Salvia Eyed as Treatment for Alzheimer’s, Chronic Pain

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Februray 17, 2011

AOL NEWS– Doctors hope further studies of salvia, a powerful hallucinogen that is sometimes smoked by recreational users, will unlock treatments for a variety of neurological disorders including Alzheimer’s disease and illnesses that cause chronic pain.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins Hospital recently completed a study that examined the effects of salvia or salvinorin A, on humans. “It is unlike anything that exists,” Dr. Matthew Johnson, lead study researcher, psychologist and assistant professor of psychiatry at John Hopkins University, told AOL Health.

Johnson believes that gaining information about how salvia affects the brain could lead to medical advances and the creation of new drugs to treat a variety of illnesses and conditions that affect the brain.

Salvia divinorum is the active ingredient in salvia, which resembles marijuana and, according to researchers, is the most powerful hallucinogen in nature. This study, which appears online in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, is the first controlled trial to be conducted on humans.

The study participants were two men and two women who had previous experience with hallucinogens. The volunteers smoked the drug in 20 sessions over the course of two or three months.

Continue reading about Powerful Hallucinogen Eyed as Treatment for Alzheimer’s, Chronic Pain.

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Photo by flickr user briweldon

2 thoughts on “Salvia Eyed as Treatment for Alzheimer’s, Chronic Pain

  1. The keys to our holistic health are all about us but we are too busy mowing it down and overpopulating and making a profit from it to wake up to that fact. Planned Parenthood could save the Earth.

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