Psi Material Submitted Oct 1 2010

Marijuana and Psilocybin (magic mushrooms), both considered illegal drugs, are two medicinal plants that are proving their worth in recent medical research studies.

We’ve heard a lot about “medical marijuana.” As an example of this type of research, a pain researcher at McGill University in Montreal published in The Canadian Medical Association Journal a double blind study showing that patients with intractable pain were able to experience relief by inhaling one puff of strong marijuana smoke three times a day. Placebo ingredients and weaker marijuana had no such effect. The relief came without creating a “high,” the scientist noted.

Ever since the famous Harvard “Good Friday” experiment (allegedly suggested by Hugh Lynn Cayce), where religious students unknowingly ingested magic mushrooms prior to attending a religious service, there has remained interest in the spiritually therapeutic value of psilocybin, the active ingredient in the mushrooms. A recent double-blind study by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, published a study in the Archives of General Psychiatry that found that patients with terminal cancer who ingested psilocybin experienced a significant reduction in death anxiety, compared to patients who ingested a placebo.

In descriptions of Atlantis, Edgar Cayce mentioned that people back then could derive electrical power from the air. Nikola Tesla had proposed to develop such a possibility over a century ago. Recent research is beginning to take seriously this proposition. According to a report published in The Economist, several research firms are actively exploring how to send electricity over the airwaves. Where does the power come from? Existing radio waves produced by television, radio and mobile-phone transmitters permeate the atmosphere. It is possible to hook up to these waves to pull off a little energy. So far, researchers have managed to run very small electrical items using this approach. They expect to evolve this approach, gradually increasing the amount of power they can produce from this “hitchhiking” method.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that over eighty per cent of Africans consult traditional healers. That group of practitioners encompasses indigenous healers using anything from rituals to roots. Unfortunately, not all of these practitioners are truly skilled and some are charlatans. WHO supports the creation of regulatory bodies who can validate and license practitioners.

The Association for the Promotion of Traditional Medicines is such a regulatory body, in Dakar, Senegal, and serves as a model. They use standards that are set by the practitioners themselves. Practitioners who wish the blessings of their colleagues must submit to examinations to prove their effectiveness. It is not enough to know a little about plants, a representative notes, but that there needs to be a good relationship with the spirits and to have a good set of professional ethics.

How happy people are in their marriages is easy to detect, according to a study completed at the University of California, Berkeley. Researchers asked individuals in married couples to describe some recent family activities. They found that the more the person used the “we” word instead of the “I” word, the greater the two people in that marriage described themselves as happily married. The more likely the persons used the words “I” and “you,” the more likely they were to describe themselves as being unhappy in the marriage.

One Word Secret to Happy Marriage

In an attempt to understand how acupuncture is able to generate its effects, researchers at the University of Rochester examined biochemical activity at the point of needle insertion in a study involving mice. According to their report, published in Nature News, the scientists found that in the area surrounding the insertion point, there were elevated levels of adenosine, a natural anti-inflammatory and painkiller.

Researchers speculated that the insertion and rotation of the needles slightly injures the tissue, stimulating the release of biochemical response.

In research on empathy, scientists place an electrode on one person's hand to measure the physical response as the person watches someone else's hand get pricked. Usually there is a sympathetic, empathic response to witnessing another person's pain. Researchers in Italy, however, found that this empathy is but “skin deep.” It only appears when the person is of the same race as the viewer.

When researchers had Africans watch the Italians have their hands pricked, or the Italians watch the Africans, the usual empathic response was not observed.

One intriguing result was that both groups responded empathically when they saw a purple hand pricked. The researchers speculated that the empathic response was natural unless racial attitudes get in the way.

Normally when you see or imagine someone else in pain, your brain experiences a twinge of pain as well. Not so when race and bias come into play, scientists now find.

Intriguingly, people respond with empathy when pain is inflicted on others who don't fit into any preconceived racial category, such as those who appear to have violet-colored skin.

"This is quite important because it suggests that humans tend to empathize by default unless prejudice is at play," said researcher Salvatore Maria Aglioti, a cognitive and social neuroscientist at the Sapienza University of Rome in Italy.

Scientists asked volunteers in Italy of Italian and African descent to watch short films showing either needles penetrating a person's hand or a Q-tip gently touching the same spot. At the same time, they measured brain and nervous system activity.

When the volunteers saw the hands get poked, the brain and nervous system activity revealed the same spot on each volunteer's own hands reacted involuntarily when the person in the film was of the same race. Those of a different race did not provoke the same response.

However, when both white and black volunteers saw violet-colored hands get jabbed, they responded empathetically. This suggests that people normally automatically feel the pain of others, and the lack of empathy that volunteers showed for people of other races was learned and not innate.

"This default reactivity of human beings implies empathy with the pain of strangers," said researcher Alessio Avenanti of the University of Bologna in Italy. "However, racial bias may suppress this empathic reactivity, leading to a dehumanized perception of others' experience."

It could make evolutionary sense that we feel less empathy for people who are different than us. "In case of war or even a friendly competition like a football game, it could be adaptive to feel less empathy for people we consider our opponents," said social neuroscientist Joan Chiao at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., who did not take part in this research.

Then again, "it also makes evolutionary sense for us to feel the pain of others, as it might cue that there is danger close by," Chiao noted. "Also, without feeling the pain of others, it could be harder to motivate altruistic behaviors, especially if such behaviors come at a cost."

Essentially, for the stranger in pain, in order to elicit help, he or she would need to actually get the stranger to feel empathy.

While the ability for culture to regulate empathy could be helpful, "when you feel prejudices that are not adaptive, that are not rooted in reality, that shows that there can be a darker side to empathy regulation," Chiao added.

These new findings could suggest one could help deal with racial prejudice with methods designed to restore empathy for others, the researchers said.

"One can reduce empathy, but one can also promote it, learning positive associations with another group," Chiao said.

The scientists detailed their findings online May 27 in the journal Current Biology.

People who brush their teeth twice a day are significantly less likely to develop heart disease than those who were not so hygienic. The increased risk of developing heart disease, according to the results of this study, conducted at University College London and published in the British Medical Journal, was approximately half that caused by smoking tobacco.

Regular teeth brushing linked to healthier hearts

Eating more than five helpings of white rice a week is associated with significant risk of diabetes, according to a long-term study conducted at Harvard University with close to two hundred thousand participants. In contrast, those who ate at least two servings of brown rice a week had significantly less incidence of diabetes.

The researchers tried to control for the fact that Americans who eat brown rice tend to be more healthy overall — they eat more fruits and vegetables and less red meat and trans fats, and they also tend to be thinner, more active and less likely to smoke than those who don’t eat brown rice. Nevertheless, after controlling for these confounding factors, the researchers nevertheless found that consuming more than five cups of white rice a week was associated with a twenty per cent increased risk of developing diabetes.

Eating Brown Rice to Cut Diabetes Risk

Francesco Tonelli for The New York Times Brown rice contains fiber and nutrients that may help ward off diabetes.

Next time you order takeout wonton soup and a spicy Number 82, you might want to make sure it comes with brown rice.

Brown rice is a whole grain — white rice before it has been refined and polished and stripped of the bran covering, which is high in fiber and nutrients. Brown rice also has a lower glycemic index than white rice, which means it doesn’t cause blood glucose levels to rise as rapidly.

Now a new study from researchers at Harvard reports that Americans who eat two or more servings of brown rice a week reduce their risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by about 10 percent compared to people who eat it less than once a month. And those who eat white rice on a regular basis — five or more times a week — are almost 20 percent more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than those who eat it less than once a month.

Just replacing a third of a serving of white rice with brown each day could reduce one’s risk of Type 2 diabetes by 16 percent, a statistical analysis showed. A serving is half a cup of cooked rice.

The study, which was published in The Archives of Internal Medicine and used data from two Harvard nurses’ health studies and a separate study of health professionals, isn’t the first to point a finger at foods like white rice as a culprit in Type 2 diabetes. A 2007 study of Chinese women in Shanghai found that middle-aged women who ate large amounts of white rice and other refined carbohydrates were also at increased risk for diabetes compared to their peers who ate less.

But the Harvard study is one of the first to distinguish between brown rice and white rice consumption in the United States, where rice is not a staple food and relatively little is eaten overall, said Dr. Qi Sun, an instructor in medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, which is affiliated with Harvard Medical School. Many food studies simply lump brown and white rice together.

“The bottom line is we showed evidence that increased consumption of white rice – even at this low level of intake — is still associated with increased risk,” said Dr. Sun, who was at the Harvard School of Public Health when the study was done. “It’s really recommended to replace white rice with the same amount of brown rice or other whole grains.”

The researchers who did the study analyzed rice consumption among 39,765 men and 57,463 women who participated in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study and the Nurses’ Health Study I and II; participants in the three groups ranged in age from 26 to 87.

They had filled out food frequency questionnaires when the studies started — in 1986, 1984 and 1991, respectively — and updated their diet information every four years subsequently, through 2005 and 2006. They were also asked about their medical histories. During the course of the studies, more than 10,000 participants developed Type 2 diabetes.

Such food studies can be unreliable, since they rely on self-reported surveys. And correlation does not necessarily mean a cause-and-effect relationship, since factors other than brown rice consumption may have accounted for the decreased diabetes risk that was observed. The researchers tried to control for the fact that Americans who eat brown rice tend to be more healthy overall — they eat more fruits and vegetables and less red meat and trans fats, and they also tend to be thinner, more active and less likely to smoke than those who don’t eat brown rice.

But, Dr. Sun said, there were many possible explanations for why brown rice eaters are at lower risk for Type 2 diabetes. In addition to having a lower glycemic index than white rice, brown rice also contains important nutrients like magnesium that are stripped during the refining process; it also contains much more fiber. Earlier studies have found that having these nutrients in the diet protects against diabetes, Dr. Sun said.

Qi Sun, MD, ScD; Donna Spiegelman, ScD; Rob M. van Dam, PhD; Michelle D. Holmes, MD, DrPH; Vasanti S. Malik, MSc; Walter C. Willett, MD, DrPH; Frank B. Hu, MD, PhD

Background Because of differences in processing and nutrients, brown rice and white rice may have different effects on riskof type 2 diabetes mellitus. We examined white and brown riceconsumption in relation to type 2 diabetes risk prospectivelyin the Health Professionals Follow-up Study and the Nurses'Health Study I and II.

Methods We prospectively ascertained and updated diet, lifestyle practices, and disease status among 39 765 menand 157 463 women in these cohorts.

Results After multivariate adjustment for age and other lifestyle and dietary risk factors, higher intake of white rice(

5 servings per week vs <1 per month) was associated witha higher risk of type 2 diabetes: pooled relative risk (95%confidence interval [CI]), 1.17 (1.02-1.36). In contrast, highbrown rice intake (

2 servings per week vs <1 per month) wasassociated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes: pooled relativerisk, 0.89 (95% CI, 0.81-0.97). We estimated that replacing50 g/d (uncooked, equivalent to one-third serving per day) intakeof white rice with the same amount of brown rice was associatedwith a 16% (95% CI, 9%-21%) lower risk of type 2 diabetes, whereasthe same replacement with whole grains as a group was associatedwith a 36% (30%-42%) lower diabetes risk.

Conclusions Substitution of whole grains, including brown rice, for white rice may lower risk of type 2 diabetes. Thesedata support the recommendation that most carbohydrate intakeshould come from whole grains rather than refined grains tohelp prevent type 2 diabetes.

Author Affiliations: Departments of Nutrition (Drs Sun, van Dam, Willett, and Hu and Ms Malik), Epidemiology (Drs Spiegelman, van Dam, Holmes, Willett, and Hu and Ms Malik), and Biostatistics (Dr Spiegelman), Harvard School of Public Health; the Channing Laboratory (Drs van Dam, Holmes, Willett, and Hu), Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School; all at Boston, Massachusetts.

When it comes to giving to charity, or volunteer work, it matters less how rich folks are, but matters more how happy they are, according to a recent study, the first of its kind, conducted by the Charities Aid Foundation in Britain, and published online as the “World Giving Index” (WGI)

The WGI is a statistical reality, based on economic data and Gallup surveys. It took into account each country's wealth (as in gross domestic product) and indicators of the population's “happiness.” It then correlated those two figures against figures indicating how much the average person in that country donated to charity, in both money and time.

In terms of individual behavior, it found that twenty percent of the world's population had volunteered in the month before they were surveyed, thirty percent had given money to a charity, and forty-five percent had helped a stranger. The results showed that average giving in a country was more closely related to the country's happiness level than to its level of wealth, which contradicted long-held assumptions about the conditions for giving.

Happy people are more likely than wealthy people to give to charity, a new study says.

The World Giving Index, released by the Charities Aid Foundation in Britain, also says 20 percent of the world's population had volunteered in the month before they were surveyed, 30 percent had given money to a charity, and 45 percent had helped a stranger.

The Index, based on a Gallup Survey on the charitable behavior of people in 153 countries representing 95 percent of the world's population, is the largest ever to examine charitable behavior worldwide, the Charities Aid Foundation says.

The survey asked people whether they had given money to a charity in the previous month, and to rank how happy they were with life on a scale of one to 10.

To develop the Index, the Charities Aid Foundation compared the strength of the relationship between giving with both a nation's gross domestic product and the happiness of its population.

The link between the giving of money and happiness is stronger than the link between the giving of money and the gross domestic product of a nation, the study says.

"Donating money to charity is something that is traditionally seen as being driven by how wealthy a person is," Richard Harrison, director of research at the Charities Aid Foundation, says in a statement. "However, it is clear that happiness plays an important role in influence whether people give."

The findings also suggest "a positive cycle where one person gives to charity, the charity improves the happiness of the individuals they support and they in turn are more likely to give," he says.

The Index also measured volunteering time and helping a stranger, and developed the Index by combining the levels of the three types of charitable behavior to produce a ranking of the most charitable nations.

Australia ranked first overall, followed by New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, Switzerland, United States, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Sri Lanka and Austria.

The data also show that "globally, the older we are, the more we tend to give," the study says, although that trend is reversed in some specific emerging and developing countries.

And in most regions, it says, "we are least likely to help a stranger when over 50."

Global patterns in volunteering vary greatly by region and by country, the study says.

In North America, for example, 34 percent of the population ages 15 to 24 had volunteered in the previous month, compared to 76 percent of those over age 50.

Ghosts have been with us as long as there were folks around to notice. Recently, however, it seems that there has been an uptick in such attention, judging from some new books out on the shelves.

Holy Ghosts, or How a (Not So) Good Catholic Boy Became a Believer in Things that Go Bump in the Night (Tarcher/Penguin, publishers), by Gary Jensen, tells the story of one man's haunting experience in the family home. It took the real life “Ghost Whisperer” (as seen on TV) to clear things up, and bring peace between religious beliefs and paranormal experience.

Mind Blowing True Ghost Stories (Createspace, publishers), by Carl Buehler offers a first-person account of the author's ghost sightings and spirit contacts.

Some soon to be released non-fiction ghost books include Ghost Box (Ghost Tracker), and Other Side: Spirits, Angels, Ghosts and More.: Who's Who, What They Do, and How They Touch Our Lives.

It seems as though religion and science are caught in an endless debate these days, with neither side accepting anything in common with the opposition. Atheists blast scientists who accept a belief in God, and some fundamentalist Christians blast other Christians who accept evolution. As that battle rages on, there is another line of development that is undermining this old argument. That is the increasing interest in spirituality, something that even atheists, scientists, and the religously minded can find they have in common.

“Spirituality is something everyone can have — even atheists. In its most expansive sense, it could simply be taken to refer to any individual's particular quest to discover that which is held sacred.” So writes Chris Mooney (author of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future), in an article for USA Today. He notes that most anything can be held sacred, and without reference to any religious concept. He writes, “That feeling of awe and wonder, that sense of a deep unity with the universe or cosmos — such intuitions might lead to a traditional religious outlook on the world, or they might not.” He notes some of the spirituality in the scientific writings of atheists, who often become enraptured contemplating the lawfulness of the universe, and can do so without supposing a god or supernatural being behind it all

Mooney concludes, “A focus on spirituality, then, might be the route to finally healing one of the most divisive rifts in Western society — over the relationship between science and religion.”

As something of a milestone, the famed NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine) published a report of a research project demonstrating the therapeutic value of acupuncture for chronic lower back pain. As part of that report, the authors, from the Center for Integrative Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, provide some historical background on the issue of acupuncture, and summarize the history of research on its effectiveness.

On their website, (nejm.org), they also note another article exploring the use of TaiChi as a treatment for ffibromyalgia. Times are changing.

The famous dream telepathy experiments conducted the late Montague Ullman, M.D., at Brooklyn's Maimonides Hospital had the distinction of being recognized by most authorities as being the best evidence for telepathy. This research has continued to this day, but in a different format. It has been re-created as a “dream telepathy contest” at the annual convention of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (an organization that credits Atlantic University's Sundance: The Community Dream Journal as being instrumental in its founding).

In a lenghty report published in Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, Rita Dwyer, an A.R.E. Member and founding member of IASD, describes the history of stunning telepathic dreams stimulated by this contest over the years since it began in 1985. The contest was designed by Robert Van de Castle, then of the University of Virginia and a part-time faculty member for Atlantic University. In his book, Our Dreaming Mind (Ballantine, publishers), which was an Atlantic University text for many years, he describes how this contest grew out of his own successful work as a telepathic dreamer in the Maimonides studies, and about how dream research at Atlantic University transformed his approach to dream research.

One Word Secret to Happy Marriage

I Feel Your Pain, Unless You're From a Different Race

Regular teeth brushing linked to healthier hearts

Eating Brown Rice to Cut Diabetes Risk

Thinking about God de-stresses believers