Laughing gas can ease symptoms of depression in just two hours, new research suggests.
A pilot study involving 20 patients who’d previously not responded to up to 12 different antidepressants found they were significantly more likely to improve with ‘laughing gas’ treatment than those given a placebo gas. The benefits lasted several days.
Now, in a new four-week study, 200 patients with depression will be treated with a mix of nitrous oxide (commonly known as laughing gas) and oxygen for an hour.
This is the first I’ve heard of using nitrous oxide to treat depression, but it makes sense that it could work. After all, ketamine (which is also classified as a psychedelic dissociative) has proved effective for treating depression too. These drugs work in the brain a bit differently than traditional antidepressants, acting on glutamate instead of serotonin or dopamine.
Psychedelic drugs like nitrous and ketamine might eventually begin to cannibalize the market for today’s antidepressants, but you can bet your bottom dollar that players in the pharmaceutical industry will try to maximize their market shares of the future pharmaceutical psychedelic medicine market.