There’s a new experimental therapy for depression that is showing some promise. It stimulates the brain with a mild electrical current. You mention electric current and right away our mind goes to what has been called electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT. It brings back memories of some of the disturbing scenes in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
ECT is still used as a treatment for severe depression, and over the years it has become safer, although it still causes memory loss which can be very frustrating to the person treated with ECT.
What’s interesting about both of these treatments is that the 100 billion neurons that make up part of our brain all use electricity to function. When a neuron’s nucleus decides to send a message to another part of the brain, it sends an electrical charge through the axon. Each neuron has one axon, and it acts as the sender of information. Each neuron also has multiple dendrites, each of which can have 10,000 fingers–all designed to connect to an axon.
So the charge is sent through the axon. When it arrives at a connection with one of the fingers of a specific dendrite, the charge is changed into a transmitter substance, such as serotonin or dopamine, or one of the over 50 other transmitter substances in the synapse, which is about 20 millionths of a millimeter. When the message crosses the synapse, it becomes an electrical charge again and is received by the dendrite and sent to a different nucleus–a complicated and awesome process.
One way to understand depression is that the electrical energy in the brain is depleted. It’s like the batteries have run down. The idea is that the electrical charge of ECT will quickly recharge the brain. But this new treatment uses only a fraction of the electrical current used by ECT. ECT lasts only a few seconds, while this new treatment takes 20-30 minutes and the patient in conscious during the procedure. It’s only experimental at this point, and so far is used in conjunction with small doses of Zoloft, an anti-depressant medication.
But once again, we are treating the symptoms and unless the person struggling with depression somehow reduces the stressors in their life, it will be an ongoing battle. We pointed out in an earlier post that the basic cause of most depression is an over-load of stressors in our lives. I can medicate the symptoms, but it doesn’t get at the cause. A major cause of depression is what we called “living in a ‘Get-Set’ world.” (See http://drstoop.com/living-in-a-get-set-world/)
Question: How’s your stress level? Do you live each day as if your are getting set for ???