'LSD could be good for you': Hallucinogens 'wrongly linked with mental health problems for years' study says

I get the impression that hallucinogen use was/is more of a college-kid thing rather than a working class thing.  In that case the underlying health of the users should be generally good and that may cancel out damage from use of the drugs.  But this is epidemiological data so it's all speculation

Hallucinogenic drugs may actually be good for you, a team of researchers has concluded.  Norwegian scientists have carried out extensive research on the effects of LSD - or trips - by studying drugs surveys from tens of thousands of Americans.

The findings are at odds with the long held belief that LSD and other 'mind-enhancing' drugs - such as mescaline and the drug psilocybin, found in magic mushrooms -  result in flashbacks, paranoia and long term mental health problems.

Researchers Pal-Orjan Johansen and Teri Krebs from Norway’s University of Science and Technology in Trondheim examined the drug taking habits of more than 130,000 American citizens between 2001 and 2004.  Some 22,000 of those surveyed had taken psychedelic drugs at least once.

Their findings were published in the science journal PLOS One.

They wrote: 'There were no significant associations between lifetime use of any psychedelics, or use of LSD in the past year, and an increased rate of mental health problems. Rather, in several cases psychedelic use was associated with a lower rate of mental health problems.'

Mr Johansen said that previous studies on the psychedelic drugs had not proved that they caused chronic health problems in an interview with Norway’s English-language news website, The Local.

Mrs Krebs added: 'Everything has some risk; psychedelics can elicit temporary feelings of anxiety and confusion, but accidents leading to serious injury are extremely rare.

'Over the past 50 years, tens of millions of people have used psychedelics and there is just not much evidence of long-term problems.'

Instead, they said, the idea that the drugs caused mental health problems came from a small number of case studies, and that these patients were already suffering some form of mental illness.

They said psychedelic drug use and mental health problems both occurred in late adolescence and so were wrongly linked by researchers, the Independent reports.

Last year, the pair wrote in the British Journal of Psychopharmacology that  one dose of LSD was 'a highly effective treatment' for alcoholics, and was 'just as effective' as approved and currently used medications.

Sixty per cent of the patients tested who had been given a dose of LSD had either stopped drinking completely or were drinking less than they were before taking the drug.  [Scared straight?]

SOURCE






A daily glass of milk during pregnancy makes your children taller - even when they are teenagers

Middle and upper class people are taller.  The findings below simply suggest that those classes dring more milk.  Since milk is widely seen as "good for you", that is no surprise

Children born to women who drink milk during pregnancy are more likely to be tall when they are teenagers, new research shows.

A team of scientists who tracked babies born in the late eighties found their height during adolescence was directly related to how much milk their mothers consumed when they were in the womb.

Although maternal milk intake has long been thought to promote growth in newborn babies, the latest research suggests the benefits last well into early adulthood.

Nutrition experts from Iceland, Denmark and the U.S. wanted to see if the benefits seen in the early stages of life from milk were extended into later years.

They tracked babies born to 809 women in Denmark in 1988 and 1989, after monitoring how much milk the women had consumed during the pregnancy.

The babies were measured for weight and birth length and tthen followed up again almost 20 years later.

The results, published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, show teenagers of both sexes were generally taller if their mothers had drunk more than 150 millilitres - roughly a quarter of a pint of milk - a day during the pregnancy, compared to children born to women who drank less than that amount.

By their late teens they also had higher levels of insulin in their bloodstream, suggesting they were less at risk of getting type two diabetes.

In a report on the findings researchers said: ‘Maternal milk consumption may have a growth-promoting effect with respect to weight and length at birth.
height

Although maternal milk intake has long been thought to promote growth in newborn babies, the latest research suggests the benefits last well into early teenhood and even adulthood

‘These results also provide some suggestion that this effect may even track into early adult age.’

SOURCE