Tackling PMS with Transcranial Current Stimulation & Personal Data
Liberty. Equality. Data. Podcast #12 with Emilė Radytė, Ph.D.
In this episode, we are joined by Emilė Radytė, the co-founder and CEO of Samphire Neuroscience and PhD in Neuroscience from Oxford and Harvard. We talk about electrical stimulation of the brain to treat PMS, and similarities with depression and Emile’s background as a depression researcher. We dive into the research and opportunities in the market for innovation in women’s health, empowering women with more precision tools based on scientific research and personal data. We also touch on where AI fits into women’s health and what innovation we expect to see in the coming years.
You can listen to this episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts.
The transcript of the conversation is available here.
Here are five highlights of the podcast conversation:
1. Blending Research Insights about the Human Brain and Neglected Needs of Females
Dr. Emile Radyte began by telling her own story of discovering her passion for neuroscience and the unique opportunity to combine academic insights with the real-world problems of half of the population on Earth. As she was studying, she discovered the enormous potential of emerging technologies and data, eventually leading her to start a company focused on translating brain technology for women’s health needs, especially neglected women’s health pains.
“Early on, I got especially fascinated by psychiatry, and the ways that psychiatry can be transformed, especially through data, new technologies and new solutions for people that they can integrate into their everyday lives.” — Dr. E. Radyte
Emile encountered a stunning fact: when we think about depression, we don’t think of gender in the first place — we think that depression should be understood similarly to other medical conditions (e.g., cancer). As she was studying different data sets, Emile started noticing various patterns in the women around herself; namely, women experience extremely strong symptoms of depression before their periods. As a researcher, she thought, “Huh, that’s super interesting!”
She realized that many invaluable insights could be made based on empirical data:
“If we could discard the data on men and looked at the data on women, we can see how the menstrual cycle impacts our mood and our proclivity to particular mood disorders.” — Dr. E. Radyte
Emile discussed the underrecognized concept of premenstrual exacerbation (PME), wherein women are most susceptible to mood and pain disorders before their menstrual cycle. She highlighted the importance of acknowledging and incorporating these factors in mental health and physical treatments for more effective management, citing examples like depression and anxiety exacerbating during the premenstrual period. Yet, most clinical trials, including those for treatments like medication or brain stimulation, still fail to consider this essential data, thus impeding the progress of psychiatric development for women.
Emile went on to explain the functioning of the device her company Samphire Neuroscience developed:
“The device sends a weak, low electrical current through different brain parts. One part of the brain for the cognitive symptoms, and one part of the brain for pain.” — Dr. E. Radyte
2. Innovating with Brain Sensors, PMS and User Experience
“Understanding our bodies better can lead us to make better decisions. … Most of the people who use our device, understand their bodies, and it’s crap for five days a month. So they need an actual solution.” — Dr. E. Radyte
Emile shared some fascinating insights her company got after interviewing early users of the brain device: they did not give feedback about the pain that they suffered, but all the amazing things they were able to do because of the effectiveness of the device:
- “This is the first time I’ve been able to go to the gym while on my period.”
- “This is the first time that I didn’t cancel all of my meetings with friends because of my PMS.”
- “This is the first time I didn’t do remote work, because I felt well enough to go into the office.”
Such-action driven responses by early users were surprising, and inspired Emile’s team to continue research, data collection, and product development:
“Women are extremely self-judgmental how they rate their pain and mood symptoms. … When they see the effects of what they can actually do, when they don’t have those symptoms, they see a very big difference. This has pushed us to show women that their lives could be a little bit more even.” — Dr. E. Radyte
3. Discovering PMS Data
In treating menstrual pain and depression, the Samphire team needs to deal with 120+ symptoms that have been identified.
Emile highlighted that because of those diverse symptoms, conditions of PMS can differ very much. Furthermore, there is much variance in the user sample. And on top of that, there is variability in response to treatment. So there’s a lot interacting with it.
Emile explained in detail how her device helps alleviate pain perception by restoring communication between the frontal cortex (by stimulating it) and the limbic system, which provokes those emotions.
4. From Excel Sheets to Behavioral Changes
Surprisingly, Emile discovered that so many people track their own health data by using … Excel sheets:
“Individual women have extremely detailed data. However, to date, we have not really condensed all of that data into one and seeing what the most common symptoms are. What is the trend? Are there phenotypes that we can distinguish from it? … That is what fascinates me.” — Dr. E. Radyte
Emile shared another remarkable realization about the existing stereotypes about how women approach (and value) their own personal medical data:
“Often, women have been framed as not knowing their bodies. In some parts is true, because on average, the scientific community doesn’t know their bodies very well. But when you look at these women who have fought to get a diagnosis who have recorded their body, so so well, it’s really a wealth of knowledge.” — Dr. E. Radyte
So how do we bring personalization in such a rapidly evolving area? How could it be possible to utilize technology to help individual women to understand their bodies? How could data and technology could be beneficial?
Emile explained that based on her team’s findings, people are less interested in actually seeing a score of how much better they feel. Instead, they are more interested in seeing what they can do because they feel better. At Samphire Neuroscience, Emile’s team was interested in exploring how brain stimulation to alleviate symptoms improve people’s performance (e.g., increased running endurance, lowering baseline heart rate, the ability to do more reps of exercise):
“Physical performance is a very good proxy for essentially your state of the body. And if you feel better physically, you’re likely to be able to feel better mentally as well. … Behavioral change is the kind of gold standard or what you want to do with any form of intervention. For us, it is about the impact of brain stimulation.” — Dr. E. Radyte
5. Bringing Personalized Experiences
Many people are very interested in understanding their physiology and how their bodies work. Wearable devices have emerged as one possible tool for people to become more observant and better understand themselves. But there is so much to be done regarding digital and medical literacy and consumer empowerment with data.
Emile shared her experience ofhow correct framing of certain issues (e.g., describing the condition what it is, PMS) helped women embrace reality and increase the urge to have a solution to the problem::
“By building a solution, and acknowledging that term (PMS), we made a lot of women feel like they deserved a solution for it, which wasn’t the case before as well.” — Dr. Emile Radyte
The final podcast segment was dedicated to discussing the inevitable increase in data from devices like the Oura ring and the challenge of empowering individuals with this data.
Dr. Emile Radyte shared her vision about AI’s potential in women’s health, particularly in addressing unheard or misunderstood issues such as PME or menopause symptoms. Emile believes that AI can revolutionize research in women’s health and enhance clinical outcomes through personalized strategies like suggesting workouts or diets around their menstrual cycles or even adjusting medication schedules based on menstrual cycles. One possible use-case for that is “specialized AI agents” offering personalized health recommendations based on user’s health and data.
You can listen to this episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts.
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