Recent research has found that psychedelics help weight loss. In particular psilocybin, the psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms.
Much research is being conducted into psychedelic plant medicines for the treatment of mental health issues like anxiety and depression. Now researchers have turned their attention to whether psychedelics could help tackle obesity.
How Could Psychedelics Help Weight Loss ?
Research suggests that psychedelics, particularly psilocybin, may have direct and indirect influences on weight loss. Psilocybin has been proven to have positive alterations on an individual’s mindset, behaviors, and emotional well-being.
These alterations can contribute to adopting healthier eating habits, somatic awareness, and increased physical activity, which, in turn, may support weight loss efforts.
It is believed that through increasing neural plasticity and altering the body’s serotonergic systems which are responsible for craving and food-intake impulses, psilocybin and other psychedelics may change maladaptive eating habits.
Radical Self Acceptance & Psychedelics
Even when embarking on endeavors of self-improvement, it is important to maintain a mindset of compassion, radical self-acceptance, and appreciation for all that the body does to keep us moving through life.
Weight loss is often perceived as a physical journey, counting calories and shedding pounds. However, its depth reaches far beyond tangible scales and measuring tapes.
It is necessary to have a general understanding of our motivations, intentions, and the complexities of the human body, knowing that there are beautiful differences between each human which should be honored.
It is also important to acknowledge that our relationship with our bodies and food is deeply intertwined with our emotional experiences, past traumas, and self-esteem.
Delving into these psychological aspects allows us to uncover the underlying causes of unhealthy habits and empowers us to address them holistically.
Am I seeking a quick fix to alter myself, or am I aiming for a deeper transformation? Am I acting from a feeling of inadequacy or a deep desire to be at my best? How can I nurture myself while also embracing my imperfections?
These are good questions to be aware of when beginning any journey of self-actualization, especially when it comes to psychedelics.
Beyond the Physical: Indirect Effects of Psychedelic Medicines on Weight
Psychedelics, especially psilocybin, have been proven to be effective tools for mental health conditions and illnesses as well as for general psychological, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
When the motivation for exploring psychedelics transcends weight loss and is rooted in a genuine intention to improve overall well-being, the transformative potential amplifies.
Establishing a healthy relationship with food isn’t just about physical nourishment; it’s about understanding how our emotional state affects and is affected by our relationship with food.
Psychedelics can play a role in this transformation, inviting us to see ourselves through a compassionate lens, fostering acceptance and encouraging a nurturing relationship with our bodies.
These mind-altering substances have been shown to benefit the following conditions, which may have an indirect effect on obesity and weight gain as a comorbidity:
As we will discover in the next section, our neurochemistry and neuroplasticity play such a pivotal role in the development of both the conditions listed in this section and the various factors that contribute to obesity. It isn’t hard to see how, through altering serotonergic systems and improving the brain’s capacity to adapt, psychedelics could similarly improve habitual maladaptive behaviors which contribute to weight gain.
Scientific Research on Weight Loss, Obesity, & Psilocybin
While we are still at the forefront of research efforts, there have been a few developments in the past couple years which point to psilocybin specifically being a relevant potential treatment for weight loss.
For instance, in 2022 some researchers compared the effects of low and high doses of psilocybin, metformin (which is a blood sugar medication known to have effects on body weight), and placebo on mice.
Because metformin is a known “positive control” and placebo would be a “negative control” when gauging the effectiveness of psilocybin, researchers were able to find a baseline for the study’s questions around psilocybin.
Not only was body weight analyzed but also high calorie food intake, fasting glucose levels, and glucose tolerance were also included.
The researchers found that “both the low and high dose psilocybin groups caused a significant decrease in changes in body weight compared to controls.”
“In the present study, we evaluated the effects of chronic treatment with three different doses of psilocybin (including a ‘microdose’), as well as a single dose of the oral antidiabetic drug metformin, on change in body weight in a rat model…
The principal finding of the study was that both doses of psilocybin resulted in significantly decreased relative weight gain compared to high calorie diet-fed rats…
Metformin also caused decreased relative weight gain, with a greater magnitude than either of the psilocybin doses. Both the high dose psilocybin and metformin groups ate less of the high calorie diet.”
They concluded that “These overall findings suggest that psilocybin may have modest weight-loss properties in humans.”
Another study conducted in 2022 explored commonalities between addiction and obesity, hypothesizing that because psilocybin “targets a neural circuit involved with the sensation of craving” and is “believed to be a treatment option for addiction,”
that “similar therapeutic approaches could be applied to the treatment of obesity and addictive disorders, and psilocybin presents a promising candidate due to its remarkable ability to alter synaptic architecture”
The serotonergic systems and processes in the brain and gut are important modulators of food intake impulses and cravings, and it has even been postulated that addiction-related behaviors are linked to a lack of neuroplasticity.
Final Thoughts
Growing evidence suggests that psychedelics hold huge potential for helping to address many of the health and wellbeing challenges we are struggling with as a society today, including depression and anxiety.
