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