Anybody have any first hand anecdotal accounts about this? What device do you use?
Edit: For the equipment, more info can be found here: http://neurofieldneurotherapy.com/transcranial-direct-curren...
I have no idea about this particular treatment, but I know that the only way to get an idea is rigorous double blind testing.
>ask brainstim01 how they know
That's an unanswerable question. He can't know. There is no way to know if an individual treatment worked for you in the absence of a control group. (Ignoring placebos which, sure, can and do "work")
I think observing a single individual in both untreated and treated time intervals provides some amount of control. It's not a terribly strong control, of course; one can certainly imagine scenarios such as that they were recovering the whole time, but that recovery hadn't reached a point where the effects became noticeable until the point where they happened to start the tDCS. So in the strong sense of "know", you're correct: they can't know for sure.
But to say that it provides no information at all is also wrong. The posterior probability that the treatment was helpful is greater, given these observations both before and after treatment was started, than if, for example, treatment had been started immediately. How much greater is hard to quantify, but a very substantial observed improvement suggests a significant effect.
Everybody gets the control arm, followed by the treatment, but the time of the switchover is randomized, often in steps (hence the name). If people consistently recover at the same time relative to the treatment, but at different absolute times, then you can conclude the treatment works well.
Couple that with the fact that athletes notoriously buy into 'woo' treatments (not to mention Joe Rogan himself is notoriously into 'woo') and it's unsurprising that she may rave about it.
Just to give a few things I've heard fighters 'rave' about in the past that have little to no substantive effect on performance: - Crossfit and 'functional' fitness at large - Cryo dunking themselves after a workout - Elevation masks - Bulletproof coffee - CBD (not saying there aren't effects but the range of health claims made border on the absurd) - Eating a Vegan diet vs a Paleo diet vs a Keto diet... - Movement(?) training - Acupuncture - Cupping
The list is almost endless. Athletes are always looking for an edge, and many of them (much like the general populace) are not well equipped to separate the woo from the goo.
One thing that struck me was that her rTMS I think was for concussive syndrome/symptoms. Whereas I thought rTMS was primarily marketed for depression and anxiety (seems some of the other posters here have personally tried rTMS for depression). Her personal story includes the tragedy of her husband committing suicide leaving her behind with their young daughter, so maybe she also has/had some depression issues and was seeing benefits with respect to that...anyway give the podcast a listen, she is an interesting person anyway.
- ~30 minute sessions, 5x a week
- rTMS device stimulates the prefrontal cortex (located through an MRI, and located each session with a pre-measured cap that you wear during the session)
- rTMS is non-intrusive, and seems to have virtually no side effects (unless you have a history of epilepsy, which would have precluded you from the study)
I would describe the sessions as pain-free, with a sense of mild annoyance (the magnetic pulse feels like someone flicking you on the head with a finger). Some other people experienced headaches the first two weeks during treatment, but I didn't experience that.
In terms of effectiveness, I would say that it helped greatly reduce the symptoms of depression for me. I've struggled with depression for ~10 years, and antidepressants would sometimes help, but the side-effects were just not maintainable. With rTMS, I feel like it reduced my symptoms by about 60% (not completely gone, but man can I ever function in life again!).
It's been about 3 months since I participated in the trial, and I am now participating in their maintenance program (2 sessions a month, ~10 minutes per session). At this point, I'm recommending rTMS for those who haven't been able to find anything that works for them yet.
I had rTMS done for a few months, and a couple of different protocols of ketamine infusions.
rTMS was mostly just killing time after I got used to the noise and sensation - the doctor I saw had a TV mounted with Netflix and other services available for you while you sat there.
Ketamine (IV; I haven't tried the esketamine nasal spray that got approved) is an intense experience each time - many doctors advise people sit in dark rooms with headphones playing music while the treatment goes on. I usually describe it as removing a lot of the ability to ignore things - that is, you experience a cognitive burden for all the things you're seeing/hearing/etc in the room, and sufficiently much cognitive burden is draining. It also affects your flow of thought a lot so you don't necessarily track well in conversations with people until you're more experienced. (I also found that it made my emotions very directly influencible by the music or conversation or w/e was going on during the treatment.)
It often makes people nauseous or vomit, so every clinic I've been to stocks an anti-emetic and a bucket.
Some doctors also give you a benzo with the ketamine because it makes it a less intense experience. There's inconclusive research on whether this dulls the antidepressant effect last I looked - I requested during my most recent treatments (mid-late 2018) that they not use it, and they were happy to comply, but it definitely makes the experience less visceral.
rTMS I saw no personal benefit from even after extending the treatment interval past the usual number of weeks. Ketamine I saw massive improvement a month or so after doing an initial treatment of 6 infusions in 2 weeks, but after a few weeks the effect lapsed (though I'd been having "maintenance treatments" periodically), with no recurrence regardless of the protocol we tried.
Please feel free to ask if there's some specific questions that'd be useful to have answered.