7 ms·

Psilocybin shows promise as anti-aging therapy

104 points by joak 1y ago

esseph 1y ago
I'm not actually interested in anti-aging, but this is still interesting!
- yieldcrv 1y ago
  Just got to get it approved for anything and …. well everything will be the same. I’ve seen so many vendors selling professionally packed psilocybin. I’m like “this is like Lion’s Mane..?” Nope, just drugs! But at least you can talk about it with your family and coworkers more casually
  - esseph 1y ago
    Cellular longevity? Lung health? Seems pretty damn useful.
    - fuzzfactor 1y ago
      I was thinking, you mean nobody has ever taken a mushroom and thought they were young again? If not, I would want better mushrooms than that myself :) Let me know when this is completely well-proven, I have a friend who's an older gentleman . . .
    - yieldcrv 1y ago
      I’m saying that after it gets rescheduled by nature of a clear medical use, the consumer environment will still be the same because its already distributed as if its legal
defrost 1y ago
See Also: Psilocybin treatment extends cellular lifespan, improves survival of aged mice (nature.com) 43 points | 1 day ago | 10 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44527358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44527358 Psilocybin for major depression granted Breakthrough Therapy by FDA (newatlas.com) 1240 points | 6 years ago | 471 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21638290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21638290 What happens when clergy take psilocybin (nautil.us) 353 points | 25 days ago | 566 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44293610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44293610
readthenotes1 1y ago
This is exactly what the world needs, a bunch of tripping boomers showing us just how wrecked the pension systems are!
- surfingdino 1y ago
  What "assisted dying" legislation is being introduced for. Start with "humane approach to suffering" end up with "right, you have no savings, and you have been taking your pension for way too long, we suggest a humane termination, here's your goodbye pill"
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - kybernetyk 1y ago
    so essentially Canada?
  - tfourb 1y ago
    Assisted dying is legal in several countries and while it is obviously a complex subject and needs well-crafted regulations to ward off some obvious moral pitfalls, it fulfills an important need and right for a society. If I, for whatever reason, feel the need to terminate my life in dignity, I should be able to, without some religious nut interfering, or me exposing anyone assisting me in that endeavor to criminal prosecution.
beardyw 1y ago
We need drugs to help people understand they are mortal.
- globular-toast 1y ago
  I used to think I was "awake" because I became intensely aware of my mortality in my early 20s. But actually I feel like that's the norm, these days. Gen Z seem to take "YOLO" seriously from a young age. Nobody is planning for anything beyond their own lifetimes. Some people still can't resist their biological imperative and have kids, but they're all basically YOLOing their lifestyles and their actions, if not their words, are saying "not my problem, you'll figure it out when I'm gone". So, yeah, be aware you won't be here forever, but what we need is for people to leave the damn place in a better state than they found it, or at least not worse.
  - justonceokay 1y ago
    It’s a value judgement. The media and culture make a lot of people think that leaving no children will be leaving the planet a better place.
    - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
      Or that it's questionable to bring children into a world that is increasingly likely to be hostile to human life along several dimensions.
  - OKRainbowKid 1y ago
    Perhaps that's a result of being born into a world with (unprecedented?) amounts of uncertainty. Climate change, automation threatening the value of human labor, rise of authoritarianism, "the West" losing it's hegemonic status, wars, genocides. Hard to make long term plans for your life when the world is changing rapidly and we don't even know how it will look like in 10 years.
    - raffael_de 1y ago
sollewitt 1y ago
They gave the mice 15mg, which is about a low-medium dose for a human. But humans weigh about 2000 times what mice do, so the effects were observed at about 2k times a reasonable dose. 1) Those mice must have been completely out of it. 2) This probably isn’t helpful to humans unless given under sedation. Or maybe that extreme a dose is equivalent to sedation, I’m not sure anyone has taken 30 _grams_ of psilocybin to tell us?
- pas 1y ago
  30 grams of pure psilocybin? that requires eating 3 kilograms of mushrooms, right? usually it's 1% (or less) of dried mass. well, actually more "doable" than initially I have assumed, but it would quickly lead to vomiting and a pretty guaranteed bad trip, well before ingesting enough. also interestingly LD50 is 280 mg/kg.
- pjerem 1y ago
  I’m not an expert so I’ll just ask questions but IIRC, there is no deadly dose of psylocybin. I would imagine that at some point the effects would plateau. Of course you would be pretty far away in space in multiple dimensions at the same time. I would be surprised, if this plateau exists, that nobody would have reached it. In psychedelics space, it’s not unheard of people accidentally taking 100-1000x the expected dose and having the best (or worse) time of their life without further health issues. Also it seems that set&setting is far more important for the experience than the actual dose.
  - coffeebeqn 1y ago
    You’d probably do profound psychological damage to yourself. It’s not deadly but that doesn’t mean it won’t affect you permanently to be stuck in some kind of a hell for what will feel like an eternity
    - sampl3username 1y ago
      Some people have accidentally taken several milligrams of LSD, whose full active dose is 100 ug, and they are fine. Every molecule's effects saturates at some point.
tinco 1y ago
Wouldn't this much psycobylin severely affect your personality?
- yieldcrv 1y ago
  Empathic, schizophrenic, but multiple empathic personalities As long as one of them can code I’ll be fine Bonus if the other one can do marketing
domofutu 1y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44525240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44525240
da-x 1y ago
It may be a secondary effect - that the extension of life from reduction of cellular damage was due to the mice being less stressed out mentally after being stoned.
groovimus 1y ago
Some comments here refer to a "tolerance" aspect of psilocybin. It might be more clearly termed 'refractory period'. Stan Grof from his clinical work would time LSD sessions no closer together than 1 week and that short period was unusual, usually with OCD patients. I have a friend with moderate OCD, has dosed several times on psychedelics and never gotten an effect.

104 points by joak 1y ago

esseph 1y ago

I'm not actually interested in anti-aging, but this is still interesting!

yieldcrv 1y ago
Just got to get it approved for anything and …. well everything will be the same. I’ve seen so many vendors selling professionally packed psilocybin. I’m like “this is like Lion’s Mane..?” Nope, just drugs! But at least you can talk about it with your family and coworkers more casually
- esseph 1y ago
  Cellular longevity? Lung health? Seems pretty damn useful.
  - fuzzfactor 1y ago
    I was thinking, you mean nobody has ever taken a mushroom and thought they were young again? If not, I would want better mushrooms than that myself :) Let me know when this is completely well-proven, I have a friend who's an older gentleman . . .
  - yieldcrv 1y ago
    I’m saying that after it gets rescheduled by nature of a clear medical use, the consumer environment will still be the same because its already distributed as if its legal

defrost 1y ago

See Also: Psilocybin treatment extends cellular lifespan, improves survival of aged mice (nature.com) 43 points | 1 day ago | 10 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44527358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44527358 Psilocybin for major depression granted Breakthrough Therapy by FDA (newatlas.com) 1240 points | 6 years ago | 471 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21638290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21638290 What happens when clergy take psilocybin (nautil.us) 353 points | 25 days ago | 566 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44293610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44293610

readthenotes1 1y ago

This is exactly what the world needs, a bunch of tripping boomers showing us just how wrecked the pension systems are!

surfingdino 1y ago
What "assisted dying" legislation is being introduced for. Start with "humane approach to suffering" end up with "right, you have no savings, and you have been taking your pension for way too long, we suggest a humane termination, here's your goodbye pill"
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- kybernetyk 1y ago
  so essentially Canada?
- tfourb 1y ago
  Assisted dying is legal in several countries and while it is obviously a complex subject and needs well-crafted regulations to ward off some obvious moral pitfalls, it fulfills an important need and right for a society. If I, for whatever reason, feel the need to terminate my life in dignity, I should be able to, without some religious nut interfering, or me exposing anyone assisting me in that endeavor to criminal prosecution.

beardyw 1y ago

We need drugs to help people understand they are mortal.

globular-toast 1y ago
I used to think I was "awake" because I became intensely aware of my mortality in my early 20s. But actually I feel like that's the norm, these days. Gen Z seem to take "YOLO" seriously from a young age. Nobody is planning for anything beyond their own lifetimes. Some people still can't resist their biological imperative and have kids, but they're all basically YOLOing their lifestyles and their actions, if not their words, are saying "not my problem, you'll figure it out when I'm gone". So, yeah, be aware you won't be here forever, but what we need is for people to leave the damn place in a better state than they found it, or at least not worse.
- justonceokay 1y ago
  It’s a value judgement. The media and culture make a lot of people think that leaving no children will be leaving the planet a better place.
  - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
    Or that it's questionable to bring children into a world that is increasingly likely to be hostile to human life along several dimensions.
- OKRainbowKid 1y ago
  Perhaps that's a result of being born into a world with (unprecedented?) amounts of uncertainty. Climate change, automation threatening the value of human labor, rise of authoritarianism, "the West" losing it's hegemonic status, wars, genocides. Hard to make long term plans for your life when the world is changing rapidly and we don't even know how it will look like in 10 years.
  - raffael_de 1y ago

sollewitt 1y ago

They gave the mice 15mg, which is about a low-medium dose for a human. But humans weigh about 2000 times what mice do, so the effects were observed at about 2k times a reasonable dose. 1) Those mice must have been completely out of it. 2) This probably isn’t helpful to humans unless given under sedation. Or maybe that extreme a dose is equivalent to sedation, I’m not sure anyone has taken 30 _grams_ of psilocybin to tell us?

pas 1y ago
30 grams of pure psilocybin? that requires eating 3 kilograms of mushrooms, right? usually it's 1% (or less) of dried mass. well, actually more "doable" than initially I have assumed, but it would quickly lead to vomiting and a pretty guaranteed bad trip, well before ingesting enough. also interestingly LD50 is 280 mg/kg.
pjerem 1y ago
I’m not an expert so I’ll just ask questions but IIRC, there is no deadly dose of psylocybin. I would imagine that at some point the effects would plateau. Of course you would be pretty far away in space in multiple dimensions at the same time. I would be surprised, if this plateau exists, that nobody would have reached it. In psychedelics space, it’s not unheard of people accidentally taking 100-1000x the expected dose and having the best (or worse) time of their life without further health issues. Also it seems that set&setting is far more important for the experience than the actual dose.
- coffeebeqn 1y ago
  You’d probably do profound psychological damage to yourself. It’s not deadly but that doesn’t mean it won’t affect you permanently to be stuck in some kind of a hell for what will feel like an eternity
  - sampl3username 1y ago
    Some people have accidentally taken several milligrams of LSD, whose full active dose is 100 ug, and they are fine. Every molecule's effects saturates at some point.

tinco 1y ago

Wouldn't this much psycobylin severely affect your personality?

yieldcrv 1y ago
Empathic, schizophrenic, but multiple empathic personalities As long as one of them can code I’ll be fine Bonus if the other one can do marketing

domofutu 1y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44525240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44525240

da-x 1y ago

It may be a secondary effect - that the extension of life from reduction of cellular damage was due to the mice being less stressed out mentally after being stoned.

groovimus 1y ago

Some comments here refer to a "tolerance" aspect of psilocybin. It might be more clearly termed 'refractory period'. Stan Grof from his clinical work would time LSD sessions no closer together than 1 week and that short period was unusual, usually with OCD patients. I have a friend with moderate OCD, has dosed several times on psychedelics and never gotten an effect.