Electrical leads implanted on each side of the brain, controlled by a programmable pulse generator placed near the collarbone, change the brain’s aberrant activity and, over weeks and months, relax the muscles’ grip, freeing patients to step out of wheelchairs, climb out of beds, and stand tall.

In a recent journal article, Dr. Tagliati tells of two patients whose treatment kept working for months, even after the implanted devices failed. And when the contractions from dystonia came back, they were much milder than before. Michael Sharp, featured in Discoveries (Winter 2012) when he was entering law school, was one of those patients.

“I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but I remember it happening. I went for a checkup and apparently one of the batteries had been dead for about three months. I started to have minor symptoms almost at the same time I found out one of the devices was off,” says Michael, who has another year of school to go.

“Law school is a lot different from undergrad, that’s for sure. It has taken some getting used to,” he says, adding that he’s thinking about going into real estate or probate law. For now, he’s maintaining status quo and just working toward his degree.

“Law school has been taking up most of my life,” he says.

Dr. Tagliati’s research was previously published in our Winter 2012 Feature: Sharp Focus

World renowned cardiologist C. Noel Bairey Merz, MD—director of the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai and the Women’s Guild Chair in Women’s Health—has been studying and using alternative therapies to treat a deadly foe: chronic heart disease in women. She led a recent study showing that women who practiced transcendental meditation had lower blood pressure, blood sugar, and risk of sudden cardiac death than those receiving medical treatment only. (See 10 Big Ideas: Consider the Alternative)

So what if other alternative and complementary therapies could help, too?

Dr. Bairey-Merz, along with colleagues with expertise in acupuncture, conducted a pilot study to see if traditional acupuncture could benefit patients with heart disease. The study revealed that women who received cardiac-specific acupuncture treatments had a positive change in their heart rate variability.

Heart rate variability measures the beat-to-beat difference in intervals between heart rates, which is an important clue in diagnosing the health of the cardiovascular system. People who have had heart attacks or aren’t cardiovascularly fit have less variability in their heart rate, which puts them at a greater risk for arrhythmia and sudden cardiac arrest.

“Our findings suggest that acupuncture is having an effect on nerve pathways between the brain and the heart,” says the study’s lead Puja Mehta, MD, director of the Non-invasive Vascular Function Research Laboratory in the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute. Dr. Mehta’s clinical work focuses on prevention and behavioral approaches such as exercise, nutrition, stress reduction, and meditation for heart disease.

Dr. Bairey Merz’s research was previously published in our Winter 2012 Feature 10 Big Ideas: Consider the Alternative

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