Microdosing
A microdose is a dose of psychedelic medicine which is sub perceptual in nature, meaning taking the dose does not cause any change in perception / consciousness. A microdose is often defined as approximately one tenth of a psychedelic dose, repeated every 3-5 days.
In the vast majority of human studies microdosing has been shown to have no effect and even in some have shown negative effects[1] such as increased neuroticism[2] or even inducing the potential to cause valvular heart disease. However, an animal study has found that 0.25g psilocybin (equivalent human dose) increases resilience to stress, lowers compulsive actions, and strengthens cortical connections to the paraventricular thalamic nucleus[3]. Some recent studies have shown that LSD microdosing was found to increase neural complexity[4], increase in sleep duration[5] and have an antidepressant effect[6].
Reference
- ↑ Motives and Side-Effects of Microdosing With Psychedelics Among Users. Hutten, N., Mason, N., Dolder, P., & Kuypers, K. (2019). International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, 22, 426 - 434. https://academic.oup.com/ijnp/article/22/7/426/5509881
- ↑ A systematic study of microdosing psychedelics. PLoS ONE, 14. Polito, V., & Stevenson, R. (2018). https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0211023.
- ↑ Repeated low doses of psilocybin increase resilience to stress, lower compulsive actions, and strengthen cortical connections to the paraventricular thalamic nucleus in rats Kat F. Kiilerich, Joe Lorenz. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-023-02280-z
- ↑ Neural complexity is increased after low doses of LSD, but not moderate to high doses of oral THC or methamphetamine. Murray, C.H., Frohlich, J., Haggarty, C.J. et al. Neuropsychopharmacol. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-024-01809-2
- ↑ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-024-02900-4
- ↑ Molla, H., et al. (2024). "Greater subjective effects of a low dose of LSD in participants with depressed mood." Neuropsychopharmacology 49(5): 774-781. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-023-01772-4