What One-day Depression Treatment Did Tim Ferriss Describe?
Tim Ferriss described a depression protocol, used at Stanford and elsewhere, that clinics compressed from about three or four months to one week, and then to a single day by adding D-cycloserine. He called that drug a neuroplasticity agent that makes a person more malleable before the stimulation. Nolan Williams and others did the one-week version at Stanford. Jonathan Downer at Ampa Health was, in his account, one of the pioneers of the one-day version. He called D-cycloserine, sometimes abbreviated DCS, the most established drug for treating depression.
The stimulation he named is intermittent theta burst. He said the hardware does not have to be an Ampa Health device. Brainsway is the hardware market leader in his telling, and MagVenture is another maker. He also said the approach has been applied to generalized anxiety disorder, and that he sees possible uses for OCD, which he called a close cousin of that anxiety in his own case, and for sleep. From his personal experience, he looks for a clinician familiar with accelerated TMS and with the one-day protocol plus D-cycloserine. Most people, he said, cannot spare five days away from work, and more days in the clinic mean more clinician time and a higher cost.
