She wanted to buy one of those devices because they really helped her but the cost was upwards of 1500€, this would probably be within range for her, assuming it works the same way?
Maybe you can tell him that and also tell him that I am quite interested in the device to check if it can reduce my heart palpitations!
Bio and neurofeedback devices are going to be an interesting space the next 10 years.
I don't see "ZenBud" or "NeurGear" in the EUDAMED database.
An ultrasonic device delivering energy to human tissue would be a class 2a or 2b active medical device under MDR.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitization_a...
And I am well aware of the placebo effect.
But just because something is not provable or falsifiable under current scientific knowledge, it does not mean it is neccesarily quackery, there's a Venn diagram there where some things may be effective.
Automatically discarding something that even occasionally gets results, because it doesn't fit current "knowledge" is the height of arrogance.
Do you mean unproven instead of "not provable or falsifiable"?
Something not being falsifiable would mean that we can't detect if it's doing anything even if we tried, which doesn't bode well for its effectiveness.
EMDR has been characterized as pseudoscience, because the underlying theory and primary therapeutic mechanism are unfalsifiable and non-scientific. EMDR's founder and other practitioners have used untestable hypotheses to explain studies which show no effect.[55] The results of the therapy are non-specific, especially if directed eye movements are irrelevant to the results. When these movements are removed, what remains is a broadly therapeutic interaction and deceptive marketing.[52][56] According to neurologist Steven Novella:
[T]he false specificity of these treatments is a massive clinical distraction. Time and effort are wasted clinically in studying, perfecting, and using these methods, rather than focusing on the components of the interaction that actually work.[57]Underlying theory doesn't matter much. Remember that we don't even know the mechanism of action of acetaminophen.
see e.g. Psychological interventions for adult posttraumatic stress disorder: A systematic review of published meta-analyses (2025) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2025.103017
State of the science: Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy (2024) https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.23012
I was dealing with the latter.
I saw someone who worked in the same practice for the EMDR sessions, but did not have the same depth of relationship with the EMDR practitioner, so maybe that was the issue.
I should mention that what ultimately changed the game for me in a major way was Ketamine assisted therapy as a supplement to my regular talk therapy.
After almost 10 years of weekly talk sessions, three Ketamine infusions was like jumping forward another 10 years in terms of processing/integration.
The idea to "try it at home" from some YouTube videos is absurd, unfortunately. It may do you good, OK, but it has nothing to do with real EMDR used in a therapeutic setting.
The results are very promising, but it's sure taking its time getting approved.
What’s interesting about the origins of the technique is that the guy thought of the possibility that adults learn to suppress visible trauma reactions - uncontrolled shaking, etc - whereas children and animals wouldn’t, and for whatever reason they would also be able to return to normal more quickly. He wondered if maybe that there was a tangible benefit to the shaking itself, in that it could help perturb out of the traumatized state itself.
Even if it's 100% placebo, if it's not harmful, and it works for a person, then it works. But, determining if it's not harmful should be a priority. I found this person saying it made their life worse, for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD_NSCommunity/comments/ungaew/t...
If the disordered person's behavior adapts to "social norms" the diagnosis no longer applies.
The reason for that is that the "disorder" part of it is a requirement that it get in the way of normal living. You can have anxiety but if you take a deep breath and you can overcome it, it's not a disorder. If that doesn't help or even if you just haven't tried it, it's a disorder.
I guess the depth of the relationship might also ramp the disorder.
These days they call hobbies (like drawing) a "distraction" or go as far as call it an addiction. They are so out of touch with the literature and science with regarding to psychiatry, it is wild.
On the TRE subreddit [0], people report being able to tremor at will once they have enough experience with the technique.
Not trying to be pedantic, just clarifying that it is very accessible! I've personally been experimenting with it and find it to be helpful.
For example, basically deep belly breathing reduces stress supposedly through VNS: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6189422/. Yoga, yes, but also even popular and known in some military and police cultures where I've seen it labeled "tactical breathing" as a proven way to lower stress responses like heart rates on command. There seems to be growing evidence around some of these responses being real and reproducible.
FWIW, I've personally observed this working in my family with a licensed therapist as a family member was able to develop and rely on belly breathing to interrupt the onset of panic attacks. There's a lot of talk - if not reproducible science yet - about the possibilities of positively outcomes through so much connected to the vagal nerve.
At something more of a stretch, the same pro-VNS therapist posited to me that even swallowing is a way to engage in VNS, and thus might have a connection to eating disorders. Sure enough, maybe there is emerging evidence: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8027699/
Emerging therapies seem to always get a sideways glance from the medical industry which loves its double-blind derived protocols, so I've started to be more receptive to being part of the vanguard in experimentation when I or someone I love is acutely suffering and it doesn't have a known protocol to alleviate it. An example of that reluctance in PTSD, of course, is the controversial psychedelic therapies: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38284341/. Sometimes these treatments just need time, and if they're reproducible, they grow in popularity.
As someone with a trauma background who never learned to suppress this shaking, I am very skeptical of that idea. I'm middle aged by now and still have severe social anxiety problems in certain moments. My body will still shake when this process gets triggered off.
There's an obsession with erasing the past and not digesting it. The subconscious wants reconciliation, and it will emerge over and over, that's what PTSD is. Lobotomizing someone is certainly one way of reconciling it. The only way out is through imho, that you are forever changed and saw the face of mankind, and your subconscious will not accept any cheap reconciliation for the most part.
"Just zap it", I sense the subconscious will not let you get away with that. You are custodian of the trauma.
you can know something is bad and act accordingly without having a disordered and painful relationship with it
Most people will have no capacity to feel what you feel about it. You have the gift of feeling what is necessary to feel about that event. It's precious, and it needs to be nurtured. My utter contempt and sorrow for what I feel about certain things belongs in the world, as best as I can hold and steer it.
No one can feel your pain, and if you zap it, then not even you can feel it. It's unloving to yourself and your experience.
I think these treatments are better understood as methods to encourage one's mind and body to reprocess some experience so that it is "merely" a terrible thing that happened so they can live a stabler, more balanced, more normal life.
It kind of reminds me of Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind. You cannot just erase something. Drugs effectively erase the bad feelings, but they don't last. Okay, so such a treatment being discussed is, I suppose, an everlasting solution. Why would I be against this? Because you cease being you in your entirety (which includes your trauma).
It's not an easy sell by any measure, especially for those who just go "well fuck that, I can erase this with some cocaine right now". Erasing it is a solution, for sure, but it's not a free solution. Something is lost in the process (you). Understanding that, stay with me here, that it's beautiful is part of it, that you have a beautiful part of you forever. It's completely didactic, you have to teach the person that they went through something and are PRETTIER in their surviving of it. Then it stops being traumatic.
If we zap them, we take away the pretty. If I zap you, and then say lets talk about it, and you say "well I don't feel any which way about it anymore", then it's lost. It's gone. So something is lost in the process. So yeah, this is exactly what is told to the most beaten down people in life.
I wouldn't zap the mustard seed.
Even the sensationalist headline talks "merely" about "erasing" PTSD: the stress disorder -- NOT the memories.
Until full processing and integration (which can take years, decades!), traumatic memories are LIVE and unprocessed memories; they are re-experienced as if it was happening NOW; again and again (see e.g.: fMRI studies show that they activate brain regions responsible to process the present, in stark contrast to normal memory recall). This is not comparable to "being reminded about a past event and having strong feelings about it". That is the goal. Not erasure as if nothing ever happened.
You're tilting at windmills, mon frere, by exaggerating egregiously.
> You are custodian of the trauma.
True, and beautiful, but debilitating trauma that destroys its vessel is not delivered to the future that would learn from it.
It’s like having something in your mouth. It doesn’t go away. PTSD therapy is not about zapping the object to make it vanish. It’s about gaining the possibility to chew and swallow it.
PaulHoule•1d ago
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK562942/