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Hacking Your Body Through a Nerve In Your Neck
agent elevator writes: IEEE Spectrum has a feature (part of its Hacking the Human OS issue) on the future of vagus nerve stimulation, a device-based therapy with the potential to treat a ridiculously wide variety of ailments: epilepsy, depression, stroke, tinnitus, heart failure, migraines, asthma, the list goes on. One problem is that, because it required an implant (a bit like a pacemaker), it was never anybody's first-choice therapy. But now there's a non-invasive version, a device you just hold to your neck twice a day for a few minutes. It's being trialed first for migraines and cluster headaches (which sound horrible). If it works, vagus nerve stimulation could compete directly with drug treatments on cost and convenience and it would let doctors find new ways to hack human physiology.
Seriously, severe migraine sufferers and those who suffer from cluster headaches need all the tools we can give them. As noted, if you really read about cluster headaches, it is truly shocking. It is noted sufferers are at a high risk for suicide; after I read what they go through, I was surprised that it is not even higher.
I suffered from migraines, but on the mild to moderate scale. I was lucky, I found a preventative regimen that works very, very well for me. For those with more severe cases, I do hope this is a successful treatment option.