Transcutaneous Auricular Vagal Nerve Stimulation Lowers Blood Pressure in Hypertensive Patients: Best at 100Hz

TAVNS for HBP Napadow
A new paper by friend of blog Vitaly Napadow, which suggests that 100Hz is the best, if not only the only effective frequency for blood pressure reduction  in respiration gated TAVNS , or RAVANS.  They looked at 12 hypertensive women and saw reductions in both systolic and diastolic pressure with RAVANS at 100 hz.  They propose that it’s because of different fibers being stimulated.

“The observed optimized effects of RAVANS at 100 Hz could be explained by specific targeting of fast adapting,low-threshold mechanoreceptors of the auricular vagusnear the dermal/epidermal junction[13]. Receptors called Meissner corpuscles detect “cutaneous flutter” stimuli (5-50 Hz), while Pacinian corpuscles lie deeper within the dermis and respond to higher frequencies (50-400 Hz) of stimulation that are sensed as “vibration.” Based on this physiology, the administration of electrical stimulation at a higherfrequency range (>50Hz) would be ideal for the modulation of ABVN receptors. In addition, brainstemneurons receiving stimuli transmitted from auricular receptorsmay also respond in a frequency dependent manner.”

Over the last month, I’ve been using 25Hz and doing bilateral alternative stimulation of the same area of the ear as in Vitaly’s article. I also have been using extremely light stimulation since reading this article. Looks like I’ll have to try 100Hz to see if there’s added benefit. In this article they did unilateral stimulation, Left Ear.