Treating Eating Disorders with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)

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MAN: Does that feel uncomfortable?

WOMAN: No.

MAN: OK.

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OK. Three, two, one.

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MAN: What we're doing with that is stimulating brain areas that we know that are less activated in people with an eating disorder.

WOMAN: That's strange.

MAN: Well, it is actually because you—

MAN: How does that feel?

WOMAN: Fine. It's really weird.

WOMAN: I liked the fact that I knew that I was kind of destroying my body. I used to feel faint all the time and every morning wake up and black out for awhile every time I got out of bed. And I used to be freezing, constantly freezing and shivering, and having a funny heart palpitations, and having this constant feeling that your stomach was eating itself because you're so hungry. And it kind of becomes enjoyable and satisfying because you know that you're doing a really good job at having an eating disorder.

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I remember first seeing her and being kind of taken aback by it. But then just being jealous, knowing that I wasn't as thin as her, at the same time knowing that it didn't look good. But still being jealous.

And I had this moment with me where—there was one moment and I saw my spine in the mirror, and thought—I was quite scared because I could see all the kind of veins protruding. And that was the only point where I thought, oh, maybe that doesn't look too good. But apart from that, I knew that I wasn't attractive to other people, but it was unacceptable for me to look any other way really.

Sufferers are totally consumed by thoughts of food, fear of food, avoiding food. And it stops them from sleeping. It preoccupies all their waking hours, and they constantly try to resist it because they're so terrified of it.

They have, typically after a period of time, lots of physical disabilities. The bones crumble, osteoporosis develops. People have problems with all their internal organs. Obviously when you have anorexia nervosa, you stop menstruating. You can't have children if you are acutely underweight.

MAN: The area that we have stimulated is about here, obviously, for each and every individual. Not for the study that we have done. There are other areas which are not visible on the surface of the brain, but we found that one session of transcranial magnetic stimulation, as we deliver it, may reduce craving in people with bulimia nervosa, food craving.

In people with anorexia nervosa, we found that this reduces their sense of fullness and fatness when they're exposed to foods, and also, it reduces their anxiety.

WOMAN: Every single day, I think about the food that's going into my body and the effect that's going to have on how I look. And it doesn't stop me eating things like a piece of cake or a cookie, but just means that when I do, I'm very, very aware on, you know, how—the fact that it's inside me, and that I'm not ill anymore.

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