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Tag: Harrison Pope
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Health
Study links steroid abuse to key biological, psychological characteristics
A study by researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital sheds new light on anabolic steroid users, augmenting previous research suggesting that users can become dependent on the drugs and showing for the first time that those who do become dependent tend to share certain biological and psychological characteristics. The findings could help in understanding who is…
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Campus & Community
Rituals enhance health
American Indians who use the hallucinogen peyote regularly in connection with religious ceremonies show no evidence of brain damage or psychological problems, report researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital. In fact, members of the Navajo tribe who regularly use peyote actually scored significantly better on several measures of overall mental health than did subjects from the…
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Health
Study: No psychological or cognitive deficits from peyote
Researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital report that Native Americans who use the hallucinogen peyote regularly in connection with religious ceremonies show no evidence of brain damage or psychological problems. In fact, members of the Navajo tribe who regularly use peyote actually scored significantly better on several measures of overall mental health than did subjects from…
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Campus & Community
Male body image
Asian men show less dissatisfaction with their bodies than males in the United States and Europe, according to a Harvard study. This may explain why anabolic steroid abuse is much less prevalent in places like Taiwan than in the United States, Europe, and Australia, the researchers found. “Disorders of body image, including a pathological preoccupation…
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Health
Testosterone drives away the blues
In the 1940s, experiments showed that major depression can be relieved by injecting testosterone into men with low levels of that hormone. The treatment never caught on because the shots are painful, and effective antidepressant drugs started coming to market. More recently, however, testosterone patches and gels became available. In June 2000, the United States…
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Health
Cognition unaffected by marijuana use
Harrison Pope, a Harvard professor of psychiatry, and his colleagues at McLean Hospital, a Harvard-affiliated psychiatric facility in Belmont, Mass., investigated the long-term cognitive effects of smoking marijuana. They recruited 180 people, who ranged from light to heavy users. Heavy use was defined as smoking pot at least 5,000 times. All the research subjects took…
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Health
Researchers identify symptoms of marijuana withdrawal
Irritability, anxiety and physical tension, plus decreases in appetite and mood, were experienced by regular marijuana users who quit the drug for four weeks during a study conducted at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. Sixty percent of those in the study experienced “significant symptoms” of withdrawal, said the researchers, Elena M. Kouri and Harrison Pope.…
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Science & Tech
Men have distorted image of what women find attractive
Asked by researchers to choose the bodies they would most like to have, male college students in a study picked computer images with 30 pounds more muscle than they actually had. Asked to select their most-wanted body from the same computer images, female college students chose men with 15 to 30 pounds less muscle than…