81–90 of 176 posts
Whoa, I firmly believe the electroshock "therapy" was debunked a few times already, wasn't it?
ECT is not for everyone, but a last option when all else fails.
This article completely neglects discussion of side effects. Ketamine has almost none, whereas ECT can cause horrible degradations to quality of life. Any discussion of efficacy that doesn’t include side effects is quackery.
> The side effect profiles of the two treatments differed, with ECT more likely to cause headaches, muscle pain and memory loss, while ketamine was more likely to cause dissociative symptoms, vertigo and double vision.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Curious what you mean by “particle level”? Like simulating every molecule in the body?
At this time, I mean every hormone and protein flowing in the bloodstream, along with the state of every single cell. Essentially, enough detail to get a list of symptoms and bodily sensations, and predict the outcome of any potential blood test or urinalysis. Or, alternatively, enough detail to take the results of a blood test/urinalysis, and predict the state of every single tissue in the body.
Consider protein folding. This occurs millions of times per second in the thirty trillion cells in the human body. We only just now built a machine learning model that can predict some of the conformations of individual proteins.
The crazy thing is that protein folding is the easiest problem in biology. Nice clean training data, static high resolution targets. Cell biology is not that. Cells are noisy and constantly changing, and its insanely difficult to even measure what they're doing. Like every time we try to determine how many different types of cells there are, we come up with a different, larger number than before. The reason for this is that all our measurements of the number of proteins, RNA, and other chemicals in cells are bad, like looking through a distorted broken lens.
Complicating all this is that biology is is insanely coupled across both spatial and temporal scales. Consider the KRAS protein. Its one of the most commonly mutated genes in cancer. The most common mutations in KRAS amount to about a dozen atoms being out of place in the protein, due to a single base change in DNA. This nanoscale change in a single cell propagates up to tumors that interfere with bulk physiology and result in death. Or, more specifically for the brain, consider huntington’s disease. Theres a section of DNA thats repeated in a gene called huntingtin. If you have less than 36 copies of the repeat, the you're fine. More than 36 results in a brain disease that typically takes 30-50 years to even manifest.
So, all that to say that simulating this is insanely hard. Like, you’re trying to write a simulation for a system where we dont know what it’s made of or how its individual parts work. Also, we just empirically know that changing the arrangement of a few atoms can result in massive changes that lay dormant for decades before they suddenly appear.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> One of these days, when I have enough free time, I want to develop a particle-level simulation of the human body, so that medical students, doctors, and curious laymen can see these processes in action on their personal computers. Likely you wouldn't need/want a particle level simulation, but a kinetics level model. Just with kinetics you could draw simulations of "particle concentrations" or other fun things to sh…
Sadly even a kinetics level simulation for anything remotely complex is far beyond what current compute is capable of. Even simplified models of basic biological processes are immensity complex, and still potentially incomplete. Just as neural networks do not even attempt to reach the level of molecules, (practical) models must necessarily exist at a much higher abstraction. Although alphafold is a breakthrough, this…
My project's scope is more along the lines of:
1. Taking a look at Roche's list of all biochemical pathways in the human body[0].
2. Creating a 3D model of a human body, assuming that all the molecules in the body interact only in the way that the chart prescribes.
3. Create a database of symptoms and sensations in the body, and use the 3D model to determine all the possible ways that the biochemical pathways could go awry in order to create the ailment.
The way I envision it, the model is simply going after low-hanging fruit.
The space is also at the precipice of a whole new class of psychedelics coming online - MDMA, psilocybin, and more are all 1-5 years out (working through FDA drug trials), and hold promise of both faster results (versus 6-8 months of trialing traditional antidepressants) and fewer downside risks (versus weight gain, sex drive, etc. issues with antidepressants and memory loss, headaches, etc. with ECT and TMS).
Bottom line, if you're suffering and considering those treatments, I highly recommend finding a local center and at least learning more about options available to you.
Edit: If anyone wants to talk, advice, etc., email is in my profile.
Whoa, I firmly believe the electroshock "therapy" was debunked a few times already, wasn't it?
aren't the side effects of ECT quite severe though? "loss of creativity, drive and energy. difficulty concentrating. loss of emotional responses. difficulty learning new information."
Ketamine is a prescription medicine that can be taken oral, intranasal or IV drip. ECT is an inpatient procedure that need one anesthesiologist and one psychiatrist plus nurses to administer, two to three times weekly for three to four weeks. Who pays for the healthcare, definitely want to try the former and use the latter only if the former works poorly.
Ketamine is a prescription medicine that can be taken oral, intranasal or IV drip. ECT is an inpatient procedure that need one anesthesiologist and one psychiatrist plus nurses to administer, two to three times weekly for three to four weeks. Who pays for the healthcare, definitely want to try the former and use the latter only if the former works poorly.
ECT, due to the potential side effects and Ketamine due to how recent it is are both near the "last lines of defence". IRRC both of them cannot compare to psychotherapy, which has far higher effectiveness at the cost of far more resources.