Psychedelics and Immunomodulation: Novel Approaches and Therapeutic Opportunities

[roller]

I suppose it could be said that as you cannot reach the lymph so readily and quickly then viral fragments etc will survive beyond the experience.

they (bacteria, pathogens, viruses) are also known to be in the bone marrow, and im very sure some are (deliberately) accessing the bones too.

the only known thing fully penetrating us are neutrinos ?

was this part of one function of the great pyramid?

 

[Owl42]

During the experience there is often what is called "the purge", which is an intense episode of projectile vomitting, to put it lightly. It feels like even your big toe is vomitting. It is said by some that this purge is so deep as to instantly remove any parasites, yeasts and viral fragments from the whole bowel, including the small intestine. This together with the emptying of the bowel via the normal way. IME that alone stands as huge "reboot" to your digestion and removes stress from the mind.

Isn't this vision a bit reductionist after reading the main research from the first post. If DMT is regulating immune system and making T and KN cells more active that would surely affect viral and other kinds of infections, wouldn't it?

 

[manna]

Isn't this vision a bit reductionist after reading the main research from the first post. If DMT is regulating immune system and making T and KN cells more active that would surely affect viral and other kinds of infections, wouldn't it?

I think it's generally viewed, or is by me at least, to be "reductionist" when you reduce what could be deemed a whole body "adaptogenic" affect down to specific receptors. In my view what you suggest is most definitely allowed within the scheme of a general system wide affect via the CNS. However, what I'm saying is not allowed in the reductionist view because it implies that on their own the parts reveal nothing.

I'm wondering what is the benefit in reducing what I see as a complex systemic affect down to it's parts? Unlikely you'll find every "part" and w/o them how can it be understood in the scheme of it? Synthesizing drugs to mimic affects on the part (receptors) seems very short sighted to me. It assumes that a systemic affect is not necessary for starters. A systemic affect that keeps all knock on affects in harmony; done by the body for the body and not to it as, you will take this quantity/dosage to affect one place and that's final.

What you quote is most likely correct but why does it occur? The answer is not separate from the problem yet the above reductionist view seeks only to mimic or describe and not understand the why's. Describing a process whereby someone ingests and allows DMT to become active and then this initiates immune regulation is all well and good but doesn't further understanding of the whys one bit. Then to proceed to synthesize drugs from that "knowledge" w/o even understanding it could be foolish...if that's the general intent of understanding these cause/affect relationships?

What I typed never implied that the study info you quoted was ever incorrect. The purge, as it's known, is probably the number one common experience, physically speaking. Not to mention it in relation to any healing affects, even immuno-modulation, could be remiss. No doubt a cleanse like that on it's own should free the body up of some burden so that in can better regulate immunity. Not forgetting that the purge or cleanse was instigated by a system wide affect on the CNS which is now "stronger" and better able to regulate ta da ta da ta da

 

[cigana]

During the experience there is often what is called "the purge", which is an intense episode of projectile vomitting, to put it lightly. It feels like even your big toe is vomitting. It is said by some that this purge is so deep as to instantly remove any parasites, yeasts and viral fragments from the whole bowel, including the small intestine. This together with the emptying of the bowel via the normal way. IME that alone stands as huge "reboot" to your digestion and removes stress from the mind.

The links I posted are from improvement with DMT, not ayahuasca, so I don't think there's any purging.
Although I do think ayahuasca purging could have its benefits like you mention...

 

[Hip]

@manna
The aspects of DMT trips you are bring up do interest me a lot, but ideally they should be in a thread of their own, as this thread is supposed to be on the immunomodulatory properties of psychedelics, which is biochemistry.

But with the risk of going even further of topic, I will answer your points:

For me it's relevant that many "digestive" meridians pass over, around and up into the head. This connects them to the brain and would, I think, show how digestive upset translates into anxiety.

Nowadays there is a scientific understanding of how inflammation in the gut can affect the brain: a major gut-to-brain route is the vagus nerve, which runs from gut to brain, and has detectors for inflammation. This nerve will signal to the brain when it senses inflammation in the gut. When the brain receives this signal from the vagus nerve, the brain turns on sickness behavior, which interestingly has symptoms very similar to those of ME/CFS.

I don't personally think it's scientific to disregard the common experiences of people taking DMT.

I agree that first hand descriptions of DMT experiences are valid and worthy of study, and I have read many such accounts. However, when those DMT trippers start creating theoretical frameworks or ornate theologies as an attempt to explain or embellish what they experienced on DMT, then I reserve the right to be skeptical, especially when those people don't have a scientific stance, and so often tend to create their belief system based on what they would like to be true, or based on what beliefs may support the social cohesion of the tribe.

To give you an example: I have read many accounts of people taking DMT encountering what Terence McKenna called "self-transforming machine elves," otherwise known as fractal elves, or just machine elves. Most DMT trippers tend to assume these machine elves are beings distinct from their own self; ie, they assume these machine elves have their own separate existence, mainly because they seem to behave autonomously.

However, in one of the rare DMT trip accounts I read from a scientist, he wanted to put this idea of the autonomous existence of machine elves to the test. So during his DMT trip, he made mental efforts to control appearance and behavior of these machine elves, and after a while, succeeded in doing so. This experiment indicates that machine elves are likely just manifestations of your own mind, rather than autonomous beings or autonomous consciousnesses.

If I remember rightly, I think I came across a study many years ago suggesting that the fractal imagery seen during DMT and LSD trips may be generated in the optic nerve, as a result of the action of these drugs on this nerve.

Strassman's test subjects all reported similar "abduction like scenarios" and being operated on by alien type beings.

One thing that does interest me about DMT is the reporting of certain recurrent themes that different trippers independently observe. For example, snakes seem to be seen a great deal. Perhaps taking ayahuasca in the Amazon rainforest might explain that in terms of cultural conditioning, as perhaps indigenous peoples in the Amazon may for good reason be fearful of snakes. However, when taking DMT in an urban environment, it is hard to explain why snakes are seen. Though I understand it make take many trips of DMT before you first see a snake, so they are not that common.

The appearance of gnomes or alien creatures with large eyes and smooth faces also seems to be a commonly reported experience of DMT. DMT or psilocybin in naturally growing plants may explain why there are so many "gnome sitings" reported in Iceland. My theory to explain the numerous Icelandic gnome sitings is that these naturally growing plants or mushrooms may be used in food, perhaps then leading to gnome hallucinations.

Iceland takes gnome sitings so seriously, that a couple of years ago, a highway project was canceled because it was thought that the new road might disturb the elf environment!

It is also possible that this feeling of love also comes from outside of the body. Just because science cannot measure that which is beyond the physical, if there even is anything, doesn't mean experiential and anecdotal "evidence" of it should be denied.

I personally think that consciousness may well have transcendental qualities (as in transcending space and time), and that one day these might be better understood when the theories of quantum consciousness that are currently in their infancy are better developed.

Love, like any other emotion, can be become the content of consciousness, as can the sensations of an itch on your ankle; but whether love is anything more than one of the sensations or feeling that consciousness can contain — a color of consciousness if you like — that's another question.

Still, the point I'm making is that I don't think you can separate any significant healing affects from having various "spiritual" experiences. If you're gonna subtract conclusions from test subject data then surely everything that occurred, which includes extrasensory and spiritual experiences, is relevant?

The art of science is being able to work out what factors are causally relevant in a given situation, are what are not. I think what makes a good scientific mind is the uncanny ability to sift the relevant from the non-relevant.

Conversely, those without this scientific ability are often caught up and confused by all the myriad minutiae of any situation; they cannot filter out the causally relevant from the causally non-relevant. And these are usually the same people who have an anti-science stance.

I'm wondering what is the benefit in reducing what I see as a complex systemic affect down to it's parts?

You would have to study science to understand that fully.

But even ignoring way the utility of science, there is a great pleasure involved in performing this reductionism. When you take any given situation or system, there is almost an infinite number of ways that you could dissect that system into component parts, or conceptual elements. You can consider these parts or elements of the system as perhaps the invention of human mind, divisions we impose on the system, or lines of demarkation we ourselves draw up, dividing the system into parts.

But the uncanny ability to perform reductionist analysis on a system involves seeing (or is it creating) the parts or elements that have causal relationships to each other.

Anyone can come along and mentally divide the world into arbitrary parts. That's easy. But to divide the world into the right parts that then have a causal and mathematical relationship to each other, that usually takes genius.

 

[manna]

@manna
The aspects of DMT trips you are bring up do interest me a lot, but ideally they should be in a thread of their own, as this thread is supposed to be on the immunomodulatory properties of psychedelics, which is biochemistry.

But with the risk of going even further of topic, I will answer your points:

Welllll yes, biochemistry maybe but biochemistry only? I don't think so cause wise. It did occur to me that I sailed my ship before really checking out of the port with the point to the first post but I could argue, correctly I think, that what I've said helps ellucidate the biochemical affects. But that's by the by and if folk are only interested in the reductionist point of view in this thread, I shouldn't like to detract even if I think it incomplete.

Nowadays there is a scientific understanding of how inflammation in the gut can affect the brain: a major gut-to-brain route is the vagus nerve, which runs from gut to brain, and has detectors for inflammation. This nerve will signal to the brain when it senses inflammation in the gut. When the brain receives this signal from the vagus nerve, the brain turns on sickness behavior, which interestingly has symptoms very similar to those of ME/CFS.

Sure, there's another avenue. I'm currently watching the start of a series on utube called "dim mak the western view" where the one fella, an emergency nurse, explains both avenues, the meridian system and the western view.

I agree that first hand descriptions of DMT experiences are valid and worthy of study, and I have read many such accounts. However, when those DMT trippers start creating theoretical frameworks or ornate theologies as an attempt to explain or embellish what they experienced on DMT, then I reserve the right to be skeptical, especially when those people don't have a scientific stance, and so often tend to create their belief system based on what they would like to be true, or based on what beliefs may support the social cohesion of the tribe.

Yes but you can still discern the commonalities beyond a persons fancy.

To give you an example: I have read many accounts of people taking DMT encountering what Terence McKenna called "self-transforming machine elves," otherwise known as fractal elves, or just machine elves. Most DMT trippers tend to assume these machine elves are beings distinct from their own self; ie, they assume these machine elves have their own separate existence, mainly because they seem to behave autonomously.

However, in one of the rare DMT trip accounts I read from a scientist, he wanted to put this idea of the autonomous existence of machine elves to the test. So during his DMT trip, he made mental efforts to control appearance and behavior of these machine elves, and after a while, succeeded in doing so. This experiment indicates that machine elves are likely just manifestations of your own mind, rather than autonomous beings or autonomous consciousnesses.

Or it shows that reality is more plastic in that realm. I've never encountered machine elves but then I've never vaped DMT. Potentially you mean folk on ayahuasca also seeing them. Hard to say as reports get separated from how the trip was initiated. One person being able to affect these elves doesn't really mean they are "likely" self projected .

If I remember rightly, I think I came across a study many years ago suggesting that the fractal imagery seen during DMT and LSD trips may be generated in the optic nerve, as a result of the action of these drugs on this nerve.

Purely theoretical of course.

One thing that does interest me about DMT is the reporting of certain recurrent themes that different trippers independently observe. For example, snakes seem to be seen a great deal. Perhaps taking ayahuasca in the Amazon rainforest might explain that in terms of cultural conditioning, as perhaps indigenous peoples in the Amazon may for good reason be fearful of snakes. However, when taking DMT in an urban environment, it is hard to explain why snakes are seen. Though I understand it make take many trips of DMT before you first see a snake, so they are not that common.

Serpentine is the way energy flows most efficiently in 3 dimensions. Your profile pic for instance. Is it similar to the caduceus? I see a straight stick, the spine, and energy flowing up it in a serpentine manner. The energy flow through the chakras is said to be serpentine. If you imagine the chakras are cogs spinning different ways and the chain is the snake it will go from side to side to reach the top. It could be said that serpentine movement is close to how the subtler energies of your body move and so you are experiencing or becoming aware of those. And the snakes could be other things.

The appearance of gnomes or alien creatures with large eyes and smooth faces also seems to be a commonly reported experience of DMT. DMT or psilocybin in naturally growing plants may explain why there are so many "gnome sitings" reported in Iceland. My theory to explain the numerous Icelandic gnome sitings is that these naturally growing plants or mushrooms may be used in food, perhaps then leading to gnome hallucinations.

Iceland takes gnome sitings so seriously, that a couple of years ago, a highway project was canceled because it was thought that the new road might disturb the elf environment!

I like Iceland. They strike me as a cool bunch of people. I had heard about the cancelled highway project. Gnome halucinations or actual gnomes? Halucinating is not something I've found to be generally reported on psychedelics. You don't see huge sharks flying through the air that wanna eat you kind of thing. If you were to see a gnome it would be in the place where gnomes should expect to be seen, if anywhere: at say the foot of a tree for instance. There are many countries, counties and states who take the fae world seriously, you'd be surprised.

The art of science is being able to work out what factors are causally relevant in a given situation, are what are not. I think what makes a good scientific mind is the uncanny ability to sift the relevant from the non-relevant.

Conversely, those without this scientific ability are often caught up and confused by all the myriad minutiae of any situation; they cannot filter out the causally relevant from the causally non-relevant. And these are usually the same people who have an anti-science stance.

Well this is a subjective and personal point of view of course. You're unlikely to think your view to be incorrect else you'd change it. I think I have an excellent scientific mind. I'm certainly not anti-science by any means but I am anti dogma and science can be as prone to that as religion can be. Science is along way from perfect. I do prefer the natural sacientists like Schauberger and Steiner. They feel that you cannot comprehend a thing via the intellect and logic alone and that sensing or feeling also come into it. Even asking the thing to tell you about itself Steiner also felt it necessary to study conventional science and I would agree and at the end of it, having both the reductionist and "Wholistic" p.o.v. could be said to be more comnplete.

You would have to study science to understand that fully.

But even ignoring way the utility of science, there is a great pleasure involved in performing this reductionism. When you take any given situation or system, there is almost an infinite number of ways that you could dissect that system into component parts, or conceptual elements. You can consider these parts or elements of the system as perhaps the invention of human mind, divisions we impose on the system, or lines of demarkation we ourselves draw up, dividing the system into parts.

But the uncanny ability to perform reductionist analysis on a system involves seeing (or is it creating) the parts or elements that have causal relationships to each other.

Anyone can come along and mentally divide the world into arbitrary parts. That's easy. But to divide the world into the right parts that then have a causal and mathematical relationship to each other, that usually takes genius.

This a description of something up in the air and intangible that is supposedly "great". W/o it being in regards to something it's indisputable...like the pseudo science mumbo jumbo. The reductionist view of the body and it's use in medicine to synthesize drugs is fatally flawed in conception and realisation, imo. The thought that you can synthesize an active ingredient and then administer it to the body and get just a healing affect is wishful thinking. There may be occasions when reductionism might be helpful on it's own, whithout wholism, but imo the human body is not one of them. But I don't want to force that opinion on anyone.

 

[Hip]

@manna You are taking this thread into the same old "the New Age is better than science" type discussions that sometimes arise on this forum. These discussions are usually fruitless, usually because you find that New Age advocates wouldn't know a proton from a crouton. And technically these discussions should be banned, because discussion of religious beliefs is agains the forum rules, and New Age ideas are a kind of religious belief.

 

[MeSci]

The other interesting thing about 5-HT2A receptors is that they are also found on astrocytes in the brain. Now when coxsackievirus B (a virus strongly linked to ME/CFS) infects the brain, it infects astrocytes (refs: 1, 2), and also neural progenitor cells.

Important to stress that these are in vitro studies.

 

[Hip]

Important to stress that these are in vitro studies.

Indeed, though evidence for a possible astrocyte infection of the brain in ME/CFS also comes from a postmortem study (detailed in this post) by Dr John Richardson in 2001, which found that in the brain of a deceased ME/CFS patient, a small fraction of the glial cells were infected with enterovirus. Most glial cells are astrocytes.

 

[MeSci]

Henry Lindlhar, well known 20th century Naturopath, known for his rigorous scientific approach, found that, from 20 years of treating 50,000 patients in his private hospital, for patients with chronic illness there was weightloss prior to improvement.

OTOH many ME sufferers had significant weight loss at the start of their illness. Then they got worse...

In the normal state you would not deny the table is there and likewise, perhaps, in the superconscious state, you might not deny what appears more real than what is in everyday reality.

In atomic physics we learn that a table is made of atoms, and atoms consist mainly of empty space. So essentially a table does too! Scientists discuss issues like this.

I've read "Supernature" by Dr. Lyal Watson and in that he uses laws of chance and indepth statistics to find out for instance, if lawyers actually are born under Leo (thats a made up connection for arguments sake). He found according to laws of chance from statistics of folk born under Leo, at about 100-1 against, they were (ignore specific data like 100-1 as from memory) lawyers. Is that scientific?

It may be. The sign 'Leo' covers a particular time of year. There have been studies that found that the time of year when one is born affects one's character, I think. So it is probably nothing to do with the stars.

 

[manna]

@manna You are taking this thread into the same old "the New Age is better than science" type discussions that sometimes arise on this forum. These discussions are usually fruitless, usually because you find that New Age advocates wouldn't know a proton from a crouton. And technically these discussions should be banned, because discussion of religious beliefs is agains the forum rules, and New Age ideas are a kind of religious belief.

Ego stroking? It was time to leave anyway. Atb

 

[Hip]

Ego stroking?

More really a sense of frustration of not being able to communicate on a scientific wavelength.

 

[manna]

OTOH many ME sufferers had significant weight loss at the start of their illness. Then they got worse...

Not sure what you mean? If they were better when they were thin would that would mean it's a good sign of improvement by that reasoning?

In atomic physics we learn that a table is made of atoms, and atoms consist mainly of empty space. So essentially a table does too! Scientists discuss issues like this.

You know some say that that empty space is actually a plenum and that atoms are holes in this plenum. This would then mean that the higher the density of a physical object the more holes in the plenum, as atoms, it contains and so matter may be like bubbles in water as opposed to solidity in a gas. Just to turn it on it's head. Scientists don't have a clue what atoms are... No sarcasm to end with..

It may be. The sign 'Leo' covers a particular time of year. There have been studies that found that the time of year when one is born affects one's character, I think. So it is probably nothing to do with the stars.

The studies could be said to strengthen the argument for astrology from what you've said. I have no interest astrology personally but the laws against chance testing Dr. Watson did always gave results and were mostly not to do with time of year. Atb

 

[Thomas]

I would suggest when you feel ready to try it, start with a very small dose, perhaps ⅛ of a tablet (cut with a sharp knife). Then if there are no problems, a day or two later you may want to increase the dose to a ¼ tablet

Before coming across this advice I took 1/4 of a 50 mg tablet. It apparently has a quick onset of action (15 minutes) and a short half life (apprx 3 hours). Initially I felt nothing. Around a few hours later as I guess the drug was leaving my system, I remember feeling a sudden mood shift from my regular dull ME/CFS to the unwanted depression and cyclical thoughts that revolved mostly around the theme of death in some way or another.

Clearly not the magic bullet I was hoping for. I'm not sure whether I should try this medication again at a lower dose like you suggested? My suspicion is no.

 

[manna]

More really a sense of frustration of not being able to communicate on a scientific wavelength.

"great posts" "informative"

 

[Hip]

"great posts" "informative"

Yes liked some of your input, and your first hand experience of DMT. But you don't like biochemistry.

 

[manna]

I've absolutely nothing against biochemistry. Never said or implied that much either. Just that on it's own it's incomplete. I have no religious beliefs and slurring with new agey, mumbo jumbo and pseudo science, proton crouton jabs has nothing to do with anything worth saying imo and should rate above "religious belief" discussions being banned but hey, who am I to say? I'm not a mod. Peace n hair grease and all that jazz

This is interesting http://realitysandwich.com/118227/free_peter_aziz/

 

[Hip]

I remember feeling a sudden mood shift from my regular dull ME/CFS to the unwanted depression and cyclical thoughts that revolved mostly around the theme of death in some way or another.

From my own experiences with opioids, I get the impression that opioid drugs sometimes do bring forth what Freud called the death drive (Thanatos instinct).

A while ago when I was experimenting with pholcodine, an OTC opioid cough suppressant, it brought out some Thanatos feelings in me. These Thanatos feelings are not quite the same as suicidal ideation (which I used to have at high levels for many years); these Thanatos feelings are just a sort of philosophical orientation and preoccupation with death.

I have seen studies where there were higher suicide rates in long term opioid users; now that could of course be because opioid users may be suffering a lot of physical pain, which is why they need opioids; but I wonder whether opioids may somehow be darkening the mental state, thus encouraging suicide.

Having said that, you have probably seen this thread where several ME/CFS patients found opioid pain medications improved the brain fog and other neurological symptoms.

 

[Hip]

This is interesting http://realitysandwich.com/118227/free_peter_aziz/

In Brazil, I believe there is a law which permits the use of ayahuasca for spiritual and religious purposes.


I used to read Reality Sandwich quite a bit, but I found as ME/CFS progressed, the spiritual side of my mind disappeared, and from then on, I found it almost impossible to enjoy all the spiritual literature that previously I had resonated with. I of course blame the aberrant biochemistry of ME/CFS for this: my best guess is that the loss of spirituality may be caused by the autoantibodies to the serotonin 5-HT1A receptor that have been found in some ME/CFS patients.

Receptors such as 5-HT1A, 5-HT2A and others have been linked to a spiritual personality (people who are more spiritual tend to have specific genetic variants of the genes for these receptors). And it is no coincidence that psychedelics tend to activate 5-HT1A and 5-HT2A.

That is why I am curious about whether very low dose DMT might be psychologically beneficial for me; it might bring back my lost spiritual disposition. But it might also precipitate psychosis.

 

[Thomas]

From my own experiences with opioids, I get the impression that opioid drugs sometimes do bring forth what Freud called the death drive (Thanatos instinct).

A while ago when I was experimenting with pholcodine, an OTC opioid cough suppressant, it brought out some Thanatos feelings in me. These Thanatos feelings are not quite the same as suicidal ideation (which I used to have at high levels for many years); these Thanatos feelings are just a sort of philosophical orientation and preoccupation with death.

That's really interesting, I haven't heard of the Thanatos instinct before. I think I may have to read up on it now - although maybe I should just leave it alone haha as I tend to get fascinated by all sorts of dark subjects.

Yes I've seen that thread before and the only other time I tried opioids I got a bit of a stimulant action from them, but nothing good enough to warrant using them regularly. With pentazocine I was hoping for the sigma1 agonist effects.