This episode of the podcast is going to explore psychedelic medicine as a treatment for chronic pain. our guest is Dr. Alex Bekker
Dr. Alex Bekker serves as Professor and Chairman of Anaesthesiology at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. With doctoral degrees in both Biomedical Engineering (NJ Institute of Technology) and Medicine (Rutgers), he completed his anesthesia training at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center before joining NYU Medical Center in 1995, where he later became Vice-Chair for Research. An internationally recognized expert in perioperative medicine, Dr. Bekker’s extensive research focuses on brain protection, neuropharmacology, and pain control. His credentials include 120 peer-reviewed publications in prestigious journals, 6 US patents, 40 educational reviews, and over 200 abstracts. He has led numerous clinical trials, including National Institute of Aging studies, serves on five journal editorial boards, and in 2017 was appointed Chair of the NJ Department of Health Medicinal Marijuana Review Panel.
It is that paper he is on the show to talk about, specifically, he is on the show to talk to us about what chronic pain is, the different between chronic and acute pain, how chronic pain is related to what he refers to as maladaptive neuralplasticity, and how it is that psychedelics may be effective in treating chronic pain conditions that we presently have no completely effective drugs or therapies for.
As always, there are timestamps and/or chapters for this episode wherever you are checking it out (below), so feel free to look it over if there is a specific topic you want to jump right into.
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Dr. Alex Bekker serves as Professor and Chairman of Anaesthesiology at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. With doctoral degrees in both Biomedical Engineering (NJ Institute of Technology) and Medicine (Rutgers), he completed his anesthesia training at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center before joining NYU Medical Center in 1995, where he later became Vice-Chair for Research. An internationally recognized expert in perioperative medicine, Dr. Bekker’s extensive research focuses on brain protection, neuropharmacology, and pain control. His credentials include 120 peer-reviewed publications in prestigious journals, 6 US patents, 40 educational reviews, and over 200 abstracts. He has led numerous clinical trials, including National Institute of Aging studies, serves on five journal editorial boards, and in 2017 was appointed Chair of the NJ Department of Health Medicinal Marijuana Review Panel.
