A method to treat depression that involves using magnetic waves to stimulate specifically targeted parts of the brain has shown promise for patients that do not respond to different forms of medication.
This was among the key topics discussed during the Wednesday, May 8 House Call speaker series hosted at the Sundre Community Centre held in collaboration with University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine, Greenwood Neighbourhood Place Society (GNP) and Sundre Hospital Futures Committee.
The free public event was aimed at giving communities an opportunity to gain insight into the future of health as well as how research matters to their health and health care. It was the fourth of a series of talks in rural Alberta.
The school’s facilitators worked with Renate de Bruijn, GNP’s community outreach coordinator, to select subjects relevant to the area, said a spokesperson.
“There were approximately 40 people who attended the event,” de Bruijn said, adding the hospital futures committee, the Teen and Young Adult Clinic as well as GNP had displays featuring what is happening with their organizations.
Among the speakers was Dr. Frank MacMaster, PhD. He talked about depression — which is more common than people might think and can also be life threatening to youth — as well as symptoms in adolescents, what researchers know about how depression affects the brain and what can be done about it.
Dr. Jayna Holroyd-Leduc, MD, also discussed the increasing number of people enduring dementia as Canada’s aging population grows. The academic geriatrician offered insight on the latest research around ways to keep the brain healthy, and also provided information about dementia-related studies underway at the University of Calgary.
Dr. Aaron Johnston, MD, drew a connection between rural medicine and medical schools, and how sharing research from a place such as the Cumming School of Medicine helps to improve care in rural communities.
Jon Meddings, Cumming School of Medicine dean, also attended the event, and spoke with the Round Up during a followup phone interview.
MacMaster’s presentation covered what Meddings described as a novel new way to treat depression in youth and adults by using magnetic waves to stimulate the brain in an effort to alter moods using a method called transcranial magnetic stimulation that Calgary has played a leading role in developing.
“People do respond to that,” Meddings said about the technique.
Different medications frequently fail to work for many patients who suffer from depression, but the magnetic stimulation “works in a surprisingly large number of these people,” he added.
Now available for a number of years, transcranial magnetic stimulation in Alberta is currently only accessible at centres in Calgary and Edmonton. But the provincial health authority aims to make the treatment — which does not involve massive equipment or require a large lab space — more available in other parts of the province, he said.
“There is an effort with Alberta Health Services to make this more widely available in rural Alberta.”
The method does require daily treatment for several weeks to maximize its effectiveness. So reaching rural communities such as Sundre might not be possible with mobile labs similar to, for example, the Man Van and the mobile mammography breast cancer screening service, he said.
However, since the technology involved in delivering the treatment is not onerously large or expensive, there is a possibility that smaller centres could eventually be equipped with the device, which is essentially a little wand that is waved over a patient’s head, he said.
The magnetic waves activate and stimulate neural circuits underneath the skull in the targeted regions of the brain, he said, adding, “We know the areas that are important in depression.”
The method is akin to training muscles and helps to improve the functionality of the neurons. Using magnetic waves to treat depression might to some people sound pseudoscientific, but a growing body of statistics undeniably demonstrates clear potential, he said.
“You can show that this does work by imaging the brain before and after treatment. There’s data and evidence to show it works,” he said, adding ongoing trials demonstrate the treatment is not “just wishful thinking.”
Holroyd-Leduc’s presentation about the different types of dementia and the treatment options available for patients and caregivers, also covered preventive medicine, he said.
Certain simple lifestyle choices, such as eating, sleeping and exercising well, combined all go a long way towards staving off symptoms of dementia. However, memory games that are sold for profit under the guise of alleviating dementia are not proven to actually work, he said.
One of the big factors, he said, is adequate rest, which children and adolescents need much more of than adults, he said.
“As we get older, we need less sleep. We don’t get into the deep sleep cycles like kids do,” he said, suggesting adults get about six to seven hours of sleep per night in a 24-hour period, but that youth should get more.
Over the past several years, the speaker series has become a new focus for the Cumming School of Medicine, which wants to not only offer communities more insight on medical advancements, but also convey to the public the importance of research that medical schools do, he said.
“The reality is, people in the general public don’t understand what medical schools do,” he said, adding there is often a perception that all these institutions do is train students and send them into the world knowing everything there is to know.
While that is one aspect, medical schools do far more than train tomorrow’s health-care professionals, he stressed.
“We are the place that develops new treatments and techniques. That’s where the research happens to improve health-care delivery,” he said.
“Most advances that I’ve seen over 30 years of practising medicine, have come through research done. And almost all of that research is done at medical schools.”
But preparing new physicians for their careers is a big focus of a medical school, and Meddings recognizes that training students for rural practices is not possible to achieve in the city alone.
“One thing that we’re grateful for is a network of rural centres that are essential to training our students,” he said.
“We wouldn’t have new rural physicians if it weren’t for places like Sundre doing that.”
