Psychedelics and Psychotherapy – Edited by Dr. Tim Read & Maria Papaspyrou

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A quick note on authorship, first: this book is edited by the psychiatrist and psychotherapist credited above, but after the introductory section, the rest of the chapters are written by experts on the individual topics.As such, the style will vary somewhat, from chapter to chapter.

What this book isn’t: “try drugs and feel better!”

Rather, the book explores the various ways in which assorted drugs can help people to—even if just briefly—shed things they didn’t know they were carrying, or otherwise couldn’t put down, and access parts of themselves they otherwise couldn’t.

We also get to read a lot about the different roles the facilitator can play in guiding the therapeutic process, and what can be expected out of each kind of experience. This varies a lot from one drug to another, so it makes for very worthwhile reading, if that’s something you might consider pursuing. Knowledge makes for much more informed choices!

Bottom line: if you’re curious about the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, and want a reference that’s more personal than dry clinical studies, but still more “safe and removed” than diving in by yourself, this is the book for you.

Click here to check out Psychedelics and Psychotherapy, and expand your understanding!

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    How to Stay Alive: Understanding Suicide Risk Factors and Finding Support. Learn how to talk about it, remove access to firearms, and build a strong social support network.

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  • Lifestyle vs Multiple Sclerosis & More

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    This is Dr. Saray Stancic. She’s another from the ranks of “doctors who got a serious illness and it completely changed how they view the treatment of serious illness”.

    In her case, Stancic was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and wasn’t impressed with the results from the treatments offered, so (after 8 years of pain, suffering, and many medications, only for her condition to worsen) she set about doing better with an evidence-based lifestyle medicine approach.

    After 7 years of her new approach, she would go on to successfully run a marathon and live symptom-free.

    All this to say: her approach isn’t a magic quick fix, but it is a serious method for serious results, and after all, while it’d be nice to be magically in perfect health tomorrow, what’s important is being in good health for life, right?

    If you’re interested in her impressive story, check out:

    Doctor With Multiple Sclerosis On The Collapse Of US Healthcare

    If you want to know what she did, then read on…

    Six key lifestyle changes

    Dr. Stancic credits her recovery to focus on the following evidence-based approaches:

    The plant-centered plate

    This is critical, and is the one she places most emphasis on. Most chronic diseases are exacerbated, if not outright caused, by chronic inflammation, and one cannot fix that without an anti-inflammatory diet.

    An anti-inflammatory diet doesn’t have to be 100% plant-based, but broadly speaking, plants are almost always anti-inflammatory to a greater or lesser degree, while animal products are often pro-inflammatory—especially red meat and unfermented dairy.

    For more details, see:

    Anti-Inflammatory Diet 101 (What to Eat to Fight Inflammation)

    Movement every day

    While “exercise is good for you” is in principle not a shocker, remember that her starting point was being in terrible condition with badly flared-up MS.

    Important to understand here is that excessive exercise can weaken the immune system and sometimes cause flare-ups of various chronic diseases.

    Moving thoroughly and moving often, however, is best. So walking yes, absolutely, but also don’t neglect the rest of your body, do some gentle bodyweight squats (if you can; if you can’t, work up to them), stretch your arms as well as your legs, take all your joints through a full range of motion.

    See also:

    The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less, & Move More

    Mindful stress management

    Stress in life is unavoidable, but how we manage it is up to us. Bad things will continue to happen, great and small, but we can take a deep breath, remember that those things aren’t the boss of us, and deal with it calmly and conscientiously.

    Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is of course the evidence-based “gold standard” for this, but whatever (not substance-based) method works for you, works for you!

    About MBSR:

    No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness

    Good sleeping habits

    Getting good sleep can be hard for anyone, let alone if you have chronic pain. However, Dr. Stancic advocates for doing whatever we can to get good sleep—which means not just duration (the famous “7–9 hours”), but also quality.

    Learn more:

    The 6 Dimensions Of Sleep (And Why They Matter)

    Substance intake awareness

    This one’s not so much of a “don’t do drugs, kids” as the heading makes it look. Dr. Stancic assumes we already know, for example, that smoking is bad for us in a long list of ways, and alcohol isn’t much better.

    However, she also advises us that in our eagerness to do that plant-based diet, we would do better to go for whole foods plant-based, rather than the latest processed meat substitutes, for example.

    And supplements? She bids us exercise caution, and to make sure to get good quality, as poor quality supplements can be worse than taking nothing (looking at you, cheap turmeric supplements that contain heavy metals).

    And of course, that nutrients gained from diet will almost always be better than nutrients gained from supplements, as our body can usually use them better.

    And see also, some commonly-made supplements mistakes:

    Do You Know Which Supplements You Shouldn’t Take Together? (10 Pairs!)

    Human connection

    Lastly, we humans are a social species by evolution; as individuals, we may enjoy relatively more or less social contact, but having access to such is important not just for our mental health, but our physical health too—we will tend to deteriorate much more quickly when we have to deal with everything alone, all other things being equal.

    It doesn’t mean you need a busy social life if that’s not in your nature, but it does mean it’s incredibly beneficial to have at least a small number of people that you trust and whose company you enjoy, at least relatively accessible to you (i.e., their life need not revolve around you, but they are the kind of people who will generally happily spend time with you and provide support when needed if they can).

    As for how:

    How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation

    Want to know more from Dr. Stancic?

    We recently reviewed this very good book of hers, which goes over each of these six things in much more detail than we have room for here:

    What’s Missing from Medicine – by Dr. Saray Stancic

    Enjoy!

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  • Radical Remission – by Dr. Kelly Turner

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    First, what this is not:an autobiographical account of the “I beat cancer and you can too” pep-talk style.

    What it is: a very readable pop-science book based on the author’s own PhD research into radical remission.

    She knew that a very small percentage of people experience spontaneous radical remission (or quasi-spontaneous, if the remission is attributed to lifestyle changes, and/or some alternative therapy), but a small percentage of people means a large number worldwide, so she travelled the world studying over 1,000 cases of people with late-stage cancer who had either not gone for conventional anticancer drugs, or had and then stopped, and lived to tell the tale.

    While she doesn’t advocate for any particular alternative therapy, she does report on what things came to her attention. She does advocate for some lifestyle changes.

    Perhaps the biggest value this book offers is in its promised “9 key factors that can make a real difference”, which are essentially her conclusions from her PhD dissertation.

    There isn’t room to talk about them here in a way that wouldn’t be misleading/unhelpful for a paucity of space, so perhaps we’ll do a main feature one of these days.

    Bottom line: if you have (or a loved one has) cancer, this is an incredibly sensible book to read. If you don’t, then it’s an interesting and thought-provoking book to read.

    Click here to check out Radical Remission, and learn about the factors at hand!

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  • Statins: Study Insights

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Q: Can you let us know about more studies that have been done on statins? Are they really worth taking?

    That is a great question! We imagine it might have been our recent book recommendation that prompted it? It’s quite a broad question though, so we’ll do that as a main feature in the near future!

    Share This Post

Related Posts

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  • Pistachios vs Pine Nuts – Which is Healthier?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing pistachios to pine nuts, we picked the pistachios.

    Why?

    First looking at the macros, pistachios have nearly 2x the protein while pine nuts have nearly 2x the fat. The fats are healthy in moderation (mostly polyunsaturated, a fair portion of monounsaturated, and a little saturated), but we’re going to value the protein content higher. Also, pistachios have approximately 2x the carbs, and/but nearly 3x the fiber. All in all, we’ll call this section a moderate win for pistachios.

    When it comes to vitamins, pistachios have more of vitamins A, B1, B5, B6, B9, and C, while pine nuts have more of vitamins B2, B3, E, K, and choline. All in all, pistachios are scraping a 6:5 win here, or we could call it a tie if we want to value pine nuts’ vitamins more (due to the difference in how many foods each vitamin is found in, and thus the likelihood of having a deficiency or not).

    In the category of minerals, pistachios have more calcium, copper, potassium, and selenium, while pine nuts have more iron, magnesium, manganese, and zinc. This would be a tie if we just call it 4:4, but what’s worth noting is that while both of these nuts are a good source of most of the minerals mentioned, pine nuts aren’t a very good source of calcium or selenium, so we’re going to declare this section a very marginal win for pistachios.

    Adding up the moderate win, the scraped win, and the barely scraped win, all adds up to a win for pistachios. However, as you might have noticed, both are great so do enjoy both if you can!

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts

    Take care!

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  • When Science Brings Hope

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    There’s a lot of bad news out there at present, including in the field of healthcare. So as some measure of respite from that, here’s some good news from the world of health science, including some actionable things to do:

    Run for your life! Or casually meander for your life; that’s fine too.

    Those who enjoy the equivalent of an average of 160mins slow (3mph) walking per day also enjoy the greatest healthspan. Now, there may be an element of two-way causality here (moving more means we live longer, but also, sometimes people move less because of having crippling disabilities, which are themselves not great for healthspan, as well as having the knock-on effect of reducing movement, and so such conditions yield and anti-longevity double-whammy), but for any who are able to, increasing the amount of time per day spend moving, ultimately results (on average) in a lot of extra days in life that we’ll then get to spend moving.

    Depending on how active or not you are already, every extra 1 hour walked could add two hours and 49 minutes to life expectancy:

    Read in full: Americans over 40 could live extra 5 years if they were all as active as top 25% of population, modeling study suggests

    Related: The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less & Move More

    Re-teaching your brain to heal itself

    Cancer is often difficult to treat, and brain tumors can be amongst the most difficult with which to contend. Not only is everything in there very delicate, but also it’s the hardest place in the body to get at—not just surgically, but even chemically, because of the blood-brain barrier. To make matters worse, brain tumors such as glioblastoma weaken the function of T-cells (whose job it is to eliminate the cancer) by prolonged exposure.

    Research has found a way to restore the responsiveness of these T-cells to immune checkpoint inhibitors, allowing them to go about their cancer-killing activities unimpeded:

    Read in full: New possibilities for treating intractable brain tumors unveiled

    Related: 5 Ways To Beat Cancer (And Other Diseases)

    Here’s to your good health!

    GLP-1 receptor agonists, originally developed to fight diabetes and now enjoying popularity as weight loss adjuvants, work in large part by cutting down food cravings by interfering with the chemical messaging about such.

    As a bonus, it seems that they also can reduce alcohol cravings, especially by targetting the brain’s reward center; this was based on a large review of studies looking at how GLP-1RA use affects alcohol use, alcohol-related health problems, hospital visits, and brain reactions to alcohol cues:

    Read in full: Diabetes medication may be effective in helping people drink less alcohol, research finds

    Related: How To Reduce Or Quit Alcohol

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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  • The Stress-Proof Brain – by Dr. Melanie Greenberg

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    The premise of the book is as stated in the subtitle: using mindfulness and neuroplasticity to manage our stress response.

    As such, it’s divided into three parts:

    1. Understanding your stress (and different types of stressors)
    2. Calming your amygdalae (thus, dealing with your stress response while the stressor is stressing you)
    3. Moving forward with your prefrontal cortex (and thus, gradually improving automatic stress responses over time, as we learn new, better responses to do automatically)

    The content ranges from the neurophysiological to “therapist’s couch” stuff; Dr. Greenberg having her PhD in psychology has prepared her to write both of those different-but-touching fields with equal competence. In-line citations are given throughout, for those who want to look up studies.

    The style is direct and informative, with little to no attention given to making it an entertaining read. As a result, it’s information dense (which is good), and/but not necessarily a “couldn’t put it down” page-turner.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to improve your ability to deal with stress, this book is as good as any.

    Click here to check out The Stress-Proof Brain, and stress-proof yours!

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