Posted by Dan Perkins on November 12, 2004, at 11:57:01
In reply to Re: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) Dan Pe » Dan Perkins, posted by Pfinstegg on November 12, 2004, at 11:07:09
Good to hear from you, Pfinstegg, I have read some of your earlier posts on TMS.
This is what I can tell you about my treatment:
I go 5 days a week (M-F) for a six week period.
I looked at the machine today and it said 10hz (or mhz?), which is I guess what you mean by frequency. Each train (that, apparently is the technical term for the series of magnetic pulses) lasts 4 seconds and there is 26 seconds between each train. A total of 75 trains are given each session.I was really surprised how much it hurt the first time. I have since started taking a pain reliever 45 minutes before each treatment (which is an idea I got from reading one of your posts). I took regular Tylenol (no codeine, unfortunately) yesterday and that worked OK, and then I tried Advil today which seemed to work a bit better. It still hurts but I can actually zone out now and think about other things and not really get bothered by each train.
I have had 5 treatments (out of a total of 30) thus far and It's a bit hard for me to tell if there has been any improvement. I have been in a deep depression for months but the problem is that I was feeling a good deal better the week before I started treatment and that feeling seemed to carry over into this week when my treatment started, so I can't tell yet how much to credit the actual TMS.
When you say that you go into remission after your sessions, does that mean you are depression free without antidepressants or are you taking ADs as well. The plan for this study is that if the treatment is effective after the 6 weeks, they put you on a maintenance level of an antidepressant and possibly offer you retreatment with TMS if depression returns.
If ther is no improvement after 6 weeks, they give you the option of continuing with the "real" TMS
treatment for an additional 6 weeks (I say "real" because it is a double blind study and half the people are receiving "sham" treatments in the initial 6 weeks - given the pain I'm pretty friggin' sure I'm not in the sham group).Good to hear all that stuff about the positive effects on cortisol, etc. that you mention. I hadn't hear or read any of that before.
I hope this works for me as well as it's worked for you. I guess only time will tell.
> I had an initial three week course of TMS in 2003, and have had three follow-up treatments of six treatments each. It hurt a LOT! i was given Tylenol #3 (codeine) to take 45 minutes prior, and that helped a lot. Each time, I had a real remission, which lasted several months. It's not permanent, though- you do need to keep on doing it. I had it to the left side, at a frequency of 20, and at 110% of the motor threshold. How are you getting it? If it is approved soon, i plan to continue it on a regular basis, if I need it. Right now, I've been in pretty good remission for six months without any further treatments, and I have to travel pretty far to obtain it. If it works for you, it's a wonderful side-effect-free treatment. It's supposed to do all the good things- decrease cortisol, increase blood flow to the LH, normalize all three main neurotransmitters, and increase cell growth in the hippocampus.
poster:Dan Perkins
thread:414030
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20041108/msgs/415026.html