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Hacking Your Body Through a Nerve In Your Neck

Posted by Soulskill on from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong dept.

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.

10 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. I predict nothing will come of this by Spy+Handler · · Score: 4, Informative

    I hear medical breakthroughs like this all the time, where a cheap simple device will replace expensive drugs. Then nothing happens and it's not heard of again.

    Is it because A. it doesn't work as well as inventors hoped or has too many side effects, or B. pharma industry silences them by killing them or paying them to hush it up? Help me out here.

  2. Long chain of stuff by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder if it can affect stress. There is some evidence gut bacteria feed stress-inducing whatever back up to the brain via this nerve, and that stress promotes abdominal (inside it) belly fat deposition, as opposed to more distributed body fat deposition, which in turn releases chemicals which cause insulin resistance, which is the main cause of Type II diabetes.

    --
    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  3. Hope it pans out... by ndykman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Hope it pans out... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Sorry for this being buried down at 0, but I've had two episodes of cluster headaches, so I can report on what that's like.

      It's the worst pain I've ever experienced, and that's including things like broken bones and accidental burns. The word "headache" isn't really appropriate because most people think of those normal headaches which are annoying and unpleasant but leave you able to function if you need to. It's not even like a migraine - just a whole different order of magnitude.

      In a cluster headache, the only thing in your entire world, the only thing that matters at all, is for it to stop. In the moment, I'd have gladly traded decades off my lifespan in exchange for making it stop. Thankfully I haven't had an episode in many years. But I understand well how people who have it happen routinely would consider suicide as an alternative to that.

    2. Re:Hope it pans out... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Oh, another thing I remembered in addition to my comment above: the "cluster" nature makes them worse in a way. There's no way to sleep, so you will be awake as long as the episode lasts. But one will hit, and then fade. When it faded I was exhausted (plus it was 3am or something) and needed to sleep, but just as I'd start to drift off, it was like suddenly someone rammed a knife up inside my sinus passages and behind my eye. And it starts over again. You have no idea how many times it will happen.

      Some people sit and hold their head and rock back and forth. All I could do was squeeze my head, wail, and pace frantically back and forth across the room, for some reason.

  4. Re:I Mean, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasovagal_response

    I've had one. It felt like my entire nervous system was on fire, followed by aphasia, followed by the worst headache I've ever had, then loss of consciousness.

    When I came to, it felt like I had a hangover (not a terrible one, but bad enough).

  5. Laugh by koan · · Score: 5, Funny

    What happens in vagus stays in vagus.

    --
    "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
  6. Hmm by koan · · Score: 5, Informative

    In 1997, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of VNS as an adjunctive therapy for partial-onset epilepsy. In 2005, the FDA approved the use of VNS for treatment-resistant depression.[2]

    Although the use of VNS for refractory depression has been endorsed by the American Psychiatric Association, the FDA's approval of VNS for refractory depression remains controversial. According to Dr. A. John Rush, vice chairman for research in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, results of the VNS pilot study showed that 40 percent of the treated patients displayed at least a 50 percent or greater improvement in their condition, according to the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale.[3][4] Many other studies concur that VNS is indeed efficacious in treating depression. However, these findings do not take into account improvements over time in patients without the device. In the only randomized controlled trial VNS failed to perform any better when turned on than in otherwise similar implanted patients whose device was not turned on.[5]
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    --
    "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
  7. Would be nice by ArylAkamov · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This would be nice but I don't have much hope for it, there are endless new "devices" like these that don't do jack shit.

    Sounds terrible though. My girlfriend works in a headache center oddly enough, the stories I hear at the end of the day are disturbing.

    Two of their patients have committed suicide in the last month, drug overdose.

  8. Re:Cures everything Marijuana allegedly cures by dpru · · Score: 5, Informative

    The mechanisms behind the beneficial effects of vagus nerve stimulation are still being explored, but many researchers believe that timing is important. Precise timing is something difficult, if not impossible, to achieve using drugs - they take awhile to become active. Once active, they remain active for hours or days, and then they slowly decline.

    VNS, as well as other methods of neural stimulation, can be applied very precisely in the time domain, allowing for a timed release of neuromodulators into the brain that can influence brain plasticity. Although not all VNS research includes timing as an important issue, a large body of the research focuses on this element of it.

    Here's one paper: http://journals.lww.com/neuror...