The Electric Panacea

I thought I understood epilepsy until I witnessed someone having a seizure.

It was not at all what I expected, and my concept of the whole condition changed.

It was a girl I went to high school with. We weren’t really friends. I was 16 and a junior, and she was 18 and a senior. We were both part of a large group tasked with setting up the stage for our school play.

The director told me to grab this girl so we could start setting up the overhead lights. She was sitting in the back of the auditorium by herself.

I ran back and told her we needed her help. She stared straight ahead with a half smile on her face.

I cocked my head and said her name a few times.

She was totally unresponsive.

I ran up in a panic, put my hand on her shoulder, and said her name again. She jumped — or, more accurately, shivered — and then turned to face me.

“Oh, hey,” she smiled. “I was just having a seizure. Sorry if I’m a little out of it.”

“It’s no big deal,” I said. “My stepmom has epilepsy, too.”

That part was true, but I’d never actually seen her have a seizure. She was on various medications to prevent them for most of my youth. I was downplaying how surprised I was by this event.

It was shocking how casual this girl was about the whole thing. My stepmother was very serious about it and went so far as to try a number of experimental and dangerous drugs to prevent her seizures from happening.

Little did I know that at that very same time — possibly even at the time of this anecdote — a new epilepsy treatment was being vetted for FDA approval. It involved hooking up an electrical current generator, similar to a pacemaker, to a crucial nerve in the chest of drug-resistant epilepsy patients. With gentle stimulation to this nerve, it could interrupt the mechanism that signaled seizures.

Two years later, it would be cleared for use in the United States.

The reason I’m talking about this treatment is because it’s being tested in lots of other areas, and the approvals keep coming.

In 2005, this nerve stimulation was approved for use in patients with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder. As it turns out, the same stimulation that can block seizures can ramp up the brain’s production of norepinephrine, which kicks up the heart rate and acts as an aid in concentration.

A couple of weeks ago, this treatment received FDA approval for obesity, a chronic global health problem.

According to the World Health Organization, being overweight or obese is linked to more deaths worldwide than being underweight.

Think about that for a second…

Conditions from being overweight kill more people than hunger.

With this treatment, the swelling number of obese Americans could find an effective way to curb their cravings without altering the capacity of their stomachs with a lap band or gastric bypass. It has the potential to be an impressive alternative to those surgeries.

This nerve stimulation therapy is an exciting piece of medical technology with a ton of potential. By stimulating this crucial nerve, the brain responds in predictable ways that can be applied to a number of different health conditions.

While we’re most excited about the potential for treatment of clinical obesity, there is plenty of other ground it can cover, and I’m cooking up a research report on it right now.

In just a short time, we’ll have a new report on this technology that you can’t afford to miss. It includes some bargain-basement stocks and a lot of information about potential new developments in the space.

Good Investing,

Tim Conneally

 @TimConneally on Twitter

For the last seven years, Tim Conneally has covered the world of mobile and wireless technology, enterprise software, network hardware, and next generation consumer technology. Tim has previously written for long-running software news outlet Betanews and for financial media powerhouse Forbes.