Therefore, there have not been any studies proving that brain levels of this or any neurotransmitter are in short supply when depression or any mental illness develops. Blood levels of serotonin are measurable - and have been shown to be lower in people who suffer from depression – but researchers don’t know if blood levels reflect the brain’s level of serotonin.”Ī 2011 review in the European Journal of Medicine and Molecular Imaging proposes that positron emission topography (PET) offers the best, non-invasive manner to measure serotonin levels in the human brain. PET uses small amounts of radioactive materials alongside a special camera and computer to evaluate tissue function. According to WebMD, even serotonin presents a set of challenges regarding measurement: “Although it is widely believed that a serotonin deficiency plays a role in depression, there is no way to measure its levels in the living brain.
This challenge is not solely relegated to DMT measurement and analysis. This makes it fairly difficult to extrapolate in-depth meaning from blood samples when attempting to understand what is taking place in the brain. For example, the chemical oxytocin, known as the “love hormone” exudes levels in the brain that are 100,000 percent greater than the amount found circulating in the blood. Other methods of generating data such as taking blood samples are also challenging being that blood levels are not entirely indicative of levels found in the brain. While this can be undertaken in rats, unless humans develop a communication method to teach rats WHM, it would be difficult to extract comparable data to human subjects. You’re essentially sticking needles in the brain to take fluid samples.
The difficulties in testing this scientifically are due to the invasive methods of extracting cerebral fluid via micro-dialysis. The real question is whether WHM increases the level of DMT in the brain correlating with the subsequent visionary effects. It seems clear based on the data that DMT is always produced throughout the brain. At this point, (in 2019) the question is not whether WHM produces DMT.