Vagus Nerve Stimulators

Sliced Bread

• Episode: Vagus Nerve Stimulators
• Website: Sliced Bread
• Feed URL: https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p07012sf.rss
• Duration: 00:30:30
• Published: 2025-05-22 08:00

Do Vagus Nerve Stimulators help your mental health?

The vagus nerve could be one of the most important body parts you might never have heard of. It's a large nerve that connects major organs like the heart and lungs to the brain and studies have found that stimulating it with electrical pulses can lead to dramatic improvements in some people with depression and other mental health conditions. Those trials were for medical devices implanted into the chest, but listener Karin has seen commercially available versions that you wear over your ear.

But do they work? Karin joins Greg in the studio along with leading experts in the field to do a deep-dive into the studies and separate out the science fact from the marketing fiction.

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RESEARCHER: PHIL SANSOM PRODUCERS: SIMON HOBAN AND GREG FOOT