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Low grade inflammation is a feature of many of our common chronic conditions.

The vagus nerve plays an essential role in regulating inflammation.

Vagus nerve stimulation reduces inflammation.

Bioelectronic medicine has the potential to revolutionize our use of medications in chronic illnesses.

Drugs these days are both life-saving and lethal. A century ago, in this country, there were hardly any approved drugs for any illnesses, and drug abuse was rare. Now we have a drug for every ailment—more than we can count—and our epidemic of drug abuse puts panhandlers on the street corners of every city. Who would dispute that pharmacology has revolutionized the practice of medicine, as well as our culture? Without these marvelous medications, many of us middle-aged and elderly would be miserable or dead.

And yet I’m sure that future generations—hopefully the next one—will look back on many of our modern pharmacology treatments as crude, wasteful, risky, and unnecessarily expensive. Every pill we swallow and every IV solution infused works by saturating our whole body to reach one or a few intended target organs. Imagine how outraged we would be if, in order for one farmer to get his cotton fields treated for boll weevils, the whole state of Alabama had to be sprayed with insecticide. The “side effects,” both physical and political, would be intolerable to the people.

Political revolutions are sparked by........

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