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A new treatment for arthritis: Vagus-nerve stimulation

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Re: A new treatment for arthritis: Vagus-nerve stimulation

#31

Post by cassianoleal »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #28
grugagag wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also let's also keep in mind not all inflammation is bad. As an anecdote, I know someone who had rosacea breakout and ended up eliminating tomatoes in particular from her diet and it seemed to do the trick so there should be something in tomatoes that causes inflammation...

What is an example of good inflammation?

Inflammation helps fight infection of any kind. You know fever? That's your body heating up to wean off infection.

When you tear a muscle or a tendon, inflammation helps blood to flow into the affected areas, speeding up the healing process.

Inflammation is one of the tools your immune system has to keep you in good health. Too much of it can have bad side-effects though, which is why we need to keep it under control.

Re: A new treatment for arthritis: Vagus-nerve stimulation

#32

Post by austinjp »

voisin wrote: post #14
exmadscientist wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably already know this, but for the benefit of others: it is very possible to kill yourself if you do this wrong. The vagus nerve (or its mirror on the opposite side of your face, I forget, it's been a while since I worked on this and I've never particularly wanted to revisit it) is involved in pacing your heart. Screw it up and you can end up very dead of cardiac arrest. So be careful trying this stuff at ho…

You can avoid the potential for death by slow exhalations and other breathing techniques that have been shown to stimulate the vagus nerve.

Oh boy. No. Slowing your breathing is not going to protect against the effects of electrically stimulating the vagus nerve. Whether or not the TENS approach to vagus nerve simulation is effective or not, please don't believe this will somehow help.

Re: A new treatment for arthritis: Vagus-nerve stimulation

#33

Post by rgrieselhuber »

cassianoleal wrote: post #31
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is an example of good inflammation?

Inflammation helps fight infection of any kind. You know fever? That's your body heating up to wean off infection. When you tear a muscle or a tendon, inflammation helps blood to flow into the affected areas, speeding up the healing process. Inflammation is one of the tools your immune system has to keep you in good health. Too much of it can have bad side-effects though, which is why we need to keep it under control…

Ok, I was imagining some food-induced inflammation since that was the context. Is there some healthy inflammation that comes from food vs the body’s natural immune response?

Re: A new treatment for arthritis: Vagus-nerve stimulation

#34

Post by PuffinBlue »

user_7832 wrote: post #22
jeremycarter wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Important advice. As a person who has PVCs and PACs I would say avoid anything that isn't medical grade and advised by your cardiologist/specialist doctor.

Sorry, what’s PVC and PAC in this context?

Probably Pre-Ventricular Contraction. And I guess Pre-Atrial Contraction.

Re: A new treatment for arthritis: Vagus-nerve stimulation

#35

Post by abnry »

austinjp wrote: post #32
voisin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can avoid the potential for death by slow exhalations and other breathing techniques that have been shown to stimulate the vagus nerve.

Oh boy. No. Slowing your breathing is not going to protect against the effects of electrically stimulating the vagus nerve. Whether or not the TENS approach to vagus nerve simulation is effective or not, please don't believe this will somehow help.

I think the advice was to forgo TENS in favor of breathing, not to mitigate adverse effects of TENS with breathing.

Re: A new treatment for arthritis: Vagus-nerve stimulation

#36

Post by ajb »

gardenfelder wrote: post #25
hammock wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more of a meta analysis in my mind of all the different studies and anecdotes I’ve osmoted over the years. As someone else said earlier, there aren’t great and clear individual studies because there isn’t any money in it. For dosing curcumin, you can try juicing a quarter inch of turmeric root a day and starting there, I have seen that knock out a lot of things within a short number of days

Best to use ground black pepper when you use turmeric: that increases the bioavailability of the curcumin

I read (I think in a hn comment a while back, that the reason black pepper increases the bio availability of Turmeric is that it broadly increases the bioavailability of everything in your gut at the time. Which is probably not what you want.

(Will now go and look for the comment and edit here if I find it)

Re: A new treatment for arthritis: Vagus-nerve stimulation

#37

Post by ABCLAW »

boplicity wrote: post #16
consumer451 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it could be placebo effect, but the thinking is/was that: > Nightshade Vegetables > Eggplants, peppers, tomatoes and potatoes are all members of the nightshade family. These vegetables contain the chemical solanine, which some people claim aggravates arthritis pain and inflammation. However, most reports are anecdotal, and while it certainly might be true for some people, there are no scientific studies done to…

> there are no scientific studies If this treatment could be turned into a drug that had billions of dollars in revenue, as some arthritis drugs have, then there would be endless studies. Sadly, that's not the world we live in. "Lack of studies" in many cases is code for "there's no money to be made here." This is too bad, because many extremely effective and effectively free treatments are ignored by scientists beca…

Lazy thinking. Governments that provide and purchase healthcare services are also in the business of funding research.

In what world do we not see an alignment of interests for studies from nutritionists and dieticians on this topic?

We have a LOT of studies on low fodmap diets and their health effects.

Re: A new treatment for arthritis: Vagus-nerve stimulation

#38

Post by jackmott »

esperent wrote: post #20
boplicity wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are no scientific studies If this treatment could be turned into a drug that had billions of dollars in revenue, as some arthritis drugs have, then there would be endless studies. Sadly, that's not the world we live in. "Lack of studies" in many cases is code for "there's no money to be made here." This is too bad, because many extremely effective and effectively free treatments are ignored by scientists beca…

This oft-repeated view is frustrating, because a huge number of studies on exactly this kind of thing are done. Should there be more? Of course! But the money has to come from somewhere. For a study on potatoes and inflammation it has to come from the taxpayer or a non-profit institute. For a study on a new drug that has a potential to make a huge profit, of course it's much easier to find someone besides those to fu…

[dead]

Re: A new treatment for arthritis: Vagus-nerve stimulation

#39

Post by ralph84 »

michaelmrose wrote: post #24
psychphysic wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth drawing a thick distinction between rheumatoid (autoimmune) and osteoarthritis (worn out).

Thank you. My wife suffers from this and its night and day different from osteoarthritis and my wife who has has been offered plenty of ridiculous "cures" that people somehow believe highly paid specialists just haven't though of.

Sorry your wife suffers from this. I just wouldn't be so confident that highly paid specialists have time to keep up on the latest research in their field. In my experience most do not. They're highly paid because they see a lot of patients, not because they read a lot of research.

Re: A new treatment for arthritis: Vagus-nerve stimulation

#40

Post by hanoz »

psychphysic wrote: post #11
consumer451 wrote: post #3

I was diagnosed with arthritis at a very young age. This was likely due to (at least related to) snowboard straps being too tight around my left ankle. I hobbled every morning for an hour, then a couple hours, then half the day. One day I learned about modifying my diet to avoid inflammation. I greatly limited, but did not entirely eliminate, tomatoes and potatoes in my diet. The effects were literally life changing.…

It's worth drawing a thick distinction between rheumatoid (autoimmune) and osteoarthritis (worn out).

Indeed. And with rheumatoid it can come a lot younger than your snowboarding years.
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