It has been almost a year since I decided to write up my story on how I came to be injured by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). In all honesty, at that time I was convinced that my injury was some sort of mystery that I would never solve. I could have never known how much I would be able to learn on my own, just having the willingness to search for answers.
In the past year I have spoken to approximately a hundred people injured by TMS, countless doctors, and quite a few medical researchers and scientists. What I was able to learn and put together about the nature of TMS injury and the culture surrounding it yields an incredible insight into the treatment itself and into the nature of the medical model in its current form.
This article is devoted to the analysis of the harm currently being caused by TMS. It is not intended to provide a balanced view of the therapy or its practice.
The Injury
First, I consider it important to identify the very clear set of symptoms that are emerging in the group of people harmed by TMS. After speaking with and reading the testimony of hundreds of people, the most common symptoms are:
- Significantly worsening depression and anxiety (which may also be newly “treatment-resistant”)
- Cognitive impairment, such as short-term memory or functional memory loss and decreased ability to multitask
- Irritability
- Fatigue
- Panic attacks
- Increased suicidal ideation
- Chronic headaches
- Loss of balance
- Dizziness
Almost every person I’ve spoken with experienced at least one of these, if not all of them.
Additional symptoms that are somewhat less common include:
- Tinnitus
- Hearing loss
- Eye injury
- Migraines
- Different forms of tachycardia
- Seizures and epilepsy
- Blood pressure problems
- Speech problems
- Muscle pain/weakness/fasciculations/cramping/tightness
- Insomnia
- Dissociation
- Environmental sensitivities to temperature, light, smell, and sound
- Sensitivity to medications and supplements
Psychosis has also been observed in a few rare cases, but at least half of those specifically involve overuse of TMS (as described in this article).
It also became obvious to me that these symptoms manifest themselves in a very specific way. For instance, the worsening anxiety and/or depression is unrelenting and does not respond to treatment. As an example, before my TMS injury, when I was extremely anxious or depressed I would run longer and start eating really well, and this would always improve my symptoms to some degree. Typically, the harder I worked out, the better I felt, and the better I ate, the better I felt.
But after TMS, when I became depressed and anxious, exercise and eating did not help. I immediately began working out harder and harder and put myself on a stricter diet, which became stricter because I never got any relief from my symptoms. Every day I woke up feeling the same intense depths of despair, and I would become very anxious during the day. If I tried to meditate or run or use the CBT methods I had developed in the past, none of them made ANY difference at all. I found this to be remarkable and deeply disconcerting, which only compounded my situation.
Another characteristic of my TMS injury was that instead of improving in the months following TMS, I actually got worse. Immediately after TMS, I did not feel nearly as bad as I began to feel as time went on. Immediately after TMS, I still had my depression and anxiety, and I may have even felt slightly better due to the placebo effect and the hope that it was helping me.
However, about a month after TMS, I felt my symptoms were slowly intensifying until, about three months after TMS, they had become far more severe. The level of depression I felt was at least ten times what it was before. Also, instead of having anxiety occasionally bother me, I now had it all day, and panic attacks that I had only experienced once or twice in my whole life became a daily occurrence.
I concluded that this is what led to the subsequent increased, intense suicidal ideation that I experienced, which is what most others have mentioned to me when discussing their TMS injury as well. When you are extremely depressed and frequently panicking, suicidal ideation naturally follows; you come to believe you will never get any relief from the suffering and you begin to doubt if you can live with it.
To me, this is a normal human response to the trauma that TMS causes in the brain and on the nervous system. If we take a step back here and look at how these symptoms are manifesting, we can see this is “delayed onset.” New symptoms are continually manifesting after the initial injury has occurred.
This happens with most of the other symptoms as well. I developed constant muscle fasciculations in my legs about three to six months after TMS. These were part of a larger muscular issue that began developing a few months after treatment: cramps, burning, numbness, and tingling in my legs, as well as sciatica. The symptoms slowly evolved over that period into what I am experiencing at present.
TMS appears to create a dysregulation of electrolytes in the body. I believe it to be sodium- ion channelopathy acquired from the electrical injury. While this may be controversial, it is my suspicion that it is what is causing the muscle spasms along with the pain, numbness, weakness, and tingling. While those symptoms are very common, we are seeing also some less common symptoms that appear to be a more severe form of this condition.
For instance, I am aware of people who have had episodes of syncope from hyponatremia after drinking too much water due to excess thirst or at the direction of their physicians because of muscle cramping. They have also experienced trouble breathing.
Before TMS, I would occasionally become dehydrated after paying too little attention to my water intake for a week or two. Now, if I drink less than 80 oz of water in a day, I will experience serious dehydration, intense muscle cramping, and increased cognitive impairment the following day.
Additionally, it appears that people are experiencing more instances of tinnitus when they had hearing protection properly in place for the duration of the TMS treatments than those that did not have hearing protection at the time of injury. This seems to suggest that the tinnitus is being caused by damage to the auditory cortex and not from external sounds. In fact, TMS treatment did not seem excessively loud to me or to others, although I do know that loud, repetitive noises can cause hearing loss. The auditory cortex of the brain is located close to the typical treatment site in TMS.
As I began to experience these symptoms and struggle to understand the reason, I began to think about similarities with each person I was speaking to. They all told me the details of their experience with TMS and, typically, any theories they had about medical injury—specifically (and most often) psychiatric injury.
This led me to an interesting discovery. I began reading about the injuries that occurred with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). My mind was almost instantly blown. I had been searching for a very long time to find some sort of cohesive explanation, a similarity to another type of injury or pattern that would give me some insight into what had happened to me. What I saw with ECT was that the types of injuries, the symptomatology, and the general fallout were very similar—almost exact.
Both injuries showed signs of traumatic/chronic brain injury, cognitive impairment, and neuromuscular and central nervous system (CNS) problems/agitation. I began searching the literature and found a community that was well-read in the evidence of the damage caused by ECT and the nature of diffuse electrical injury.
The Evidence
I realized it is important to understand not just the physiology of the damage caused by the injury, but also the kind of recovery people injured by TMS might expect.
The first important piece I read was an article by Jennifer Berg and Michael Morse. It is incredibly important because it describes both the diffuse electrical injury symptomatology and the difficulty some doctors have in addressing it because of the subjectivity of the symptoms. It describes the reasons for delayed onset of symptoms and damage, the psychological and physiological symptoms, and why the injury so rarely shows up on imaging and other diagnostics.
In summation, this article validates the theory of electrical injury and the difficulty doctors have in verifying it. It is extremely important to point out that the problems with diagnosing and treating this injury are not the lack of evidence of injury but that doctors simply are not diligent enough in seeking the right conclusions to diagnose the injury.
The next important step is tying this electrical shock injury to TMS injury. You may think that since TMS does not use direct electrical current it is not shocking the brain or inducing electrical current into the brain, but that is not correct.
In fact, according to the manufacturer’s websites, you will typically find a statement that TMS is not the same as ECT. While this is true, it does not mean that TMS does not shock the brain and cause the same type of electrical trauma that ECT does. I think the fact that manufacturers overtly deny being an ECT treatment is very telling. TMS is obviously not ECT, just as it is obviously not an SSRI or talk therapy treatment. But unlike those, it does induce electricity into the brain.
I think the direct statement of difference is to try and diffuse an inherent connection people may make about having their brains shocked, the associated discomfort, and obvious risks of such a treatment. TMS treatment is considered “benign” because it is less invasive (and less dramatic), but it is not.
Expert evidence presented in recent ECT litigation by Kenneth Castleman demonstrates that ECT causes damage by both heat and electroporation (that is, tearing holes in individual cell membranes so that they fail and cause cell death). Both heat and electroporation are generated by rapidly alternating electrical fields and are not exclusive to the physical manifestation of the electrical current itself. With TMS, electrical current is still being generated inside the skull by means of electromagnetic induction, as well.
Therefore, the same damage and impact on the brain is being exerted by the electromagnetic coil used in TMS. If you Google how TMS works, you will get the same answer: It works by generating rapidly alternating electrical fields, which we now know generate both heat and electroporation inside the human skull. In this way it is similar to ECT, simply without the direct electrical current applied to the temples. One could even say it is an evolution of ECT.
As if these similarities with ECT were not enough, we learn something else from the Castleman document: ECT practitioners go through a process of initially determining a patient’s seizure threshold. Clinicians have a testing session where they shock their patients with varying levels of electrical current to see what level of current is required to induce a seizure in the patient. After they have this data, they produce a seizure at a current somewhere between one and a half times to 12 times the seizure threshold.
In TMS, every patient is given an initial session where the clinician measures or maps the patient’s “motor threshold.” The patient is hooked up to the TMS machine and the clinician activates the machine and directs it at different parts of the brain to see if the patient’s hand twitches or not. To my knowledge, this is done so that the treatment will not induce a seizure.
However, the clinician has to specifically manipulate the machine to avoid inducing a seizure the way ECT does. This is further evidence that TMS is generating an electrical current inside the brain in a strikingly similar manner to ECT, and that it uses a similar methodology to measure its effects on a patient.
Some Science
To understand the dangers of TMS, we need to understand the basics of the energy it uses. Electromagnetic waves such as the ones created by TMS are made up of two simultaneous types of energy: magnetic and electric—hence the term electromagnetic wave or field.
TMS devices generate a minimum of a 1 to 1.5 tesla electromagnetic field. The electrical component of the field generated, based on this energy conversion table, is up to 797,700 to 1,196,550 milliamperes (mA) per square millimeter. In a study by Leo Alexander and Hans Löwenbach on specific damage done by ECT, they found that just 20 mA per square millimeter of brain tissue would cause irreversible damage to the tissue. TMS is far beyond the threshold established by the study.
The magnetic component of the field generates up to 10,000 to 15,000 gauss. The earth naturally generates a magnetic field of about .25 to .65 gauss, and the generally accepted safe occupational levels of gauss are generally set at 5 to 10 gauss. That means TMS could be generating anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 times the amount of magnetic energy that is generally considered safe.
While electromagnetic fields do dissipate the further you are away from them, in TMS the coil is often held just millimeters away from the patient’s skull. This is causing damage to patients’ brains, and while the brain is a resilient organ, we cannot expect it to mitigate damage from that amount of force. The question is not why people are harmed by TMS but, rather, how is it that some are not harmed by TMS.
Those Who Were Not Harmed
I have spoken to quite a few people who were not harmed, but claim they were helped by TMS therapy. One such person told me they felt better after TMS treatment and were not harmed in any way.
When I asked further questions about how long they felt good and if they still felt better today, they replied that the positive effect had lasted for a few months after their last treatment, but they slowly reverted back to their previous state. They also told me they were currently battling some significant depression and a bit of anxiety. That was very interesting but, sadly, not a surprise.
The surprise came next, when I asked if they had any suspicion of being harmed by TMS. They said they did not feel they had been harmed in any way. I then asked if they were sure and I listed all of the aforementioned symptoms associated with TMS and electrical injury. This is where things became very interesting: A few months after TMS, this person had a severe and long-lasting bout of sciatica with no apparent physiological cause. That is, this person had never had sciatica before and they found no explanation for the occurrence.
I asked some probing questions about how the sciatica could have come on and they simply had no explanation. This opened up a discussion about the sensations experienced during TMS, particularly the “dip” in which the patient becomes more depressed during TMS and then has to stick with treatment in order to come out of the dip. This person had experienced such a dip and had concerns about their health during treatment. They expressed a tremendous amount of concern and emotional discomfort in association with their treatment when speaking about it with me as well.
Coming away from this interview, both of us felt that maybe TMS was not as beneficial as they had originally thought. In fact, the conversation raised a few new concerns. This depressive dip that occurs during TMS could be a neurological response to acute brain trauma. Furthermore, ignoring that dip causes so much trauma within the brain that the patient begins to experience anosognosia—becoming unaware of their condition because they are in a kind of shock and no longer possess the faculties to properly understand their condition.
I experienced this same thing. I was having so much cognitive dysfunction I could no longer recognize the disoriented state TMS had induced in me. Additionally, I think the delayed onset of symptoms is due to a similar phenomenon. The nervous system is in a dysfunctional state for several months after the injury caused by TMS.
When it starts to recover, it now has injuries and impairments to its ability to function, and we see the long-term symptoms begin to emerge—such as the sciatica in this case. In other cases, such as mine, we see a more severe set of symptoms, such as cognitive impairment and neuromuscular issues. It is also possible that cognitive impairment accounts for some of the indifference to and lack of reporting of serious side effects. Physicians are often well aware of this possibility and choose to ignore it in many cases.
For those who follow TMS testimony closely, a typical objection to the existence of injuries is “What about all the people it has helped?” The truth of the matter is that we see the same thing with ECT. People claim real relief from the treatment, and it does have some amount of temporary efficacy.
This may occur because electricity always follows the path of least resistance. Everyone’s brain physiology and the variables involved in the treatment are different. Also, the brain is made up of at least seventy percent water, so the electrical current and fields generated inside the brain will follow a different path every time. This means that while one treatment could prove harmless, the next one could have devastating effects.
We see the same variability with lightning strikes. While one person can walk away perfectly fine, the next will be killed instantly or have severe neurological problems as we see in TMS or ECT. There is actually a very interesting article on its effects on a group of children that also corresponds to what we see in ECT and TMS.
Another trend I am now seeing is that, as with ECT, people who were at first successful with TMS are going back for subsequent treatments when the benefits wear off. They will have a relapse of symptoms and then become injured in subsequent treatments. I fear patients undergoing TMS will be pulled into the same debilitating loop as those given ECT.
The initial treatment may prove beneficial, but its efficacy will fade, as the therapeutic effect seems to be simply some kind of endocrine response to the trauma itself. Traumatic injury causes the body to release hormones that promote healing and reduce pain. But subsequent TMS treatments will lead to additional sensitization of the CNS to electrical injury, inevitably causing serious, life-altering harm to the patient.
The Clinics
As if all the aforementioned problems with TMS were not enough, I have seen another pattern emerge from the people I have spoken with. Many of the clinics administering TMS know very little about the treatment, the science of its effects, and even less about the brain, CNS, and human body. The staff is made up of trained technicians, not educated scientists.
The person who administered my treatments was newly trained and had no other medical training or knowledge. Their only knowledge of TMS was given to them by the manufacturer’s training personnel shortly before my visit. I did not learn of this until well after my treatments had started.
Furthermore, during my treatments, the intensity of the machine was increased, creating a more intense feeling of drunkenness, lightheadedness, and impairment. When I described this to my technician and her manager, they both told me that they had to increase the intensity to reach the therapeutic effect. At this point, I was so desperate to make it work, I agreed. They did not know why, but they had been taught to do this.
Day after day, I made the same complaint, and they said it was “normal.” When I pressed them about it, they specifically told me that the manufacturer instructed them in training to turn up the intensity of the treatment regardless of patient complaints. The manufacturer told them to ignore patient complaints and turn up the intensity because there was “no chance of harm” during the process.
At this point, given all I have learned, experienced, and witnessed about TMS, I would disagree with that. It is bad enough that this happened to me, but worse knowing that those who came after me into that TMS clinic have experienced the same thing. I heard the same story from people injured by TMS all over the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore—virtually all over the world.
Another disturbing pattern I identified was the use of TMS for off-label use. One gentleman I spoke with described severe anxiety, insomnia, and several other life-altering problems after just one treatment. He could no longer work. He told me he was administered TMS for Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).
I was in disbelief. I said, “Do you have any history of mental health issues?” He said, “No, never.” He had a very severe reaction to TMS; he could barely stand still and his voice was racing and disjointed—obviously in rough condition. In his case, the treatment was much worse than the disease.
This was not the only such story I heard. People have described TMS being used to treat their addiction problems, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, pain, or simply “to improve brain function” as well. The cases of Alzheimer’s and dementia are particularly troubling because these patients were already suffering from cognitive impairment. We risk making things much worse for patients who may not possess the awareness or ability to report further harms.
I have also heard from many people that they had relatively minor anxiety or depression and were asked by the office staff to exaggerate their responses to the PHQ-9 questionnaire so that TMS would be approved by insurance. People who go in for TMS are usually desperate for help and have been convinced that this is a no-risk miracle cure. This is a massive contributor to both these clinics’ bank accounts and to inappropriate levels of risk and harm to their patients.
The Recovery
All of this has a huge impact on a person’s physical and emotional health for many reasons. So, what happens when they go to a doctor for help with the harm done? Typically, and almost exclusively, the patient is invalidated, with doctors denying the possibility of any harm having been done to them from this treatment. This is simply because these experiences are not listed as a side effect in the common literature or on the manufacturer’s website.
This is a fierce, fierce tragedy. Not only is someone harmed seriously despite being told they wouldn’t be, but now all the physicians they see deny the harm and sometimes even try to add an additional mental illness to their diagnosis simply because they were harmed by TMS.
It does not help that there is so little knowledge out there about electrical injuries. Once I learned that the injury is electrical in nature, I asked my doctors about it, but they had no insight nor any inclination to try to treat that type of injury, which is “outside their specialty.”
Interestingly enough, after I had queried all the usual medical resources, I called a large and reputable electrical injury rehabilitation institute and described my injury to them without using the word TMS. Instead, I told them that I had my head next to a 1 to 1.5 tesla electromagnetic coil for 20 minutes a day for two months—after which they replied that they do commonly treat those types of injuries and they gave me the rundown on what they did and how much it would cost, which would not be covered by my insurance.
I found this to be very interesting. Once the buzzword “TMS” was removed from the situation, physicians told me several times, and in subsequent follow-up emails, that this is indeed an injury they could attempt to rehabilitate me from.
As for the injury itself, the next problematic point is that it is very difficult to show brain injuries diagnostically. TMS is no different. Electroporation affects each cell individually as it expands and contracts the cell walls; therefore, each cell has its tipping point where it cannot recover its form and fails altogether, causing cell death. That, combined with the fact that the current and electromagnetic fields being generated fluctuate based on the conductivity of the matter they are interacting with, means there is no way to predict which cells will be affected and which will not.
So, what we have is microscopic damage taking place throughout different, very small, particular areas of the brain which will not show on any kind of imaging test like an MRI, CT, or PET scan. I had several myself and have talked to countless others that have had the same, and so far we cannot see, nor have our technicians’ reports shown, any damage.
This makes it that much harder for doctors to believe their patients—although they do not have any reason to disbelieve them, either. It is very important to be aware that these scans also do not show damage caused by other means—even those which are now well-established—such as the brain-damaging effects of psychiatric medications or chronic traumatic encephalopathy (brain damage caused by repetitive head injuries, typically in professional sports players).
These diagnostic techniques simply do not work as well in this area, even though there is very clearly significant damage to the brain’s function. In order for patients harmed by TMS to even begin to hope to recover, generally speaking, physicians need to start by acknowledging the injury. This is unlikely, however, due to the professional and financial pressure they are under to defend their highly profitable industry.
I do believe recovery is possible. Because of the way TMS injures the CNS, I believe that CNS sensitization is the primary issue to recover from. When our systems are overwhelmed enough or we come into contact with stimuli to which we are particularly sensitive, we experience panic attacks or sometimes other catastrophic symptoms like tachycardia, syncope, or seizures. On top of this our general sensitivity to anxiety and depression seems to be heightened.
So far, the best approach I have found is to provide as much of a neutral environment for the CNS to recover as possible. This means, psychologically, as little stress and negativity as possible. This will give the CNS a safe space to repair itself and use whatever bandwidth it has freed up for that. I have also found diet to be essential: I really only eat organic food with no preservatives. Essentially, I eat like our ancestors did: primarily organic and free-range vegetables, fruit, fish, and poultry.
Healthy activity is incredibly important to keep our bodies functioning optimally. I shoot for at least 45 minutes of cardio per day. For some people, that is not realistic and they have to start small—there is nothing wrong with that and it is actually the right move. Just keep active and engaged in your physical environment in ways that are not overly strenuous.
If we keep ourselves in a stimuli-neutral environment we can then introduce things that will help the brain recover cognitively as well. Playing games, listening to positive music, doing puzzles of all different kinds (like Legos, crosswords, etc.), and engaging in artwork to stimulate brain activity and create new neural networks that can build around our injuries and compensate for our losses.
It is key to focus on experiences you see as positive. Positive experiences are the building blocks of healthy brain activity and healing. This approach is the long-haul approach and with time, I think real recovery is possible and there is very little risk involved.
Recovering from injury caused by TMS demands respect and a healthy attitude toward healing just like all mental health challenges do. We cannot expect to solve these problems with more medications and therapies that have significant risks just so we can live the unhealthy lives that may be expected of us. It is time to focus on being human again, accepting and embracing the reality that comes with that, with all of our hearts and minds.
Lastly, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Sarah Price Hancock who has offered her indispensable brilliance in my endeavors to understand my injury and everything that comes with it.
Thanks James. Superb, totally awesome!
I applaud any and every article that might save even one person from these draconian snake oil salesmen. It is so much worse than any snake oil ever sold.
It’s sad that the public no longer understands what real science is and I’m horrified that the new kids on the block are going into “science” with so much garbage sold as “science”. These are the kids that will be posing as “researchers”, “doctors” “treatment providers”.
In reality, everyone who thinks they need a shrink should go to a neurologist. After all, it’s supposed to be brain related.
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Thought you might like this one Sam, glad to hear it.
It was very interesting, the progression of all this. At the beginning I did believe in the legitimacy of everything you mentioned although I had some skepticism. Then, i had to actually go through it all and learn more and more at every step until i came to the same conclusions.
Another thing I see quite a bit is that these problems we identify as mental health issues are very often undiscovered physiological health problems Dr’s don’t take the time to understand. So the lack of evidence for real mental illness becomes even bigger. We have these undiagnosed or ineffectively treated physical issues and then of course normal reactions to human to stress and trauma that we mislabel and vilify. It all makes what is left a very thin area of the population, certainly nowhere near 1 in 4, and, we mishandle that. I wonder what would happen if we cut through all the rubbish and focused all our efforts on helping that small percentage, how well we could do. Wishful thinking maybe, lol.
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I think anyone that sees any professional needs to do so with a lawyer. It might be worth to meet a lawyer for ones appt and drop the 500 bucks.
You might only need one appt 🙂
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lol, That would be nice. I will see what I can do. So far, as a whole, my interactions with lawyers have not met even my low expectations.
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Can we start a class action lawsuit.
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We can technically speaking we meet all the criteria and the evidence is there both experiential from victims and scientifically.
However the problem lies with the will, it is a very complex and tedious endeavor legally. Also, after talking to what is around a hundred different lawyers, most of them are what appear to be the best in the country, none of them have the will or ethics to represent us yet. I was very surprised to find that was in desperately short supply.
While myself and others who are in incredible pain and suffer a severe lack of energy and cognitive ability are entirely willing and able to get this done, a very large population of American injury lawyers could not say the same even though they appear perfectly able. I could elaborate for a very very long time but that speaks enough to why its not being done.
We cannot find the legal help we need although virtually all the pieces are in place… which has taken a tremendous amount of energy and effort to put into place and of which no lawyer made any effort at all to help with.
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Hi James….I’m sorry to hear this dead-end, but I had a thought two months back when I encountered the same blow offs from 4 attorneys. We all file claims in small claims court for expenses to get our lives back on track. That is what I plan to do in RI. Even if folks don’t have receipts, just file the suit. Having it before the public and a neutral third party is the worst nightmare of these medical mofos excuse my expression. Happy to share my letter and strategy. Cheers. Alicia Condon (RI) [email protected]
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Howdy Alicia,
I hope you are well. Brilliant idea, I will circulate it. I know judges I have spoken to have been very interested in what’s happened and even proactively seems to ask me questions about it and make recommendations. I think that’s a great way to go about it.
Thank you for your help as always.
Cheers – James
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Hi James, I ran into this article by pure chance but I thought I would give you my two cents as someone who is a TMS researcher at an R1 institution. I use TMS as a tool to study the causal role of certain parts of cortex (but thats neither here nor there). I am curious as to the treatment you received (I am not familiar with the clinical use of TMS though I know its commonly used to treat depression as a last resort). Do you happen to know what coil (did it look like an 8), pulsing pattern, and or area was stimulated? Did you have to go through an MRI session to localize the anatomical area?
I am not here to dispute whether TMS can do long-term damage to cortex (that would depend on many factors–though I highly suspect that it wont–provided the people administering the treatment are well trained). I am mostly here to help, with any lingering questions you might have about TMS. I see you did your research as to the strength of the magnetic field (1-1.5T), to put things into perspective the average MRI scanner (also a magnet) has a strength from 3-7T and is deemed safe. BUT, beyond the strength of the magnetic field which is not the issue here. I can tell you that TMS is absolutely not frying your brain, nor is it powerful enough to reach deep enough into cortex to do any serious damage. That being said, the intensity of stimulation is not as important as where you are stimulated. which is why I asked the questions I did. Anyway at this point im rambling on…please do contact me if you have any TMS related question. BTW if you’re worried TMS has done long term damage to brain tissue you could get an anatomical MRI done, that might ease some worries.
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Please. An MRI is rudimentary considering how vast the brain is. Do you think we are done knowing? We have all the tools to show what a brain does?
And why in the world should any person do their own research as to strengths etc? LOL
Besides, there is no research because they do not know the brain, the vast possibilities, and all “reported” research should be eyed with suspicion.
It is a rudimentary experiment and playing with someone’s brain. Period
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ant Rh – This is an interesting query to be sure.
I think its fair to say your skeptical of the potential harms of TMS which makes sense based on the picture you have of how the energy your using works in your research, which is troubling, but not just troubling in the context of this conversation but rather that it is a reflection of a much larger understanding in the medical community whether that is academic research, private research or practice.
The fact is that the harm being done is microscopic, if the damage could be readily seen on any MRI or an anatomical MRI these would be overt harms and likely well known, but they are not. I mention in my article the primary mechanism of harm is electroporation of the cell walls, which is an incredibly small evidence of harm so it should follow that unless we are doing microscopic observations or studies post mortem there is no current way to see the harm being done, and it certainly does not mean that harm is not being done. In fact evidence of neurological harm is quite obvious although it is not being documented in TMS studies, it is also not even being considered or looked for in TMS studies.
This is a simply known fact to those who are working with non ionizing radiation, and understand the biophysics of how these energy fields interact with the human body. The warnings are all there and it is well studied, however when we cross fields into medical science instead of physics, now no one understands these effects? That’s rather convenient. It really is not that hard for a medical researcher to speak to a physicist about the risks to the human body of dealing with these types of energy. It took me awhile to understand what was happening and what was not happening, but if I could figure it out, well it is absolutely and unequivocally unacceptable that professionals who are experimenting with and selling this type of technology be allowed to claim ignorance.
So the greater question is, here where you have evidence of harms that are not visible… will you continue your research? Will a doctor continue TMS even though they have direct evidence it is causing harm that is not easily detectable with imaging and diagnostics? Were you even trained on or educated on the fundamental physics you are using and the impacts on the human body? Because when I found the experts, the NASA scientists and researchers who have testified before congress about this energy and the impacts on the human body it was plain as day what was happening. One actually told me they were waiting for someone to show up with evidence of the harms of TMS, because they understand the theoretical potential of the harms from their work very well.
I have a friend who has electrical injury and she codes every time she attempts to get an MRI and can no longer get them. Tell me are CT scans safe? If we have the appropriate perspective we get the full picture. It is easy to say MRI’s are safe but they are not, virtually every doctor and researcher will tell you CT scans are considered safe, but they cause cancer. The over simplification of dealing with these types of energy is not helping anyone and in fact it is costing some people their lives. I now know three people who have died as a direct result of TMS injury.
I am genuinely grateful for your offer of help, as I am for all of them but tell me, who needs the most help here, me or you?
When we see things through the lens of truth we will be capable of genuinely helping each other out but until we have been liberated of our indoctrination we will continue to hurt each other whilst trying to help. I see it every day.
If you want to help, learn about the physics of what is happening here and what you are handling in your research. Take a look at how when and why these injuries are occurring and help to explain them in a way that people will understand and listen to. That would be sometime worthwhile. It may be helpful if you stop rationalizing away all the ways in which harm is not being done as the nature of TMS is invasive and it is something being done to another human being which does not need it to be done at all. Just because you are not observing harm does not mean it is not occurring. Did you catch the part of this article talking about the delayed nature of electrical injury? Are you following up with your research subjects? Do you think TMS researchers are following up and doing thorough cognitive assessments before and after treatments? Are they looking to assess mitochondrial function three months after TMS exposure? These are basic fundamental scientific questions for safety that aren’t even being considered or talked about.
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Removed for moderation.
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MRI with contrast – I am hearing reports that the contrast does not go away, and that it is found by techs in future MRI’s, but they cannot report it, because – well, it’s their job.
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JanCarol,
I found the same time. It seems as though some peoples systems process it out while others do not and others develop severe CNS agitation and injury from it not unlike some TMS symptomologies I have seen. It is really well documented and more common than I thought.
One particularly interesting thing I did end up learning with the help of a friend of mine is that Iron contrast instead of gadolinium(what they most commonly use now, that I think we are casually referring to here) is actually even more effective for MRI readings and it obviously handled and processed by the body much more naturally and effectively. It blew my mind especially when I started looking into it.
My doctor wanted to do a follow up MRI and I asked for iron contrast instead and they said sorry no one uses that anymore its too rare… I thought hmmm… Iron is more rare than Gadolinium… Interesting. Then I declined it entirely.
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Hi James,
I need some support and resources to help with my TMS experience. I am really struggling.
What is the best way to contact you.
Or [email protected]
Many Thanks,
Amanda
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So sorry to hear about that Amanda,
I just emailed you. Hopefully we can find some answers.
Hang in there.
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I tend to call it “emotional distress,” because when you call it “illness,” that puts it in the doctor’s wheelhouse. And really, truly, it is nothing to do with “mental,” it’s to do with trauma, childhood strategies for survival which no longer work, all those things that Dr. Breggin calls “problems of living.”
Try it out – emotional distress.
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To Sam & James Hall:
To Sam: Hi! Love your energy & support for fellow survivors! Always, always, always love to see your name!
To James Hall:
Thank you for this article. I am collecting articles about psychosurgery & neurosurgery for my husband who is staunchly Anti Psychiatry, but is not as well read as me about it (as I am not as well read as some other Titans on this site). He was unaware that psychosurgery/neurosurgery has continued unabated since the days of lobotomy.
(Just an aside: in the MIA article Kamala Harris’s ‘Mental Health Plan’ and Why it Still Matters, Kamala Harris is attempting to reclassify “mental illnesses” as neurological disorders! If Joe Biden does not finish his term for *any* reason, think of the YIKES factor there)
https://www.madinamerica.com/…/kamala-harris-mental-health-plan-why-it- still-matters/
My husband is a God (note there is a word meaning excessively fond of one’s wife: uxorious. But none meaning excessively fond of one’s husband???? So I will have to ply him with phrases until I can possibly invent a one word equivalent)
and has read *everything.*
O.K., not everything, obviously.
But most scholars in other fields cannot keep up with the Crimes of Psychiatry. He is an English Professor & keeps up with Science (as opposed to Scientism) & Tech for FUN. His teachers had to find someone to teach him Calculus in the 4th grade!
I am also collecting books for both of us to read about the Crimes of the Intelligence apparatus, the CIA, FBI, & NSA. The true history of their “dark arts,” as Glenn Greenwald would say.
It, unfortunately, VERY UNFORTUNATELY
does all intersect.
Next: have to go back to your other article & tackle the (whoa!) 160 comments on it. Saw your eating well, love of exercise, & outdoors descriptor. Love it! Something else we have in common. I have been studying & practicing energy work in one form or another for 34 years. Great to “meet” you : )
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snowyowl,
Thank you so much for taking the time out to read it. I have to agree that it does all seem to intersect somehow, or at least my gut is telling me that is true. The more we learn the clearer the picture seems to become.
Thanks for taking a look at my other article as well. The comments may be a bit of a beast but i do think they are an incredibly good read as well. Keep your eye open for the ramblings of Boans and myself, they do tend to drag on a bit, but its very interesting in my opinion.
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Thank you for bringing this issue to light James.
I’ve been experiencing TRD for the past few years, and had literally tried every medication out there with no results. Like you, I still fought everyday to go to work and provide for myself and my family despite feeling mentally and physically awful. Of course, all of my physical symptoms had been written off by the medical community as psychosomatic; once they see you’re on psychiatric medications, that’s the common reaction. My psychiatrist recommends TMS, not one, but THREE courses of 36 sessions. Three sessions into the third, I say this is ridiculous, I’m paying through the nose to see you and do these treatments, and I actually feel worse! I’m not doing it again! He’s saying it’s helping me; really, because I’ve never had such horrible cognitive dysfunction in my life! I’m exhausted all the time, My memory is gone, I have dysarthia, gait problems, vertigo, tremors, constantly dropping things, etc. Then he tells me, I’m being “non-adherent” to the treatment plan, and displaying “narcissistic traits”; because I’m challenging a treatment plan that is not working? I go to my PCP explaining my symptoms; he orders a head CT, which shows “cerebral atrophy inconsistent with patient’s age”. Off to the neurologist, MRIs with contrast, and lo and behold, multiple lesions in my brain and spinal column consistent with multiple sclerosis. Maybe if any of these idiots ever thought to listen to what I was saying in the first place, I could’ve gotten the proper treatment 5 years ago.
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Super common theme there with psychiatrists insisting they know how you feel better than you do yourself. Was the same for me.
“You’re suicidal.” ” No, I’m not.”
It’s gaslighting and mental rape.
Glad you got out of there and found someone who is a real doctor and foremost a decent human being.
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Wow Dun, Wow.
I am a little bit surprised at the request for 3 rounds of 36 treatments, that is the first I have seen that much of a recommendation outside of what i was told about from stories from vets. I am afraid that would be the similar to what we see in severe poly drugging. I am very glad you had the presence of mind to get out of there during the early sessions, we really do have to look out for ourselves, most often these clinicians will not. In this case they were probably looking forward to the 15k to 45k dollar payday.
And then to find out it was a real physiological problem, I cant tell you how many times that has occurred with others. There is very, very commonly a good explanation for the psychological symptoms, of course not to mention the physical ones. Sometimes its the lack of diligence on behalf of Drs that jams us up so bad. 15 minutes per patient, yes i am sure that is long enough to figure out someone has early signs of MS. That was my best sarcastic voice of course.
Sorry to hear about the probably MS diagnosis. If you are looking for a good read on it, I have been doing ‘The Candida Cure’ protocol for diet and the author and a friend of mine overcame their MS diagnosis with it. It is a book by Ann Boroch.
Well said, beokay.
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And since the lesions were not looked for nor seen prior to the electrocution of the brain, how do we know that the TMS did not cause it? Perhaps there are areas that get “fried”, and form scars.
What I find outrageous and shows how stupid our leaders and FDA are, is that there seem not to be enough harmful stuff out there for brains. So what will be next? As we type here, there are ugly men and women hunched over chemicals, holding their pet ducks as they add a dash of this or that. And it does not even bother them lol.
Place yourself in ALL those people’s shoes, going to work DAILY, for years and years, being as undetached from people as possible.
And our governments complain about crime? That is hilarious.
What I also don’t get is that all these people have families and it matters nothing to them what happens next door.
I met a big time Pharm rep who was damaged by Zoloft. And “they” feel terrible about having been part of this environment for years.
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I thought the same thing about the lesions being after effects of the Tortuous Mental Stunting, or at the very least it might have accelerated their progression. 75+ sessions of this barbarism in under 18 months, why not? But, of course why would the FDA, AMA, or the APA concern themselves with that, it’s just my brain after all. It’s a whole new breed of deadly consumerism; Big Pharma/APA has completely co-opted mental health care and tricked the public into believing that the sole path to wellness is through popping their magic little pills or, now TMS; Let non-invasive magnets zap you into bliss, all from the comfort of your doctor’s office! Hell, you can even get it done on your lunch break and be back in time for the 2pm conference call. They line their pockets while we get sicker, need more “treatment”, dole out more money, and it goes on and on.
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Its funny you brought up the convenience factor, that really seems to be where its headed… Why trouble yourself with a whole inpatient trip for ECT when we can easily zippy zap you in under 20 minutes, and with a minimally trained staff! My GP originally told me about it, and that was his pitch, He told me how easy and harmless it was, and then at the end he said in the not too distant future every Dr’s office will have one so if their patients are suffering from depression they just sit in the chair and get the ole zippy zap and they are good to go! Wow, doc, sign me up!
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Or why not just stick your finger in a socket 3 times a day for a few weeks? Makes about as much sense, and it would be cheaper, plus you can stop if you don’t like it.
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James,
I’ve heard good things about ‘The Candida Cure’ for autoimmune/inflammatory disease in general; I’m definitely researching it further. I’ve also started seeing a naturopathic doctor for orthomolecular medicine. You are absolutely right about needing to advocate for ourselves; many clinicians don’t have a real understanding of what “informed consent” is, particularly in psychiatry. “Take this pill, it’s good for depression, anxiety, etc.” When I ask about side effects, the response I got was, “Well, don’t worry about that, because then you think you’re going to have them”. My reply: You mean the nocebo effect? I am a researcher you know, I’m familiar with the concept. Then you get accused of “interrogating” them when you question something, or seeking information elsewhere. It’s like asking a wizard to share from his Book of Spells: unthinkable! And probably just as much smoke and mirrors, lol.
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“Well, don’t worry about that, because then you think you’re going to have them”.
Ohh I love this. It’s so scientific ain’t it.
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Glad you’ve also heard good things about it. I’ve had excellent results in fact, might have given me what I needed to avoid perishing from this whole cluster.
I have heard mixed things about the neturopathy, but I am curious about the orthomolecular medicine, I will look it up. If you have good results I would love to hear about it.
Also- I remember falling for the nocebo trick. What i remember most is how i blamed myself for it as well. I thought, I keep getting harmed from these meds, it must be because I am so worried about getting harmed I am manifesting it for myself – just like the doc said. It took all this pain and suffering to get my eyes wide enough to see what was really happening. And, now that they are open i can see how difficult it is for others to get onboard, you literally have to fight every Dr. or other professional you see just about. I have to tell my Dr. what is what, piss him off, and be prepared to walk out ever time I see one. This is not something anyone wants to do, and yet is completely necessary to avoid death and injury.
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Dunwithpsychslavery:
I recently learned the concept of the ‘nocebo effect’ from Ivan Illich’s 1970’s book, Limits to Medicine, Medical Nemesis: Expropriation of Health. If only I had all the terms and resources in the early thick of it all, when I was mostly flying on instinct, intuition, feeling, and sensation.
I dedicate part of my website to orthomolecular medicine:
http://www.evanhaarbauer.com/orthomolecular
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Orthomolecular = think Linus Pauling and Abram Hoffer. There’s a practitioner here who is frequently posting about niacin for connecting with reality.
JAMES: what you say here: ” It took all this pain and suffering to get my eyes wide enough to see what was really happening. And, now that they are open i can see how difficult it is for others to get onboard, you literally have to fight every Dr. or other professional you see just about. I have to tell my Dr. what is what, piss him off, and be prepared to walk out ever time I see one. This is not something anyone wants to do, and yet is completely necessary to avoid death and injury.”
OMG this is so true. Why do I feel such intense fear when I have to go to a new doc? Why do I dread the docs I already know? It’s this diligence, this due diligence, to protect your body from them.
For a profession that claims to be about “healing,” it is anything but.
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Jan,
I entirely agree. I get all sweaty and nervous and stressed out when I go, even with doctors that I know and work well with now. However before I would be incredibly worried I would feel obligated to comply with instructions from the doctor that I knew were unhealthy and dangerous for me. Of course, I would never speak my mind when I was there and then comply in some fashion with the orders or go see another doctor. I find it very interesting that the very vast number of us are indoctrinated to comply with this mentality.
Even now I still get very nervous but my conversations are always even and open with my opinion being just as important as the doctors. I also found doctors that listen and respect me, which was not an easy task. I feel very badly for all the people that don’t have that, which by my estimation is most folks.
It has taken me years to get to this spot, and I likely have years to go before I can really be stress free stepping in there. In any case I will always be on high guard, I feel its more dangerous than walking down a dark alley at night.
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This is a tremendous article, James! I appreciate how much research went into it, and how well you’ve synthesized it and then lain out the facts. To me, it’s especially noteworthy how little training or knowledge is possessed by the people performing this procedure, hence the much greater chance of doing it “wrong” and injuring the patient (as if zapping the brain with electricity could ever be right).
You have a real organizing tool here — I suggest you might want to rally all your research and interview notes into a more formal bundle of documentation and start sending the piece and the packet to professional organizations, mainstream journalists, and so on. At a bare minimum, it appears that TMS must be much more closely regulated and that its harms be thoroughly investigated by those with power to do so.
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It should be illegal to hurt people’s brains, nervous systems, no matter what device or drug is used. It should be illegal to offer this garbage.
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Thank you so much Miranda, as always!
You are absolutely right, the lack of knowledge for such a serious procedure does not make sense, in a fundamental way. Its hard to filter through the layers of impropriety.
Thank you for the recommendation as well, believe it or not i had not given that much though yet. I suppose it would behoove me to get a bit more organized about it and try and prepare for what may lie ahead. It will also make it easy for me to distribute.
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James,
Excellent exposé. Electricity is a great boon, but not when it gets inside one’s brain!
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Thank you so much Phil.
I have to agree with you here and of course your TMS article as well, the fascination with shocking the brain and CNS is just such a poor idea, there has never been any indication that it provides any benefits or a lack of harm. Its so odd.
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I don’t understand why anyone continues to fall for physicalist treatments for psychological disorders (this drug isn’t addictive, this treatment has no long-term side effects, etc. etc.)
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Yeah, let’s just induce random electric currents into this unbelievably complex system we only have the vaguest of understandings of. What could possibly go wrong?
/sarcasm
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You said it, beokay! Agree with you 100%.
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Thanks.
I wish you all the best in your recovery from this barbaric practise.
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Hi James – I don’t know how to thank you and so appreciative of the time, effort, that went into the research and writing this extremely helpful and professional summary update. Having spent the last 6 months recovering from damaging TMS myself, it is so helpful. (I most recently needed to take a medical leave of absence from work because of the way that the damage impacted me.) I wonder if there are ways to volunteer and be more involved in this TMS community research effort that you have successfully built. for example, I think about ways in which this TMS community can share best practices in health recovery, effect policy and standards (for example, better training for practitioners, patient education). I also wonder about streamlining information for legal challenges/damages for people who have been hurt by TMS practices. On a personal note, I’d like to share something that was extremely helpful and especially with regard to the muscle spasms, and that was high quality Cal/Mag supplement w D, and also magnesium malate. Thank you again for all of this wonderful information. I wish everyone on here the best in their healing & recovery from TMS.
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Thank you Alicia, I am really grateful to still be able to figure this stuff out. So many of us just aren’t able to contribute in the way they would like. Thank you also, for your encouragement and advice, it is greatly appreciated.
I really hope/wish there was some way to help some of the impacts TMS is having on others and our communities but I have not been able to find any, I haven’t really even found anyone that thinks this is a real injury or that it causes harm.
I will give those supplements a shot, thank you so much for sharing that as well. I hope you have a speedy and full recovery.
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Can a crude and blind disruption of the brain harm you?
yes, like everything else in the psych roster.
Anything else?
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lol, Exit, I have to say all this might have been a bit harder to find out if psychiatry didn’t have such a harmful track record.
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Thank you for this well written, well researched article. The comparison with ECT was particularly interesting, as I had never considered the damage from the current flow due to the magnetism. How obvious now that you point it out. Clever that you contacted a clinic that treats electrical brain injuries. Very informative. Thanks again.
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My pleasure Stuart,
I hope that this offers some sort of knowledgebase and understanding for a real informed consent, for the treatment.
Its funny you mentioned that point about the fields, that was actually my kind of epiphany moment when I had been reading about ECT and seeing the similarities… what was causing the damage in the cells was the rapidly alternating fields and not the current itself, but a byproduct of the current. If one could utilize the same fields without the current, they could essentially perform the same procedure without the same stigma. A masterful trick really.
Thank you for your efforts and dedication to help this whole overall situation we find ourselves in, while pursuing the Do No Harm approach and also not turning your back on the problems we see. It takes no lack of courage and fortitude, I am sure.
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To James:
I read the last article first & the first article last, plus the comments. And I must say, I am even more impressed by your new article than I was before. You stomached the ad hominem attacks (that weren’t removed by site moderators), & used that as the basis to answer questions from your detractors, next article!
Amazing! That takes a mastery I look up to. I cannot imagine how angry you must have been to be protecting yourself, your loved ones, & your friends in your support system while getting attacked in such a disrespectful way. Of course, I am not saying all of the criticisms were disrespectful, but the ones that *were* remain in my mind.
As I’m sure, they remain in yours.
Until now, hopefully!
I especially loved how you tracked down “patients” who had beneficial results, but when you compared it with a checklist of symptoms another truth began to form. I also noticed the dates of your responses. Still talking to the amazing MIA survivors all the way up to late December 2020! Just before this article came out.
I thank you. That’s rare on this site. I wish it weren’t so, because survivors need each other, emotionally & intellectually like never before.
If you haven’t already read Jenny Miller’s blog that’s up on the front page right now on this site, I recommend it highly. I’ll put in the link, but it’s on the front page. It’s about the History of Anti-Psychiatry.
There ‘s a lot of haggling of terms about what Anti-Psychiatry IS and ISN’T. These conversations are important to recover the lost legal rights of survivors & the terminology of such. As well as to cut off $ sources that go into “studying” those of us that do not consent to being “studied.”
((I will have to bring up the Intelligence Apparatus as well as Big Tech at this juncture again. Unfortunately))
That isn’t to say there aren’t wonderful people in some of these fields. It is a critique of the fields themselves, in some cases, & some of the most moral of the degree-holding specialists have become dissenters. I argue we need professional dissenters, to: 1) give expert witness testimony in court cases, to combat the “Black Robe Effect,” and to 2) dissuade young professionals from going into psychiatry, especially & 3) never, NEVER speak of the NEEDS of the profession before, or in place of, the RIGHTS of survivors.
(Also, impressive on this site is Peter Simons–a science writer & researcher. I’m sure you know him, or know of him. And although I agree with AP activists that we do not need to argue, scientifically, against an argument that semantically contradicts itself: namely “mental illness” cannot exist because the MIND is not an organ, & therefore, cannot have health, or illness…
I believe we are engaging in something well, WELL, beyond a David & Goliath fight & we need to keep up with the lies-posing-as science at least until we get our rights back. Survivors are second class citizens due to Involuntary Outpatient Treatment in all but five states, I believe. So, until then….dunno. And I am open to arguments both ways)
And let’s not forget Jim Gottstein, a lawyer who posts on this site, & even encourages lawyers to work for survivors pro bono!!! Impressive!
In your article, the explanation of how TMS is an evolution of ECT was fascinating. I look forward to seeing what cool comments are engendered by your brilliant essay.
Will the comments section last until your next article? Bets anyone?
The History of Madness Network News and the Early Anti-Psychiatry …
https://www.madinamerica.com/2021/01/madness-network-news/
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Snowyowl,
You continue to be so complimentary, I appreciate your kindness so much.
Thank you for that link, while I am working hard to learn about TMS and psychiatric harms, I find at times there is so much history and activity I am unaware of, which may work to my detriment because I am trying to leverage as much as I can.
Its my thought that community or tribe is the answer to the problems we are facing, I read a really excellent book called Tribe by Sebastian Junger. This book was not the genesis of my thoughts but it was the expression of conscious and subconscious ideas I had on the subject. It coalesced everything I had been trying to for a long time. For that reason, I have found myself trying to live that value I want to see in our greater community. What I found is that MiA is a manifestation of that same idea whether it was by intent or providence, I do not know. That being said, if we don’t stick together and make something out of these ideas we will continue to fail each other in the same old ways. I find it very interesting that our adversary’s only leverage against us is money really and they are able to somehow defeat reason and all human intuition by leveraging it. I think if it were not for the complete disintegration of our larger communities by technology, media, corporations and corporate rights over the rights of individuals(specifically in the workplace), and big government this may not be occurring. The knowledge of such a tragedy is a good motivator for me.
I think its very interesting that you bring up surveillance and big tech, because I was in big tech… in a way and so I have seen first hand how information and dissention is suppressed. Execs and senior leadership continually reorg and move dissenters and everyone really so they cannot dissent or even grow an in depth knowledge of important operations, or the ‘greater picture’ which could also be termed ‘the greater crimes’ against out fellow tribemates. You could liken this too compartmentalization you see in the military. Everything important is partitioned and constantly moved around so leadership retains control. For instance I was an analyst and I noticed the data and reports i was feeding up to my execs did not paint a pretty picture about how this company was doing business… When i happened to see an executive presentation deck for other lines of business or others who needed to be in the know, maybe finance and compliance… i noticed the numbers i had provided were massaged, and or changed to appear much more pleasant than they were, and essentially tell a different story… See any parallels? Maybe to clinical studies for psychotropic meds, medical devices, or anything else that needs a stamp from the FDA? By the time i start to gather the details and figure out what is going on, one of two things has already happened. I was reorged into another area of the company OR i was assigned to another project and everything i was doing before is handed off to another team. The incredibly dramatic icing on the cake here is that my new boss is extremely unpleasant and adds incredible stress onto an already overworked individual … and doesnt care if i have to take time off because he just screws up someone elses professional life by handing off my work to them and asking them to figure it out, when that task alone is almost impossible. As a small side note… In this scenario I can only take so much time off work before the private disability company paying me to take time off requires i am on psychiatric meds in order for me to continue to get paid… this was an extremely offensive injustice i did not think was even a real thing… but again corporate rights over the rights of the individual, as if i decline the psychiatric drugs because that should be illegal, i not longer get paid.
Does that paint a picture? are we starting to see the different levels of control that have been implemented into the workforce – Intel, Tech, and anywhere else? This doesn’t even include a host of other legal pressures that they use as back up leverage if anyone in leadership gets froggy. Leadership gets the last say, leadership gets the control… and guess what… leadership has their interests, they have a bias and they have interests and agendas, you could even say that’s senior leaderships sole function… and I have yet to see one that benefits the tribe and not their own pocketbook, and I don’t say that arbitrarily, I have known and spent time with high level execs.
The person that stands up, stands up alone, which is the problem isn’t it.
I hope this further illuminates the excellent track you are exploring, because you are right exactly right and there is overwhelming evidence of it, we just need access to it, its right under all our noses. Peter Gotzsche talks about this quite accurately in ‘Dangerous Medicines and Organized Crime’ – I understood instantly all the things he was talking about because I witnessed them in action for long years. Everything he claims is exactly true, to the letter and it is happening right now. One of my Dr’s told me the book was dated… if it was not for my kinder side I may have had a choice words or two for him. The tricks of pharma and device companies are hiding in plain sight, along with every other corporate exploitation of our communities. All we have to do is dig in and take them on, but when we do we must have an alternative to the modus operandi.
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To, JH
Wow, thank you for your thoughtful response & all of the time you take to respond to each one of us! I am going to post on this article from time to time, since it will resurrect it in the comments section & people who haven’t seen it yet can see it.
I’ll give you some time before I do that, because I know you take each comment seriously & like to provide a thoughtful answer. And you’ve got other stuff to do.
Spoiler Alert: I am going to follow up with the Big Tech theme, and I am going “IN” on the topic, most surgically.
See ‘ya (fairly) soon. Breather space : )
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Outstanding, I am looking forward to it.
When you mentioned Big tech and the intelligence apparatus before I was very curious to hear your thoughts and what you learned about it.
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Hi James,
About a month after my TMS treatment ended I experienced sudden (now permanent) hearing loss and started experiencing debilitating violent vertigo attacks and tinnitus. I have tried multiple medications, steroid injections into my ear, and ultimately an inner ear surgery to treat the vertigo through my ENT.
I appreciate your articles as your information is about the only information I’ve been able to find regarding injury from TMS. As of now my doctors are thinking this may be a case of Ménière’s disease, but my husband and I feel that the timing is very suspicious in relation to the TMS. And the side all of my symptoms are on is the same side of my head that my treatment was done on.
Do you have anymore resources you may be able to share? Or a support group of any kind?
Thank you for all of your research and time put into this.
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Howdy Lisa,
I am really sorry to hear about all that. Did you have any improvement from the surgery? I don’t want to assume, but from what I have learned, that wouldn’t seem like a helpful option, but would love to hear how you did or did not benefit from it. That symptom is a more curious and elusive one in terms of gathering evidence and diagnostics of it.
We did create a support group on Facebook, the link is here.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/tmssideeffects
I have made extensive comments in there and shared may ancillary thoughts as well.
As far as your specifically named symptoms here, they seem to be vestibular damages. I had really significant success with the balance, dizziness and vertigo type symptoms by doing vestibular rehabilitation program for a few months. Surprisingly enough, I learned about that kind of rehab from a group called Warrior Angel Foundation and a movie called Quiet Explosions. The movie outlines the different kinds of traumatic brain injuries that are not from a direct impact to the head.
I was sitting in my neurologists office and all these symptoms came up on their TV, it said do you have this that and this, and it described my symptoms almost perfectly. I said this is it, thats me! and it flashed to the next screen and it said – then you could have a concussion or Post concussion syndrome(closely associated with TBI). When I told the Dr about it and subsequently a few others, they said no you cant have that because you did not have a blow to the head… Thats ridiculous, TMS is repeated rapid blows to the head, just because its with an invisible source doesnt mean its any less significant.
All this is to say, for your symptom set it may be helpful to start looking at it through this paradigm. When I started doing that, I was able to make some progress, learn a whole lot more and get into vestibular rehab which was a huge help with those specific symptoms.
Additionally Tinnitus is a tough one but I have had some success by leveraging the techniques and knowledge in Joey Remenyi’s book ‘Rock Steady’ as well.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
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I’m shocked I found this article and intrigued to say the least. I have been married to my husband 13 years, he has had social issues and relational issues the whole time, specifically with me. 2 days ago he took asperger quizzes upon my prompting– after him poopooing and angry about the suggestion. He scored off the charts as aspie. It explains alot. Coincidentally he also had an appointment for TMS pre scheduled due to PTSD from his military service. He has depression, anxiety, etc. Well now that it is something that is becoming “real” I slammed on the breaks in my mind. WAIT a second, they are doing WHAT to you. Let’s think this through. What if it makes you WORSE!?? We need to research this a bit more. I am overly practical and well researched when it comes to any life altering decision especially in the area of medical treatments. He on the other hand is more a follower, fiercely so. I don’t want my husband to be further damaged. Most things I have found gives glowing reviews. This causes me to pause. I don’t know if I can convince him to hold off. He is so desperate for relief.
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HI sorry to butt in here.
I don’t know what an “aspie” is, since I bet every “aspie” is completely different from the other “aspie”. In other words, he is not like “others”?
It’s between the two of you, but I really don’t want to be tested neurologically by my husband or a shrink.
And I also really resent always being the problem when there are issues.
If he’s a sensitive person to his environment, maybe he needs to do things that suit his personality instead of trying to shock his brain into co-ordinating with the world around him.
But good luck. Perhaps he would love a 2 month wilderness trip with a few kind caring buds.
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Interesting,
I have had a few people close to me convinced that they had Asperger’s but it was not true, I think the vagueness of the symptomology can draw in a lot of false diagnoses. Just a side not to be aware of, of course you should assess your situation very carefully either way. That piqued my interest.
It is a really good trait to be incredibly weary and skeptical of medical treatments. I learned too late unfortunately that the patient is typically the only one looking out for the patient. So, you have to be a very strong advocate for yourself and your loved ones. You husband is very lucky to have you in that respect. I was very much a follower and trusting to those I thought were just trying to help me out. I always maintained a very good relationship with the professionals that treated me, it didn’t end up doing me any good with TMS.
This desperation for relief is what got me and others into trouble. I have found that for myself and so many others this is actually an indicator that there is an underlying factor aggravating the situation that needs to be addressed. An overly stressful job or expectations being put on the person that are unrealistic, something of that nature, these obstacles need to be overcome before a good decision can be made. Typically when you do that the cause of the issues may be made clearer and can be addressed without this kind of treatment, as well. I found for myself, just allowing myself to be human and not live up to the expectations of others, solved a lot of my problems. The larger outside world seems to have given up all efforts to treat people, like people. So, we end up being responsible for doing that for ourselves. I was late to that party.
Best of luck, I hope maybe if he was able to read this article he may better understand the real dangers, I have talked to so many people in the VA that claimed they were harmed by this treatment as well. They have been doing it for over 20 years and I am certainly not convinced it was a good thing.
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Hey how’s it going Mr. Hall. I’m glad I found your two articles as I was seriously stressing out about what I’ve done to myself. So I’ve always had a bit of depression, anxiety, ocd and I guess always a bit of an over thinker but I’ve always managed to sort of deal with them over the years. Drugs were always being prescribed to me but I’d always refuse as it doesn’t seem to be a good long term decision. As much as I had these issues I would’ve rather had my “old” mental problems rather than whatever this TMS thing gave me. So the general doctor that I go to prescribed me antidepressants and I was scouring the internet looking for an alternative solution. There seemed to be an ad that kept popping up talking about TMS this and TMS that. I even seen it mentioned on social media pretty often. I ignored it at first but upon further research it looked very intriguing. They do a really good job marketing their product. Saying that it’s safe and non-invasive. I googled and YouTube searched far and wide and there seemed to be positive reviews on every page that I searched. Every website on google that I looked at seemed very generic which I thought was a little suspect. On the various YouTube videos I watched there were people who had some device on their head and they always had positive things to say about it. There didn’t seem to be any cons and I figure it was a “healthier” alternative to whatever else was out there for mental issues. So I gave the company a call and the sales lady was extremely convincing and kept talking about how it improved various people’s lives and just convinced me to try a session and see if it does anything. I had some doubts but everything seemed positive and I sort of just went with it. They make it seem like something that’s convenient like a massage appointment where you just go and then you go back to work. But it definitely doesn’t work that way. I found a place that was near the place I worked at the time and they had the same things to say about it. All positive and everything will work out fine. They weren’t even doctors. So I went ahead and scheduled the first session and I didn’t really like it at all. It felt really weird from the get go. They put you on a device hooked up to your head and you get zapped every 20-30 seconds. The technician kept saying its normal and I just sort of went with it. After the session I had serious doubts about this device. I wish I would’ve refused after the first set of zapping they did. I went in for a second round which only lasted 15 minutes and all these zapping sensations. After this session I felt very odd and the first symptoms I started experiencing was heightened abnormal amount of anxiety. I decided to not move forward with the treatment as my common sense told me something was seriously off about this device. After these two treatments I began having various symptoms such as: Disassociation/depersonalization (out of body feeling), weird head sensations/tight headband feeling, mental issues became worse, insomnia, light sensitivity, decreased enjoyment of life, vertigo feelings but this went away, depth perception is way off (objects seem far away than they really are). The insomnia and vertigo went away but all the other symptoms continue to persist. I wanted to say for a long time that it wasn’t the TMS but before this device I never had any of these symptoms and I the only thing I can think of is the TMS being responsible for this. I was depressed about this for a long time and still sort of am but at this point I just want solutions now. What can be done at this point? No amount of complaining is going to solve anything. And if there’s ways I can be compensated how can that happen? I continue to “tough” out these symptoms but this has honestly been an added challenge in my life on top of everything else that is going on nowadays. I’d like a solution but this is something I don’t even know where to start. I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever have my regular brain back. It’s been a year since I had those two treatments and haven’t really seen any improvements. All I did was adapt to this “hardship.” But anyways let me get back to the main point. Are there any solutions and if not is there any way we can be compensated?
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Comancho7,
I really appreciate you sharing a bit of your story here. You nailed and captured a lot of elements to this story that need to be told an emphasized.
I am not sure people are understanding exactly what happening here and how serious it is. TMS is blasting the executive function are of our brains and everything after is screwed up and disoriented in so many ways. It is scrambling our brains and people are so hurt and confused afterwards they have a hard time figuring out what the hell happened to them. I think its possible the most dangerous type of harm is the harm you never knew happened.
I have managed to learn a a lot and there is so much i couldn’t even get anywhere close with this article, however the most important concepts are in here. I will reach out for specifics on email.
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Hey how’s it going James, yeah I seriously don’t feel the same way after having this so called “treatment” done for me. However at that time there was no cons or anyone really speaking out against this at the time so I trusted whatever was going on at the time. I remain optimistic however and just soldier on no matter what. But i seriously feel disabled at times and know that I am not the same person I was before i got this thing done.
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My mind continues to be blown by tragic comments such as this, and what people are posting on James’ private TMS Facebook group. Is this device/intervention even regulated? The idea that they are marketing the procedure as some kind of spa treatment and, if true, that some people with no medical training are offering and performing TMS, is outrageous. There needs to be a serious investigation by regulators of these facilities.
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I completely agree Miranda, and I am so thankful you are actively watching what is happening. I am getting people severely harmed every day. If you have any ideas on who i can reach out to let me know.
I already reached out to the FDA and they did an investigation but clearly it did not yield any actions and they did not notify me of the results. Apparently i need to file another FOIA to see what they found. Its not really important though because their investigations just mean that they go to the facility and make sure they are doing everything correctly and safely.
Consider this, the FDA does not even know how TMS works, they have no roll in the matter. They simply get an explanation of the device and trials from the manufacturer and approve it based on that. There is no condition of understanding anything to do with the mechanism of action or the results or anything of the sort. We both know that all this paperwork and data are easily manipulated for approval, but in all honest do they even need to manipulate anything if the FDA doesn’t even understand or doesn’t want to know how it works and what it does to the human body? The whole thing is out of sorts, I read articles about how dangerous electromagnetic waves of this intensity are to the human body but these salesmen for TMS say its a magnetic wave and perform all sorts of deception to make it sound harmless. This is a HUGE problem but no one is listening. I have contemplated my next step… I could send letters to the DOJ and other places but obviously I don’t really have any evidence that it will be taken seriously… I just listened to the podcast about the Ghostwritten paper 342, or whatever that Peter Simons wrote and narrated and there was a senator in there that seemed very interested in investigating these types of things, but I feel very lacking in the specific knowledge of how to bring attention to this type of thing. I certainly have found that making general inquiries to large institutions is very ineffective, the AG of my state just sent a letter saying they are rerouting my complaint after 2 years… I brought up a very concerning imminent threat to public health and that’s the response I got.
I continue to flounder but I am happy to do what I can everyday in full awareness that it will take a tribe to address these dangers in any real way. I see the great struggles of others harmed by so many other things as well and I cant hope to fair any better. On a deep level though, I am very concerned that this is a NEW treatment and a NEW wave of trickery and danger that is set to injure untold millions of our community, of which the nature of the delayed onset of symptoms will make an impact for many many generations to come.
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Miranda, companies can hire private endorsement people and off it goes to the public. BUT, psychiatrists and other professionals are using this on people.
But then psychiatry uses only damaging tools which were approved by the FDA.
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This machine has to be put out of service.
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Yes Miranda at the time it really did seem like some sort of “stress-free” spa treatment but that’s further from the truth as I was in bed for 2 months after I had this thing done to me.
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Hello. Does anyone know if Nexalin therapy is the same as TMS? I am seeking treatment for my 18 yr old daughter that does not involve medicating her. Of course she believes medication is her only option after only 4 visits with a psychiatrist. I am desperately looking for alternatives. He told her father and I that he didn’t think she was bi-polar, but she thought she was bi-polar, and now he suddenly suspects, bi-polar 2. Just take the Lamictal though and if it doesn’t work, we know it’s not a mood disorder. Is this seriously a medical doctor telling her this? She’s a legal adult but I’m doing my best to stand in the way of this. No more psychiatrists for one thing. Thanks for any feedback from the group
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gsgrace,
I am so glad you brought this up since i had not heard of it yet. Ironically I have had quite a few of these types of treatments brought up to me that i have never heard of. This is not the same as TMS, although it seems similar to it in the kind of technology it uses. It looks like it uses electromagnetic waves to agitate cells.
After looking into it just briefly, I see even the manufacturer is saying it uses ‘electric wavesforms’ to effect the brain. So what do we know about that?
We know that electricity has never shown to benefit CNS function in any way and in any study… well that’s a pretty big statement, how can i make that? The mechanism of action is not even known for ANY of these treatments, if scientists don’t know how it works they cannot say it is healthy or has some therapeutic effect. What do we know? We do know for a fact that electricity and electromagnetic waves cause serious damage to the human brain and nervous system through electroporation, heat and other disruptive means. So we know that this treatment is most likely a con just like the others. The manufacturer has provided no evidence of real therapeutic effect, but we have seen this kind of language before that has roped good intentioned people into trusting a product only to become severely harmed by it, with no chance of ever having benefited.
It looks like with this one, best case scenario it is not as harmful as ECT or TMS, at worst it could offer unknown serious harms, especially delayed onset ones. Some of these treatments seem effectual because the harm is actually stimulating an endocrine response which makes you feel dazed or in a state of shock that some people mistake for feeling better, but actually its just a natural masked response to trauma.
I am very sorry to hear about your daughter. It seems we are indoctrinated these days by NAMI and so many other organizations that unpleasant mental states require a medical or chemical fix so we can be normal, of which is a complete and total lie. We are not meant to ever feel normal, we are meant to respond to our environment and, extreme stress, anxiety and depressive feelings are a response to serious things going on around us, and these responses help keep us safe. It seems to be very popular to dole out bipolar diagnoses’ for anything and also for labeling the side effects of medications as a mental disorder, when in fact it is a physiological response to having neurotoxins in our system. Bob’s book, anatomy of an epidemic really put together what had been brewing in my subconscious for so long on this topic. The evidence is just astounding.
Medical doctors should be held to a high standard and be men of science, so you are right to be very skeptical. Many of them now a days just mascaraed as such but do not have any kind of practice based on science or medicine, they just prescribe and prescribe again until patients leave or become so subdued they do not complain of their side effects. Stand up for yourself and your daughter, regardless of her age, I am sure it is one thing you will never regret. We have all been put into very precarious situations with this topic and must help each other as much as possible to try and discern the truth of it.
Best of luck, I hope this was helpful.
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I am so happy to have found this blog. I read Peter Breggin’s book, Reclaiming our Children, years ago, when my daughter didn’t even have any problem. I just found it amazing that so many of my kids’ friends were taking drugs for ADD, depression, etc. After my daughter had a complete meltdown in October and went into therapy I read Bob’s book, which is what lead me to sign up to this site. I will indeed stand my ground for my daughter. I want her to read his book, but she is a senior in high school, just trying to keep up, with covid making everything worse. She doesn’t have the time at the moment. I will stay away from this Nexalin and I’m going to tell her therapist to just keep doing her cognitive work and that we are staying away fro medication. I am considering Dr. Amen’s clinic to do a brain scan to see if maybe there is a physiological reason for her mental problems. Bless you for the incredible work you are doing and for your bravery in disseminating all of this personal information! I am very grateful for you.
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Thank you so much for the kind words, much appreciated.
Dr. Breggin is so brilliant in so many different ways. I find it particularly cool how he emphasizes the effects of all this one children because they are the long term representations of what we are doing to ourselves, they are so incredibly important.
I have always seen High School as the most difficult and influential part of my past. It really came to define my struggles and who I turned out to be. I understand that situation!
Possibly the most important bit of wisdom I have discovered on this journey is that there is almost always a physiological reason for the distress. I have run into so many people that have suffered so greatly only to find out may years later that it was a physiological problem all along. Many times diet or some sort of exposure that needs to be healed from. I have seen quite a few people try the Candida diet(I prefer ‘The Candida Cure’) and find healing there. Personal and relational stress is another big one but if can be addressed and removed healing can begin.
Hang in there and be thankful to yourself for advocating for your daughter, that’s so outstanding.
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Howdy James….Glad this idea brings some hope and perhaps another pathway. If nothing else this TCM journey forces us to be even more self-reliant while thinking outside of the box. I spoke with law firms; shockingly all they cared about was money and how long it was going to take/the ROI. They are useless to us. The small claims court idea came to me in the summer when my mind was probably at rest after a day in the garden. Since we spoke last it was necessary to switch careers – my brain doesn’t work the same anymore and attention/eye focus shot – I have got a real estate license and job doing marketing proposals for a nationally respected company – I only say this because these things would make it hard for an opponent to attack credibility. Build from within. Stay strong, stay in touch! -Alicia
[email protected]
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That’s so brilliant and inspiring Alicia, thank you for sharing.
You got it.
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Hi James,
This article is so beautifully articulated.
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Thank you so much! That is a high compliment!
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James- I unfortunately got talked into that new Experimental Stanford TMS treatment recently that thank god stopped after 25 or so treatments. Im suffering from Tinnitus, eye problems, insomnia and more memory issues. Im currently at Amen Clinics seeing neurologists, doing EEGs and potentially doing HBOT, vitamins and other things to hopefully heal. Have your symptoms ever gotten any better?
Cory
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Cory,
Thank you for your comment. I am sorry you were injured in what sounds like Stanford’s new SAINT treatment. Let me know if I am wrong. I have been very disheartened to hear about it in the media lately and even on CBS Sunday Morning. They are painting it as a safer or more effective version of TMS, however without addressing the harms that result from the sheer physics of the treatment it is likely they will never be able to improve efficacy or safety.
To answer your question, I have had some improvement to my emotional state which was absolutely horrible in the months following TMS. I also feel I have had some improvement to my fatigue and tinnitus at times. However under certain circumstances these things tend to revert to how they manifested originally. So, that leaves me primarily with cognition problems, dizziness, and DPDR that i really haven’t noticed much of an improvement in, and maybe some other things I am forgetting… I still have muscle fasiculations and twitches as well too, and serious sciatica. Initially my insomnia was pretty significant but that has largely resolved as well.
It sounds like you are getting some good care, I know at least one other person who claims they improved their TMS injury from HBOT, but it was upwards of 40 to 80 treatments. It sounds promising.
I have focused on building up healthy habits in order to heal over time and my doctors have agreed this is the best approach. I am working on an episode of my podcast now that covers this process I have been working on and my thoughts on the topic.
If you are interested my podcast is called ‘Unshadowed Thought’ and it is available on Podbean, Youtube, Google Cast, and Audible as of right now.
I should have this healing episode published within the next couple weeks.
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Thanks for your insight, no you are spot on all this. I’m working with a functional neurologist to get to the bottom of all these issues.
I was a 40 year old real healthy guy who worked out 6 days a week. Covid got me bad, was told to get the the vaccine 30 days after the vaccine which made me crazy. I’ve always been sensitive to medication, but should have gott on something to relax as I hollistically healed. I had a psychiatrist talk me into doing 6 ECT treatments, which was a disaster and has left me with memory and vision issues.
Then this Stanford study comes out, and was talked into that and thank god I stopped it.
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Yeah your summary is spot on. I had a double whammy with 6 ECT treatments against my will then TMS.
I feel like the stupidest person ever listening to doctors I shouldn’t have after working out 6 days a week and being very healthy.
Im doing the HBOT, IVs, will do an EEG and scan and then potentially an eye Doctor to see if they can do anything to resolve the eye issues as I used to have 20/20. I might even look to see if they can do Lasik again on me but I don’t know. I saw 7 eye doctors after ECT and none of them could figure anything wrong. I’m working with a functional medicine specialist now to see what to do to heal. Just a shame, if I would have just taken medication and not messed with any risky Brain stimulation treatments I would have had an amazing life. Got bless
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I’m also dealing with libido issues since TMS but not sure that will ever get better, been a frustrating ride.
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This is very interesting for a few reasons. But, first let me say that it seems your experience highlights this really serious problem with the western/industrialized Medical model and that is, that it is so dangerous that the longer you are apart of it, the more likely you will end up harmed, over a long enough timeline it seems your are sure to be severely harmed.
At first my assumptions about this kind of experience were limited to psychiatry but after reading Peter Gotzsche’s Dangerous Medicines and Organized Crime, I became very open to the possibility that it applied to our medical system as well – of which i have been validated in my suspicions, with a tremendous amount of evidence that I really wish was not as prolific as it as ended up being. If you haven’t picked up that book I highly recommend it, as well as any of Peter’s other books, including his new one on vaccines. Its excellent.
I have been very skeptical of the covid vaccine based on my aforementioned research and experiences so it was interesting to watch the event around it unfold. I noticed some folks in my TMS harm group and others who experienced psychiatric harms from psych meds react in a relatively benign way at first… however as more of them took it, I noticed some very very severe reactions. What stood out to me most was that the majority of the reactions seemed to be a setback of sorts, many people who have already been harmed seemed to revert to a previous stage of more significant harm. Since both covid and the vaccine for it act on the nervous system and thats primarily the system that was harmed, it seems to either sensitize it again or agitate the components of the nervous system that are healing or were already harmed. I am very sorry you had to endure that as I saw some very very unpleasant things unfold for people that were already harmed and it was and is very hard to watch.
As for the sexual side effects, I am sorry to hear that as well of course. However you are not alone, more than a few members of the TMS harm group have experienced a complete absence of libido following TMS. That is also pretty interesting considering the instances of PSSD or sexual dysfunction with both psychiatric drugs and finastride. I know with finastride the syndrome can cause irreversible physiological damage to the gentials which is horribly tragic. I hope you are able to heal from any impairment that has occurred from TMS. Based on principles of neuroplasticity if the only damage occurred in your brain and CNS it seems possible to make a recovery although it may not be quick.
In the electrical injury community NORA rehab seems to be one of the avenues people have experienced the most success with and they seem a lot more knowledgeable on the relationship the eyes have to the CNS. You may want to check them out. Many of us have had vision issues, I have had more mild ones and they seem to have improved over time although i have spells of visual distortions, in the past I had them daily, now maybe every few months.
https://noravisionrehab.org/
In regards to what i said previously about the medical model, i find it more than a little humorous that we have to see functional neurologists and kind of fringe or unconventional specialists to have any hope at help. It seems they are the only ones who want to address the problem and not the symptoms. Pretty ironic really that they are the ones mainstream medicine looks down on.
I am sorry the combination of ECT and TMS probably compounded any issues that were cropping up but i see that regularly in my group, DR’s that screw up one treatment want to escalate and use an even more dangerous one – in what world does that make sense? Its like they just keep going until your dead and/or cant complain anymore.
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James, I think you’re mistaken about the vaccine primarily affecting the nervous system–I understand that it primarily affects the immune system. Typically a strong reaction to the vaccine indicates that someone’s immune system is healthy and doing its job, but I can imagine that since (as part of the immune-stimulating process) the vaccines temporarily increase inflammation, a TMS-injured person’s system just might not be able to handle it.
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Thank you for that Miranda, I should not have spoken so flippantly about the vaccine without pointing out that it is meant to act on the immune system, and rather since both the immune system and central nervous system have both upstream and downstream affects on one another it appears that there is a possibility of second hand consequences for people with neurological problems.
Given the history of neurological harms and disorders generated by vaccines including Demyelinating CNS disorders and Guillain-Barre Syndrome it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to think there maybe direct causation as well, even though they are considered fairly rare. All these vaccines were intended to work on the immune system but it appears to be much more complex than that as anything that works on the immune system has the potential to cross the blood brain barrier and interact with the delicate structures of our CNS.
There has been so little time to observe what is emerging and the causation of what has and will result. I really wish as much money, energy and attention that went into developing vaccines and medical treatments was also spent on trying to understand the potential harms and actual that occur after. To me that seems reasonable.
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Thanks James, yes it is going to be a long long road back. I’ m not sure its possible between the damage ECT then TMS caused its possible, the vision situation is real bad but I am going to try. I will look into the vision rehab situation, I tried that before after ECT. The vision situation is worse than ever now, not sure if I could look into Lasik again. Im hoping the EEG shows the reasons potentially for the Tinnitus and also the vision problems.
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Has anyone that you know of recovered in full from TMS?
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I hope your EEG yields some valuable information, mine did not and I have not yet seen anyone’s who has. If yours does it would be very interesting. We have seen some pertinent information show on a QEEG.
We have seen just a handful of people recover completely or virtually completely from serious TMS injury, unfortunately about half of those people only had 1 to 3 treatments. Generally speaking it appears that the best we can do is really minimize and cope with the impacts until they start to diminish over time. Certainly some people have managed to completely eliminate a certain side effect or a certain side effect resolved completely in a relatively short period of time while others persisted.
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Yeah sounds like I am in a bad spot. Im not sure how things will get better since the Stanford study was over 20 something treatments before I stopped it. I did the EEG, doing bloodwork and hoping to see an eye specialist to determine what if any options there could be for anything to improve. What a nightmare as I try to manage this with 2 little kids at home. I have a quarterback functional neurologist who has dealt with this stuff before, but I pray for a miracle.
Im assuming your still doing routines? Exercise, eating well, etc?
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Have their been any cases of post TMS injured eye patients improving? I had Lasik years ago I wonder if it could help again
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James is there a best email to contact you at per some questions?
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Yes, please feel free to email me at [email protected].
Life with little kids is pretty demanding, I get that, you have a big task just keeping things going I am sure.
Depending on the severity, we have seen some improvements to eye function over time. Things like detached retina of course usually require a medical intervention I believe and don’t heal on their own.
I do stick as well as I can to the routines, eating well and getting as much physical activity as I can. I think they really drive healing.
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I live in Mexico, I am 22 years old, male. Three weeks ago doctor offered me a free TMS session for depression, just to try it out, and I accepted. They placed me the device for 15-40min, in the right side of the brain. Since that TMS session Ive been severely depressed. Ive lost all interest in life. Im not even interested in women anymore. Ive been constantly thinking about killing myself. Before that TMS session, I didnt have suicidal thoughts, and at least I had few interests in life. I probably only had mild depression, and now I have severe depression.
Doctor said its not possible that the TMS session did that to me. He said this type of therapy is very safe. He told me to start taking anxiety medication and to double the dosage of Escitalopram. I havent done it, I dont feel this is a solution.
I dont know what to do. I am afraid of taking another TMS session, because It might make my situation worse.
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Well, you were better beforehand and worse afterwards. The doctor says that couldn’t happen, but it did. What is the most likely explanation?
I’d say tell the doctor to take a long walk off a short pier.
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David,
I am incredibly sorry to hear about this. When it happens it is very hard for others to understand just how bad it is and how it feels.
I also understand how cheated you feel when you didn’t need the treatment in particular in the first place. I only had a moderate depression that i was handling with exercise and healthy diet, but in my struggle i trusted the opinions of a few doctors who unfortunately had no idea what they were talking about. It is a very very unfortunate situation and just adds insult to injury.
I agree on the meds, they havent proven to help anyone I have met so far in treating their symptoms, just like with other electrical injury. For me i focused on eating very very well, being as active as I could and studying up on how to handle brain injury or TBI. It turns our our injury is a TBI from electromagnetic fields. So reducing neuroinflammation could be the best approach to take for healing.
Its very hard sometimes not to go back to the lies about TMS and try additional sessions, physics tell us this can only end badly but some people report feeling better after this “dip” but there is no medical or scientific basis for the dip or even TMS at all. Its likely to just increase injury and or create cognitive impairment so significant a person may not realize they are injured or may not experience the injury in an overt way that is detectable.
Some people have recovered from just a single treatment in a rather short time, others it has been a longer road. Whatever you choose I wish you the best of luck. Trust yourself and hang in there.
Steve – hahahah, I love it.
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James, I just wanted you to know that I read your articles before I started TMS with Neurostar. Thank you! They helped me create boundaries and define what were acceptable side effects. I stopped TMS after 5 sessions. I had horrible side effects: ever present headache for a week, returning for the part of the day for a month. Tinnitus 10x worse, sensitivity to sound, taste, light. Insomnia worse. My emotional sensitivity was extreme, too. It felt like I’d had a concussion, as I had one 10 years ago and it was familiar.
If it weren’t for your articles, I might have gone along with their encouragement to ‘keep going’ as the headaches are temporary. NO one ever wanted to speak with me about my injuries. I don’t even know how I would report them. I feel betrayed by the health care professionals that administered it and then abandoned me.
It’s been 8 weeks since I quit and I’m better, but feel like this was such a setback. I wish I could warn people about it.
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Rain726,
I am so glad you got some means of informed consent from these articles. Its very interesting how you experienced it in relation to concussion. It really does appear to be a TBI, concussion or some sort of intense brain injury based on what we are experiencing. Thank you for sharing that.
I hate hearing how healthcare professionals do abandon us, but it is really consistent. Generally speaking they don’t understand or treat brain injuries proficiently and when it comes to TMS its even worse.
I am so incredibly glad to hear you are better!!! I am also glad you feel driven to let people know about your experience. Please do so.
I think the most important and profound impact we can have is by telling the people around us, in our closest and meaningful relationships what has happened and why. This can make a really big impact in our immediate community and is critically important so people stop getting injured at some fundamental social level, its really the only way currently we can be sure to get the word out and impact people.
The other thing you can do is report the event to your state medical board, attorney general, and the FDA if your in the US. The FDA link is here –
https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/medical-device-safety/medical-device-reporting-mdr-how-report-medical-device-problems
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/medwatch/index.cfm
We cannot compel our governments to act but we can make a record of what happened to us so when the thousands of others end up reporting their harms the right people will be able to change things at that level as well.
I hope you continue to improve, I am so sorry you had to experience this setback.
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Thank you for those links, James. I will definitely make use of them and write more about my experience. I realize I still feel a little PTSD’d from the whole thing. My experience was made worse by the absence(betrayal) of the people I thought were in my court, the psychiatrist and the TMS administrator. I plan on writing to the director of the health clinic because you can’t say you’re interested in mental health, primarily, when you completely abandon someone experiencing symptoms from a treatment. I want them to know I’ve been with this family health clinic for nearly 10 years, and I respected them. I even worked for them for a year. I’ve written glowing reviews for neighbors… no more. Treat all western medicine with extreme caution, their priorities are warped.
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I think your feelings are entirely justified and your course of action even more so.
Every single person I have spoken to harmed by TMS gets a PTSD type dynamic when trying to communicate with the TMS clinic that harmed them and then doctors in general. It is very hard to endure what we do and then get met with extreme criticism, skepticism, denial and gaslighting. I can imagine those feelings are all the more intense when you really built trust and even a work relationship with the people who ended up doing this to you.
I am always amazed at how we are all treated with the same lack of accountability even given close relationships. One person recounted to me how she had worked as a nurse in a hospital for a very long time, maybe her whole career if i remember and she was put into an extreme state from TMS and could no longer work. When she went in to complete some disability forms they tried to involuntarily commit her, she had to throw herself through the door and run out to her vehicle . When she got home two sheriffs deputies were waiting for her. They did an assessment and inspected her home and since they could not see she was a harm to anyone or herself they let her go. This was motivated by the same hospital and staff she had worked for for years and the same ones that hurt her with TMS. In all honesty I would find these stories hard to believe if i did not hear them over and over again from completely independent sources.
It is very important that these people at least know clearly what they are doing. One of the most frequent tragedies in my mind are when people are severely harmed but never say a word to the staff or anyone involved in the treatment, as this perpetuates things quite a lot. But I really do understand why they do it, absolutely no one wants to talk about these things and stand up to others when they are going through severe brain injury, its really quite unpleasant.
Thank you for your conscience and efforts!
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Dear James, thank you for being so generous with your time and your comments.
I do think we need to hold them accountable somehow.
I do intend to write to the higher-ups at both the psychiatry department and the overall health clinic.
I’m waiting to have a clearer vision for what to say.
I’ve started writing this reply to your comment 3 or 4 times and just go off on tangents… Clearly, I’m not over the betrayal. It’s been almost 2 months and my headaches are truly gone and mostly the anxiety and triggeredness is gone.
I hope many people find your articles and take care of themselves as they consider, or try TMS.
There’s one thing that I’m really certain of and will be including in my complaints. They should let people experience ONE session, and not schedule another one. until they’ve had a WEEK to assess. I really wish I had done that. IT SHOULD be OK to have a single session. It should be encouraged. It’s not. They tell you to push through a week. And of course, they push some people through months of it… That is so wrong.
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I am so glad you have the fortitude to stick with this and bring awareness and accountability to what is happening. It will take alot of us all over to do that unfortunately – ideally we shouldnt have to do anything for people to take us seriously and want to understand what happened but that doesnt seem to be where we are at, at this point in history.
Very wise to wait and think on what to say, write and do. I have had to do that several times in critical situations since addressing my injury with others, its very difficult to do given our situation, my anger used to be so bad. It makes it really easy to ramble on about just how incredibly messed up this situation is, there are an unending number of parallels, correlations and incredible injustices tied into what we are going through.
I think the single sample session would make a big difference in getting people to see the reality of TMS before committing to all those sessions, brilliant.
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I have learned with my husband, who has had stroke, to take headaches very seriously.
I believe that the headaches after the COVID shot were vascular, and honestly they scared the heck out of me, knowing he’d had stroke before, and it presented as headache.
Likewise, if you are getting headaches, it may be a symptom of neurological damage.
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“I believe that the headaches after the COVID shot were vascular, and honestly they scared the heck out of me, knowing he’d had stroke before, and it presented as headache.”
I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. After a 5 treatments of TMS I had a headache that was so DEEP so present, so raw that lasts almost 2 weeks. Vascular sounds like the perfect description. It was debilitating, scary and very, very emotional.
And then encouraged me to come back for the second week of treatment. “Headaches are a common side-effect of early treatment, they fade over time” they told me.
I told them they weren’t listening to me. THIS headache is not a tension headache, a caffeine withdrawal like headache, not even a migraine. It was very, very scary to me. I was wounded in a very deep way.
It was the worse time of my life to go into something with such hope and have it derail me so entirely and have NO support. They just dropped me like a hot potato! How could they keep saying ‘no side effects’ if they acknowledged what I was telling them.
The coordinator asked me twice in the same phone call if I was bipolar, trying to put me in some category that fits TMS known failures… I was so appalled, where is their compassion as purported ‘healers’ and empaths? It’s just a magnet, it can’t do harm.
Well it took me about 8-12 weeks to fully get over 5 treatments, but that included what felt like betrayal and abandonment.
I suggest no one ignore a serious headache and try some more treatments.
I’m having much more success with my issues with micro doses of substances, not anti-depressants. I’ve always been sensitive and I was a fool to try something so invasive as TMS. I should have done 1 and stopped to evaluate. The headache grew after each treatment. The fifth was sheer force of will to sit through it. Never again will I ignore such basic warning signs.
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Dear James,
At first I was not going to comment because my situation/experience was different but after I read your long carefully thought out report and some user’s posts I decided to post. As a teenager I went through something that led me to start on numerous pharmaceuticals one led to the next, antipsychotics and then antipsychotics in combination with lithium. Unfortunately the lithium over many months led to my blood levels rising above the toxic range and all I can say is that I was never really the same afterwards. It baffled me to read stories about how people like lithium and live on it or say it “saved their lives” when it was detrimental to me. I could not comprehend it when it wrecked havoc in my body and made me feel such intense fatigue that never fully went away after I stopped taking it.
I tried TMS with the Neurostar and later with Theta Burst TMS and it changed my life. Eventually it helped me so much that I purchased my own device for theta burst tms with the prescription of a doctor. For five years until 2020 It saved my life, I used it (3min) once very other day and sometimes less than that if I did it consistently enough effects would last. I used the FDA parameters, had the exact DLPFC spot mapped out on my brain found my own MT which I got down to 55% intensity which is lower than the TMS doctor found. It worked wonders for years. I also had researched safety guidelines – the largest threat being “Tissue heating”. The papers I read stated that one pulse of TMS causes 0.1^C of heating and permanent damage at 43^C. However it also stated that “pathology” could change this and of course brain anatomy and folding is different in different regions. After using the same location for 5 years I began to start putting the coil over my medial pre frontal cortex. For a while it was fine at such a short time(3min) at a low intensity. To make a long story short there was someone who posted that TMS potentially could cause “scar tissue in the brain”. The main point of my post is that safety parameters are not that clear and I am attaching a link to the paper about safety. Like I said the largest threat is “ohm heating to tissue”:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1388245720305149#s0075
I hope this story makes you feel less isolated. Finally a doctor’s opinion told me he could not rule out “gliosis” (scar tissue) in my brain. Please pass on this TMS safety guidelines to anyone you think it may help. If you have any information about specifics of TMS heating brain tissue or Ohm heating and how it effects brain tissue and could possibly cause scar tissue or lesion’s
please pass it on!
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Gayle –
Thank you very much indeed for deciding to respond here. The only information that I have about TMS causing heat inside the brain is two fold and also already illuminated here. There is expert testimony listed in this article about how ECT and the subsequent electrical current generates thermal energy inside the skull which causes heat damage to the brain, obviously the brain is incredibly sensitive to heat. The other is that we know electrical current and their corresponding fields create heat as a simple matter of course(physics) so it is inferred that there is no way TMS does not generate heat inside the skull because it induces electrical current inside the skull and the electrical field passes through the skull as well, so we know it is generating heat but how much was unknown. It likely does not have the thermal potential ECT has from direct exposure to outside current.
That being said, It is incredibly hard to find documentation and evidence of what TMS does and how it interacts with the body, the stacks and stacks of studies I have read through are all devoid of any meaningful measures of electrical energy and or thermal energy generated or applied. It only speaks about the hertz which I am all but certain is because the scientists and professionals publishing these things are either censored for it or are well aware that measuring these types of forces can be directly related to the amount of harm the human body would be subject to. So, for you to find anything that even mentions heat transfer or build up is a really really important find. I could find nothing of the sort for the aforementioned reasons.
I wish I had some additional information to offer on the subject but I do not at the moment but I will reach out to some friends of mine to see if I can come up with some resources for you, on heating brain tissue and specifically by way of electromagnetic fields.
Thank you for this resource, I will share with with the group and anyone else I think it will help.
lastly, I am very glad you have not experienced any harmful effects from TMS. All of us sharing all of our stories always helps me feel less alone, I am grateful for every one and all that we learn from them.
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Mmmm. If holding a cellphone to your ear for long periods (thermal EMF) has been connected to brain cancers . . . . then. . .
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Gayle, I find your success very interesting. Particularly the 3 minutes every other day! I was treated for 5 consecutive days of 20 minutes each. As I’ve thought about it, I do wonder whether just short bursts would have helped me. Instead it was complete overload. It was progressively more painful, deep in my head with each passing day. I was left with a constant headache and sensitivity to sound, movement and light and what felt like PTSD, effects lasting weeks. The deep hurt can’t be summarized by “headache” and I was angry at the time that it was suggested I ‘soldier through’ and continue treatments as ‘headaches’ usually go away.
The first day I felt something akin to an ‘awakening’ — just a lightness and peace. It was downhill after that. I’m fine now, no permanent damage but I am disgusted that the clinic cared so little about my experience. I wonder if they’re still saying there are ‘little to no side effects or if they say that people drop out.
It’s about money, I’ve decided. They want to schedule you for 3 months of M-F treatments. They want a formula, just like with medications(which rarely worked for me, except in pediatric doses…) One size fits all. No deviation from that. If I were given a choice I would have wanted to try 1/2 the normal dose once a week. I’m cautious.
I’ve never heard of 3 minute treatments but that sounds like caution to me, and perhaps that would have worked for me — what I experienced was a complete sensory overload and disruption to my life. We’re all different. These one-size-fits-all approaches of Western Medicine are deleterious to my health. I will no longer participate.
I’m glad you benefited from these treatments. They don’t sound remotely like what most people here are talking about in terms of length of treatment times and frequency. Perhaps someone considering TMS will see you comments and benefit from being cautious.
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! Just to clarify TMS did end up burning my brain tissue and forming scar tissue. If anyone has further information about heating of brain tissue from the eddy currents tms induces please pass on a good deed and let me know.
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Gayle, that is such an important finding. I know from your last comment it sounded like it was a hypothesis, were you able to establish some diagnostics around it? As much as you feel comfortable sharing, I am sure would be very helpful to help us establish some basis for how this injury is manifesting. If the situation is the same, no worries.
I can tell you that an expert I am in touch with has identified additional mechanisms of harm and I am waiting to get the documentation on it, I will share it as soon as it is made available to me in full measure.
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Hi James, my name is Eve. I am wondering if I was damaged by TMS. I have done it twice, about 9 months apart. Each time I had major improvement in my depression, that lasted each time about 6 months. Each time, 6 months after the end of the TMS treatment, I started getting depressed again gradually, but more alarmingly I developed extreme fatigue where I could only sit or lie down. I slept more than normal, up to 12 hours per day. The first time this lasted 4 months and then I gradually recovered from the fatigue. I repeated the TMS after I recovered from the 4 months fatigue, not thinking the fatigue was related to the TMS.This is now the second time. It has been 6 months since the end of my second TMS treatment and again I have that extreme exhaustion, increased sleeping time, some anxiety, and gradual return of depression.
I am wondering if this is a kind of “rebound” phenomenon from TMS. After all TMS stimulates neurons to increase firing and increase the level of neurotransmitters in the brain. Once the neurons lose the mojo given to them by TMS (after 6 months) neurotransmitter level tanks dramatically.
Is this a possible explanation? I’m feeling quite desperate.
Thanks
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Eve,
Thank you so much for writing. I have heard of many people experiencing virtually the same thing, having benefitted and then having to go back after not long. My suspicion by your comment is that you are not entirely bought into the harm paradigm of TMS and that’s perfectly fine, each one of us has to figure it out for ourselves.
There are really two perspectives on this.
The first is much as you mentioned, that TMS will help you and has the potential to give you lasting relief from your depression and maybe even more symptoms of discomfort. So if you believe that I suppose it makes sense to try it again, but i sense your apprehension, maybe your gut is telling you something else is awry? If i was in your spot i would certainly be wondering about the fatigue.
The second perspective is the one that I share and opponents of ECT actually share as well. That is that electromagnetic treatments offer insult to the brain, and it is always harmful. Now, the kicker here is that our endocrine system will actually boost our feelings of wellbeing after a head injury to give us what we need to survive it. However the physical injury still exists there and after that system ramps down, the real damage becomes apparent. Hence the delayed nature of electrical injury, not just in ECT or TMS, but with lightning strikes, repetitive low voltage injury and high voltage injury.
A primary manifestation of that delayed injury is… Fatigue, your nervous system is now on overdrive trying to process all the same environmental stimuli that it is now impaired to do along with all kinds of extra work trying to heal itself. There are all kinds of reasons for the fatigue but the fact is that it is delayed and it happens to virtually all who are injured by TMS.
In ECT there is phenomena called the death spiral. It is when someone gets ECT and find relief then, every three to six months their symptoms return and they get another round. The problem is that every time they go back their getting additional injury until it is far too much for their bodies to sustain and they are seriously or permanently disabled or die. It is a very difficult spot to be in, getting relief and then having everything come back, so we must question why THAT phenomena is happening, because it is very dangerous indeed, it is a mental trap for those who are having to decide to keep getting treatments or not.
I was surprised to find out that many people in my TMS group are actually two, three or even more time patients of TMS and they kept going back until they were severely disabled then they came into the group and shared. When i speak with them, I am always amazed at how lucky they were they did not get severely injured the first time, since I have quite a few people in the group who are severely injured after just one TMS treatment. It doesn’t really help matters because they are injured now but it is quite an interesting phenomena. We all have different tolerances, bodies and brain so we can all tolerate different amounts of TMS. I think maybe the most tragic thing is for someone who has made it through quite a few unscathed to keep returning until the do become injured.
That being said I would like to challenge you to question or ponder deeper just one notion of what you have said, that TMS stimulates Neuronal activity. Do we know that’s true for you? Do we know that the stimulation of neuronal activity translates to feelings of wellbeing or the relief of depression? When I say do we know, I mean have we been provided evidence?
So to answer your concerns more directly, yes the rebound phenomena exists. Its just a matter of why it is happening that is important for our decisions going forward.
And lastly, if you are feeling quite distressed the one piece of good advice I give everyone is to take the time to think it through, there is no rush for anything. Make sure you feel you have made the right decision before taking the next steps.
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Thanks so much James, what you say makes a lot of sense. You have convinced me that TMS can damage the brain and that the damage can become apparent a few months after the TMS treatment. I was so hopeful about this treatment. I will now not repeat it ever again. I just hope my brain will heal from this damage.
I did have a warning during my second course of TMS: I had a lot of trouble tolerating it (the first time I tolerated it very well) The sessions caused nausea and dizziness and malaise, which caused me to end the course early.
Thanks again!
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That’s very interesting as well.
Perfectly glad to help, please reach out if you have any more questions.
The mind and body have great capacities to heal if we give it the space to do so. I am glad you don’t have any of the more severe symptoms that I often see but i know that what you are experiencing isn’t easy either.
Hang in there and thanks again for reaching out Eve
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Have you found that those that only did a small amount of treatments (I did 2) have a good chance of recovering? I think the fatigue has gotten better by 20-30% and the derealization has greatly reduced in the last month and is almost totally gone. Is the fact that the symptoms arent stagnant a good sign?
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Yes, definitely a good sign. Your chances of recovering quicker and more completely are definitely better with fewer treatments, and the immediately reduction of symptoms is a fantastic sign that that is occurring as well.
I have met a few people who have had just a single or a few treatments who fully recovered within a few months and it seems their symptoms tapered off fairly quickly.
I have also met several people who sustained a pretty hefty injury from a single treatment, but it just ramped up as time passed on and there is a delayed effect as well that tends to pop up anywhere from a few weeks to several months after the treatments are done.
However most of the people who sustained an injury from many treatments certainly seem to have a much more persistent and long lasting symptom set. So your in the best possible spot really. I am very glad to hear of such a great reduction in symptoms so soon, that’s a really great thing.
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Yea, I dont think my symptoms are getting worse. If anything, they are getting better even if the fatigue has only gotten better by 20-30% in 3.5 months. Hopefully in 3-6 more months I will be closer to 60-80% and then in 12-18 months I will be close to 100%.
Perhaps the recovery isnt at the same rate throughout the entire process. It could start slow and then end fast. This is how it was for the derealization. I spent 2 months extremely suicidal, agoraphobic, and terrified and then in the last four weeks my cambridge dissociation scale score went from 133 -> 90 -> 70 -> 50.
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Paul – That sounds about right, really as you start to get better it should feel as if it is going faster. And surviving the onslaught at the beginning is a big deal.
What we have found so far is that once you can get over the nervous system impairment, it begins to heal itself exponentially. This may be because once you get out of the sympathetic nervous system activation, and the body can then devote the energy it needs to healing.
Getting into this healing zone is hard because you can get trapped in negative sensation and thinking loops and that can really go on indefinitely, but once you are out everything gets better quick.
Somethings others and I have found to get true rest for your nervous system so it can heal has been – Fasting(all kinds), Eating really clean and consistently, lots of sleep and rest (just like Lorraine says below), healthy activity at whatever level feels comfortable without overextending yourself, Doing anything you feel is exciting, and working to transform and negative and anxious thinking into honest – positive – and fun thinking patterns through neuroplastic techniques.
Really your doing all the things that are known to reprocess your CNS into a relaxed, healing and restful state. This took me a very long time to lock down. Its all about living a life entirely different than the one that injured us, and the road to getting there in my mind.
Its funny you bring up fatigue because a lot of these things that are most effective, I ended up learning from or relating to through the CFS/ME – Chronic Fatigue Syndrome community. I am not sure our injury is entirely different from theirs.
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Im actually a member of the ME/CFS community! I came down with mono in 2017 and the first 6 months were horrible, but since then I have managed to lead a “functional” life: Graduated from college with 2 degrees, have a normal social life and was not encumbered by crashes or anything like that. You have probably already checked out phoenixrising.me?
And yea, derealization was going so well that I decided to get off of my benzo taper a week and a half ago and that has not been pretty. It has only made my symptoms much worse. Now, every time I go to exert myself I get nauseous and feel like I am going to collapse. Oh well, the glory that I will feel when this horrible storm is over will be one to cherish like no other.
Have any of your symptoms remitted or gotten better?
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Wonderful outlook, I am so glad to hear about it. Benzo withdrawal is so incredibly lame, nothing could really do it justice.
I have been struggling with going forward and then backwards for years. I recently did a prolonged water only fast and many of my symptoms did markedly improve and I have managed to keep the progress up. The derealization has improved but it is still a struggle, its a really puzzling symptom. After the fast there was a huge change which allowed me to understand a bit better what was actually going on and that my CNS needed true rest to heal itself. The problem for most i believe is that even digestion taxes the nervous system, and any troubling thoughts so it can be very tricky – however fasting gave me relief from both of those so it allowed an opportunity for a host of new thinking and understanding.
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Glad it cleared some of your symptoms. I used to do a ton of water fasts. Sometimes for 3 days. Did your cognitive impairment ever go away?
For me, the derealization is now totally gone although the genesis of this was a different protocol and we did only 5 min before I said enough. The one that caused the fatigue we did for 40 min total. I am hoping that if I can recover from one, I can recover from the other.
My days are still mostly horrible to be honest. Operating at 20% your normal battery is not great. I mostly spend the day sitting on a couch just looking at a wall because I have anhedonia. TV isn’t even interesting. It’s weird though, I definitely waver. For instance, 4 days ago I read 100 pages of a book and life felt beautiful again. It was incredible. Since then life has been really stale. I am hoping the good days become more and more apparent.
Have you ever thought about doing something like Neurofeedback to correct the damage?
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Paul – Thats a very interesting question about my cognitive impairment, and the answer is no it has not. That is really my primary metric for recovery, both the impairment and the derealization, and no – no measurable improvement there. Really frustrating but I did read an article about a gal who did two prolonged water only fasts before her chronic headache from a head injury went away, so I am hoping the next time around will yield further improvement.
How did you get rid of the derealization? Very curious about your thoughts on that one.
Its very interesting how intense the mental and physical fatigue from TMS injury are. I was the same way really, just completely drained the vast majority of my time, even when I woke up first thing in the morning. The good news is that those symptoms seem to resolve for everyone over time if they don’t pick up psychiatric drugs after the TMS injury. However the fact you are getting breaks from it already is an especially good sign. I wonder if there is anything that you think instigated that break in symptoms? I have realized that when I get excited about something new or have a really good experience from something i will get a solid break from certain symptoms. This is why i think negative thinking loops are playing a bigger role in all this than we might be inclined to believe. I think the positivity and different thinking will give us some temporary plasticity that allows us to experience different sensations before reverting back – from what I think is some reintroduced negative symptoms, probably from the physiological damage of TMS of CNS agitation(maybe from bad food, an argument with a friend or family, or physical overexertion). I would be curious to hear if you recognized any of those types of things here.
I have looked at neurofeedback and other similar treatments, to be honest i could not afford them so they were out for me from the get go, I might have tried to find a way to pay for it if i saw some sort of extraordinary efficacy but I did not, when i first heard about it I did not see anything convincing and when i spoke to people about it they did not report impressive results … and in fact over time I actually started running into people reporting severe negative results… I was rather surprised by that given the benign nature of the typical treatment, however when i looked into it further I found out that they are starting to incorporate electrical devices into the treatment applied to the head. Some of these devices were actually very similar to TMS in terms of the electrical energy used and some are rather benign but after hearing consistently bad stories, I certainly wrote it off.
To be honest after five years of looking at treatments and listening to peoples stories and their endeavors to heal… I avoid anything that costs money, especially things that have high costs. This is a rather tentative idea that I have developed but it seems to me that the more something costs the less effective it is likely to be, and the less expensive it is the more effective it is likely to be. All the progress I have made, really has come from being taught by someone who offered advice freely or the cost of a book and learning a whole set of information from an expert that way – and it may even be free at the library. I wish I had gained this wisdom from being humble and frugal from the beginning but its not true. Like so many others I tried so many supplements, procedures, therapies and doctors and my failure rate has been absolutely exceptional. Another thing i learned is that the more an answer is handed to you as the result of a high monetary exchange, then the less background information we learn and the less functional knowledge we have with it, and it tends to result in a lack of longevity with any results we may get as well. Perhaps the wisdom gained from learning on our own holds far more lasting healing value than trying to pay for the summation of others hard work? Maybe.
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Paul – Additionally, I have been thinking… I felt much better at least emotionally after finishing several books as well. At first I could not read at all – after TMS – but as I just kept trying over and over, it came back and I have always felt much better after reading regularly.
Interesting.
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I can tell you that after 5 I fully recovered. I did it February 2022 and am glad I didn’t continue beyond the first week. It took me about 5 months to fully feel like myself. I did a lot of alternative healing, I do recommend a lot of rest, then movement. I used a mini trampoline, walking, and pool aerobics, gently and feel like it helped. Acupuncture also.
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I am on month 3.5. I am healing a little slower than you did but I am definitely healing. Probably have another 3-6 months of being horribly exhausted. Was you improvement linear or did the healing process get faster and faster as time went on?
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What were your symptoms if I may ask?
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Paul,
If you scroll back I have several entries under Raina726 here and replies to others that describe my symptoms. When I replied to you initially autofill put in my full name Lorraine. When I scrolled back, I found an entry where I said I still felt like I had PTSD almost 4 months later. That was exactly a year ago.
Benzo withdrawal and dealing with symptoms from TMS at the same time may be a special hell. I quit benzos, too, two years before I did TMS. I’d tried a dozen times to wean off, but the side effects were so horrific I alway failed. Be patient with yourself. Knowing what I know now, I would have gone to a compound pharmacy and gotten micro-dose tapers. The recommended schedule for tapering just doesn’t work for me. It needs to be much slower. After 20 years taking Klonopin, my body didn’t want to let go. I think it even effected my liver function, the cessation of that drug.
I’m intrigued by the ‘successes’ reported by some people after TMS. I suspect if I’d been able to try ‘micro-doses’ of TMS it might have worked with me, also.
I’m just that sensitive. I had a wonderful response after the first treatment, feeling connected to myself in a way that hadn’t been true in years. It’s the ‘dosage’ that seems to be the problem. Which seems to be Western Medicine’s failing, if you ask me. One dose fits all. I’ve been poisoned by so many medications… I’ve finally found a doctor that listens and is open to trying unconventional things. I’m on a few pharmaceuticals now that truly are micro-doses compared to the ‘recommended’ doses. So, in my mind, pharmaceuticals are not all “bad” but the prescribing method is. I’ve taken the approach that I should find the lowest dose that works, before taking the recommended dose.
In your case, take it easy, you’ve got a double whammy to your body and emotions with benzo withdrawal and TMS reactions.
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Hi James,
Thank you for putting this out there. I thought people would think I was crazy because they’re all so Pro TMS. I did 2 rounds back to back at the highest setting, so 70 sessions. I felt none of it helped and as time went on I started to get symptoms that i had never had before and worsening of symptoms I did have. My brain scans from prior are normal and from after I have 2 white spots on my mri and the front is lit up white and my neuro asked if I had had a stroke or a major head injury. The list of debilitating symptoms is long worsened tinnitus, adhd, loss of memory, loss of executive function, inability to multitask, depression, disconnection, muscle weakness, exercise intolerance, severe heat intolerance and problems with my body temp regulation, and more. I’m hoping there is hope for us to be able to heal or that these injuries are brought to light. Generally big pharma and the establishment crush the people. Please share with me any other info you may get on this. You can reach me on Facebook Meredith Greene Sarasota FL or via Instagram same name, Thanks so much.
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Thanks for sharing Meredith.
These MRI findings are quite remarkable and possibly much more to work with than anything we have found so far. The flip side is that I am sorry to hear you have such overt harm from TMS.
I would be glad to pass on everything I have learned on recovery, which at this time is quite sizable.
I attempted to find you on FB but it did not work and I am not on the gram. That doesn’t leave much, but I would be happy to get an email from you so I could respond with my resources. My email is [email protected]
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Meredith, I’ve never heard of anyone with scans prior to TMS and also SO MANY sessions. I’m so sorry! But I think James is right that those scans might not only help you heal, but be grounds for a law suit. At a minimum, the people that did that to you should SEE them. And respond.
My experience with just 5 sessions interrupted my life for months and they wouldn’t even acknowledge it was a “real” reaction to the TMS.
I feel for you and hope you find your way back to the forum. James is a wonderful resource. I also looked you up on FB and IG and don’t find you.
I felt like TMS aftereffects were very much like a concussion, it took a lot of self-care and acceptance to be patient with myself. I was glad I found James’ articles so that I knew there were others that felt TMS was not ‘non-invasive’ as advertised.
Thanks, James, for what you do!
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