Interest in fly agaric grows – but here's why you shouldn't confuse it with the 'magic mushroom'

Psilocybin, a compound present in many varieties of mushrooms, is one. Antidepressants with potential use in therapy restlessness. Unfortunately, unscrupulous vendors have used these medical findings to sell products produced from irrelevant and somewhat toxic mushrooms.

In a recent study, researchers on the University of California, San Diego found Significant increase Interest on this mushroom – 114% increase in Google searches from 2022 to 2023.

So what is that this mushroom and why is it cause for concern?

or “fly agaric” is present in temperate and sub-arctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere. of the a thousand yearsShamans from regions starting from Lapland to Siberia have used mushrooms of their rituals, helping them achieve states of mind much like those achieved with other psychedelics.

The lively ingredients in these mushrooms are muscimol and abutinic acid, that are completely different compounds than psilocybin. Today, products containing muscimol, e.g gummies, tinctures and capsulesare being sold with vague guarantees of higher health.

The brain incorporates chemical messengers called neurotransmitters, and muscimol works on one among these transmitter “receptors” (GABA-A) to scale back brain activity. GABA is the brain's brake – or the word “inhibitory neurotransmitter”. As a result, drugs that act on Gaba-A receptors are used for anxiety, epilepsy, and pain—conditions that overstimulate the brain.

Muscimol could have an identical effect to anti-anxiety drugs called benzodiazepines (Valium, for instance).

Relatively few cases of muscimol poisoning have been reported from fly agaric mushrooms. Most cases report. Gastrointestinal disorderBut not death.

Another compound present in fly agaric, abutinic acid, is structurally much like the neurotransmitter glutamate. If GABA is the brain's brake, you'll be able to consider glutamate as its accelerator.

Like glutamate, ibotenic acid will be toxic in high doses. Originally, ibotenic acid is used for Kill brain cells In rodent experiments where small parts of the brain are destroyed in an try and understand what it's. Brain regions do.

It is extremely unlikely that ibotenic acid has any health advantages. However, it's doubtful whether eating these mushrooms will kill brain cells because, inside about an hour of eating, a lot of the ibotenic acid is excreted within the urine.

Muscimol and ibotenic acid have been found to have relatively low lethal doses. Testing in mice The LD50 (“lethal dose, 50%”), where half of the rats die when these substances are administered orally, was found to be 22mg and 38mg per kilogram of body weight, respectively. The LD50 could be very low in comparison with many other commonly ingested substances: cocaine (99mg/kg), morphine (524mg/kg) and ethanol (alcohol, 3,450mg/kg).

While few deaths from fly agaric have been reported, a recent case described the death of a 44-year-old man after ingestion. This mushroom. The man suffered a heart attack about ten hours after eating 4 to 5 mushroom caps. Although he was revived, he remained unresponsive and died nine days later.

Comparison with Psilocybin

Psilocybin is a compound present in a big number of “magic mushrooms,” but not in fly agaric. After consumption, the body converts psilocybin into psilocin. Psilocyin prompts neurotransmitters. 5-HT2A of serotonin LSD-like receptors. Meta-analyses, where data from multiple clinical trials are pooled and reanalyzed, show that psilocybin is an efficient Antidepressants.

Side effects of therapeutic doses of psilocybin have been evaluated and probably the most common are headache, nausea, restlessness, dizziness and hypertension. They are well tolerated and dissolve internally. some days.

Taken together, then, we will see that the fly agaric will not be in any respect much like the psilocybin-containing mushroom.

Although psilocybin has now been shown to have good clinical use, there is no such thing as a such evidence for fly agaric. Although muscimol has shown some positive effects in animal studies. A stroke and another neurological diseases, these findings haven't yet been replicated in humans.

Most countries have fly agaric, muscimol and abutinic acid. Uncontrolled substance And persons are allowed to grow, take, buy, sell and use them. Although consumption isn't fatal, there are risks related to eating them. Attention must be paid to the practice of selling these products to unsuspecting consumers who expect psilocybin-like health advantages.