SOONER OR LATER WE'LL FIGURE OUT SOMETHING OUR ANCESTORS DIDN'T KNOW (via Tom Morin):

Zapping the blues: The rebirth of electric-shock treatment (The Economist, Jun 1st 2006)

ELECTRICITY has long been used to treat medical disorders. As early as the second century AD, Galen, a Greek physician, recommended the use of electric eels for treating headaches and facial pain. In the 1930s Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini, two Italian psychiatrists, used electroconvulsive therapy to treat schizophrenia. These days, such rigorous techniques are practised less widely. But researchers are still investigating how a gentler electric therapy appears to treat depression.

Vagus-nerve stimulation, to give it its proper name, was originally developed to treat severe epilepsy. It requires a pacemaker-like device to be implanted in a patient's chest and wires from it threaded up to the vagus nerve on the left side of his neck. In the normal course of events, this provides an electrical pulse to the vagus nerve for 30 seconds every five minutes.

This treatment does not always work, but in some cases where it failed (the number of epileptic seizures experienced by a patient remaining the same), that patient nevertheless reported feeling much better after receiving the implant. This secondary effect led to trials for treating depression and, in 2005, America's Food and Drug Administration approved the therapy for depression that fails to respond to all conventional treatments, including drugs and psychotherapy.

Not only does the treatment work, but its effects appear to be long lasting. A study led by Charles Conway of Saint Louis University in Missouri, and presented to a recent meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, has found that 70% of patients who are better after one year stay better after two years as well.

Folks have too much emotionally invested in the myth that we've made tremendous medical advances to accept such things, nevermind the usefulness of leeches.

MORE:
Step by step, cancer patients use exercise to feel better (EurekAlert)

When individuals with breast or prostate cancer followed a moderate, home-based exercise program using resistance bands and walking, the patients had less fatigue during radiation treatments, greater strength and could walk farther and faster in only four weeks, researchers discovered in a pilot study.

"At the end of the study, the patients in the exercise program were averaging more than 12,000 steps a day – which is above the American College of Sports Medicine and Centers for Disease Control recommendations of 10,000 steps a day for healthy people without cancer," said principal investigator Karen Mustian, Ph.D., of the University of Rochester James P. Wilmot Cancer Center.

"The results of this study are extremely promising and I am hopeful this that this type of research is creating a body of knowledge that is focused on treating the whole patient and all of the complexities of cancer," Mustian said.

Mustian presented the results of her randomized, controlled study at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2006 annual meeting in Atlanta on June 5. ASCO awarded her an ASCO Junior Investigator Research Merit Award, given to outstanding early-career researchers to recognize their cancer prevention and control research.

Exercise is emerging as a new therapeutic weapon to help cancer patients manage and reduce side effects and improve quality of life. Studies are beginning to show that exercise is safe and feasible for many patients. In her clinical trial, Mustian found that the participants were enthusiastic and adhered well to the exercise program, even though they were older (average age was 60), half of them had received chemotherapy, and 84 percent had already endured a surgery. Still, 95 percent completed the prescribed exercise routine.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 8, 2006 8:40 AM