Erin Allman‑Updyke

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549 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Sep 2026 last heard 8 Sep

Erin Allman‑Updyke’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.

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This Podcast Will Kill You · Ep 221 Electroconvulsive Therapy Part 2: A current conversation · 8 Sep 2026 podcast

Because it's like an inhibitory neurotransmitter, if GABA levels are low, then your seizure threshold is lower.

And we know that ECT actually raises the seizure threshold.

So during a course of ECT, uh seizures tend to get shorter.

And sometimes we have to go up on that electricity dose in order to have an actual seizure because our threshold is rising with increasing treatments.

So there's some thought that maybe it's actually a GABA-related anti-convulsant effect that somehow is how ECT is working.

That's an anti convulsive effect.

And then why is that also affecting all these other things?

There's some involvement there that we don't know.

We also know that ECT has induces really big fluctuations in a whole bunch of hormones that our brain releases.

So inside of our brain, there's these areas called the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland.

We've talked about these in other episodes.

And these produce hormones that go throughout our body and interact with a whole bunch of other organs like our thyroid, our ovaries, our testes, our adrenal glands.

And what we see after

ECT is increases in a lot of these hormones that are produced by the hypothalamus and the pituitary, things like prolactin, uh ACTH, which stimulates the release of cortisol.

We also see increases in TSH and just a bunch of changes that happen in our hormones.

How does this then directly cause improvements in symptoms?

We don't know, but we see these changes from ECT.

And finally, there's also evidence, and this one is so interesting, Erin.

ECT induces what's called neurogenesis, which really means like structural brain changes in various parts in various different cell types.

And this, we think, is mostly mediated by this really interesting compound called BDNF, or brain derived neurotrophic factor.

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