Help beat depression with a MAGNET.

[bluedawg12]

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/health/article465085.ece

Help beat depression with a MAGNET. US expert Dr Mark George says the therapy works by jump-starting a mood-regulating part of the frontal brain with high-powered magnets.



Attractive ... magnets beat
depression
They may even help head off dementia. Another US study found magnets stimulate the growth of brain cells.

Scientists hope the discovery may one day be used to repair the damage associated with Alzheimer’s.

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Release trapped wind by, er, LOOKING UNDER THE SOFA!

Kneel on the floor with your head on the ground and your bottom in the air, as though you’re looking under a chair, says Dr Stephen Amiel, author of The Doctors’ Book Of Home Remedies.

The trapped gas will exit relatively noiselessly and inoffensively after a few minutes.

[realisticphish]

1. in my experience

people who get MRIs are inevitably delirious with happiness

[mr blur]

3. Strangely, that didn't happen to me.

Must have been my closed mind.

[Silent3]

4. I've been deliriously happy when an MRI was finally over.

Does that count?

[bluedawg12]

5. See it's true! A testimonial!!1!

[charlie]

2. They can also make you sense disembodied "presences" nearby

The sense of "a presence" or of a sentient being during partial sensory deprivation and exposure to very weak, complex magnetic fields across the cerebral hemispheres may be a normal neurocognitive experience that is associated with the brief intrusion of the right hemispheric homologue of the left hemispheric (and strongly linguistic) sense of self into awareness. Within an optimal experimental setting, women reported more frequent experiences of a sensed presence than did men, and men were more likely than women to consider these experiences as "intrusions" from extrapersonal or ego-alien sources. Both effects were predicted by the vectorial hemisphericity hypothesis and the known neurocognitive differences between right-handed men and right-handed women. Sociobiological implications for gender differences in the probability of intercalation between distinctive processes within the left and right temporoparietal lobes are discussed.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12661700

Good thing to know when you're ready to roll out that seances-to-go franchise.

[bluedawg12]

6. I have always said,

Vectorial cerebral hemisphericity are differential sources for the sensed presence, mystical experiences and religious conversions.

:rofl:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8321608?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

[Deep13]

7. Well, that would make sense if my brain were made of metal. nt

[bluedawg12]

8. That's why I always wear a tin foil hat, the magnets.

Plus, it just looks snazzy. :P

[realisticphish]

11. MST3K, "This Island Earth"

"The grips are magnetic"
-"and if our hands were metal, that would mean something"

[uriel1972]

9. Um, called TMS

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, it's been used for a few years now and from what I've heard around the mental health traps it works for a good number of people. It doesn't have the memory loss side effects of ECT and doesn't need sedatives for the procedure. Not having had it done I can't give you a testimonial, but it sounds pretty attractive if you've been on anti-depressants for years and dealing with those side effects. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater we aren't strapping fridge magnets to peoples heads and saying "You're cured." here.

[bluedawg12]

13. Good point and here's my quarrel with the article.

The wording is misleading and implies conclusive results.

I have no objection to any notion of electromagnetic fields, heck, MRI's are large magnets and they produce imaging that would have sounded nutty 30 years ago. Yet they work, with a ton of sophisticated technology and software and testing behind it, and it is proven.

It's not magnets per se, it's the specious claims: "beat depression" ( serious disease that affects about 1 in 4 Americans).

And that Dr. George ( an appeal to authority) say "that it works by..."

>>Help beat depression with a MAGNET. US expert Dr Mark George says the therapy works by jump-starting a mood-regulating part of the frontal brain with high-powered magnets.<<

Now, a quick sniff of the internet reveals that you have made a good point, but, not the point made in the article I cited. I still don't know if magnets "beat depression" however, I do know that the work is: an investigational procedure.

Where's the potential good?
If people can avoid costly meds, or ECT, excellent!

Where's the potential harm in portraying it as a "treatment that works?"
Well, it's just not true. It's under investigation.
If people delay proper treatment.
If people spend hard earned money in some charlatan practice out there that abuses this type of treatment, and does not follow protocol.

The protocol, at least Emory, is:

"Who should get TMS?
Usually, TMS is considered after a person has tried one or more antidepressant medication trials and still has significant depressive symptoms. It can also be used for those patients who cannot tolerate antidepressant medications because of the side effects."

Or, as you alluded to, if this preliminary work, which is ripe for abuse, get's into the hands of someone who literally charges for treatment with refrigerator magnets. :eyes:

There are many shoe insert magnets out there for foot pain. Hats with magnets are a worry. The science behind magnets is what is of interest. Not magnets per se.

Magnets are not so much the issue as the claim that the treatment is now proven, because it is, at this stage, investigational. At least according to Emory University, "Both the treatment and the machine used to deliver the treatment are experimental."


BTW- the article I cited actually showed a common house magnet and not some sophisticated device at Emory.

http://www.emoryhealthcare.org/departments/fuqua/patient_info/TMS.html

>>What is transcranial magnetic stimulation?
Transcranial magnetic stimulation is an investigational procedure used to treat major depression. The technique involves use of an electromagnetic coil to create electromagnetic pulses in the brain which have an antidepressant effect. Both the treatment and the machine used to deliver the treatment are experimental. The fact that they are experimental means that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not yet approved TMS as a treatment for major depression. TMS is, however, approved for other medical uses. Studies involving TMS are being done to evaluate its safety and effectiveness as a treatment for depression.

How is TMS administered?
TMS is offered in the United States both in private practice and through research studies. While most studies are free or of low cost, treatment in private practice can be more expensive and will not be covered by insurance. The treatment is typically administered five times per week at the same time of day for up to six weeks. The patient is awake and alert during the treatment; there is no anesthesia involved.<<

If the article had simply stated, Investigation is under way to determine the "efficacy of of an electromagnetic coil to create electromagnetic pulses in the brain which may have an antidepressant effect,"
it would have been more accurate.


Here's a current article from a quick search. BTW- I do hope it proves to be a useful treatment. Thank you for bringing this up for discussion. It is always worth it to see what is cooking in R&D. :)

Curr Opin Psychiatry. 2009 May;22(3):306-11.
Transcranial direct current stimulation as a therapeutic tool for the treatment of major depression: insights from past and recent clinical studies.Murphy DN, Boggio P, Fregni F.
Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation, Department of Neurology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a noninvasive method of brain stimulation that has been increasingly tested for the treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders. It has useful characteristics, such as low cost, ease of use, reliable sham methodology, and relatively powerful effects on cortical excitability. Because of its potential to modulate cortical excitability noninvasively, tDCS has been tested for the treatment of depression for several decades. Therefore, we reviewed evidence on the use of tDCS for major depression examining evidence from past and recent tDCS studies. We also briefly compared tDCS with other techniques of neuromodulation, namely deep brain stimulation, vagal nerve stimulation, and transcranial magnetic stimulation; and suggest future directions for the use of tDCS in major depression. RECENT FINDINGS: Results from past clinical trials testing direct current stimulation as a therapeutic tool had mixed methodology and showed heterogeneous results. Recent studies on tDCS and depression using novel approaches, such as different parameters of stimulation, have improved its neuromodulatory effect thus resulting in larger clinical effects. In fact, two recent small trials have shown that tDCS is associated with significant clinical gains. SUMMARY: On the basis of these findings there is still not enough evidence to support tDCS as a therapeutic modality for depression. However, findings to date encourage further studies in this area that should explore novel parameters of stimulation. In fact, it appears that current methods of tDCS might not be fully optimized and, in fact, (1) individualized parameters of stimulation, (2) longer stimulation sessions, and (3) methods to focalize tDCS might be useful strategies to provide greater clinical benefits.

[Random_Australian]

10. Hmmmmm, with a bit of care, you really can freak around with people's heads with magnets.

Last I looked, it required a reasonably complex setup and some pulsing, but it does change stuff.

However, I have no way of validating of countering this article.

[bluedawg12]

14. there is a lot of work being done and magnets and the brain.

That's true.

What is not true is that it has been shown "to beat depression."

[nickgutierrez]

12. Oh, magnets.

Is there anything they can't do?