Author: books

This is the second in a two-part series on the future of wearable tech. Part one (read here) explores what future wearables will look like and what they will accomplish.

Aug. 23, 2022 – Pick up your smartphone. Yes, you’ve held it a thousand times, it’s like an extension of your hands. But let’s do an experiment: Grab it by both ends and stretch it out as far as it will go. Now twist it. Wrap it around your forearm. Cool, right? Now let it snap back.

Wait, what do you mean your phone won’t bend and stretch?

That little exercise in imagination illustrates what’s possible in the realm of wearables – electronic devices we wear close to or on our skin. Today, smartwatches and phones are still hard, inflexible blocks of plastic and metal. Tomorrow, all that will change.

“In wearables, flexibility, stretchability, and washability are all key requirements,” says Veena Misra, PhD, a professor of electrical engineering at North Carolina State University and director of the ASSIST Center, a federally funded research institute that develops wearables to aid health.

“We are seeing these kinds of developments across the board,” Misra says, “and you can track that in the number of [research] papers coming out in wearables. That number is just growing exponentially.”

We tend to think of wearables as fun consumer gadgets, but a growing school of thought says they will drastically improve health care – providing a vehicle for continuous, long-term monitoring to predict adverse events and closely track disease, improving treatments and health outcomes worldwide.

For that to happen, wearables must work seamlessly with our bodies. That means making conventionally hard, rigid devices and systems more like human skin – soft, bendable, and stretchable.

How does one manage that? By redesigning electronics at the molecular level, miniaturizing sensors, and creating unheard-of power sources to support what engineers call a skin-like “form factor.”

To coin a phrase, it ain’t science fiction. It’s happening as we speak, and the new products these advances will create – potentially starting in health care and crossing over to the consumer wellness market – could become as normal as that clunky, inflexible phone you can’t put down. Here’s how.

Why Does Form Factor Matter?

A wearable that conforms to your body is better in two crucial ways: It’s less obtrusive for the user, and it allows for a more reliable measurement.

“Sensors and sensor systems a lot of times suffer from mechanical mismatch,” says Alper Bozkurt, PhD, an electrical engineer, and Misra’s colleague, at NC State and ASSIST. “If you have soft tissue that’s moving around, but a rigid sensing device that’s not moving around, your measurement may not be reliable.”

That’s because all that extra banging around between the device and your body shows up as “noise” – meaningless information that can distort the measurement and may lead to false conclusions.

Then there’s the “human factor,” Bozkurt notes – the issue of compliance.

“One of the challenges is, we design things in the lab, test everything, and bring it to our medical operators, and they raise their eyebrows and say, ‘No, my patients are not going to wear this,’” Bozkurt says. “You cannot imagine a future for wearables without solving the compliance issue.”

People want a device that’s comfortable, doesn’t stick out, and requires little interaction, Bozkurt says. “We call it wear-and-forget.” You might compare this to wearing a Band-Aid – sure, you notice it occasionally, but mostly it fades into the background, without interfering with your daily tasks and without others even noticing it’s there.

A wristwatch may seem comfortable enough, but applications extend beyond what a wristwatch can enable, notes Michael Daniele, PhD, a fellow member of the NC State / ASSIST team, who studies soft nanomaterials to engineer devices that monitor, mimic, or supplement body functions.

Wearable devices are being developed to help patients and even treat them in ways “in which the patient’s comfort is a priority,” he says.

Take the use of electrodes and electronics in lower-limb prosthetic sockets as an example, he says. “Picture a few metal screws pressing into your limb that you are supporting all of your weight with, or picture filling your shoe with an array of rocks. That’s the state of wearables for such a user.”

OK, So How Do You Make Electronics Soft and Stretchy?

One way is to take hard things used to monitor health – like silicon chips – and make them so thin they become flexible. Among the first to demonstrate this kind of material technology in skin-like wearable devices was John Rogers, PhD, in 2011, in a landmark Science paper titled Epidermal Electronics.

“We’d been pretty active in that field for a number of years,” says Rogers, who at the time was at the University of Illinois and has since moved to Northwestern University. “But then we realized that even silicon – which most people think of as a very rigid, brittle rock-like material – can be made into forms and shapes, and at thicknesses that allow it to be bent and … even stretched.”

Rogers, whose team has several applications in development, uses an etching technique to shave off the surface of a semiconductor wafer.

“It turns out all the action in those integrated circuits is happening on that very-near-surface layer,” he says. “All of the silicon underneath is just serving as a mechanical support.”

That critical layer is then embedded into an elastic polymer matrix, Rogers explains, allowing them to design fully functioning systems that can bend, twist, and stretch.

Still others use a different approach, building electronic parts from scratch out of materials that are inherently soft and stretchy – polymers. This is the kind of work Stanford chemical engineer Zhenan Bao, PhD, does, using a range of polymers with conducting properties.

“In our work, we gain a fundamental understanding on how to design plastic molecules so that they have the functions and properties we want,” Bao says. For skin-like electronics, the plastics are designed – on a molecular level – to be conductive, elastic, and soft.

One of the newest creations out of Bao’s lab is a polymer that lights up, enabling skin-like visual displays. She imagines a skin patch with the display right on it, or going further, a telehealth appointment where the doctor could see and feel the texture of the patient’s skin via a three-dimensional, lifelike display. Example: One exam to check for severe water retention in heart failure patients is to press on the skin to see if it bounces back, Bao says. The patient would wrap an electronic sticker around their leg and press on it to generate a display for the off-site doctor. “The doctor would be able to feel on the display the texture of the skin that the patient would feel,” she says – from a remote location.

“Of course, this is still far away,” Bao notes. “But that’s what I think would be possible that can be enabled by skin-like displays and sensors.”

More Wild Advances: Liquid Metals, Plasma Bonding, Chemical Sensors

Still other developments are continuing. Advancements in liquid metals allow for stretchable conductive wires. Textile-based, moisture-resistant antennas can transmit data while worn close to the skin. Methods like water vapor plasma bonding attach thin metals to soft polymers without losing flexibility or using high temperature and pressure that can damage super-thin electronics.

Sensors are improving too – that’s the part that interacts with whatever you’re trying to measure. Most commercial wearable sensors are mechanical (used to track physical activity) or optical (heartbeat, pulse oximetry). But chemical sensors are in development to measure internal markers in the body as well. These are critical in revealing the full picture of your health, says Joseph Wang, a doctor of science and professor of nanoengineering at the University of California, San Diego, who has published research on biosensors and wearable devices.

For example, a rise in lactate and drop in blood pressure can mean you have septic shock. Measuring potassium levels can give information about heart rate changes. And combining blood pressure and glucose measurements may reveal more about metabolic health than either one alone. “If you combine them, you get better evidence,” Wang says.

This is where the new tech can get really geeky. Chemical sensors are made from some of the most exotic nano materials, including graphene, carbon nanotubes, and gold nanoparticles, Daniele says. Some (glucose sensors in particular) use enzymes that bind to target molecules. Others use aptamers, short single strands of DNA or RNA.

Chemical sensors typically work with body fluid such as sweat, saliva, tears, or – as is the case for continuous glucose monitors – interstitial fluid (the liquid between the cells in your body).

“Most of the things you want to measure in blood you’ll be able to do in interstitial fluid if you have the sensor technology,” says Jason Heikenfeld, PhD, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Cincinnati. Just imagine having a full blood workup done by simply putting on a skin patch, no blood sample required.

Heikenfeld has also investigated sweat, which appears useful for measuring hormone levels (such as those that regulate stress, sex, and sleep) and prescription drug monitoring – that is, monitoring levels of a drug in the body and tracking how quickly it’s metabolized, he says.

Sweat sensors may also find a place in at-home tests, Heikenfeld says. “If there was a people’s choice award for bio fluids, sweat would win,” he says. “We don’t want to do blood, don’t want to drool in a cup, don’t want to mess with a urine stick. Tears, forget it. The test would be a simple patch you slap on your arm; collect some fluid, put it in an envelope, and mail it to a lab.”

Wearable Power Sources: Beyond AA Batteries

If you want to create a stretchable, flexible electronic device, you’ll need a stretchable, flexible, and even washable way to power it. Many of today’s wearables, like smartwatches, are powered by very small but still rigid batteries, Bao says. Hence the bulky form.

“There’s certainly a big demand for high-energy density, truly flexible batteries,” she says.

This demand has prompted researchers from across the globe to develop batteries that can stretch and flex. To name just a few recent examples, Canadian researchers developed a flexible, washable battery that can stretch to double its original length and still function. In Singapore, scientists created a paper-thin biodegradable zinc battery that you can bend and twist and even cut with scissors – like any piece of paper – and it will still work. Still others are engineering batteries into long strips that can be used in smart clothing.

Another option is wireless power, Bao says. The battery does not need to be in the device – it can be in your clothes or your pocket and still power the sensors. Bao’s lab at Stanford has developed a sticker-like wearable called BodyNet that can be charged using radio-frequency identification, the same technology used to control keyless entry to locked rooms.

Still others – like Misra and her colleagues at ASSIST – are exploring battery alternatives like energy harvesting, or converting body heat, solar energy, or movement into power.

Misra is working on an energy generator that can convert the temperature difference between your skin and the room into energy to power a device. “You have a skin temperature of, say, 98.6 degrees,” she says. “The temperature in your room is probably about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. And that temperature difference of 28 degrees can be dropped across a device called a thermoelectric generator, which can convert that energy difference into power.”

Just imagine: No more worrying about the battery dying, getting wet, or having to be recharged. “Your body is the battery,” Misra says.

What’s Next

For wearables to truly reach their full potential, all the parts must become more power-efficient and come together in a flexible, stretchable package, Misra says. They also must be designed in such a way that millions, if not billions, of people will want to wear them.

Just as important: Devices destined for the medical world must provide top-quality data. If the collected data isn’t gold standard, what good is it? And all that data needs to be turned into useful information. That’s where data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence come in. “These are not unsolvable problems,” Misra says, “but they’re exciting problems that a lot of the community is working on.”

Bottom line: Our wearable future is well on its way.

Aug. 23, 2022 – We live in particularly stressful times, and some people turn to alcohol to cope with challenges, from the COVID-19 pandemic to any number of personal stressors.

And the hits just keep coming, as it seems like stressful infectious disease news keeps coming – more people developing long COVID, the monkeypox outbreak, and even polio making a possible comeback. One expert likens this barrage of news to a smoke alarm that never stops chirping.

And though self-treating stress with alcohol is not new, there is evidence the pandemic has raised the stakes.

The danger of turning to alcohol to cope in the short term is the risk of getting alcohol use disorder, which can cause brain changes that make the condition worse over time. The cycle of drinking, abstaining, and relapsing, in fact, can increase the risk for long-term adverse health effects, experts say.

There are solutions and reasons for hope as scientists and clinicians focusing on alcohol use disorder continue to learn more.

A Large-Scale Challenge

Alcohol contributes to more than 200 health conditions and almost 100,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, according to data from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

An unfair truth is only a minority of people get alcohol use disorder. Others drink and never have problem drinking. That’s not to say there are not other health risks from drinking too much. But only an estimated 6% to 8% of drinkers become dependent, Marisa Roberto, PhD, said at recent lecture on alcohol addiction science and medicine sponsored by the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA.

That might sound like a small percentage, but alcohol use disorder affects about 15 million Americans each year, putting it on par with an estimated 14.5 million Americans affected by cancer. Also, the National Institutes of Health budget for researching cancer is about 10 times greater than NIH money focusing on alcohol use disorder, said Roberto, a neuroscience researcher and chair of molecular medicine at Scripps.

Even so, Roberto said she is not advocating for universal abstinence.

“Not everyone that likes to drink in a social setting will develop this problem. We need to keep that in mind,” she said. “So, continue to drink your glass of wine with your meal, with your friends, in moderation.”

Pandemic Upheaval

The COVID-19 pandemic also changed why some people drink alcohol, said Aaron White, PhD, a senior scientific adviser to the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

For example, even before COVID-19 emerged, “We saw a shift beginning in alcohol use among young people away from drinking to socialize and more toward drinking alone and drinking to cope with stress,” White said at a White House event this month that focused on the use of alcohol as a coping mechanism.

“Then, of course, the pandemic started, and everything escalated.”

White and colleagues attracted a lot of attention in March when they published research that showed a jump in alcohol-related deaths in 2020. Alcohol-related deaths increased 25% between 2019 and 2020, according to the research letter, which was published March 18 in TheJournal of the American Medical Association.

Multiple reasons likely drove the higher number of alcohol-related deaths, White and colleagues noted. “Increased drinking to cope with pandemic-related stressors, shifting alcohol policies, and disrupted treatment access are all possible contributing factors.”

Alcohol and Other Drugs

Alcohol use disorder often does not develop on its own. “People with alcohol use disorder are eight times more likely to have another drug use disorder than the general population,” said Carrie D. Wolinetz, PhD, who hosted the White House webinar. Wolinetz is the deputy director for health & life sciences at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

“And alcohol plays a role in around one of five drug overdose deaths,” she said.

Alcohol is a sedative, and sedatives and painkillers can interact, said Cece Spitznas, PhD, senior science policy adviser at the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Data from her organization shows that alcohol-related deaths involving synthetic opioids, like fentanyl, increased by 146% from 2018 to 2021.

“Among people who died with alcohol in their systems,” she said, “76% of them also had a synthetic opioid present.”

“One of the challenges for the research and health community to understand is how all of this is intertwined,” Wolinetz said.

Like an Alarm That Keeps Going Off

Using alcohol to cope with stress after stress can lead to “bit of a trap,” White said. Drinking works “really well at temporarily dampening activity in the brain areas that make us feel afraid,” he explained.

One part of the brain, the amygdala, can signal danger like a smoke alarm. When things feel threatening, the amygdala continuously chirps, he said. Some people turn to alcohol to cope because “we don’t like that [response]. It doesn’t feel good.”

Even so, alcohol “makes a promise it can’t keep,” White said. “The promise is, ‘Hey just drink me, and you won’t have to feel these uncomfortable feelings.’” The problem is “when the alcohol wears off, the smoke alarm gets louder.”

Over time, brain changes can result.

“PTSD is a great example. If you have PTSD and you’ve got high levels of anxiety, fear, and sleep disruption, alcohol might help you initially. But the changes in the brain that happened when you drink regularly actually end up making the symptom of PTSD worse,” White said.

What the Science Shows So Far

A lot of research over the years compares mice, rats, non-human primates, and others given alcohol to animals that have not. Many insights continue to emerge from these studies that could translate into better understanding and treating of alcohol use disorder in people.

For example, a neurotransmitter called GABA is a key player in alcohol addiction, Roberto said. Animals that develop dependency to alcohol have higher levels of GABA moving between neurons in their brains. That is one reason a drug that lowers GABA levels, gabapentin, has shown promise for treating people with alcohol use disorder.

Another substance, corticotropin releasing factor, also plays a role. Blocking its ability to attach to receptors in the brain made a difference in studies. “What you see in the animal, especially in the dependent animal, is that they relax,” Roberto said. “There is less anxiety-like behavior. They drink less.”

Neuroinflammation, or inflammation in the brain, is a more recently identified culprit in alcohol use disorder. “We have found some mechanism where the stress system is very intertwined within your immune signaling from chronic exposure of stress,” Roberto said. “They all work in the brain to increase neuroinflammation.”

Like almost every other discovery in alcohol use disorder, the immune-inflammatory interaction is very complex, she said.

Roberto and her team are evaluating drugs already FDA-approved to treat inflammation to see if they can reduce this neuroinflammation. “This is going to be terrific because it will help us to skip some of the long steps to take a drug from the bench through the bedside.”

In response to a question, Roberto said genetics plays a role in about 40% of alcohol use disorder cases. But it’s complex, and the risk involves multiple gene changes. Again, animal studies help pinpoint what specific gene changes are involved.

Potential Solutions

A way to avoid over-relying on alcohol to cope with stress is to find another option, White said.

“One of the ways that we should help address problems with alcohol in the country is to make people aware that there are other ways to cope,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be alcohol. Find a relationship with some other strategy for coping with stress and anxiety that doesn’t carry the same risks.”

Social and cultural connections also can help. When people feel connected to their families and have a stronger link to their history and their communities, they tend to be more resilient, White said. “And if they’re more resilient, they tend not to fall into these sorts of traps of leaning on substances that offer quick fixes.”

Health care providers counseling a person at risk for or with alcohol use disorder can also try what’s known as motivational interviewing, said Daniel Calac, MD, chief medical officer of the Indian Health Council and principal investigator of the California Native American Research Centers for Health.

A quick screen for alcohol misuse during routine health care visits – as well as referring anyone identified as at risk for alcohol use disorder to treatment while a patient is in the office – also helps, he said.

Research at the Indian Health Council suggests that working with providers at a behavioral health unit, especially one on site, can also help.

Screen for Mental Health Effects Too

Mental health issues can also be part of the equation, but on an individual level, it can be unclear which comes first, alcohol use disorder or anxiety and/or depression.

“In fact, having a history of alcohol use disorder more than doubles the odds of having depression, PTSD, or other anxiety disorder,” Wolinetz said.

White said that if doctors ask even one question about alcohol use, it could provide insight into that person’s mental health. For example, if a patient reports binge drinking once a month, “you’ll find that they are statistically more likely to have major depression, to be suicidal and/or to misuse opioids.”

“It doesn’t mean that they absolutely do,” White said, “but it means that a simple question about alcohol can actually clue health care practitioners into other aspects of people’s lives.”

Reasons for Hope

“We’ve seen some really encouraging things happening with regard to alcohol and public health,” White said, when asked reasons he might be optimistic at this point.

Before the pandemic, there was a “real groundswell of interest in opportunities for being mindful of one’s drinking, and taking a break, like ‘dry January’ or ‘sober October,’” he said. He applauded the sober curious movement for getting people to think about their drinking and their relationship with it. Growth in low- or non-alcohol products is also encouraging, he said.

“I see changes that are very promising, but they’re just sort of embers right now,” White said. “We’ll have to see what happens.”

Resources for Patients and Providers

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism offers online resources for consumers and health care providers.

The Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration also has a hotline for people having a hard time with mental health or substance use disorders. The free, confidential service provides information and treatment referrals in English and Spanish. The number is 800-662-HELP (800-662-4357), and the line is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year.

One place to start with general questions about drinking and personal risk for alcohol use disorder is the NIAAA Rethinking Drinking website. The information is designed to help people explore their drinking and figure out if they need support.

For a person who decides they do need help, the NIAAA Alcohol Treatment Navigator is an online resource to help people explore their options and find support services in their area.

“It’s so important that providers who are on the front lines really look to NIAAA and what they have to offer because they do have a great plethora of information on their websites,” Calac said.

Aug. 23, 2022 – Your twice-daily brushing and flossing routine could someday be automated using tiny microrobots that scrub your teeth for a customized clean, thanks to new research from the University of Pennsylvania.

Scientists used magnetic fields to assemble nanoparticles into tiny, brush-like robotic structures that precisely remove biofilms, a network of germs and other sticky substances, from the surfaces of teeth. They describe their results in a paper published in the journal ACS Nano.

The microrobots feature bristles that can extend, retract, change shape, and move horizontally, vertically, and in circles. The bristles can adapt to each person’s tooth alignment and get into hard-to-reach spaces.

“It could be perfectly aligned teeth or misaligned teeth,” says study author Hyun (Michel) Koo, DDS, founding director at the Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry at the University of Pennsylvania. “It will work in either case because they can adapt to different surfaces, different nooks and crannies.”
While they scrub your teeth, these bristles can also help to kill germs. That’s because they’re made from “iron oxide nanoparticles,” which can activate hydrogen peroxide to help kill bacteria and degrade biofilms. Another benefit: These nanoparticles are cheaper and more plentiful than many materials used in nanotechnology, like gold and platinum.

“It’s such a basic material,” says study author Edward Steager, PhD, a research investigator at Penn Engineering. “It’s not even a necessarily fancy material.”

When Will Tiny Teeth-Brushing Robots Be Available to You?

The team is packaging the technology into a consumer-friendly prototype, which they hope to have ready within a year. But they will likely need a few more years of testing before the robots are ready for commercial use.

Once fully developed, this technology could be a game changer for people with disabilities, older populations, or anyone who lacks the manual ability to take good care of their oral health, says Koo. These populations will likely be the first to try out the device, then others will follow.

“We started with persons with disabilities or an older geriatric population, but I think at the end of the day, we want this to become available for everyone,” says Koo.

This innovation could change the whole oral care industry, he notes.

“The whole technology of dental plaque control has not been disrupted for, say, centuries,” Koo says. “I mean, essentially, you have a bristle-on-a-stick concept, which has been used since early millennia, you know, and it’s not very effective, right? To the point that you have to actually floss and rinse to make sure that you have effective plaque control. We want to disrupt that. We want to have something that is user-friendly, plug and play.”

Dental floss has been around for a couple hundred years, but only about a third of Americans floss daily, according to the CDC. Any plaque left behind after brushing and flossing puts your mouth at risk.

“Dental plaque is the source of a number of oral diseases, from tooth decay to gum diseases,” says Koo.

With a precise, effective way to control oral disease, we can protect our overall health, he says. Indeed: Gum disease is linked to heart disease and diabetes.

“Bacteria found in the oral cavity are associated with Alzheimer’s,” Koo says. “So there’s a lot of connection between oral and general health.”

TUESDAY, Aug. 23, 2022 (HealthDay News) — If you think hallucinogens like LSD are a thing of the past, think again.

New research estimates that the use of mind-altering LSD rose from less than 1% in 2002 to 4% in 2019 among people aged 18 to 25. And, overall, 5.5 million Americans used some kind of hallucinogen in 2019.

“According to our results, hallucinogen use is a growing public health concern, warranting prevention strategies given the growing risk of unsupervised use,” said lead researcher Dr. Ofir Livne. He’s a postdoctoral fellow in the department of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York City.

The increase in hallucinogen use is likely caused by a decrease in the perception of the drug as risky, Livne noted.

“Studies now indicate that certain hallucinogens, such as LSD and psilocybin, can improve cognitive [mental] function, productivity and mental health,” Livne explained. “Nowadays, we see ‘micro-doser’ communities, essentially individuals who are exploring the reported positive effects of micro-doses of LSD without experiencing any negative effects.”

Still, “in light of our findings, we believe there is a need for a comprehensive examination of the motives behind the use of LSD and other hallucinogens, especially since previous studies have reported increased risks of negative outcomes, such as cognitive impairments and mood disorders,” Livne added. “Before hallucinogen use becomes ‘normalized,’ there needs to be a larger body of literature that can help discern safe use from hazardous use.”

The research was published online Aug. 22 in the journal Addiction .

These findings mirror those of a new federal government study published this week that found that the use of hallucinogens like LSD, MDMA, mescaline, peyote, “shrooms,” psilocybin and PCP started to increase in 2021 after staying relatively stable until 2020.

In 2021, 8% of young adults used a hallucinogen in the past year, an all-time high, that study found. In comparison, only 5% of young adults reported using a hallucinogen in the past year in 2016, while only 3% used one in 2011. The only hallucinogen that saw a decrease in use was MDMA (ecstasy or Molly), where use dropped from 5% in 2016 and 2020 to 3% in 2021.

Pat Aussem, associate vice president for consumer clinical content development at the Partnership to End Addiction, said that the increased use of hallucinogens may be a result of newfound interest in their beneficial effects on some mood disorders.

“While many hallucinogens are designated as Schedule 1 drugs with ‘no currently accepted medical use,’ they are increasingly being discussed on social media, at research institutes and in other forums as alternatives to more traditional pharmaceuticals for certain mental health problems,” she said.

“Both personal anecdotes and promising clinical trials have given rise to the use of hallucinogens to address depression, anxiety, PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] and substance use disorders, as well as to improve cognitive functioning,” Aussem explained.

The promise that hallucinogens can potentially treat depression, PTSD and other mental health ills — in some cases more quickly and with less onerous side effects — has played a role in the growing interest in these drugs, she said.

“There is also the commercial side of the equation, as by some estimates, the market is anticipated to grow from $2 billion in 2020 to over $10 billion in 2027. Huge investments are being made to capitalize on growing consumer interest in these substances,” Aussem noted.

In 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a medication called Spravato for patients with severe depression who are not responding to other treatments. It’s closely related to the psychedelic drug ketamine, but it is not the same as ketamine that someone might buy on the street. It also has to be given with an antidepressant in a supervised setting, she said.

Psilocybin is also being studied in clinical trials to treat depression and anxiety, she added.

Meanwhile, MDMA has been studied in clinical trials to address PTSD.

“It is expected to be approved by the FDA in 2023. Again, it is important to note that although ecstasy and MDMA are often used interchangeably, ecstasy may contain MDMA, but also be formulated with other substances that may be harmful,” Aussem said.

Hallucinogens may work for some, but not all people, and for certain conditions they have risks, she said. The use of hallucinogens may be contraindicated if there is a personal or family history of psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or suicidal ideation, as well as heart problems and seizures.

Depending upon the hallucinogen, there can be a wide range of short- and long-term effects, including nausea, increased heart rate, intense sensory experiences, relaxation, paranoia and persistent psychosis. They can also be riskier if mixed with alcohol and other substances, including prescription medications, Aussem said.

There is also a significant difference between the safety of hallucinogens used in a clinical trial and what people get on the street, she noted.

“It is especially important to note that street MDMA has been laced with fentanyl, a powerful pain reliever that is driving skyrocketing overdoses in our country,” Aussem said.

“It can be tempting to try hallucinogens, especially if a person is struggling with mental health, but street drugs are not the answer,” Aussem said. “The composition, strength, dosing and therapeutic oversight of the hallucinogens in the clinical trials underway and the FDA-approved medications are not a ‘do-it-at-home’ remedy. A person interested in pursuing hallucinogens may benefit by seeking guidance from their health care provider and investigating participation in clinical trials.”

More information

For more on hallucinogens, head to the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse.