Use of TAVNS in conjunction with Acupuncture for Anxiety: Ma.Co edition

I’ve been working on trying to get a single HRV measure of efficacy for transcutaneous auricular vagal nerve stimulation.  Readers know that I look at many parameters since the “best use” procedures are far from established.  Some advocate time measures such as RMSSD, others LF/HF a frequency measure that I’ve found to be a great snap shot of stress levels, others advocate the nonlinear measure of SampEn.

Long story short, I’ve had a very difficult time showing any difference between HRV with acupuncture alone, and acupuncture with TAVNS.  Within the last few weeks while my website was down, I reviewed many patients’ data with a different lens.  I picked shorter time frames of 1 minute and looked only at DFA α 1.  It still isn’t a bullet proof measure, but I’d like to share this data of a patient I’ve been seeing for a year for extreme anxiety as a result of Chantix withdrawal.

I realize there is a ton of noise in the data , but if you look below each column which represents a visit, you will see TAVNS as designation when it was used.  The tendency for marked decreases, though jagged, are unmistakable.  If I had better data visualization skills I think I could better show this.