Article and video on transcutaneous auricular vagal nerve stimulation (taVNA)

[Rhyothemis]

Don't know if anyone else is interested, but I came across a really great article (more of a how-to than a study) with an accompanying video:

jove.com/video/58984/labora...

[Hidden]

Rhyothemis,

I think your post is much more important than the members have realized! I don't want it to slip away unnoticed so I am adding to it to bring it back up from obscurity!

I'm afraid that many forum members may have missed the importance of what you are saying here about stimulating the vagus nerve appropriately and the positive effect it can potentially have for PWPs!

A high information flow rate is great for us on this forum, but it can have a downside also and this is a perfect example. Your post is only 8 days old and it might as well be a month old and could easily slip away unnoticed, even though it contains what is potentially very useful information for PWPs!!!

When you look for information regarding vagus nerve stimulation alone, there is an overwhelming amount of available information concerning multiple health issues, but when you search selectively for vagus nerve stimulation and PD, the field of information becomes much more manageable! One thing that is clear is that there are health benefits associated with stimulation of this nerve in multiple health issues and the vagus nerve as an important pathway to the brain is often mentioned in PD. As such, it is easy to review these fewer PD/vagus nerve studies in a more timely manner. In the case of PD, there have already been many rodent PD model studies suggesting that vagus nerve stimulation may be beneficial. There is at least one study that shows that PWPs have a higher incidence of bilateral vagus nerve atrophy when compared to non PWPs and that study, I consider to be an important clue! In other diseases, vagus nerve atrophy is often as a result of neuropathy, but in PD, that is apparently not the case and again this is important information that needs to be combined with other information in order to see a bigger picture of the vagus nerve as it relates to PD.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

PD rodent model studies do not always translate to humans so it is hard to get excited about a PD rodent model vagus nerve stimulation study even when it has a happy ending or some form of improvement as the closing message. Here is a typical rodent model study which suggests benefit from stimulation of the vagus nerve.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/303...

All good, but what is lacking are human equivalency studies as is often the case! This month, a very small human study came out on PubMed , but it is behind a pay wall. I read part of this very small study and like the rodent models, there was benefit in gait and freezing! Okay, so even though you don't get to see the study on PubMed, the important point is that there now appears to be potential benefit to vagus nerve stimulation in PD!

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/308...

There are multiple ways to stimulate the vagus nerve such as ice water dunking of the face, tens unit or devices made specifically for the purpose to name just three, but a quick youtube or google search should give you plenty of options. The main point I would like to make is that stimulating the vagus nerve is easily doable through multiple methods, has now shown benefit in PWPs and is about as non-invasive as any PD treatment out there!

Just some food for thought for those of you who might be interested into looking into this treatment modality further!

Art

[Rhyothemis in reply to Hidden]

That's great news about more research on PD and vagal nerve stimulation.

I got interested in vagal nerve stimulation since my father had Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) and so had a lot of autonomic nervous system issues - I wish I had known about this stuff back then. I've been having a lot of the same problems as he had, but they say MSA is not hereditary, so I wonder about his diagnosis. He had a lot of other issues with his peripheral nervous system - neuropathy, and towards the end, extreme muscle wasting in his limbs (and I wonder if TENS or microcurrent may have helped).

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I started using Elite HRV with a CorSens monitor in January to get a baseline for heart rate variability. I then tried taVNS as per this article:

onlinejacc.org/content/65/9...

The next morning I was way over into parasympathetic mode and my HRV had increased by around 13 points. The benefits diminished over a few days of use. I believe one can become habituated to the stimulus and it may lose its effect; I've been trying to switch things up a bit, but I feel I am sort of shooting in the dark. I've been wondering about varying the pulse width and such... I suppose I should just read more articles

~

As you note, there are lots of ways to stimulate the vagus nerve and hack the autonomic nervous system. Have read about Wim Hof? the LPS challenge stuff was really amazing:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

~

Focused ultrasound is being investigated as a means to stimulate the vagus nerve (and for neuromodulation, generally):

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...