stack

Paul Stamets is an author, speaker, medical researcher, entrepreneur and mycologist. He is considered an industry leader in fungi as he lectures extensively on a wide range of mushrooms and how they can help the health of humans and our planet. He has led the charge on preserving many strains of mushrooms as he believes they have a wide range of medicinal benefits. Although Paul Stamets is the author of six different books, he recently gained more mainstream popularity after appearing on the “Joe Rogan Podcast” for the second time.


Paul Stamets

Paul Stamets has also spoken on and advocated for the “Stoned Ape Theory.” The Stoned Ape Theory was first proposed in 1993 by Terence McKenna, who was an American ethnobotanist, lecturer and author. The theory proposes that the transformation of species from the early Homo Erectus to the Homo Sapiens was mainly due to the addition of psilocybin-based mushrooms in their diet. McKenna believed that early humans were forced to search for new food sources after the desertification of Africa. He suggests that these early humans would follow large herds of wild cattle, whose dung was now undoubtedly part of their diet. With cow dung being a preferred habitat for Psilocybe Cubensis, McKenna believes that the psilocybin improved early humans vision, which in turn made them better hunters, resulting in a higher food supply, which ultimately led to higher reproductive success.


At the Psychedelic Science 2017 conference, Paul Stamets addressed over 3,000 guests from 42 different countries and said the following: “I present this to you because I want to bring back the concept of the Stoned Ape Hypothesis. What is really important for you to understand is that there was a sudden doubling of the human brain 200,000 years ago. From an evolutionary point of view, that’s an extraordinary expansion. And there is no explanation for this sudden increase in the human brain.” After laying out the teachings of the Stoned Ape Theory, founded by Terence McKenna and his brother Dennis, Stamets went on to state “I suggest to you that Dennis and Terence were right on. I want you or anyone listening, or seeing this, to suspend your disbelief. I think this is a very, very plausible hypothesis for the sudden evolution of Homo Sapiens from our primate relatives.” Stamets ended his speech on this note as the audience in attendance broke into a wild applause.



Terrence McKenna

While Paul Stamets was speaking on the Joe Rogan Podcast, he mentioned a nootropic supplement stack that he referred to as “Stamets Stack”. This nootropic stack consists of psilocybin, lions mane mushroom and niacin. Stamets has said that he would like to see this supplement made available as a vitamin, as it has the potential to be “the next quantum leap in human consciousness.” Stamets claims that the combination of psilocybin and lions mane has the ability to perform neurogenesis, which is the creation of new neurons in the brain, which ultimately helps humans to think in new ways. He based this claim on a study where scientists intentionally damaged the brains of two mice through the use of a neurotoxin. The scientists observed the mice’s behaviour and noted that they showcased dementia-like symptoms. After introducing lions mane to the mice, the effects of the neurotoxin reversed and the mice no longer exhibited dementia-like symptoms. Psilocybin is included in the stack due to its complementary relationship with lions mane and its ability to penetrate different parts of the brain. Niacin is apart of the stack due to its deliverability of the mushroom molecules. Stamets believes that most neurogenesis occurs in the extremities; and with niacin being a flushing agent it carries GABA across the blood brain barrier which distributes the mushroom molecules.


Based on Paul Stamets nootropic stack, Microdose Mushrooms has created our very own nootropic supplement stack known as “Neuro Blend.” Neuro Blend consists of Psilocybin, Lions Mane Mushroom, Chaga Mushroom, Reishi Mushroom, Niacin and Niacinimide. We have added Chaga to our stack due to its ability to give users a “coffee like” boost without the anxiety or jitters often accompanied by consuming caffeine. Reishi was added to our stack because it has been scientifically proven to boost the immune system and aid in fighting fatigue and depression. Neuro Blend will help users who are seeking neurogenesis or those who are seeking a boost in creativity and focus. Neuro Blend has is also taken by users who are looking to combat their anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD and other mental ailments. We recommend speaking to your doctor, naturopath or other health care provider prior to using any new vitamin supplements.



Paul Stamets


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The Nootropic Power of Kratom

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The Nootropic Power of Kratom – Kratom Canada – Buy Kratom Online

 

If you’re looking for a way to channel your energy and concentrate on what you need to get done, then Kratom can be a great solution. Used correctly, it can really help you focus and concentrate as a powerful nootropic.

 

Here, we’ll look at and discuss the positive effects of kratom to help you determine if this is the nootropic for you.

 

How Kratom Helps You Concentrate

 

The effect that kratom has on you depends on a lot of different factors:

  • The strain
  • The dosage
  • The quality

 

All of these things will determine how you react to kratom and what it does for you.

The Nootropic Power of Kratom  – Kratom Canada – Buy Kratom Online

Kratom is good for concentration for a simple reason. It binds to opioid receptors in your body and activates them. It doesn’t do this in an aggressive way, like opioid drugs sometimes do, but just sufficiently to activate the receptors.

 

This activation results in the release of endorphins (known as analgesia). This relieves anxiety and stress, and promotes mental clarity, focus and concentration.

 

This is the basic science behind its nootropic qualities, but how can you use it most effectively in order to boost your concentration?

 

Getting the Right Dose and Strain

 

In general, a lower dose of kratom is recommended in order to boost concentration and mental clarity. With higher doses, you run the risk of triggering feelings of euphoria or creating excess energy. Neither of these things are helpful for enabling optimum concentration.

The Nootropic Power of Kratom – Kratom Canada – Buy Kratom Online

 

So, how much kratom should you use? In general, a lower dose of most strains will help boost your concentration, enabling you to focus better and think more clearly. However, smaller doses of white kratoms, like White Bali, can be particularly effective. This is because such strains are less likely to trigger euphoria and a surplus of energy.

 

The Key Point

 

Overall, the key thing to remember when trying to unlock the nootropic effect of kratom is that it isn’t just about the strain. If you really want to improve your focus and concentration, then finding the dosage that works for you is particularly important. Learn more about kratom options by browsing trusted retailers online!

www.kratomearth.com

Written By: Todd Charles

Microdosing For Anxiety and Depression

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Microdosing For Anxiety And Depression
Microdosing For Anxiety And Depression

 

Microdosing For Anxiety And Depression

Microdosing has been known to have multiple beneficial effects on adults, including reducing the effects of Depression and Anxiety. The World Health Organization has unipolar depression ranked as the single largest contributor of illness-induced disability. With the pressures of everyday life weighing down on humans harder than ever, suicide rates are at a drastic amount of 11.5 per 100,000 people in Canada, and 13.5 per 100,000 people in USA. Stats Canada has estimated that 90% of people who commit suicide have a mental or addictive disorder, including depression and anxiety. With approximately 60% of people who commit suicide having been diagnosed with depression at one point or another, it is the highest-ranking mental illness related to suicide. With such alarming numbers, patients and scientists both have looked towards microdosing psilocybin as a possible treatment for depression and anxiety.

 

 

Psychedelic researchers had been conducting extensive investigations on the medical benefits of hallucinogens in the 1950s and 60s; however, these researchers were limited in the 70s when political and cultural pressures forced them to cease their studies. Since the 90s, many researchers began once again looking into the medical benefits of hallucinogens, including psilocybin. One such study done in 2010 set out to explore the safety and efficacy of microdosing psilocybin in patients with advanced-stage cancer and reactive anxiety. The study concluded that there were no adverse effects with psilocybin. Furthermore, patients demonstrated a significant reduction in anxiety at 1 and 3 months after microdosing and a drastic improvement of mood within 6 months.

Microdosing For Anxiety And Depression

Microdosing Psilocybin is able to help those with depression and anxiety by targeting the serotonergic 5-HT2A receptors, which in turn promotes the production of Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) and increases the transmission of Glutamate. Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) is a neurotrophin which is vital to the maintenance, survival, and growth of neurons in key brain circuits which are involved in emotional and cognitive function. Those with anxiety or major depression disorder are known to have reductions in BDNF which is why microdosing psilocybin has been used to treat those with depression as it increases the production of BDNF.

 

 

Neuro Blend Benefits

 

Microdosing psilocybin causes parts of the brain which would normally not communicate together, to communicate with one another. These brain connections are made by decreasing the activity in our Default Mode Network (DMN), which is often a very over-used part of our brain. The DMN in our brains is responsible for numerous mental activities such as thinking about the past/future and self-reflection. With an over-stimulated DMN, these mental thoughts often lead to thoughts of depression and anxiety. Since microdosing has been proven to slow down the activity of our DMN, it leads to humans naturally thinking in new ways which would otherwise be inaccessible to us. These new thought patterns help remove and forget about depressive and anxious thoughts altogether and allow people to be present in the current moment.

 

 

Scientists and medical researchers have been conducting tests and experiments for years to pinpoint all of the medical benefits of microdosing psilocybin. Studies are still coming out at a high rate which outline new potential medical benefits of microdosing psilocybin. Although microdosing to treat depression and anxiety has caught mainstream appeal as of late, it may not work for everyone as all humans are individually wired and microdosing may have adverse effects for those with other pre-existing medical issues. We recommend speaking to your doctor or other health care professional prior to trying any of our microdosing supplements.

 

 

Written By: Melissa Smith

Microdosing Mushrooms For Flow State

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Microdosing Mushrooms For Flow State

 

What are Flow States and how can Microdosing help achieve entering a Flow State:

 

A flow state is something that every human has experienced in their life at one point or another. It is the mental state of feeling energized, focused, and fully involved in the performance of an activity; also, simply known as “being in the zone.” When achieving a flow state, your brain drops from the Beta Wave thinking space and shifts toward Alpha oscillations. Alpha waves are the resting state of the brain and aid in calmness, alertness, integration of the mind/body and overall mental coordination.

Microdosing Mushrooms For Flow State

Flow states can be achieved through practices such as meditation, yoga, sports, exercise, or mentally challenging yourself in some way and Microdosing psilocybin can aid in assisting this process. Microdosing can help users enter flow states due to its ability to dampen the effects of an often over stimulated part of our brain, known as the “Default Mode Network” (DMN). The DMN is a large network of interacting brain regions which are known to have activity highly correlated with each other and distinct from other networks in the brain. The often over-stimulated DMN can cause humans to overthink and often step out of the “now” to question the past or future. There are many studies that suggest an overactive DMN can also cause depression. Since Microdosing psilocybin limits the DMN, the brain is able to make connections between networks that would otherwise not communicate with each other. With a limited DMN, the effects of depression are limited, new brain connections are created, and these factors ultimately aid in the entering of a flow state.

Microdosing Mushrooms For Flow State

Microdosing Psilocybin will also remove the ego, which will allow the subconscious to shine. “Ego” is often associated with the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which has little activity when people are in a state of flow. This allows your brain to be free of making calculated socially influenced decisions and allows your subconscious to make immediate uninfluenced decisions.

Some may wonder if Microdosing on a continuing basis to avoid depression and entering flow states is beneficial or even feasible. The answer to that question is something that each individual must find on there own. Users of psilocybin have said that it allows them to find themselves and detach from the expectations set upon them by society, family, friends, etc. By opening your mind to who you really are and living your life the way you want to, entering flow states will come naturally on a day to day basis.

Microdosing with Psychedelics

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Oiling the Hinges of the Doors of Perception – Microdosing with Psychedelics

Written by: Amanda Feilding at the Beckley Foundation

As the psychedelic renaissance advances, and ever more clinical studies begin, we are coming to understand just how crucial to healing the peak psychedelic state is:  that most profound shift in conscious experience, where patients experience a sense of unity with all things, a transcendence of time and space, the dissolution of the ego itself, alongside profoundly positive emotions of joy, connection, and love. In this state, the doors of perception are well and truly opened, and these experiences can be indistinguishable from those described across various mystical traditions. However, as psychedelics can fairly regularly engender these experiences in people regardless of their religious or spiritual beliefs, many researchers prefer more the secular term of ‘peak experience’ to ‘mystical experience’.

Across a number of studies, including those undertaken as part of the Beckley/Imperial Psychedelic Research Programme, we have found that the quality of the peak (or mystical) experience predicts how successful a psychedelic treatment is. In our ground-breaking investigation of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for treatment-resistant depression, we found that those patients who healed the most had, during the psilocybin sessions, experienced the greatest feelings of oceanic boundlessness, a dissolution of the boundaries of the self associated with heightened mood, sublime happiness and serenity. While the academic community comes to recognise these out-of-the-ordinary experiences as highly valuable for development and healing, it is precisely because of them that many people are uneasy about engaging with psychedelics as a treatment.

How much patients experienced oceanic boundlessness predicted the extent of their relief from depressive symptoms.

 

Valuable as these states are for healing, it would be wrong to say that they are indispensable. A study released earlier this year found that a single dose of LSD reduced excessive alcohol consumption in mice, and very few people would suggest that the mice underwent mystical experiences. The practice of microdosing, taking small doses of psychedelics regularly, rather than large doses infrequently, has now attracted a huge number of advocates, especially in the tech and creative industries. More palatable to the wider community than large doses, microdosing does not involve any ego-dissolving mystical-type experience, and yet anecdotal reports of myriad benefits, including significant antidepressant effects, abound. The ability of LSD to provide an anti–depressant effect, without the mystical, classically psychedelic component, suggests that there is much more to be learned about its underlying mechanisms of action.

In our study of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression, the patients who had the most intense, mystical-like experiences, went on to have the greatest reductions in severity of symptoms.
.

Microdosing with Psychedelics

Regular dosing of LSD has long been an interest of mine: back in the 1960s, before the prohibition of psychedelics, I carefully experimented with regular doses. In those days, apart from occasions of the peak experience, my aim was to find that ‘sweet spot’, where vitality and creativity are enhanced, while leaving me in full control of my behaviour. Smaller, regular doses of psychedelics truly can act as a ‘psychovitamin’, enriching lives in all manner of ways. Microdosers are not, as some might portray them, breaking the law in order to get high. A properly sized microdose – typically 1/10th the size of a standard recreational dose – produces no changes to perception, or hallucinogenic effects, whatsoever. Microdosers are breaking the law in order to be sober, but ‘improved’. Reading through accounts of the experiences of microdosers, a theme that appears again and again is that these small amounts of LSD allow the user to work better and with more enthusiasm and focus, think more creatively, and feel more alive to the present moment—what we might today call “living mindfully.” They also report an improvement in mood, with many microdosers using the practice to alleviate from their depression.

 

Microdosers of LSD will tend to take just a fraction of a tab to achieve the desired effects. More than 10-30 micrograms can lead to alterations to visual perception, which most people prefer to avoid during the working day Image: BBC News

Microdosing with Psychedelics

In spite of an increasing number of microdosers oiling the hinges to the doors of perception, all of the current evidence on the practice is anecdotal in nature. There are still no placebo-controlled scientific studies exploring the mechanisms of action, benefits, or possible side-effects of microdosing. The discoverer of LSD himself, my friend the sadly departed (at the age of 102) Albert Hofmann, declared that microdosing is the most under-researched aspect of psychedelics. That remains true to this day. And now, precisely because of the increasing number of adherents, rigorous scientific research is all the more urgent.

Since finally succeeding in carrying out the first brain imaging study with LSD in 2016, I have been wanting to extend our LSD research to include the microdosing phenomenon. Now, with Beckley Foundation collaborators Professor Jan Ramaekers and Dr Kim Kuypers at the University of Maastricht, we are carrying out a study assessing the physiological and psychological impact of various sized microdoses. Across the space of a month, participants are receiving different sized microdoses, and their effects on creativity, cognitive flexibility, mood and well-being are being assessed. Moreover, we are collecting much needed data about vital signs to establish the safety profile of the practice, as well as taking blood to measure markers of neuronal growth and neuroplasticity, another promising potential application of LSD.

I am also formally about to start a much needed lab study into microdosing using EEG to measure changes in connectivity and neuroplasticity. This study is to be placebo controlled.

As part of the Beckley/Imperial Psychedelic Research Programme, we have recently launched this new study in which people from all over the world can participate remotely. There have been a number of naturalistic studies of microdosing before, which, although valuable contributions to the literature, share one key shortcoming: participants, taking their own drugs, know that they are microdosing. With this in mind, it’s difficult to rule out the placebo effect: perhaps, after all the hype over microdosing, people are experiencing and reporting benefits merely because they believe they will experience them. Our new study, by using an entirely novel, self-blinding protocol, will ensure that participants are unaware of which days they are taking a microdose, and which days they take placebos. At the end of a month, we will unblind participants, sending them a personalised report, detailing which days they were microdosing. We can correlate their daily performance scores with which days they were microdosing, and participants can know with confidence how the practice affects them in reality.

 

The study is now recruiting. If you are already microdosing, or about to start, you can make a tangible, important difference to psychedelic science by joining the study. By collecting data from hundreds of microdosers, we can  advance our understanding of the potential benefits of low doses of psychedelics.

We have so much still to learn about the microdosing experience, and I hope our studies will cast more light into the shadows, and that we will soon have a better understanding of how microdosing can benefit mental health, creativity, and well-being more generally.

Microdosing may well be the ideal way to rehabilitate psychedelic compounds in the eyes of the world: a pill that enhances energy, vitality, creativity, and mood, while allowing the user to retain full control of their focus and behaviour, could be a welcome addition to our current pharmacopeia in the midst of a rising tide of mental health disorders.

As Francis Crick wrote in his diary: Suppose a psychedelic chemical was produced to make people more intelligent, with no addictive properties or bad side effects would you object to it?

 

Written by: Amanda Feilding at the Beckley Foundation

Link: https://beckleyfoundation.org/2018/11/13/oiling-the-hinges-of-the-doors-of-perception-microdosing-with-psychedelics/