January 27, 2026 • 48 mins
What if psychedelics could transform the way we treat trauma, chronic pain, and insomnia? This week, neuroscientist and psychedelic researcher Grace Blest-Hopley joins the show to break down the research on psychedelics and female biology. She discusses how psychedelics work in the brain, and the ways that psychedelic-assisted therapies might be beneficial for women in midlife.
Links to resources mentioned in this episode:
Hystelica’s resources on psychedelic retreats
The acute effects of classic psychedelics on memory in humans
Psilocybin with psychological support for treatment-resistant depression: six-month follow-up
Single-Dose Psilocybin for a Treatment-Resistant Episode of Major Depression
Johns Hopkins study on psychedelics and Alzheimer’s
Note: In this show, we use “women” as shorthand for people with XX chromosomes. We understand sex and gender are more complex, and acknowledge the experiences we describe reach beyond that word.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Speaker 1 (00:17):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
This show is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis,
or treatment. It is for informational purposes. Please consult your
healthcare professional with any medical questions.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Welcome back to Decoding Women's Health. I'm doctor Elizabeth Pointer.
Psychedelics come with all sorts of associations and preconceived notions
tech bros, Wild partying, Burning Man, and the nineteen seventies.
But in recent years more research has emerged about the
potential for psychedelics and clinical settings, and finally there are
(01:02):
researchers studying these drugs with a specific audience in mind women.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
We really had never tried to properly understand women's biology
in the context of many things, really, but especially in
areas like mental health and how we think about treating them,
and particularly as we came into this new world of
psychedelics and psychedelic therapy. And for me, that was an
incredibly start, considering that so many of the mechanisms that
(01:30):
psychedelics work by have so much synergy with the mechanisms
of female biology.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
That's doctor Grace Blessed Hopley. She's a neuroscientist and research
associate at King's College, London, She's also the chief scientific
officer at a biotech company in the UK focused on
psychiatric and neurologic disorders, and the founder of Hisstelica, an
organization that focuses on psychedelics and female biology. Much of
(02:01):
her academic research focused on cannabinoids, but her background as
an Army reserve officer and her work with military veterans
led her to the field of psychedelics research. She believes
that psychedelics can be powerful tools for helping people living
with depression and post traumatic stress disorder, which is commonly
(02:21):
referred to as PTSD, and she's seen firsthand how these
treatments can be helpful for people from all different walks
of life in dealing with mental and physical health challenges.
How did you first get interested in the therapeutic benefits
of psychedelics.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Yeah, well, I think there has been the knowledge that
psychedelics can be useful for treating mental health conditions for millennia.
If we look into practices that have gone on in
the Amazon jungle, for instance, using substances like hyahuasca, it's
been very commonplace for a long time, but for me
it kind of was a little bit observational. Also in
(03:01):
terms of seeing substances that were perhaps being used in
a more of a recreational party scene and seeing the
changes that were coming about in those people, and that
really sparked a huge curiosity in me to try and.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Understand why that was.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
And so once I got that opportunity to do the
work alongside particularly military vecterans with whom I was able
to understand quite the severity of the issues that they
often face and see that immediate and significant change in
mental health progress, then I really was particularly sole. But
you know, as any good scientists, I always want to
(03:38):
see the data. I always want to see the proof.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
I wanted to have doctor Blessed Hopley on the show
because all of this research and interest and investment in
psychedelics has made this a very buzzy space. Many people
out there are curious about these drugs. Personally, I'm really
interested in what the latest research is showing us about
the potential for treatment options to help people overcome past
(04:05):
trauma or manage chronic pain. I'll admit I'm fascinated by
this space, but some of the terminology is quite new
to me. So I am doctor Blessed Hopley to walk
us through the basics. First, can you give us a
psychedelic one oh one kind of overview, like what are
psychedelic substances, what are they actually doing to our brain?
(04:26):
What is a psychedelic versus a hallucinogen? Just give us
a big broad one oh one.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Of course I would love to use so first of
all to say, you know, the difference between what we
might call a psychedelic or a hallucinogen, it's not super
well defined off when we might call a psychedelic and
hallucinogen interchangeably, it's more common that we would use the
word psychedelic now than hallucinogen, because there is you know,
more effects than just hallucination with these substances. You can
(04:54):
broadly break down psychedelics kind of into two categories, classical
psychedelics and non classical psychedelics. When we talk about classical psychedelics,
that's when we're talking about substances like psilocybin, lsd ayahuasca.
You know, DMT the main active component of yahuasca, And
these are all substances that primarily work by engaging our
(05:15):
serotonin system and engaging with a particular receptor in that
serotonergic system.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
The five HT two a receptor.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Now they also bind with many other receptors and other
networks within our brain, but this is the primary network
they work through through the serotonergic system, and when they
have this activation at the system, that's when we get
the effects that we might associate with things like hallucinations,
for instance. And what we actually see is that our
brain is structured in a way that we sort of
(05:43):
have a control center which is in the middle, and
then we have sort of areas like our prefrontal cortex
and other parts which are more sort of gray matter
that get recruited in when they are required from the
control center, if you were. Now, when we take psychedelics,
what we see is that this control center is actually
no longer dictating the information that comes in, and we
(06:05):
actually see activation happening across the brain. So we see
a lot of sort of cross talk betweens of the
brain that might not always under normal situations be able
to communicate. And that's where we start to see the
effects in terms of how we're able to, you know,
go back and process certain memories that perhaps we wouldn't
be able to get at in previous times. We might
(06:27):
hear things or perceive things or see things, and we
have these very transformative experiences in terms of how we
feel while we're under the influence of the substance. Now
that's the psychedelic experience in itself, but there's actually so
much more that goes on. And as I said, you know,
they engage a number of different receptors in the brain,
and so beyond the kind of experiential part that we
(06:49):
have under psychedelics, we see biochemical changes that come about
after psychedelic use, and what we're talking about there is
essentially changes that happen on a cellular level that can
increase things like neuroplasticity, so the ability for the brain
brain to kind of grow and change and make new connections,
which is what we need in order to make new
(07:09):
memories or to form new thought patterns. And we also
see changes in things like neurogenesis, so actually you know,
starting to produce new proteins and new cells potentially even
within our brain. So there is this incredible kind of
after glow effect that goes on for depending on the
psychedelic you know, days weeks after. So that's largely what
we're talking about when we talk about classic psychedelics.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
But as you're right. There are a number of.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Other things that substances that are very similar and what
we might call non classical psychedelics, and that includes things
like ketamine, MDMA, cannabis even and when we think about them,
they have quite different mechanisms. MDMA is probably the most
similar to classic psychedelics and that it also works through
the serotonergic system, but it doesn't work quite in the
(07:55):
same way, so we don't quite get the hallucinatory parts.
We'd often call that more of an en pathogen. So
often the feelings that we have on MDMA are more
associated to this reduction in fear and increased feeling of
connectedness perhaps with the people that we're with, and that's
why we use MDMA in a lot of psychedelical system
therapies that involve sort of talking about potentially traumatic incidences
(08:19):
that have happened, or in couples therapy for instance, where
they able to empathize with each other on a different level,
and it can be very beneficial there. Ketamin is a
drug that has some of the hallucinatory effects I suppose
of classic psychedelics, and a lot of the benefit people
get from ketamin can be about the experience in a
similar way that it is in classic psychedelics, but it
(08:42):
actually works in a very different way. And so though
it can be similar in how it can sometimes feel,
it is quite different mechanistically. And finally, cannabis is always
the huge argument is cannabis is psychedelic or not. I
think I've been persuaded it is. Why is that, I
think because the endocannabinoid system is very complicated in itself,
(09:02):
and that's the primary system within our brain by which
cannabis works, and it can have a number of these
sort of you know, multi system effects that can then
lead to having these experiences that can feel like a
psychedelic experience. And also, because we now know as well
just quite how many other neurosystems in the brain that
cannabis and cannabinoids can affect, so they are also having
(09:26):
this sort of multi level engagement with various different brain substrates,
I suppose, So so.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Fair to say that a psychedelic is kind of unlicks
the brain, so it can communicate in ways that are
typically suppressed. So it's taking the breaks off our brain
a little bit and allowing it just to expand and
have different communication networks.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Absolutely, And you know, we have to really think of
our brain as you know, a very kind of fine
tuned machine and part of what it has to do.
You know, we often always associate more with better, but
actually more is not always the most efficient, and so
our brains are evolved and adapted to only really recruit
the parts that it needs in order to.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Complete the task.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Now, that's fine if the part of the brain that
is recruiting those other parts in is very plastic and
adaptive and has sort of good blueprints I suppose, with
which it is wanting to engage other parts of our brain.
But when we see things like depression, anxiety, and post
traumatic stress disorder, what we often see often built in
(10:31):
from very very foundational you know, early early childhood years
in some people, that this part of the brain can
start to become very rigid. I like to think of
it a little bit like if you think of a
small stream that comes to a beach and is going
into the ocean, and it just dives one very deep
groove within the sand, and when we take a psychedelic
(10:52):
a huge wave comes and washes over the beach, and
those deep grooves get kind of filled in a little
and they allow the water to now potentially take other
roots down to the sea. And that is sort of
what happens with the way that the structure of how
our brain communicates changes under a psychedelic.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
So in terms of the impact the change and the
impact of the change, how rapidly does one see that,
Do you use a psychedelic and then three days later
you feel more empathy and more at peace with the world,
Or how long does it take for these changes to
really impact how you feel or how you look at
the world, And then how long do they last for.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
It can really be very dependent on people's experience and
what they uncover, because sometimes as well, we go and
we take these substances and what they are essentially are
they are just.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Catalysts to our own psyche right.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
They're not really bringing anything new, They're just unlocking doors
that we are able to then access things that are
already there. And so if you go with a problem
that maybe you don't have any oversight of and you
instantly are able to sort of see it and realize it, well,
are you instantly then better?
Speaker 4 (12:00):
Well?
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Maybe probably not, because you probably have to now integrate
that into your life and understand what it means and
change you know the behaviors in your day to day
living that allow you to become happier and healthier and
you know, more connected and all the things that we
know that are possible. So it isn't quite a case
of you will take it and then suddenly feel better.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
Often people do.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Often people have a really pleasant time in the experience,
but sometimes as well, people do realize very deep and
potentially hidden aspects of themselves, and that takes time to integrate.
And so I like to think that that there are
catalysts to getting better forever, as opposed to you will
take it and then suddenly you will be healed.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
But if we look at what's happening.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
In clinical trials, if we look at the amount of
people who've got treatment resistant depressions, for instance, who have
had significant clinical improvement in their condition, we definitely are
able to do that. And that is you know, normally,
within you know, a month or so of having the
treatment that they would do those follow up assessments. Now,
(13:10):
in terms of the long longevity of it, again, like
I say, how much you integrate this into your life.
You can take a psychedelic and feel amazing and be
dancing around having the most wonderful time. But if you
don't do anything about what you potentially are learning about
yourself during this experience, and you just carry on all
of the same practices in two three four weeks time,
(13:32):
you'll feel exactly the same as you did before you
took the psychedelic and the same again if you ever
do it in a very therapeutic way. And we do
see this within these clinical trials. Now we're starting to
get follow ups that are six months a year down
the line.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
There's still a very good, meaningful.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Benefit to a majority of people who've been in the trial,
but people do start to regress back towards the baseline,
and so you know, it's not this sort of one
and done that perhaps we'd originally thought with psychedelics, and
maybe you can just take it once and then you
work at all your problems and then you never have
to take it again. It's not really that, it's sort off.
You take it and then you kind of stops the
(14:12):
journey that you do need to pay attention to in
order to maintain getting benefit in the long run.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Coming up, we discuss the potential uses of psychedelics specifically
tailored for women, and how these drugs may interact with
our hormones more in just a moment. Whenever a new
(14:40):
study is published on psychedelic assisted therapies, I find myself
drawn to it. Typically, this type of treatment is taking
place in a controlled clinical setting where trained therapist or
clinical staff are involved before, during, and after the drug
is administered, and training facilitators are part of the process,
(15:02):
helping participants prepare beforehand, staying with them during the experience,
and guiding integration sessions afterward. The idea is that the
drug alone isn't the treatment, it's actually the combination of
the substance with the structured psychological support. I wanted to
(15:22):
hear from doctor Bless Hapley about what conditions these types
of therapies may be most effective for. So what types
of conditions would midlife women women look for in terms
of using a psychedelic The.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
List goes on and on. Right in oncology, there is
some incredible work. There's some amazing work going on in
neurodegenerative disorders, and obviously we know women are so much
more prevalent to developing neurodegenerative disorders later in life. So
I think that work is still in its infancy, but
is extremely promising. So there's a long long list of
things that they can be useful, but the primary thing
(16:00):
with which they are being investigated for at the moment
are largely mental health conditions and primarily depressive conditions, so
things like treatment resistant depression or major depressive disorders.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
So interesting, but yeah, very interesting.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
But I think, particularly for women, I think there is
this amazing opportunity to explore how psychedelics could be useful
for pre menstrual conditions. I've been thinking particularly around PMDD
pre mensional dysphoric disorder, which is a pre mental disorder
that is a very severe form of PMS. Essentially it
(16:32):
affects up to eight percent of women and really is
a very very marked change in their mood and behavior
around the final week, sometimes even as long as the
whole Luther your face, so final two weeks of their
mental cycle. But one of the things that we do
know about this condition, unfortunately it is highly associated with
previous life traumas. We also know that PMDD seems to
(16:54):
be associated with changes in sensitivity of things like our
progesterone receptors, and that could be a lot to do
with why women feel like like this and potentially to
do with their stress responses and their HPA access, and
these are all things that we are starting to think
that psychedelics could interact with with HPA axis.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Could you just define for our listeners what the HPA
access is. I know what it is, but I don't.
Lot of people probably don't.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Yeah, the hypothermic pituitary access is essentially a feedback loop
within our bodies that involves a couple of structures within
our brains, and it's primarily the system that dictates our
coursol and our cord sole release, and so our kind
of stress response.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Now cors soil is.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Needed because if we didn't have it, we would struggle
to get ourselves out of bed in the morning, and
so we have a small spike every every morning. It's
a kind of waking response. But we also have a
spike when we have any stresses that come in our lives,
and when we have repeated stresses or chronic stresses that
are not tigers but in fact a never ending email
chain or something, then we can start to get dysregulation
(18:01):
in that feedback system, and that's when we start to see,
you know, increases in things like anxiety disorders, insomnia particularly,
and it's HPA access. It is the conductor to the orchestra,
if you like, of dictating when we start releasing different
hormones at different parts of our mental cycles. So if
it becomes dysregulated through stress dysregulation, but when we do
(18:25):
start to see people having issues with prematural symptoms and
potentially changes in their mental cycle length or even their fertility.
Maybe so knowing that psychedelics potentially can alleviate some of
this dysregulation in the system could be very useful for women.
But we need to investigate and understand that, I think
(18:45):
in a way that we've not been very used to doing.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
How about the use of psychedelics for chronic pelvic pain,
pulvic floor dysfunction, women with endometriosis who suffer from terribly
Any work going on in that area in terms of
women's health specifically.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Yeah, absolutely, I even myself have been doing some work
in to this around the idea of chronic pelvit pain
and women. So things like endometriosis or volverdina for instance.
Sometimes we forget that there are two sides to pain.
There's the thing that is causing the pain and there's
the thing that is perceiving the pain, and if the
thing that is perceiving the pain, I er brains has
(19:22):
gotten stuck on thinking pain is expected in those rigid
ways that I talked about about earlier that we sometimes
get in these control centers of our brain, then we
are expecting to feel pain. And when we're expecting to
feel pain, any pain that we do then feel, we
will feel in a more intense way. So by being
able to potentially change some of those pathways within the
(19:44):
brain around pain perception, and some of the work we
did in some military actions with chronic pain kind of
showed this that perhaps although the pain in the actual
limb itself, the aggrogreic gating factord not change their perception
of the pain, and their relationship with the pain had
changed as such that they no longer felt like they
were in as much chronic pain or they were no
longer bothered by it as much as they were previously.
(20:07):
So I think there is a huge potential for women
in this area. And also I think there's something about
psychedelics that really allow us to kind of include things
like embodiment practices where we can really start to actually
connect our wonderful you know, all controlling brains, less them
to our bodies, which actually have a lot more input,
(20:28):
I think than we often give them credit for. And
we know that within women particularly, we often do kind
of dissociate away from our bodies, particularly when we've had
a lot of unexplained chronic pelvic pains that maybe we've
not been you.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
Know, listened to properly in our healthcare systems.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
And so having the ability to also connect with our
bodies and think about how movement practices can be used
in collaboration with psychedelics or you know, as a kind
of mindfulness practice could also be very very useful for these, yeah,
particular conditions.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
So a lot of the midlife women have issues with
sleep insomnia that sometimes aren't even corrected with proper hormonal management,
application of psychedelic treatments or uses with chronic sleep issues
and insomnia issues.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
Yeah, and insomnia is a really interesting one because there
can be.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
So many reasons why, right why we are having insomnia problems.
One of the common ones and women can be dysregulation
of quartsole released and sometimes we're very stressed, we're releasing
cortal at the wrong time, and then it's difficult for
us to be asleep when that is happening. You know,
that's very closely tied with anxiety, which is one of
the main drivers for insomnia, and we know that psychedelics
(21:43):
improve anxiety. And you know, the final women's specific kind
of midlife psychedelic use that I wanted to come to
is of course, that of perimenopause and menopause, and I
think sleep is obviously a huge, hugely associated symptom within
that field. And overall we've seen that the women who've
gone and taken psychedelics at retreats have reported to us
(22:06):
a vast improvement in a large range of menopause symptoms,
including this, and the reasons for that I think could
be manifold.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
With estrogen.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
We also know that it highly affects the serotonergic system,
increases the amount of serotonin serotonin network activation, and it
also has these hugely neuroprotective effects and effects that increase
things like neuroplasticity, and so when we lose those effects
during perimenopause and menopause, there can be very much correlated
with the development of a number of issues with anxiety, sleep, depression,
(22:43):
you know, even with things like cognitive performance.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
But there's also this wonderful opportunity. I think that as.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Women going through perimenopause and menopause, there's a lot to
rationalize with yourself. Right, You're going through a monumental change
in your life stage and kind of potentially how you identify,
and so taking psychedelics at this time has often been
kind of reported as extremely useful to help women to
(23:13):
process that change and to kind of accept often that
they are now moving into postmenopausal phase. And so we
don't always need to think about looking after ourselves on
just biological and mechanistic level. We have to think about
looking after ourselves on a spiritual level, and psychedelics are
very good for that.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Is there any intersection between how estrogen affects the impact
of a psychedelic on a female brain in terms of
should we be using if we are going to use
a psychedelic to be used in a ludial phase, the
follicular phase perimenopause versus menopause, do you see different reactions
any correlation there?
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Well, this is what I really am on a mission
to find out, and we are slowly starting to gather
bits of data and even develop the tools so we
can even take the measurement. But just by theory, one
would assume if we've got higher levels to be stood
in them, we've got a more reactive soonergic system, therefore
need less of a psychedelic to achieve the same effect.
(24:15):
Now do we know that to be definitely true In
terms of giving women psychedelics at different estrogen phases and
seeing if it changed their effect, Well, we haven't been
able to do that yet, and we hope that we will,
but it does make sense mechanistically that there is going
to be some kind of drug drug interaction, if you will,
between estrogen and psychedelics. But for me, one of the
(24:36):
most important aspects in terms of hormonal influence and psychedelics
that should be taken into account is that of the
effect of progesterone. And when we see progesterone dropping very
suddenly at the end of our mental cycle, we see
this huge change in what is actually an anziolytic effect
that progesterone is giving us kind of chills es out.
(24:57):
It's similar mechanism to alcohol, and so when we see
this level drop dramatically at the end of our mental cycle,
that's when we see huge increases in things like intrusive
thought patterns and also you know, higher dysregulation with our
dopaminagic systems. So all of these things increase the likelihood
that our mindset it's going to be such that we
(25:19):
are particularly anxious. Maybe we are having physical effects, you know,
breast tenderness or pain, and if we gave a psychedelic,
then they are internal amplifiers. If you feel terrible and
you take a psychedelic, there's a good chance you can
amplify that feeling.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
So for me, this effect of how changes.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
In hormones in women during the mental cycle effect their
mood and their emotional processing. If it is severe, then
we should not try and use high dose to psychedelics
during that time.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
I love the reminder that pain isn't just physical, it's
also mental, and that goes from major shifts like menopause too.
It's so interesting to think about the ways that psychedelics
might help with this emotional journey. After the break, doctor
bless Happy and I talk about what's next in the
field of psychedelic research, and we discussed some tips for
(26:11):
people looking into options in the space Welcome back. So
we've talked a lot about the research that's happening and
what we're learning about how these drug assisted therapies may
be useful to clinicians who are operating in safe and
(26:33):
controlled settings. I was also curious to hear more about
the world outside of that setting. To be clear, I'm
a doctor and an advocate for safe and controlled settings,
but I'm not naive. I know that people are curious
and they're very capable of finding ways to experience or
experiment with these drugs outside the doctor's office, oftentimes at
(26:57):
retreats or with their friends. In addition to her research efforts,
doctor Grace Blessed Hopley is engaged in education and advocacy
around women's psychedelic retreats, So I had to ask her
about what those are like and if she has any
tips for women to keep them safe. But before we
get there, I wanted to hear more from doctor Blesh
(27:19):
Hopley about why she founded Hystealica and what she hopes
her research, education and advocacy efforts yield in this space.
So you founded a company called Hystalica. Tell us about it.
Why did you start this company? What are you doing
with it?
Speaker 4 (27:37):
Yeah? Absolutely?
Speaker 3 (27:38):
So, really is my babya and it's a nonprofit organization
that really does have this mission around understanding women and psychedelics,
and we're doing that in a number of different ways.
And first and foremost, it's important that we provide education,
and that's education for women about their own bodies. It's
education for clinicians who are going to be using psychedelics
(28:02):
and researchers who are trying to think about the questions
that they should be asking. So we've really tried to
make sure that everybody kind of what they need to
make informed decisions that they.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
Might need to make now.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
But we also want to answer some of these primary
questions that we don't have good answers to, and so
for the last few years we've been conducted in research
alongside King Scotish London, where I am still a researcher,
asking women who've used psychedelics to share some of their
experience with us, and that's enabled us to start to
build a data set from which we can start to
tease a part some of potentially the answers to these
(28:37):
questions around when is it safe for women to take psychedelics?
You know, what are the things that we need to
explore more and understand more.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
And beyond that, what we try and do in Hystelica
is to.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Be an advocacy for this work and to highlight how
important it is and to highlight other women in the
space who are doing similar work, because it's not easy
out there being an academic, and sometimes it can be
really difficult, you know, if you're trying to convince people
that it's important that we spend a lot of time
(29:09):
and a lot of money on something that hasn't really
been given very.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
Much respect before.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
It's a huge, huge hole in terms of the all
of the previous biological knowledge that we have. It's largely
based on male models, male animals, you know, males, and
clinical trials, and so there's a huge amount that needs
to be unpicked and rediscovered. So it's important that for
me at Hystalica, we become a community for researchers and
(29:35):
for women who are interested in understanding themselves and understanding
how psychedelics can help themselves.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Have you seen the perception of the use of psychedelics
and the acceptance of the use of psychedelics and the
state of the research has it you founded this company
in twenty twenty two, is have you seen a change
over the passport three year or four years?
Speaker 4 (29:55):
Oh? Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
I remember when I first signed the company and I
was sort of try and sit there and explain to
my mom and dad what I was doing over the
Christmas dinner table, you know, And now my mom is
sort of sharing the Instagram posts with her friends. I love. Yeah,
there's definitely a huge change, and I think a real
big change that is coming around in women. And I
(30:19):
think a lot of that comes around, like I said,
this idea of community. We often, in the lack of
good healthcare options for women, do just sort of discuss
with our girlfriends right about what maybe worked for them.
And these conversations are often where we make a lot
of our healthcare decisions sometimes. And we've definitely seen there's
been this kind of ripple effect of women who are
(30:42):
starting to talk about psychedelics in rooms and at the
tables that perhaps they wouldn't have felt comfortable doing before.
And that is sort of slowly trickling down as to
who then says, maybe I.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Will go on a retreat, and you know.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
The number of high quality psychedeltic retreats that are not
available that are specifically designed for women is going up
and up. Now I should caveat that with there's some
not so good retreats, and we should always be very
very cautious about about choosing to go and do any
of the stuffs of people that we don't know, we
don't have any background on, but people I would not
(31:16):
have told them what I did before, and now have
they come to me and ask me how it can
get involved.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
So it's been remarkable great.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
What generally happens in a retreat, I'm fascinated by the
retreats actually, but what happens like so you do you
do a dose of psilocybin or do you do one
journey or one trip days and weeks long.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
So not all retreats are the same. And obviously the
substances that are used in retreats varies a lot. But
if we were to say, take for example, a psilocybin retreat,
So for instance, I partnered with a female retreat provider
and we're going to do some retreats next year that
are reasonably standard. What we primarily do is we get
(31:58):
people kind of enrolled three four weeks before the retreat itself.
Hopefully we will have a medical screening before you get
onto the retreat, and then you will have a couple
of calls where you'll meet the other people on the retreat,
meet the facilitators, ask any questions, and then the retreats
themselves are usually between four and five days long.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
They usually consist of one or two psilocybin.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Ceremonies, and you will perhaps arrive on the first day,
settle in, and then have some discussions in the evening.
The second morning, maybe you have a kind of preparatory
session between you all, and then the first ceremony will
usually happen on the second day, and that ceremony is
around six hours long, and after the ceremony is finished,
(32:44):
most people you'll just want to eat and go to sleep,
and then the next day you probably take a day
of integration, so that might look like again having group discussions,
but journaling, often meditation practices, yoga massages, but really taking
time slowly and just reflecting. And then the day after
(33:07):
that often they will then do a second ceremony, and
all the day after that again will be kind of
integration and discussion and again practices of how you can
take these things forward into your life. And then once
you leave the retreat, that's when all the real work,
real work starts, and integration is and often you will
then stay in touch with your cohort for you know,
(33:30):
three four weeks having group calls to try and integrate
some of your process. But the whole retreat itself is
really designed as a space, a held space where the
facilitators and the people who are running the retreat are
essentially there to keep a container during which you are
(33:51):
able to kind of go through and you know, experience
what you need to experience, express whatever it is you
need to express, and they can be really magical environments.
Have been extremely lucky to go to a number of
retreats as not as a participant, but as somebody who
is helping out with collecting research or similar and the
atmosphere is unbelievably calm and really fosters this ability for
(34:14):
us to do really deep reflective work.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Do you collot data from Can you cuot data from
these retreats?
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Yes, So we collect data as Hystalica, which is an
open survey for any women who are going to any retreats,
And what we do is we ask people are baseline
so before they go, and then four weeks and twelve
weeks afterwards. No, this particular piece of research is specifically
looking at mental cycle symptoms and specifically looking at menopause symptoms.
(34:42):
But I've done a lot of research, for instance, with
military veterans, where we've done a similar thing, and we're
looking at post mundic stress disorder, quality of life military
to civilian conversions. But there's also a lot of real
interest now and I completely get it in individuals who
are going through psychedic retreats who want to you know,
we all are clean on our own data, and we are,
(35:05):
you know, all getting so good at integrating all of
these wearable devices into our lives. And there are some
really interesting programs that have popped out that you can
sort of apply for subscription and sort of follow yourselves
through your own psychedelic experience and see what kind of
changes that it might occur.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Integration and wearables. I love that, actually, I love that's
really great. What trials and research right now do you
find particularly promising? What do you see as the future
the promising area of the future.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
There are hundreds of clinical trials currently ongoing with psychedelics,
so it's difficult to pick my favorite favorite one or
my favorite indication, but for me, it has to be
neurodegenerative disorders. And potentially things like traumatic brain injuries as well.
With psychedelics, we're starting to think it could be possible
(35:58):
that we have a mechanism that looks a bit like
neuronal regrowth in traumatic brain injury. It's early days, it's
all very pre clinical. Plus this anecdotal evidence of people
who've taken psychedelics, but.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
We not have good answers for them at all at
the moment.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
What women who should consider pursuing any type of psychedelic
type of treatment. Who do you think benefits the most?
Who should seek Who should say, hmm, maybe that's from me,
Maybe I should pursue that.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
I think that there's a lot a lot of women
would benefit hugely from it. You just sort of ask
yourself the questions in terms of what that potentially would
you like to discover about yourself? Or is there some
part of you that you want to move past. And
we don't always have to talk about this in terms
(36:48):
of oh, I actually I feel very anxious, or I'm
having sleep problems. It could be like I feel a
real creative block between my work at the moment and
I want to find out what is at the bottom
of that, Or my children have all left home, and
I want to now give myself the opportunity to re engage,
you know, with myself and understand more. So anyone who
(37:09):
has this sort of curiosity to try and understand themselves more,
you know, potentially with this intention to improve in some
aspect I think, is really ready to start thinking about
doing it. It's fascinating to watch, as I say, people
kind of come out the other side of it, and
often the thing that they go in that they think
(37:29):
is the thing that has been upsetting them, and it
actually turns out that it's nothing to do with it
at all, And then you can actually yeah, absolutely, and
then you can address it and move forward, whereas if
you don't, you'll spend your whole time looking at this thing,
going why is this thing ruining my life? Not understanding
it's nothing to do.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
With it's something in a different direction that's like, yeah,
that's actually so interesting. Gives you better.
Speaker 4 (37:50):
Insight, huge insight about who you are.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
If somebody is embracing psychedelics in their life and using
them and as having benefits from them, how frequently are
they using them?
Speaker 4 (38:05):
Yeah, that's another great question.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
And I think as little as you need to, you know,
as should be the answer with a lot of things
that we take. But when it comes to big ceremonial doses,
you know, if you do a ceremony properly, you shouldn't
really want to go back to one in the near future.
You know, they are big and they are a lot
to process. It's always a concern for me when I
(38:27):
see people jumping from one ceremony to the next. It
can often mean they're doing something we might call spiritual bypassing,
where you're not really listening to the message you're getting,
but the ceremony itself is making you feel kind of
good enough, and that afterglow that you just keep jumping
from one to the next. There's an excellent quotation, when
you get the message hang.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Up the phone microdocing. Tell us about microdocen What that is?
What are the benefits?
Speaker 3 (38:54):
Yeah, well the jury is still allowed on the benefits,
I'm afraid. But microdosing essentially is taking a sub perceptual
sub pollucinatory amount of the substance. And I say, you
know both those things there as we always used to
say sub perceptual, but actually when we think about some
(39:18):
of the what we would still classed as a psychedelic
people are. They are noticing that something is different, but
it's not in a way that would impair your ability
to go about your everyday life. So you would still
be able to.
Speaker 4 (39:33):
Work or move around. I won't say you would be
able to drive, because these substances are illegal and you
actually would be breaking the law.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
So when we talk about microdocing, what we're talking about
is usually taking these substances in a way that might
be much more recognizable to how people think about traditional pharmaceuticals.
So we're taking these substances daily, though often with micro
docing protocols we might say we'll take them every other day,
for instance, and there's a lot of kind of thinking
(40:02):
about you know, exactly what that should be, but essentially
you do it for a prolonged period of time. Now,
the reason that you might be doing that could be
for all of you, you know, the improvements in serotoinlagic function,
but also these improvements in europlus system the other kind
of long you know, more kind of longer lasting effects
of psychedelics. In terms of evidence we have, it's a
(40:23):
difficult one because there's not been a lot of randomized
control trials done and one of the things that is
really important to remember is that the placebo effect is very,
very real, particularly in mental health disorders, and the anticipation
that people have that using a microdose of psychedelics is
(40:45):
going to make their insert thing hear better is such
that many people see a huge benefit when they start microdosing.
Once we start to take that data and we apply
control groups to it, we apply placebos and more rigorous
testing in terms of what is actually changing, we see
(41:06):
those effects actually come down a lot. And so the
evidence base for microdocing psychedelics as a substance is the
thing that is making your anxiety go away or improving
your cognition or whatever else they have been testing, is that. Yeah,
it's a bit it's a bit trickier to find once
(41:27):
we add a randomized control trial in. And it could
also just be that the pacibo response is so strong,
yeah right, that it still works. It's just everyone the
perceiver really thinks it works too, and so the effect
size gets washed out.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Washed out contraindications to psychedelics. Sure should not use a psychedelic.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
Yeah, Well, I think there's a lot of questions still
around psychosis, and anyone who has any family history of
psychosis and talking things psych schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. We
do have some anecdotal evidence of people having taken psychedelics
and it induced a psychotic episode in people who were
(42:08):
already predisposed to this. So if you do have had
any personal history of psychosist or have any immediate family
members a brother or sister, a parent, an uncle and aunt,
then I don't recommend that you take these substances. The
other part is that these substances do put a strain
on our systems and our physical bodies for the time
(42:31):
in which we're under them. They increase our heart rate,
our blood pressure, if you have any cardiovascular problems, again,
it would not be advisable to take these substances. We
know that women are a much higher risk for cardiovascular
events postmenopause and so potentially are a group at higher
risk for using psychedelics because of this particular aspect of them.
(42:54):
And if you're currently taking medication, there's a lot of
medications that do not mix well with psychedelics. As I mentioned,
these are working on many different systems within our brain,
primarily the serotonergic system, but also you know dopamine, glutamatic
and so if you're taking any medications, particularly any psychiatric medications,
it's really a good idea that you go.
Speaker 4 (43:16):
And speak to somebody. But we also know.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
That these psychiatric medications can take a long time for
our brain to kind of bounce back in terms of
receptor availability and things, and that can really impact the
experience that you'll have, not that you'll have a worse experience,
but often that the experience will be dulled in some way,
will not actually have perhaps the effect that you would like.
My final point was just to say, as well, anyone
(43:40):
who's not serious about it, I don't think should do it.
Speaker 4 (43:43):
I think you know that they need.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
These substances are amazing, but they are very powerful and
if you're not really in a position to take it
seriously in terms of you know, checking in with yourself
and making sure that you are mentally prepared to you know,
take these substances and have thought about what integration might
look like for you and how you might want to
(44:07):
you know, you know, include certain practices going forward. All
of those things are really really important in terms of
in proving your chances of having a successful experience, but
also your safety during the time.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
So resources in terms of best practices for women are
anybody who wants to pursue this, what do you recommend
to women who want to start on maybe this pathway.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
I have a couple of retreats that I know personally
and I trust, and I have them on my website.
I also have on there a whole page that is
taking you through the checklist of you know, what you
should look for in a retreat and the questions you
should be asking yourself before you go to retreat, so
you know, ask yourself what your intentions are, but ask
(44:53):
yourself what their intentions are. And I often like to
think about when you kind of go through the process
of being under the influence of psychedelic it's probably a
little comparable to that of giving birth. And if you
wouldn't trust that person to help you give birth, don't
trust them to sit with you while you're on psychedelics.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
If women could take away one major point from our
conversation today, what would you hope it to be.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
I'd like them to take away if they've not tried psychedelics,
that maybe that this maybe this could be a gift
that they give to themselves, and it could be this
moment to think, actually when did her last check in
with me and understand, you know, the route of perhaps
my anguish in any way, and do something about trying
(45:41):
to change that. And it doesn't have to be psychedelics, right,
Maybe it's a yoga class, maybe it's meditation, maybe it's
something else, But it's worth just taking time to check
in and ask our bodies because modern Western science has
not been designed, particularly with women, to make sure that
we are looked after on you know, not just these
(46:01):
kind of biological levels, but also these spiritual levels.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
I love what doctor Bless Hopley just said about taking
the time to check in with our bodies, about finding
ways through movement, through meditation, through whatever brings you peace
and joy, and making room in your life for those things.
It's clear that the field of psychedelics has a ton
of promise. There's still a lot of research to be done,
(46:26):
especially on how they affect women, which is why I'm
so grateful that researchers are finally paying attention to this.
And this conversation made me excited hearing that through these
studies we're getting early indications of ways these drugs may
be helpful tools. But it's important to keep in mind
that psychedelics are a tool. They're not a magical cure.
(46:49):
They may be a way to give your brain a
chance to shift out of long standing patterns, or a
way to manage depression when other options just haven't worked.
But of course it's so crucial to check with yourself
and do your research before undergoing any new treatments, especially
in this space. Coming up, on the next episode of
(47:09):
Decoding Women's Health, I'll be joined by a very special guest,
my husband, doctor Richard Shapiro, for a conversation about how
to best support your partner through menopause. Dacoding Women's Health
is a production of Pushkin Industries and the Atria Health
and Research Institute. This episode was produced by Rebecca Lee
(47:31):
Douglas and Daphne Chen. It was edited by Amy Gaines McQuaid,
mastering by Sarah Bruguer. Our associate producer is Sonya Gerwitt.
Our executive producer is Alexandra Garreton. Our theme song was
composed by Hannes Brown. Concept creative development and fact checking
by Shabon O'Connor. Special thanks to Alan Tish, David Saltzman,
(47:54):
Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Morgan Ratner, Owen Miller, Jordan McMillan,
and Greta Cone. If you have questions about women's health
and midlife, leave us a voicemail at four FI five
two one three three eight five, or sends a message
at Decoding Women's Health at Pushkin dot FM. I'm doctor
(48:16):
Elizabeth Pointer. Thanks for listening. Until next time,
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
This show is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis,
or treatment. It is for informational purposes. Please consult your
healthcare professional with any medical questions.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Welcome back to Decoding Women's Health. I'm doctor Elizabeth Pointer.
Psychedelics come with all sorts of associations and preconceived notions
tech bros, Wild partying, Burning Man, and the nineteen seventies.
But in recent years more research has emerged about the
potential for psychedelics and clinical settings, and finally there are
(01:02):
researchers studying these drugs with a specific audience in mind women.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
We really had never tried to properly understand women's biology
in the context of many things, really, but especially in
areas like mental health and how we think about treating them,
and particularly as we came into this new world of
psychedelics and psychedelic therapy. And for me, that was an
incredibly start, considering that so many of the mechanisms that
(01:30):
psychedelics work by have so much synergy with the mechanisms
of female biology.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
That's doctor Grace Blessed Hopley. She's a neuroscientist and research
associate at King's College, London, She's also the chief scientific
officer at a biotech company in the UK focused on
psychiatric and neurologic disorders, and the founder of Hisstelica, an
organization that focuses on psychedelics and female biology. Much of
(02:01):
her academic research focused on cannabinoids, but her background as
an Army reserve officer and her work with military veterans
led her to the field of psychedelics research. She believes
that psychedelics can be powerful tools for helping people living
with depression and post traumatic stress disorder, which is commonly
(02:21):
referred to as PTSD, and she's seen firsthand how these
treatments can be helpful for people from all different walks
of life in dealing with mental and physical health challenges.
How did you first get interested in the therapeutic benefits
of psychedelics.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Yeah, well, I think there has been the knowledge that
psychedelics can be useful for treating mental health conditions for millennia.
If we look into practices that have gone on in
the Amazon jungle, for instance, using substances like hyahuasca, it's
been very commonplace for a long time, but for me
it kind of was a little bit observational. Also in
(03:01):
terms of seeing substances that were perhaps being used in
a more of a recreational party scene and seeing the
changes that were coming about in those people, and that
really sparked a huge curiosity in me to try and.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Understand why that was.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
And so once I got that opportunity to do the
work alongside particularly military vecterans with whom I was able
to understand quite the severity of the issues that they
often face and see that immediate and significant change in
mental health progress, then I really was particularly sole. But
you know, as any good scientists, I always want to
(03:38):
see the data. I always want to see the proof.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
I wanted to have doctor Blessed Hopley on the show
because all of this research and interest and investment in
psychedelics has made this a very buzzy space. Many people
out there are curious about these drugs. Personally, I'm really
interested in what the latest research is showing us about
the potential for treatment options to help people overcome past
(04:05):
trauma or manage chronic pain. I'll admit I'm fascinated by
this space, but some of the terminology is quite new
to me. So I am doctor Blessed Hopley to walk
us through the basics. First, can you give us a
psychedelic one oh one kind of overview, like what are
psychedelic substances, what are they actually doing to our brain?
(04:26):
What is a psychedelic versus a hallucinogen? Just give us
a big broad one oh one.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Of course I would love to use so first of
all to say, you know, the difference between what we
might call a psychedelic or a hallucinogen, it's not super
well defined off when we might call a psychedelic and
hallucinogen interchangeably, it's more common that we would use the
word psychedelic now than hallucinogen, because there is you know,
more effects than just hallucination with these substances. You can
(04:54):
broadly break down psychedelics kind of into two categories, classical
psychedelics and non classical psychedelics. When we talk about classical psychedelics,
that's when we're talking about substances like psilocybin, lsd ayahuasca.
You know, DMT the main active component of yahuasca, And
these are all substances that primarily work by engaging our
(05:15):
serotonin system and engaging with a particular receptor in that
serotonergic system.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
The five HT two a receptor.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Now they also bind with many other receptors and other
networks within our brain, but this is the primary network
they work through through the serotonergic system, and when they
have this activation at the system, that's when we get
the effects that we might associate with things like hallucinations,
for instance. And what we actually see is that our
brain is structured in a way that we sort of
(05:43):
have a control center which is in the middle, and
then we have sort of areas like our prefrontal cortex
and other parts which are more sort of gray matter
that get recruited in when they are required from the
control center, if you were. Now, when we take psychedelics,
what we see is that this control center is actually
no longer dictating the information that comes in, and we
(06:05):
actually see activation happening across the brain. So we see
a lot of sort of cross talk betweens of the
brain that might not always under normal situations be able
to communicate. And that's where we start to see the
effects in terms of how we're able to, you know,
go back and process certain memories that perhaps we wouldn't
be able to get at in previous times. We might
(06:27):
hear things or perceive things or see things, and we
have these very transformative experiences in terms of how we
feel while we're under the influence of the substance. Now
that's the psychedelic experience in itself, but there's actually so
much more that goes on. And as I said, you know,
they engage a number of different receptors in the brain,
and so beyond the kind of experiential part that we
(06:49):
have under psychedelics, we see biochemical changes that come about
after psychedelic use, and what we're talking about there is
essentially changes that happen on a cellular level that can
increase things like neuroplasticity, so the ability for the brain
brain to kind of grow and change and make new connections,
which is what we need in order to make new
(07:09):
memories or to form new thought patterns. And we also
see changes in things like neurogenesis, so actually you know,
starting to produce new proteins and new cells potentially even
within our brain. So there is this incredible kind of
after glow effect that goes on for depending on the
psychedelic you know, days weeks after. So that's largely what
we're talking about when we talk about classic psychedelics.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
But as you're right. There are a number of.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Other things that substances that are very similar and what
we might call non classical psychedelics, and that includes things
like ketamine, MDMA, cannabis even and when we think about them,
they have quite different mechanisms. MDMA is probably the most
similar to classic psychedelics and that it also works through
the serotonergic system, but it doesn't work quite in the
(07:55):
same way, so we don't quite get the hallucinatory parts.
We'd often call that more of an en pathogen. So
often the feelings that we have on MDMA are more
associated to this reduction in fear and increased feeling of
connectedness perhaps with the people that we're with, and that's
why we use MDMA in a lot of psychedelical system
therapies that involve sort of talking about potentially traumatic incidences
(08:19):
that have happened, or in couples therapy for instance, where
they able to empathize with each other on a different level,
and it can be very beneficial there. Ketamin is a
drug that has some of the hallucinatory effects I suppose
of classic psychedelics, and a lot of the benefit people
get from ketamin can be about the experience in a
similar way that it is in classic psychedelics, but it
(08:42):
actually works in a very different way. And so though
it can be similar in how it can sometimes feel,
it is quite different mechanistically. And finally, cannabis is always
the huge argument is cannabis is psychedelic or not. I
think I've been persuaded it is. Why is that, I
think because the endocannabinoid system is very complicated in itself,
(09:02):
and that's the primary system within our brain by which
cannabis works, and it can have a number of these
sort of you know, multi system effects that can then
lead to having these experiences that can feel like a
psychedelic experience. And also, because we now know as well
just quite how many other neurosystems in the brain that
cannabis and cannabinoids can affect, so they are also having
(09:26):
this sort of multi level engagement with various different brain substrates,
I suppose, So so.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Fair to say that a psychedelic is kind of unlicks
the brain, so it can communicate in ways that are
typically suppressed. So it's taking the breaks off our brain
a little bit and allowing it just to expand and
have different communication networks.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Absolutely, And you know, we have to really think of
our brain as you know, a very kind of fine
tuned machine and part of what it has to do.
You know, we often always associate more with better, but
actually more is not always the most efficient, and so
our brains are evolved and adapted to only really recruit
the parts that it needs in order to.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Complete the task.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Now, that's fine if the part of the brain that
is recruiting those other parts in is very plastic and
adaptive and has sort of good blueprints I suppose, with
which it is wanting to engage other parts of our brain.
But when we see things like depression, anxiety, and post
traumatic stress disorder, what we often see often built in
(10:31):
from very very foundational you know, early early childhood years
in some people, that this part of the brain can
start to become very rigid. I like to think of
it a little bit like if you think of a
small stream that comes to a beach and is going
into the ocean, and it just dives one very deep
groove within the sand, and when we take a psychedelic
(10:52):
a huge wave comes and washes over the beach, and
those deep grooves get kind of filled in a little
and they allow the water to now potentially take other
roots down to the sea. And that is sort of
what happens with the way that the structure of how
our brain communicates changes under a psychedelic.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
So in terms of the impact the change and the
impact of the change, how rapidly does one see that,
Do you use a psychedelic and then three days later
you feel more empathy and more at peace with the world,
Or how long does it take for these changes to
really impact how you feel or how you look at
the world, And then how long do they last for.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
It can really be very dependent on people's experience and
what they uncover, because sometimes as well, we go and
we take these substances and what they are essentially are
they are just.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Catalysts to our own psyche right.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
They're not really bringing anything new, They're just unlocking doors
that we are able to then access things that are
already there. And so if you go with a problem
that maybe you don't have any oversight of and you
instantly are able to sort of see it and realize it, well,
are you instantly then better?
Speaker 4 (12:00):
Well?
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Maybe probably not, because you probably have to now integrate
that into your life and understand what it means and
change you know the behaviors in your day to day
living that allow you to become happier and healthier and
you know, more connected and all the things that we
know that are possible. So it isn't quite a case
of you will take it and then suddenly feel better.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
Often people do.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Often people have a really pleasant time in the experience,
but sometimes as well, people do realize very deep and
potentially hidden aspects of themselves, and that takes time to integrate.
And so I like to think that that there are
catalysts to getting better forever, as opposed to you will
take it and then suddenly you will be healed.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
But if we look at what's happening.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
In clinical trials, if we look at the amount of
people who've got treatment resistant depressions, for instance, who have
had significant clinical improvement in their condition, we definitely are
able to do that. And that is you know, normally,
within you know, a month or so of having the
treatment that they would do those follow up assessments. Now,
(13:10):
in terms of the long longevity of it, again, like
I say, how much you integrate this into your life.
You can take a psychedelic and feel amazing and be
dancing around having the most wonderful time. But if you
don't do anything about what you potentially are learning about
yourself during this experience, and you just carry on all
of the same practices in two three four weeks time,
(13:32):
you'll feel exactly the same as you did before you
took the psychedelic and the same again if you ever
do it in a very therapeutic way. And we do
see this within these clinical trials. Now we're starting to
get follow ups that are six months a year down
the line.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
There's still a very good, meaningful.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Benefit to a majority of people who've been in the trial,
but people do start to regress back towards the baseline,
and so you know, it's not this sort of one
and done that perhaps we'd originally thought with psychedelics, and
maybe you can just take it once and then you
work at all your problems and then you never have
to take it again. It's not really that, it's sort off.
You take it and then you kind of stops the
(14:12):
journey that you do need to pay attention to in
order to maintain getting benefit in the long run.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Coming up, we discuss the potential uses of psychedelics specifically
tailored for women, and how these drugs may interact with
our hormones more in just a moment. Whenever a new
(14:40):
study is published on psychedelic assisted therapies, I find myself
drawn to it. Typically, this type of treatment is taking
place in a controlled clinical setting where trained therapist or
clinical staff are involved before, during, and after the drug
is administered, and training facilitators are part of the process,
(15:02):
helping participants prepare beforehand, staying with them during the experience,
and guiding integration sessions afterward. The idea is that the
drug alone isn't the treatment, it's actually the combination of
the substance with the structured psychological support. I wanted to
(15:22):
hear from doctor Bless Hapley about what conditions these types
of therapies may be most effective for. So what types
of conditions would midlife women women look for in terms
of using a psychedelic The.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
List goes on and on. Right in oncology, there is
some incredible work. There's some amazing work going on in
neurodegenerative disorders, and obviously we know women are so much
more prevalent to developing neurodegenerative disorders later in life. So
I think that work is still in its infancy, but
is extremely promising. So there's a long long list of
things that they can be useful, but the primary thing
(16:00):
with which they are being investigated for at the moment
are largely mental health conditions and primarily depressive conditions, so
things like treatment resistant depression or major depressive disorders.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
So interesting, but yeah, very interesting.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
But I think, particularly for women, I think there is
this amazing opportunity to explore how psychedelics could be useful
for pre menstrual conditions. I've been thinking particularly around PMDD
pre mensional dysphoric disorder, which is a pre mental disorder
that is a very severe form of PMS. Essentially it
(16:32):
affects up to eight percent of women and really is
a very very marked change in their mood and behavior
around the final week, sometimes even as long as the
whole Luther your face, so final two weeks of their
mental cycle. But one of the things that we do
know about this condition, unfortunately it is highly associated with
previous life traumas. We also know that PMDD seems to
(16:54):
be associated with changes in sensitivity of things like our
progesterone receptors, and that could be a lot to do
with why women feel like like this and potentially to
do with their stress responses and their HPA access, and
these are all things that we are starting to think
that psychedelics could interact with with HPA axis.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Could you just define for our listeners what the HPA
access is. I know what it is, but I don't.
Lot of people probably don't.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Yeah, the hypothermic pituitary access is essentially a feedback loop
within our bodies that involves a couple of structures within
our brains, and it's primarily the system that dictates our
coursol and our cord sole release, and so our kind
of stress response.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Now cors soil is.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Needed because if we didn't have it, we would struggle
to get ourselves out of bed in the morning, and
so we have a small spike every every morning. It's
a kind of waking response. But we also have a
spike when we have any stresses that come in our lives,
and when we have repeated stresses or chronic stresses that
are not tigers but in fact a never ending email
chain or something, then we can start to get dysregulation
(18:01):
in that feedback system, and that's when we start to see,
you know, increases in things like anxiety disorders, insomnia particularly,
and it's HPA access. It is the conductor to the orchestra,
if you like, of dictating when we start releasing different
hormones at different parts of our mental cycles. So if
it becomes dysregulated through stress dysregulation, but when we do
(18:25):
start to see people having issues with prematural symptoms and
potentially changes in their mental cycle length or even their fertility.
Maybe so knowing that psychedelics potentially can alleviate some of
this dysregulation in the system could be very useful for women.
But we need to investigate and understand that, I think
(18:45):
in a way that we've not been very used to doing.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
How about the use of psychedelics for chronic pelvic pain,
pulvic floor dysfunction, women with endometriosis who suffer from terribly
Any work going on in that area in terms of
women's health specifically.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Yeah, absolutely, I even myself have been doing some work
in to this around the idea of chronic pelvit pain
and women. So things like endometriosis or volverdina for instance.
Sometimes we forget that there are two sides to pain.
There's the thing that is causing the pain and there's
the thing that is perceiving the pain, and if the
thing that is perceiving the pain, I er brains has
(19:22):
gotten stuck on thinking pain is expected in those rigid
ways that I talked about about earlier that we sometimes
get in these control centers of our brain, then we
are expecting to feel pain. And when we're expecting to
feel pain, any pain that we do then feel, we
will feel in a more intense way. So by being
able to potentially change some of those pathways within the
(19:44):
brain around pain perception, and some of the work we
did in some military actions with chronic pain kind of
showed this that perhaps although the pain in the actual
limb itself, the aggrogreic gating factord not change their perception
of the pain, and their relationship with the pain had
changed as such that they no longer felt like they
were in as much chronic pain or they were no
longer bothered by it as much as they were previously.
(20:07):
So I think there is a huge potential for women
in this area. And also I think there's something about
psychedelics that really allow us to kind of include things
like embodiment practices where we can really start to actually
connect our wonderful you know, all controlling brains, less them
to our bodies, which actually have a lot more input,
(20:28):
I think than we often give them credit for. And
we know that within women particularly, we often do kind
of dissociate away from our bodies, particularly when we've had
a lot of unexplained chronic pelvic pains that maybe we've
not been you.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
Know, listened to properly in our healthcare systems.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
And so having the ability to also connect with our
bodies and think about how movement practices can be used
in collaboration with psychedelics or you know, as a kind
of mindfulness practice could also be very very useful for these, yeah,
particular conditions.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
So a lot of the midlife women have issues with
sleep insomnia that sometimes aren't even corrected with proper hormonal management,
application of psychedelic treatments or uses with chronic sleep issues
and insomnia issues.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
Yeah, and insomnia is a really interesting one because there
can be.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
So many reasons why, right why we are having insomnia problems.
One of the common ones and women can be dysregulation
of quartsole released and sometimes we're very stressed, we're releasing
cortal at the wrong time, and then it's difficult for
us to be asleep when that is happening. You know,
that's very closely tied with anxiety, which is one of
the main drivers for insomnia, and we know that psychedelics
(21:43):
improve anxiety. And you know, the final women's specific kind
of midlife psychedelic use that I wanted to come to
is of course, that of perimenopause and menopause, and I
think sleep is obviously a huge, hugely associated symptom within
that field. And overall we've seen that the women who've
gone and taken psychedelics at retreats have reported to us
(22:06):
a vast improvement in a large range of menopause symptoms,
including this, and the reasons for that I think could
be manifold.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
With estrogen.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
We also know that it highly affects the serotonergic system,
increases the amount of serotonin serotonin network activation, and it
also has these hugely neuroprotective effects and effects that increase
things like neuroplasticity, and so when we lose those effects
during perimenopause and menopause, there can be very much correlated
with the development of a number of issues with anxiety, sleep, depression,
(22:43):
you know, even with things like cognitive performance.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
But there's also this wonderful opportunity. I think that as.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Women going through perimenopause and menopause, there's a lot to
rationalize with yourself. Right, You're going through a monumental change
in your life stage and kind of potentially how you identify,
and so taking psychedelics at this time has often been
kind of reported as extremely useful to help women to
(23:13):
process that change and to kind of accept often that
they are now moving into postmenopausal phase. And so we
don't always need to think about looking after ourselves on
just biological and mechanistic level. We have to think about
looking after ourselves on a spiritual level, and psychedelics are
very good for that.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Is there any intersection between how estrogen affects the impact
of a psychedelic on a female brain in terms of
should we be using if we are going to use
a psychedelic to be used in a ludial phase, the
follicular phase perimenopause versus menopause, do you see different reactions
any correlation there?
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Well, this is what I really am on a mission
to find out, and we are slowly starting to gather
bits of data and even develop the tools so we
can even take the measurement. But just by theory, one
would assume if we've got higher levels to be stood
in them, we've got a more reactive soonergic system, therefore
need less of a psychedelic to achieve the same effect.
(24:15):
Now do we know that to be definitely true In
terms of giving women psychedelics at different estrogen phases and
seeing if it changed their effect, Well, we haven't been
able to do that yet, and we hope that we will,
but it does make sense mechanistically that there is going
to be some kind of drug drug interaction, if you will,
between estrogen and psychedelics. But for me, one of the
(24:36):
most important aspects in terms of hormonal influence and psychedelics
that should be taken into account is that of the
effect of progesterone. And when we see progesterone dropping very
suddenly at the end of our mental cycle, we see
this huge change in what is actually an anziolytic effect
that progesterone is giving us kind of chills es out.
(24:57):
It's similar mechanism to alcohol, and so when we see
this level drop dramatically at the end of our mental cycle,
that's when we see huge increases in things like intrusive
thought patterns and also you know, higher dysregulation with our
dopaminagic systems. So all of these things increase the likelihood
that our mindset it's going to be such that we
(25:19):
are particularly anxious. Maybe we are having physical effects, you know,
breast tenderness or pain, and if we gave a psychedelic,
then they are internal amplifiers. If you feel terrible and
you take a psychedelic, there's a good chance you can
amplify that feeling.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
So for me, this effect of how changes.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
In hormones in women during the mental cycle effect their
mood and their emotional processing. If it is severe, then
we should not try and use high dose to psychedelics
during that time.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
I love the reminder that pain isn't just physical, it's
also mental, and that goes from major shifts like menopause too.
It's so interesting to think about the ways that psychedelics
might help with this emotional journey. After the break, doctor
bless Happy and I talk about what's next in the
field of psychedelic research, and we discussed some tips for
(26:11):
people looking into options in the space Welcome back. So
we've talked a lot about the research that's happening and
what we're learning about how these drug assisted therapies may
be useful to clinicians who are operating in safe and
(26:33):
controlled settings. I was also curious to hear more about
the world outside of that setting. To be clear, I'm
a doctor and an advocate for safe and controlled settings,
but I'm not naive. I know that people are curious
and they're very capable of finding ways to experience or
experiment with these drugs outside the doctor's office, oftentimes at
(26:57):
retreats or with their friends. In addition to her research efforts,
doctor Grace Blessed Hopley is engaged in education and advocacy
around women's psychedelic retreats, So I had to ask her
about what those are like and if she has any
tips for women to keep them safe. But before we
get there, I wanted to hear more from doctor Blesh
(27:19):
Hopley about why she founded Hystealica and what she hopes
her research, education and advocacy efforts yield in this space.
So you founded a company called Hystalica. Tell us about it.
Why did you start this company? What are you doing
with it?
Speaker 4 (27:37):
Yeah? Absolutely?
Speaker 3 (27:38):
So, really is my babya and it's a nonprofit organization
that really does have this mission around understanding women and psychedelics,
and we're doing that in a number of different ways.
And first and foremost, it's important that we provide education,
and that's education for women about their own bodies. It's
education for clinicians who are going to be using psychedelics
(28:02):
and researchers who are trying to think about the questions
that they should be asking. So we've really tried to
make sure that everybody kind of what they need to
make informed decisions that they.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
Might need to make now.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
But we also want to answer some of these primary
questions that we don't have good answers to, and so
for the last few years we've been conducted in research
alongside King Scotish London, where I am still a researcher,
asking women who've used psychedelics to share some of their
experience with us, and that's enabled us to start to
build a data set from which we can start to
tease a part some of potentially the answers to these
(28:37):
questions around when is it safe for women to take psychedelics?
You know, what are the things that we need to
explore more and understand more.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
And beyond that, what we try and do in Hystelica
is to.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Be an advocacy for this work and to highlight how
important it is and to highlight other women in the
space who are doing similar work, because it's not easy
out there being an academic, and sometimes it can be
really difficult, you know, if you're trying to convince people
that it's important that we spend a lot of time
(29:09):
and a lot of money on something that hasn't really
been given very.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
Much respect before.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
It's a huge, huge hole in terms of the all
of the previous biological knowledge that we have. It's largely
based on male models, male animals, you know, males, and
clinical trials, and so there's a huge amount that needs
to be unpicked and rediscovered. So it's important that for
me at Hystalica, we become a community for researchers and
(29:35):
for women who are interested in understanding themselves and understanding
how psychedelics can help themselves.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Have you seen the perception of the use of psychedelics
and the acceptance of the use of psychedelics and the
state of the research has it you founded this company
in twenty twenty two, is have you seen a change
over the passport three year or four years?
Speaker 4 (29:55):
Oh? Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
I remember when I first signed the company and I
was sort of try and sit there and explain to
my mom and dad what I was doing over the
Christmas dinner table, you know, And now my mom is
sort of sharing the Instagram posts with her friends. I love. Yeah,
there's definitely a huge change, and I think a real
big change that is coming around in women. And I
(30:19):
think a lot of that comes around, like I said,
this idea of community. We often, in the lack of
good healthcare options for women, do just sort of discuss
with our girlfriends right about what maybe worked for them.
And these conversations are often where we make a lot
of our healthcare decisions sometimes. And we've definitely seen there's
been this kind of ripple effect of women who are
(30:42):
starting to talk about psychedelics in rooms and at the
tables that perhaps they wouldn't have felt comfortable doing before.
And that is sort of slowly trickling down as to
who then says, maybe I.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Will go on a retreat, and you know.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
The number of high quality psychedeltic retreats that are not
available that are specifically designed for women is going up
and up. Now I should caveat that with there's some
not so good retreats, and we should always be very
very cautious about about choosing to go and do any
of the stuffs of people that we don't know, we
don't have any background on, but people I would not
(31:16):
have told them what I did before, and now have
they come to me and ask me how it can
get involved.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
So it's been remarkable great.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
What generally happens in a retreat, I'm fascinated by the
retreats actually, but what happens like so you do you
do a dose of psilocybin or do you do one
journey or one trip days and weeks long.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
So not all retreats are the same. And obviously the
substances that are used in retreats varies a lot. But
if we were to say, take for example, a psilocybin retreat,
So for instance, I partnered with a female retreat provider
and we're going to do some retreats next year that
are reasonably standard. What we primarily do is we get
(31:58):
people kind of enrolled three four weeks before the retreat itself.
Hopefully we will have a medical screening before you get
onto the retreat, and then you will have a couple
of calls where you'll meet the other people on the retreat,
meet the facilitators, ask any questions, and then the retreats
themselves are usually between four and five days long.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
They usually consist of one or two psilocybin.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Ceremonies, and you will perhaps arrive on the first day,
settle in, and then have some discussions in the evening.
The second morning, maybe you have a kind of preparatory
session between you all, and then the first ceremony will
usually happen on the second day, and that ceremony is
around six hours long, and after the ceremony is finished,
(32:44):
most people you'll just want to eat and go to sleep,
and then the next day you probably take a day
of integration, so that might look like again having group discussions,
but journaling, often meditation practices, yoga massages, but really taking
time slowly and just reflecting. And then the day after
(33:07):
that often they will then do a second ceremony, and
all the day after that again will be kind of
integration and discussion and again practices of how you can
take these things forward into your life. And then once
you leave the retreat, that's when all the real work,
real work starts, and integration is and often you will
then stay in touch with your cohort for you know,
(33:30):
three four weeks having group calls to try and integrate
some of your process. But the whole retreat itself is
really designed as a space, a held space where the
facilitators and the people who are running the retreat are
essentially there to keep a container during which you are
(33:51):
able to kind of go through and you know, experience
what you need to experience, express whatever it is you
need to express, and they can be really magical environments.
Have been extremely lucky to go to a number of
retreats as not as a participant, but as somebody who
is helping out with collecting research or similar and the
atmosphere is unbelievably calm and really fosters this ability for
(34:14):
us to do really deep reflective work.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Do you collot data from Can you cuot data from
these retreats?
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Yes, So we collect data as Hystalica, which is an
open survey for any women who are going to any retreats,
And what we do is we ask people are baseline
so before they go, and then four weeks and twelve
weeks afterwards. No, this particular piece of research is specifically
looking at mental cycle symptoms and specifically looking at menopause symptoms.
(34:42):
But I've done a lot of research, for instance, with
military veterans, where we've done a similar thing, and we're
looking at post mundic stress disorder, quality of life military
to civilian conversions. But there's also a lot of real
interest now and I completely get it in individuals who
are going through psychedic retreats who want to you know,
we all are clean on our own data, and we are,
(35:05):
you know, all getting so good at integrating all of
these wearable devices into our lives. And there are some
really interesting programs that have popped out that you can
sort of apply for subscription and sort of follow yourselves
through your own psychedelic experience and see what kind of
changes that it might occur.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Integration and wearables. I love that, actually, I love that's
really great. What trials and research right now do you
find particularly promising? What do you see as the future
the promising area of the future.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
There are hundreds of clinical trials currently ongoing with psychedelics,
so it's difficult to pick my favorite favorite one or
my favorite indication, but for me, it has to be
neurodegenerative disorders. And potentially things like traumatic brain injuries as well.
With psychedelics, we're starting to think it could be possible
(35:58):
that we have a mechanism that looks a bit like
neuronal regrowth in traumatic brain injury. It's early days, it's
all very pre clinical. Plus this anecdotal evidence of people
who've taken psychedelics, but.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
We not have good answers for them at all at
the moment.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
What women who should consider pursuing any type of psychedelic
type of treatment. Who do you think benefits the most?
Who should seek Who should say, hmm, maybe that's from me,
Maybe I should pursue that.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
I think that there's a lot a lot of women
would benefit hugely from it. You just sort of ask
yourself the questions in terms of what that potentially would
you like to discover about yourself? Or is there some
part of you that you want to move past. And
we don't always have to talk about this in terms
(36:48):
of oh, I actually I feel very anxious, or I'm
having sleep problems. It could be like I feel a
real creative block between my work at the moment and
I want to find out what is at the bottom
of that, Or my children have all left home, and
I want to now give myself the opportunity to re engage,
you know, with myself and understand more. So anyone who
(37:09):
has this sort of curiosity to try and understand themselves more,
you know, potentially with this intention to improve in some
aspect I think, is really ready to start thinking about
doing it. It's fascinating to watch, as I say, people
kind of come out the other side of it, and
often the thing that they go in that they think
(37:29):
is the thing that has been upsetting them, and it
actually turns out that it's nothing to do with it
at all, And then you can actually yeah, absolutely, and
then you can address it and move forward, whereas if
you don't, you'll spend your whole time looking at this thing,
going why is this thing ruining my life? Not understanding
it's nothing to do.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
With it's something in a different direction that's like, yeah,
that's actually so interesting. Gives you better.
Speaker 4 (37:50):
Insight, huge insight about who you are.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
If somebody is embracing psychedelics in their life and using
them and as having benefits from them, how frequently are
they using them?
Speaker 4 (38:05):
Yeah, that's another great question.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
And I think as little as you need to, you know,
as should be the answer with a lot of things
that we take. But when it comes to big ceremonial doses,
you know, if you do a ceremony properly, you shouldn't
really want to go back to one in the near future.
You know, they are big and they are a lot
to process. It's always a concern for me when I
(38:27):
see people jumping from one ceremony to the next. It
can often mean they're doing something we might call spiritual bypassing,
where you're not really listening to the message you're getting,
but the ceremony itself is making you feel kind of
good enough, and that afterglow that you just keep jumping
from one to the next. There's an excellent quotation, when
you get the message hang.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Up the phone microdocing. Tell us about microdocen What that is?
What are the benefits?
Speaker 3 (38:54):
Yeah, well the jury is still allowed on the benefits,
I'm afraid. But microdosing essentially is taking a sub perceptual
sub pollucinatory amount of the substance. And I say, you
know both those things there as we always used to
say sub perceptual, but actually when we think about some
(39:18):
of the what we would still classed as a psychedelic
people are. They are noticing that something is different, but
it's not in a way that would impair your ability
to go about your everyday life. So you would still
be able to.
Speaker 4 (39:33):
Work or move around. I won't say you would be
able to drive, because these substances are illegal and you
actually would be breaking the law.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
So when we talk about microdocing, what we're talking about
is usually taking these substances in a way that might
be much more recognizable to how people think about traditional pharmaceuticals.
So we're taking these substances daily, though often with micro
docing protocols we might say we'll take them every other day,
for instance, and there's a lot of kind of thinking
(40:02):
about you know, exactly what that should be, but essentially
you do it for a prolonged period of time. Now,
the reason that you might be doing that could be
for all of you, you know, the improvements in serotoinlagic function,
but also these improvements in europlus system the other kind
of long you know, more kind of longer lasting effects
of psychedelics. In terms of evidence we have, it's a
(40:23):
difficult one because there's not been a lot of randomized
control trials done and one of the things that is
really important to remember is that the placebo effect is very,
very real, particularly in mental health disorders, and the anticipation
that people have that using a microdose of psychedelics is
(40:45):
going to make their insert thing hear better is such
that many people see a huge benefit when they start microdosing.
Once we start to take that data and we apply
control groups to it, we apply placebos and more rigorous
testing in terms of what is actually changing, we see
(41:06):
those effects actually come down a lot. And so the
evidence base for microdocing psychedelics as a substance is the
thing that is making your anxiety go away or improving
your cognition or whatever else they have been testing, is that. Yeah,
it's a bit it's a bit trickier to find once
(41:27):
we add a randomized control trial in. And it could
also just be that the pacibo response is so strong,
yeah right, that it still works. It's just everyone the
perceiver really thinks it works too, and so the effect
size gets washed out.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Washed out contraindications to psychedelics. Sure should not use a psychedelic.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
Yeah, Well, I think there's a lot of questions still
around psychosis, and anyone who has any family history of
psychosis and talking things psych schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. We
do have some anecdotal evidence of people having taken psychedelics
and it induced a psychotic episode in people who were
(42:08):
already predisposed to this. So if you do have had
any personal history of psychosist or have any immediate family
members a brother or sister, a parent, an uncle and aunt,
then I don't recommend that you take these substances. The
other part is that these substances do put a strain
on our systems and our physical bodies for the time
(42:31):
in which we're under them. They increase our heart rate,
our blood pressure, if you have any cardiovascular problems, again,
it would not be advisable to take these substances. We
know that women are a much higher risk for cardiovascular
events postmenopause and so potentially are a group at higher
risk for using psychedelics because of this particular aspect of them.
(42:54):
And if you're currently taking medication, there's a lot of
medications that do not mix well with psychedelics. As I mentioned,
these are working on many different systems within our brain,
primarily the serotonergic system, but also you know dopamine, glutamatic
and so if you're taking any medications, particularly any psychiatric medications,
it's really a good idea that you go.
Speaker 4 (43:16):
And speak to somebody. But we also know.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
That these psychiatric medications can take a long time for
our brain to kind of bounce back in terms of
receptor availability and things, and that can really impact the
experience that you'll have, not that you'll have a worse experience,
but often that the experience will be dulled in some way,
will not actually have perhaps the effect that you would like.
My final point was just to say, as well, anyone
(43:40):
who's not serious about it, I don't think should do it.
Speaker 4 (43:43):
I think you know that they need.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
These substances are amazing, but they are very powerful and
if you're not really in a position to take it
seriously in terms of you know, checking in with yourself
and making sure that you are mentally prepared to you know,
take these substances and have thought about what integration might
look like for you and how you might want to
(44:07):
you know, you know, include certain practices going forward. All
of those things are really really important in terms of
in proving your chances of having a successful experience, but
also your safety during the time.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
So resources in terms of best practices for women are
anybody who wants to pursue this, what do you recommend
to women who want to start on maybe this pathway.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
I have a couple of retreats that I know personally
and I trust, and I have them on my website.
I also have on there a whole page that is
taking you through the checklist of you know, what you
should look for in a retreat and the questions you
should be asking yourself before you go to retreat, so
you know, ask yourself what your intentions are, but ask
(44:53):
yourself what their intentions are. And I often like to
think about when you kind of go through the process
of being under the influence of psychedelic it's probably a
little comparable to that of giving birth. And if you
wouldn't trust that person to help you give birth, don't
trust them to sit with you while you're on psychedelics.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
If women could take away one major point from our
conversation today, what would you hope it to be.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
I'd like them to take away if they've not tried psychedelics,
that maybe that this maybe this could be a gift
that they give to themselves, and it could be this
moment to think, actually when did her last check in
with me and understand, you know, the route of perhaps
my anguish in any way, and do something about trying
(45:41):
to change that. And it doesn't have to be psychedelics, right,
Maybe it's a yoga class, maybe it's meditation, maybe it's
something else, But it's worth just taking time to check
in and ask our bodies because modern Western science has
not been designed, particularly with women, to make sure that
we are looked after on you know, not just these
(46:01):
kind of biological levels, but also these spiritual levels.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
I love what doctor Bless Hopley just said about taking
the time to check in with our bodies, about finding
ways through movement, through meditation, through whatever brings you peace
and joy, and making room in your life for those things.
It's clear that the field of psychedelics has a ton
of promise. There's still a lot of research to be done,
(46:26):
especially on how they affect women, which is why I'm
so grateful that researchers are finally paying attention to this.
And this conversation made me excited hearing that through these
studies we're getting early indications of ways these drugs may
be helpful tools. But it's important to keep in mind
that psychedelics are a tool. They're not a magical cure.
(46:49):
They may be a way to give your brain a
chance to shift out of long standing patterns, or a
way to manage depression when other options just haven't worked.
But of course it's so crucial to check with yourself
and do your research before undergoing any new treatments, especially
in this space. Coming up, on the next episode of
(47:09):
Decoding Women's Health, I'll be joined by a very special guest,
my husband, doctor Richard Shapiro, for a conversation about how
to best support your partner through menopause. Dacoding Women's Health
is a production of Pushkin Industries and the Atria Health
and Research Institute. This episode was produced by Rebecca Lee
(47:31):
Douglas and Daphne Chen. It was edited by Amy Gaines McQuaid,
mastering by Sarah Bruguer. Our associate producer is Sonya Gerwitt.
Our executive producer is Alexandra Garreton. Our theme song was
composed by Hannes Brown. Concept creative development and fact checking
by Shabon O'Connor. Special thanks to Alan Tish, David Saltzman,
(47:54):
Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Morgan Ratner, Owen Miller, Jordan McMillan,
and Greta Cone. If you have questions about women's health
and midlife, leave us a voicemail at four FI five
two one three three eight five, or sends a message
at Decoding Women's Health at Pushkin dot FM. I'm doctor
(48:16):
Elizabeth Pointer. Thanks for listening. Until next time,
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