Posted by psychobot5000 on October 20, 2007, at 17:01:51
In reply to TMS, DBS, Vegas Nerve Stim for Anxiety, posted by Gary Engel on October 14, 2007, at 17:12:49
Hi Gary,
Some of the other posters' suggestions sound to me like good ideas, but I did want to add a thing or two on the type of treatments you were asking about. The first is that, as I understand it, VNS does now seem to have some pretty good evidence behind it. ...But since it is an expensive (25,000$, all told, I believe) and invasive procedure, it occurred to me that CES (Cranial Electrotherapy Stimulation) might be something along similar lines to look into.
It's basically running a Microcurrent TENS through your head for maybe 20 minutes a day. The devices cost a few hundred dollars, and can apparently be useful for sleep, anxiety, and depression, working in kind of a similar manner to VNS or TMS. It's a very old techique, but has never hit mainstream, and never had the money behind it to do large studies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranial_electrotherapy_stimulation
poster:psychobot5000
thread:789217
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20070923/msgs/790362.html