It said there was a “significant beneficial effect” on alcohol abuse, which lasted several months after the drug was taken.
An expert said this was “as good as anything we’ve got”.
LSD is a class A drug in the UK and is one of the most powerful hallucinogens ever identified. It appears to work by blocking a chemical in the brain, serotonin, which controls functions including perception, behaviour, hunger and mood.
Benefit
Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology analysed earlier studies on the drug between 1966 and 1970.
Patients were all taking part in alcohol treatment programmes, but some were given a single dose of LSD of between 210 and 800 micrograms.
For the group of patients taking LSD, 59% showed reduced levels of alcohol misuse compared with 38% in the other group.
This effect was maintained six months after taking the hallucinogen, but it disappeared after a year. Those taking LSD also reported higher levels of abstinence.
The report’s authors, Teri Krebs and Pal-Orjan Johansen, said: “A single dose of LSD has a significant beneficial effect on alcohol misuse.”
They suggested that more regular doses might lead to a sustained benefit.
“Given the evidence for a beneficial effect of LSD on alcoholism, it is puzzling why this treatment approach has been largely overlooked,” they added.
Prof David Nutt, who was sacked as the UK government’s drugs adviser, has previously called for the laws around illegal drugs to be relaxed to enable more research.
He said: “Curing alcohol dependency requires huge changes in the way you see yourself. That’s what LSD does.
“Overall there is a big effect, show me another treatment with results as good; we’ve missed a trick here.
“This is probably as good as anything we’ve got [for treating alcoholism].”
Mac Cosmetics is collaborating with 90-year-old style icon Iris Apfel making her the oldest woman ever to personally represent a line of beauty products.
From Iris Apfel’s Facebook page: “For me the key to personal style lies in accessories. My friends tell me that my oversized glasses and my pairs of bracelets have become my unwritten signature. I have amassed an enormous ‘collection’ of bags, belts, bangles and beads without which I would be lost. One can change the entire look of an outfit by substituting one accessory for another. I love objects from different worlds, different eras, combined my way. Never uptight, achieving – hopefully – a kind of throwaway chic.”
This past week my colleague Shirley Gines (pictured above) and I visited the Mountain View office of Vasper Fitness and Performance Systems to test their high-tech exercise machine. Reportedly, it provides the equivalent of a two-hour workout in only 20 minutes.
And you don’t sweat!
Even more compelling, exercising on a Vasper has been shown to increase the body’s production of human growth hormone (HGH). This has many benefits including increased muscle mass and bone density, decreased body fat, improved sleep, increased focus and clarity of mind, faster recovery from exercise or physical injuries, and increased exercise capacity.
Whether higher levels of HGH actually make you younger or not is debatable but who cares if it gives you more energy and makes you feel younger.
If you can increase your HGH levels naturally without the fuss of expensive, daily injections that may come with some alarming side-effects (see Mayo Clinic article) then Vasper is a potential winner for anyone who wants to live a longer, healthier life.
Just getting to the Vasper office is quite an adventure as it is located at Moffitt Field NASA Ames Research Center under the shadow of one of the world’s largest free standing buildings–Hangar One, a massive blimp hangar built during the Depression.
From highway 101 you have to drive through a military checkpoint, where you simply tell the nice marine that you are visiting Vasper and show him your California driver’s license. You then follow a windy road towards Hangar One past some vacant military buildings and an immaculately mowed parade ground to a group of trailer-like structures.
One of these is building 566, the Vasper office/combination gymnasium.
(The reason Vasper is at this peculiar location is because they have a research contract with NASA to see if their exercise technology might be useful for astronauts whose bodies tend to atrophy in space.)
Sedate on the outside, Vasper is buzzing with activity on the inside. There is a reception desk where you sign in and four Vasper stations where people are madly peddling away, each attended by an assistant monitoring their every stroke.
Meet the founder
After checking in, Shirley and I ask the attendant if we can interview Vasper’s founder, Peter Wasowski, before we go through the workout. Peter is busy but he’s intrigued by the name of this blog (“Death is Obsolete”) so he asks us to follow him to his lab, an identical building next door.
An energetic 64-year-old professorial man with intense, sparkling eyes, Peter impresses me as a nerd who has never quite grown up. He excitedly expounds on the theories behind the Vasper system while referring to some charts on the wall of his laboratory.
Pointing to a graphic of children at play, he says, “Whenever you see kids running around there are huge amounts of lactic acid accumulating in their bodies–and the more lactic acid the stronger the feedback to the pituitary gland to release more growth hormone.”
“At puberty,” he continues, “when the body reaches closer to adult size, your muscles are bigger, and so you are no longer able to concentrate lactic acid. Every 10 years after puberty humans lose 14% of their production of growth hormone.”
Looking at the chart below, Shirley comments, “Oh my god, I’ve lost nearly half of my growth hormone levels!”
“Less growth hormone is the main reason,” Peter points out, “that older people take longer to recover from injuries.”
He goes on to explain there are three core ideas behind the Vasper technology:
Compression. Cuffs, similar to the ones used when measuring blood pressure, are applied to upper thighs and biceps to trap the lactic acid that is produced when you exercise. This “fools the brain into thinking you have destroyed muscle tissue when in fact you have not.”
Core body cooling. A vest is wrapped around the chest which is filled with a cold liquid. The same liquid is also pumped into the cuffs and into a special helmet on your head. This keeps your body from sweating, thereby preventing the loss of oxygen that would otherwise occur as your blood temperature goes up. And since oxygen is the fuel for the muscles, this makes your exercise more efficient.
Grounding. Peter tells us that “arthritis took off in the Western world in the mid-1950’s when polymers were invented.” The theory is that because of synthetic clothing, nylon carpets, rubber soles, etc., people started picking up a lot of static electricity and they “had no way to off-load it.” He says static electricity is an “inflammatory energy” and that if you go to India where 800 million people wear cotton clothes and are barefoot you will see very little arthritis. For this reason when you exercise on a Vasper machine you do it barefoot and your feet rest on a grounded copper plate.
Now that we have some understanding of the concept, it is time for us to test it out ourselves, so we head back to the other building.
“Beam me up, Scotty!”
Once seated on one of the Vasper exercise machines, a technician straps a blue vest around your chest, followed by the four cuffs around both thighs and upper arms. Each of these has tubes running out of them attached to a control unit. A cold liquid is pumped through tubes which provide compression (arms and legs) and simultaneously cools you body. As it was a warm day, I found that this felt really refreshing.
Next, you place your bare feet on the copper pedals for the grounding effect. The pedals are cold as well. A liquid cooled helmet is then place on your head and you are ready to rock and rolls. (See video below.)
After nine minutes of moderately pumping your arms and legs, the technician tells you to pump as fast as you can for 90 seconds. This followed by 90 seconds of slow pedaling, then 30 seconds as hard as you can, etc. There is a total of six high-intensity periods.
I found the Vasper did provide a good workout. While I didn’t sweat or get winded, I could feel a definite burn in my thighs and upper arms.
For the rest of the day my endorphins were kicking in like crazy and I did get a really good sleep that night. To find out whether or not my pituitary was pumping out more hormones would require a blood or saliva test which wasn’t available. But I felt great.
Interval training isn’t new but recently it has been shown to boost the levels of HGH as wells as anabolic hormones such as testosterone, DHEAS and IGF1. It may also help normalize the level of the stress hormone cortisol.
And interval training is an effective way of inducing fat loss and improving aerobic capacity. Hell, yeah!
I’ve been practicing a form of interval training for two years and swear by it. I’m totally addicted to it, so much so I find it hard to do the other forms of exercise that used to be part of my routine.
The question I have about Vasper is the body cooling, compression and grounding really necessary? Wouldn’t I get the same benefit, or close to the same benefit from simply following the Vasper routine on a regular exercise bike?
The advantages of sweating
Not sweating is nice, but there a benefit to sweating which includes healthier skin and detoxification. If you need to exercise over the lunch hour then Vasper or a similar system would be great because who has time to take a shower. Otherwise the jury is still out as far as I’m concerned.
Peter Wasowski likes to point out that only 5% of adult Americans exercise on a regular basis. The reason he believes is “because it is painful because exercise damages the muscles.” Vasper solves this problem because it “fools the brain into thinking the muscles are damaged, so you get all the benefit minus the pain.”
I think inertia and the fact exercise takes too much time out of our busy days are the real reasons people don’t exercise. Interval training with or without Vasper saves time and I always feel great after it, I never feel any pain. I haven’t really felt pain from exercise since my high school cross-country coach made us run up the stadium steps over and over again until we dropped from exhaustion.
If you happen to live in or near Mountain View or work at the nearby GOOGLE headquarters, you can sign up for Vasper at their website (vasper.com) for only $35 a session.
It is worth it just to get a close-up view of Hangar One.
This past week my colleague Shirley Ginnis (pictured above) and I visited the Mountain View office of Vasper Fitness and Performance Systems to test their high-tech exercise machine that reportedly provides the equivalent of a two-hour workout in only 20 minutes. And you don’t sweat!
Even more compelling, exercising on a Vasper has been shown to increase the body’s production of human growth hormone (HGH) which has many benefits including increased muscle mass and bone density, decreased body fat, improved sleep, faster recovery from exercise or physical injuries, and increased exercise capacity. Whether higher levels of HGH actually makes you younger or not is debatable but who cares if it gives you more energy and makes you feel younger.
If you can increase your HGH levels naturally without the fuss of expensive daily injections that may come with some alarming side-effects (see Mayo Clinic article) then Vasper is a potential winner for those of us who want to live longer, healthier lives.
Just getting to the Vasper office is quite an adventure as it is located at Moffitt Field NASA Ames Research Center under the shadow of one of the world’s largest free standing buildings–Hangar One, a massive blimp hangar built during the Depression.
First, from highway 101 you have to drive through a military checkpoint, where you simply tell the nice marine that you are visiting Vasper and show him your California driver’s license. You then follow a windy road towards Hangar One past some vacant military buildings and an immaculately mowed parade ground to a group of trailer-like structures, one of which is building 566, the Vasper office combination gymnasium.
The reason Vasper is at this peculiar location is because they have a research contract with NASA to see if their exercise technology might be useful for astronauts.
Sedate on the outside, Vasper is buzzing with activity on the inside. There is a reception desk where you sign in and four Vasper stations where people are peddling away, each attended by an assistent monitoring their every stroke.
After checking in, Shirley and I ask the attendent if we can interview Vasper’s founder, Peter Wasowski, before we go through the workout. Peter is busy but he’s intrigued by the name of this blog (Death is Obsolete) so he asks us to follow him to his lab, an identical building next door.
An energetic 64 year old professorial man with sparkling eyes, Peters impresses me as a nerd who has never quite grown up as he profusely expounds on the theories behind the Vasper system while pointing to some charts on the wall of his laboratory.
Pointing to a graphic of children at play, he says “whenever you see kids running around there are huge amounts of lactic acid accumulating in their bodies and the more lactic acid the stronger the feedback to the pituitary gland to release more growth hormone.”
“At puberty,” he continues,”the body reaches closer to adult size, your muscles are bigger, and so you are no longer able to concentrate lactic acid. Every 10 years after puberty humans lose 14% of their production of growth hormone.”
“This is the main reason,” he points out, “that older people take longer to recover from injuries.”
Peter goes on to explain there are three core ideas behind the Vasper technology:
Compression. Cuffs, similar to the ones used when measuring blood pressure, are applied to upper thighs and biceps to trap the lactic acid that is produced when you exercise. This “fools the brain into thinking you have destroyed muscle tissue when in fact you have not.
Core body cooling. A vest is wrapped around the chest which is filled with a cold liquid. The same liquid is also pumped into the cuffs and into a helmet. This keeps your body from sweating, thereby preventing the loss of oxygen that would otherwise occur as your blood temperature goes up. And since oxygen is the fuel for the muscles, this makes your exercise more efficient.
Grounding. Peter tells us that “arthritis took off in the Western world in the mid-1950’s when polymers were invented.” The theory is that because of synthetic clothing, nylon carpets, rubber soles, etc., people started picking up a lot of static electricity and they “had no way to off-load it.” He says static electricity is an “inflammatory energy” and that if you go to India where 800 million people wear cotton clothes and are barefoot you will see very little arthritis. For this reason when you exercise on a Vasper machine you do it barefoot and your feet rest on a grounded copper plate.
Now that we have some understanding of the concept, it is time for us to test it out ourselves, so we head back to the other building.
Once seated on one of the Vasper exercise machines, a technician straps a blue vest around your chest, followed by the four cuffs around both thighs and upper arms. Each of these has tubes running out of them attached to a control unit. A cold liquid is pumped through tubes which provides compression (arms and legs) and cools you body. As it was a warm day, I found that this felt really great.
You place your bare feet on the copper pedals for the grounding effect. The pedals are cold as well. A liquid cooled helmet is then place on your head and you are ready to rock and rolls.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukPYcrkAZOY
The exercise itself is a form of interval training. After nine minutes of moderately pumping your arms and legs, the technician tells you to pump as fast as you can for 90 seconds. This followed by 90 seconds of slow pedaling, then 30 seconds as hard as you can, etc. You can get a really good idea of how this works by watching the YouTube video above.
According to a new survey, more than 15% of American surgeons suffer from alcohol abuse or dependency problems. Also it is reported that surgeons who showed signs of alcoholism were 45% more likely to admit that they had serious medical mistakes in the past three months.
A team of researchers led by Dr Michael R Oreskovich from University of Washington, Seattle collected surveys of 7,200 surgeons from more than 25,000 members of the American College of Surgeons.
The survey questions asked surgeons about their work, their lifestyle and their mood, and several were screened for alcohol abuse or dependency.
The latest survey which published in the Archives of Surgery reported that overall, 15% of American surgerons showed signs of alcohol problems, while other studies have documented that among the general population, the number is about 9%.
This research study led by Dr Oreskovich, did not determine why alcohol problems might be more common among surgeons.
The study, published in the Archives of Surgery, found that 15% had a score on the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test that was regular with alcohol abuse or dependence.
The senior author of the study Oreskovich said that the nature of the beast is that the percent of emergencies, the percent of after hour jobs and actual scheduled work itself all needs energy and attentiveness that is actually different than a lot of the other specialties.
The research showed that the alcohol abuse or dependence was 14% for male surgeons and 25% for female surgeons, also reported was that these are more likely in surgeons who were younger, who were dissatisfied with a spouse or partner relationship, and did not have children.
Researchers found that the surgeons who were burned out and disheartened were more probable to have the uses of alcohol and dependence issues.
The study said that surgeons with alcohol abuse or dependence accounted for 77% of surgeons who reported a medical error in the past three months.
One dose of the hallucinogenic drug LSD could help alcoholics give up drinking, according to an analysis of studies performed in the 1960s. A study, presented in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, looked at data from six trials and more than 500 patients. It said there was a “significant beneficial effect” on alcohol abuse, which lasted several …
Mac Cosmetics is collaborating with 90-year-old style icon Iris Apfel making her the oldest woman ever to personally represent a line of beauty products. From Iris Apfel’s Facebook page: “For me the key to personal style lies in accessories. My friends tell me that my oversized glasses and my pairs of bracelets have become my unwritten …
by David Bunnell This past week my colleague Shirley Gines (pictured above) and I visited the Mountain View office of Vasper Fitness and Performance Systems to test their high-tech exercise machine. Reportedly, it provides the equivalent of a two-hour workout in only 20 minutes. And you don’t sweat! Even more compelling, exercising on a Vasper has been …
According to a new survey, more than 15% of American surgeons suffer from alcohol abuse or dependency problems. Also it is reported that surgeons who showed signs of alcoholism were 45% more likely to admit that they had serious medical mistakes in the past three months. A team of researchers led by Dr Michael R …
One dose of the hallucinogenic drug LSD could help alcoholics give up drinking, according to an analysis of studies performed in the 1960s.
Just getting to the Vasper office is quite an adventure as it is located at Moffitt Field NASA Ames Research Center under the shadow of one of the world’s largest free standing buildings–Hangar One, a massive blimp hangar built during the Depression.
road towards Hangar One past some vacant military buildings and an immaculately mowed parade ground to a group of trailer-like structures.
An energetic 64-year-old professorial man with intense, sparkling eyes, Peter impresses me as a nerd who has never quite grown up. He excitedly expounds on the theories behind the Vasper system while referring to some charts on the wall of his laboratory.
Just getting to the Vasper office is quite an adventure as it is located at Moffitt Field NASA Ames Research Center under the shadow of one of the world’s largest free standing buildings–Hangar One, a massive blimp hangar built during the Depression.
military buildings and an immaculately mowed parade ground to a group of trailer-like structures, one of which is building 566, the Vasper office combination gymnasium.
An energetic 64 year old professorial man with sparkling eyes, Peters impresses me as a nerd who has never quite grown up as he profusely expounds on the theories behind the Vasper system while pointing to some charts on the wall of his laboratory.
According to a new survey, more than 15% of American surgeons suffer from alcohol abuse or dependency problems. Also it is reported that surgeons who showed signs of alcoholism were 45% more likely to admit that they had serious medical mistakes in the past three months.