Psilocybin prevents chemotherapy nerve damage in preclinical study via mitochondrial protection

For decades, chemotherapy has carried a hidden cost: in up to sixty percent of patients, it quietly destroys the sensory nerves of the hands and feet, leaving behind numbness, pain, and sometimes the impossible choice to stop treatment. Now, researchers have found that psilocybin — and compounds like it — may interrupt this damage before it begins, by preserving the mitochondrial energy that nerve endings depend on to survive. The discovery, still preclinical, points toward a future in which the tools of psychedelic medicine are recast not as agents of altered consciousness, but as guardians o