Summary
Dr. Georgine Nanos, founder of Kind Health Group in Encinitas, California, discusses her work with accelerated TMS for treating veterans and service members with treatment-resistant depression and anxiety. She explains how TMS uses magnetic field energy to affect the brain's salience network, breaking deep negative loops that form in anxiety and depression. Nanos details the evolution from traditional 40-day protocols to the accelerated Stanford/SAINT protocol that condenses treatment into four to five days. She emphasizes the importance of combining TMS with therapy for best results and discusses the particular benefits for military populations who may be reluctant to take psychiatric medications.
Key Points
- TMS uses magnetic field energy delivered through the skull to affect the brain's salience network where depression and anxiety centers reside
- Traditional TMS requires 40 consecutive daily sessions, which is a major barrier to mainstream adoption
- The accelerated Stanford/SAINT protocol condenses treatment into four to five days with dramatically improved efficacy
- Combining TMS with psychotherapy significantly augments treatment response
- TMS is particularly appealing to military populations who resist psychiatric medication
- The treatment addresses pathologic anxiety and depression by breaking deep negative neural loops
- TMS is distinct from electroconvulsive therapy and does not require anesthesia or cause seizures
Key Moments
How TMS affects the brain's salience network
Dr. Nanos explains how TMS delivers magnetic pulses into the brain to affect the salience network where depression and anxiety reside, breaking the deep negative loops that become pathologic over time.
"TMS uses magnetic field energy applied to the head and delivers deep pulses into the brain to affect our salience network where our depression and anxiety centers tend to live within our brain."
Evolution from 40-day to accelerated SAINT protocol
Dr. Nanos describes how the Stanford-developed accelerated protocol condenses the traditional 40-day treatment course into just four to five days, making TMS far more practical and effective.
"And it was actually much more effective. And that became known as the accelerated or Stanford or SAINT protocol. They're all the same thing, essentially. And that condenses the treatment into, instead of doing it over 40 days, you're doing it over four to five days."
TMS combined with therapy for military populations
Dr. Nanos discusses how TMS combined with therapy produces the best outcomes and is particularly well-suited for military populations resistant to taking psychiatric medications.
"We find that doing that also in conjunction with working with therapists definitely augments that response."
