New Therapy For Severe Depression Can Take Months To Work

[HuckleB]

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=44042&nfid=nl

"It takes time - between three and 12 months - before a new type of therapy for treatment-resistant depression starts to benefit patients, according to new preliminary brain scan research that confirms earlier observations by psychiatrists about vagal nerve stimulation. Saint Louis University, working in collaboration with Washington University School of Medicine, conducted a pilot study of brain scans of a small group of depressed patients who received vagal nerve stimulation after failing other therapies.

Positron emission tomography (PET) scans showed significant changes in brain activity starting three months after vagal nerve stimulation treatment began. These changes continued to evolve over the course of the next 21 months.

These changes in brain scans appear to "roughly parallel" the significantly delayed effects that psychiatrists observed in improvement in mood.

"The effects come after a significant period of treatment time," said Charles Conway, M.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry at Saint Louis University School of Medicine and the lead investigator of a vagal nerve stimulation research project conducted between 2000 and 2004.

..."

[Ciggies and coffee]

1. Electrotherapy is an interesting treatment

Stimulation of the body's natural processes can take time to change the mindset. Is the gadget no longer needed after success? If so, that is even better.

[On the Road]

2. Wonder if Acupuncture Can Do That

It definitely stimulates the nervous system in peculiar ways.

[HuckleB]

3. Research was done on acupuncture in the '80s...

in regard to treating depression, with very good results.

[On the Road]

4. All I Know is That

after an acupuncture treatment, I feel absolutely reborn. I have no doubt it affects depression.

[Dogmudgeon]

5. Another electrotherapy: Cranial Electrical Stimulation

It's also called TCES (Trans Cranial Electrostimulation), MET (Microcurrent Electrical Therapy), or TCET (Trans Cranial Electrical Therapy).

It uses weak electrical pulses, typically under 100 µA, and the current is applied from earlobe to earlobe, temple to temple (A1 to A2 or T3 to T4 in the standardized 10-20 nomenclature), or forehead to occiput (FPz to Oz or the `Inion`). It is similar to TENS, but uses much lower levels of electrical energy, and bipolar waveforms are preferred, though not mandatory -- most TENS devices use a 555 chip producing a monopolar pulse. TENS itself is being investigated as a psychiatric treatment, although this is quite recent.

It's an "orphan" approach, since the basic technology isn't patentable, having been developed in the USSR during the Cold War. It was called "Electrosleep", a gross exaggeration of its real effects, which are mild sedative, anti-depressant, concentration-improving, and pain-control properties. Full effects take about a week to become observable, and though most people can feel a mild "buzz" immediately (the actual current tends to be imperceptible).

Very few companies make these devices; the Alpha-Stim is probably the best one on the market, though I haven't checked out "the market" in several years. There are also dozens of circuit diagrams on the Internet for the motivated electronics hobbyist. During the "Brain Machine" fad, several inexpensive consumer models were produced, but Alpha-Stim's lawyers were diligent about putting the FDA wise to them. One version, called the Voodoo Magick Box, promising the usual orgasms and psychedelic effects, was being sold as late as 2003.

As for its "legitimacy", it is approved by the FDA, and there is a considerable body of peer-reviewed work relating to it, most of it old enough to have not been conducted under the too-common modern regime of "Science for Hire".

It's worth a look for many people. Vagal nerve stimulation is also a promising technology, though much more invasive. Jerry Lewis has been promoting spinal electric anesthesia devices after getting substantial, life-changing relief from the procedure himself. Magnetic stimulation methods are also showing promise.

Once upon a time, the FDA just routinely banned all electric devices, but lucky for us, Science is self-correcting, even if it does take seventy or eighty years.

--p!