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DRUG-FREE SOLUTIONS FOR DEPRESSION
by Sheila Julson
As a practicing psychiatrist for more than 40 years, Dr. Paul Gross, Director of TMS Center of the Lehigh Valley, had always sought ways to help patients considered “treatment resistant”—those who weren’t helped by psychotherapy, medication or a combination of both. When he heard about transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) therapy, a brain stimulation technique that noninvasively stimulates neurons in the brain to induce immediate or long term changes in activity, he became intrigued.
“I had been following TMS while it was being proposed and researched,” he says. “There was a lot of interest in it, and a lot of journal articles about it, before it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2008.” The treatment had already been used in Europe.
In 2010, while attending a conference in Atlanta, Dr. Gross saw a NeuroStar TMS machine. He was also able to speak with French and Cuban psychiatrists that had used other TMS machines in their practices and had seen good results.
Once the NeuroStar TMS machine received FDA approval— the first model to do so—Dr. Gross knew that was a golden opportunity to help his patients. In January 2011, he opened TMS Center of the Lehigh Valley, the region’s first depression treatment center offering FDA approved, non-drug, non-invasive TMS treatment for patients. TMS Center of the Lehigh Valley has since
become one of the most experienced centers on the East Coast, having treated over 1,000 patients. While receiving TMS therapy, the patient reclines in a chair while a strong magnet coil, similar to that used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), is placed on the patient’s scalp in the left prefrontal cortex, or the “control center” of the brain for depression. The magnet repeatedly stimulates the neurons in that area, turning them “on.” “It turns on that part of the brain; when the neurons are turned off for various reasons—we’re not sure why—but we’re bringing those neurons back to normal function,” Dr. Gross explains. Patients are awake during treatment. The duration of treatment sessions is based upon the average repetitions of the magnet, or 3,000 pulses. Dr. Gross estimates it takes about 30 sessions over a six-week period to reach the number of treatments necessary to see results. The treatment is mostly free from side effects. Some people report headaches during treatment, or feel slightly tired afterward. Transcranial magnetic stimulation therapy is commonly used for depression and anxiety, two conditions that Dr. Gross says often go hand-in-hand. “Often, people who are depressed are also anxious, so when their depression gets better, their anxiety level gets better as well,” he says. Other conditions that Dr. Gross uses TMS for include obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), bipolar disorders and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The magnetic coil is placed in different areas, depending on the condition. Dr. Gross had also treated a neurological patient that had suffered from a stroke. The patient had depression and couldn’t move his right arm or hand. Dr. Gross and his team used TMS to treat the patient’s depression. Through brain stimulation, the patient was able to move the right hand and arm again. Dr. Gross notes he always looks at the medications patients are taking, and sometimes he’s been able to reduce their medications during or after TMS treatment. “We’re in the infancy of this treatment, and we’re finding out more every year about where to place the magnet, how strong it should be and how many Dr. Paul Gross sessions,” he notes. “There’s ongoing research, and the field is really wide-open because there are a lot of disorders that are not being treated well with current treatment practices, and TMS is an option. Down the road, I would suspect that you’ll see TMS used more and more for other conditions.” During the decade that Dr. Gross has used TMS therapy on patients, he’s seen about a 65 percent significant improvement rate among patients that have depression, many of whom were considered treatment resistant. “These are people who, for years, had shown no improvement. So, it’s really remarkable to see somebody who has been suffering for years and they start to get better,” he concludes. TMS Center of the Lehigh Valley is located at 401 N. 17th St., Ste. 304, in Allentown. For more information, call 610-820-0700 or visit tmslv.com.
Mislabeling Found in Some Immunity Supplements
Immunity supplements may not be all they claim to be, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers conducted liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry tests on 30 of the bestselling, four-star-and-up immunity products on Amazon and found that only 13 contained the exact ingredients listed on their labels. Thirteen were missing some of the listed ingredients and nine contained ingredients not listed on the labels. Missing ingredients were mainly plant extracts such as aloe vera, astragalus, eleuthero, ginger root and slippery elm. Added ingredients included black rice seed in elderberry extracts and pantothenic acid.
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Stretching and Balance Exercises Can Avert Mental Decline
To protect against memory loss, simple stretching and balance exercises work as well as hard-driving aerobics, concludes a new study from Wake Forest University. The study enrolled 296 sedentary older adults with mild cognitive decline such as forgetting dates, keys and names. Those that performed simple stretching routines for 120 to 150 minutes per week experienced no memory decline in a year’s time, as measured by cognitive tests and brain scans that showed no shrinkage. These results matched the outcome of people that did moderate-intensity aerobic training on treadmills or stationary bikes four times a week, striving for about 30 to 40 minutes of a heightened heart rate. A control group of equally matched people that did not exercise did decline cognitively. The people that exercised were supervised by trainers at local YMCAs, which may have helped them stay motivated, say the researchers. MIA Studio/AdobeStock.com
Longevity Diet Involves Fasting, Too
After reviewing hundreds of studies on nutrition, diseases and longevity in laboratory animals and humans, the optimal diet for longevity has logo3in1/AdobeStock.com “lots of legumes, whole grains and vegetables; some fish; no red meat or processed meat and very low white meat; low sugar and refined grains; good levels of nuts and olive oil, and some dark chocolate,” reports University of Southern California gerontology professor Valter Longo. According to the literature review he and others authored for Cell, a day’s meals should ideally occur within a window of 11 to 12 hours, allowing for a daily period of fasting. A five-day fast or fast-mimicking diet every three to four months was also suggested to help reduce insulin resistance, blood pressure and other risk factors for those with increased disease risks.
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global briefs Google Downplays Flight Emissions
The world’s biggest search engine has taken a key driver of global warming out of the carbon calculator embedded in the company’s Google Flights search tool, making journeys appear to have much less impact on the environment than before. Dr. Ben Klewais/Unsplash.co,, Doug Parr, chief scientist of Greenpeace, says, “Google has airbrushed a huge chunk of the aviation industry’s climate impacts from its pages.”
With Google hosting nine out of every 10 online searches, this could have wide repercussions for people’s travel decisions. In July, the search engine decided to exclude all the global warming impacts of flying except CO2 following consultations with its industry partners.
Kit Brennan, a founder of Thrust Carbon, a UK company that helps businesses reduce the effect their travel has on the climate, fears consumers could come to believe that non-CO2 impacts on the climate are not relevant in the longer term, despite the science that contradicts this view. That would mean up to 1.5 percent of the warming caused by human activity would be ignored, and the pressure on airlines to reduce their emissions would be cut accordingly. Some experts say Google’s calculations now represent just over half of the real impact of flights on the climate.
Plastic Recycling Hoax Revealed
According to a new report (Tinyurl.com/Chemical Recycling) from the nonprofit Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), 20 states have passed bills to exempt tanvi sharma/Unsplash.co,, chemical recycling facilities from waste management requirements, despite significant evidence that most facilities actually incinerate the plastic they receive.
The petrochemical industry, as represented by the American Chemistry Council, has been lobbying for state-level legislation to promote “chemical recycling”, a process that critics say is recycling in name only. Their goal is to reclassify chemical recycling as a manufacturing process, rather than waste disposal, with more lenient regulations concerning pollution and hazardous waste.
GAIA Policy and Research Coordinator and author of the report Tok Oyewole says, “These facilities are in actuality waste-to-toxic-oil plants, processing plastic to turn it into a subpar and polluting fuel.” The report calls for federal regulation to crack down on the plastic industry’s misinformation and affirm chemical recycling’s status as a waste management process.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering whether chemical recycling should be regulated under Section 129 of the Clean Air Act, which would define chemical recycling processes as incineration, potentially short-circuiting the petrochemical industry’s state legislative strategy, although Oyewole says it’s unclear whether the agency’s determination would override existing state legislation.
Concrete Made with Rubber Refuse
Concrete consists of water, cement and an aggregate such as sand or gravel. The aggregate has to be mined from the ground, and is now in short supply in many parts of the world, while discarded tires can be partially recycled, but are often burned or relegated to landfills.
Attempts to replace some of the aggregate used in concrete with crumbled, used tires has been stymied by a bonding problem because pores in the rubber fill with water when the concrete is first mixed, and become empty holes as the water evaporates and the concrete sets.
As reported in the journal Resources, Conservation & Recycling, scientists at Australia’s RMIT University have produced good-quality concrete in which all of the aggregate has been replaced with tire particles. They started with wet concrete in which all the aggregate is comprised of tire particles, then placed it in special steel molds as it set to place pressure on the concrete, compressing the particles and the pores within.
Once the concrete dried and set, the cement had bonded much better to the tire particles. When compared to previous 100-percent tire-aggregate concrete produced by conventional means, the preloaded concrete exhibited 97 percent, 59 percent and 20 percent increases in compressive, flexural and tensile strength, respectively.
