Many ancient cultures have used music or, to be more specific, repetitive drumming as part of their various traditions in order to promote overall well-being and prosperity. Indeed, the drumming and chanting of Hindu healers, Yogis, shamans of the Americas, and even Tibetan monks are good examples of this. Here, to a large extent, the repetitive sounds are used to manipulate certain brainwaves in order for them to transcend consciousness and help with spiritual growth, healing, and to promote concentration. Binaural beats may be described as a more modern approach to this time-tested methodology.
Most people are familiar with an optical illusion. For example, someone walking through the desert thirsting for water may have their eyes play tricks on them, with them seeing an oasis in the far-off distance while there is, in fact, nothing there except more sand. Binaural beats could best be described as an illusion that you hear. In other words, binaural beats may be likened to auditory illusions.
Binaural beats are perceived in your brain when you wear earphones with two slightly different sound frequencies being played in each ear. In fact, the word ‘binaural’ refers to ‘bi’ – two, and ‘aural’ – ear. What your brain perceives, however, is not two individual sound frequencies. It hears one single beat that is somewhere between that of the two frequencies that are actually playing.
For example, let’s say that the left earphone is receiving the sound frequency of a beat that is 150 Hz. At the same time, the right earphone is receiving the sound frequency of a beat that is at 150 Hz. What your brain captures is a third frequency that is the difference between the two, i.e. a sound beat at a frequency of 10 Hz. In other words, your brain has acknowledged hearing binaural beats that in reality are not there, thus the auditory illusion.
If you only listen through one ear, your brain will only pick up on the sound frequency played in that ear. In order to hear binaural beats, both ears need to hear different sound frequencies at the same time.
Before deciding that binaural beats are of no benefit and something concocted by people who know nothing about scientific studies, you may want to take a look at some of the research conducted on the phenomenon.
While much study still needs to be conducted with regards to how binaural beats actually work on the human brain and the various applications it could be used for, studies conducted thus far seem positive.
A study on binaural beats and pre-operative anxiety, for example, show remarkable results. Patients suffering from anxiety before an operation when played music with binaural beats showed a greater decrease in anxiety levels than their counterparts who were played the same music without the incorporation of binaural beats. Binaural beats addressing your delta brain waves seem to have the greatest anti-anxiety effect, according to this study.
With regards to a study on Alzheimer’s disease, binaural beats targeting the gamma frequency band showed promise in improving cognitive function. According to those conducting the research, it seems that they feel that further study of binaural beats may hold promise with regards to neurological function. Binaural beats may also help improve attention, according to another study.
These days, and according to much research, binaural beats are believed to have positive benefits with issues such as stress relief, pain relief, helping people focus, and a host of others.
Neurotransmitters are responsible for the transmission of messages between neurons. In so doing, communication is able to take place throughout your entire body, including your organs. They play a role in regulating most body functions, including both physical and cognitive performance, your sleep patterns, mental state, etc. If for some reason you have a chemical imbalance, the effect would be a systemic one.
Our nerve cells communicate with each other via neuronal pathways. They do not touch each other, however, but instead are separated from each other by means of what is known as the synaptic cleft. When a message is sent, it is sent from one neuron to another by way of this synaptic cleft. Please note that the neuron sending the message is called the presynaptic cell (axon), and the neuron receiving the message is called the postsynaptic cell (dendrite).
In order for a message to be sent across a synapse, a neurotransmitter, i.e. a chemical messenger, is needed. For example, the presynaptic cell would produce serotonin which would then move through the synapse and bind with receptors on the postsynaptic cell surface. The signal would then arrive at this cell and from there be transferred to the next until the final target of the initial signal sent by the brain is received.
Your brain will detect the binaural beat if the tones are lower than 1,000 Hz. What you hear as the binaural beat is the difference between the sound entering the left and right ear.
For example, if a tone entering your left ear is at 180 Hz and the tone entering your right ear is at 190 Hz, the binaural beat is 10 Hz - the difference between the two frequencies.
While some frequencies can entice your brain into action, others will slow it down. This means you can use this therapy to change the brainwave activity and create mental states that would otherwise be more difficult to achieve. Binaural beats can make you more alert, increase your cognitive abilities, help you relax, make it easier to enter deep meditation, help you fall asleep, and more.
There are five different types of brainwaves that are used by binaural beats:
Frequencies under 4 Hz produce these brainwaves. This is the lowest level of brain activity and is associated with deep, dreamless sleep.
These waves are produced by frequencies between 4-7 Hz. They are dominant during deep meditation, visualization, intuition, creativity, and dreaming sleep (REM).
Frequencies between 7-13 Hz produce Alpha brainwaves. We experience them during periods of relaxation, light meditation, and just before falling asleep.
Frequencies between 13-30 Hz produce Beta waves. They are dominant during intense mental activity and focused concentration, but also when we experience stress and anxiety.
Binaural beats with frequencies above 30 Hz produce Gamma waves. This is the fastest brainwave frequency and is associated with intelligence, higher states of consciousness, and peak concentration. Gamma waves also affect memory, self-control, and compassion.
Most people use binaural beats therapy to relax, increase concentration, or sleep better. However, this therapy can help you achieve much more.
Key benefits of binaural beats therapy include:
Although this therapy is perfectly safe, in some cases, you should not use it. If you have epilepsy, experience seizures, or live with a pacemaker, speak to your doctor about what relaxation techniques you would benefit most from.
Healthy sleep patterns require balanced cortisol levels. Unfortunately, chronic stress often wreaks havoc on the cortisol secretion process.
With a healthy circadian pattern, cortisol levels rise and fall throughout the day. They are highest in the morning and lowest between midnight and 4 AM.
However, due to stress and other factors, the circadian pattern can become unbalanced. When this happens, your sleep pattern gets messed up because neither high nor low nighttime cortisol levels benefit sound sleep.
A typical reaction to stress is a rush of adrenaline and cortisol hormones. These hormones increase your alertness and make it easier to deal with stress. However, the rush of hormones also makes it more difficult to relax and fall asleep. This is how chronic stress and the constant adrenaline rush prevent sound sleep.
Many people use binaural beats therapy to recover from chronic sleep deprivation. However, this therapy does not work like a sleeping pill. It can help you get a good night's sleep, but only if you manage to shut out your racing thoughts.
However, chronic lack of sleep is not only about feeling tired and being in a bad mood. It affects the quality of your life on several levels. For example, you have to cope with decreased alertness and focus. Your immunity is lower making you more prone to disease. You have to fight carbohydrate cravings, elevated estrogen levels, and reduced pain tolerance.
If you have sleep issues, you will, sooner or later, have to address them. If you don't, chronic sleep deprivation or reduced quality of sleep can lead to Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome (AFS).
Adrenal fatigue can have a major impact on your sleep pattern. The problem is that with those affected by this condition, adrenal glands do not release cortisol correctly. Instead of it being high in the morning and low throughout the night, with AFS sufferers cortisol may spike in the middle of the night or bounce up and down all night.
These are three of the main ways AFS may disrupt your sleep pattern:
This is the most common type of sleep disorder. If this describes you, you usually stay up late and are most alert at night. As a result, you feel exhausted and slow in the morning.
In this case, you easily fall asleep, but after a couple of hours, you wake up and stay wide awake for 1-3 hours. By the time you fall asleep again, it's time to get up. If this is what often happens to you, it means your cortisol level is low in the evening (which is why you have no problem falling asleep) but it spikes in the middle of the night (which is why you wake up and stay awake for a couple of hours or more).
Although you fall asleep without a problem, you continually wake up throughout the night. As a result, you usually feel drained and exhausted in the morning. This happens if your cortisol is bouncing up and down all night.
There are several reasons for experiencing these disruptive sleep patterns. To resolve these issues, it is important to identify the root cause. One such cause is elevated cortisol levels at night.
One reason you may have disrupted sleep is elevated cortisol levels at night. The longer your cortisol is elevated when it shouldn't be, the more likely you are to develop health problems. Digestive issues, hormone imbalances, immune system conditions, and premature aging are only some of the common side effects of chronic sleep deprivation.
Another way adrenal fatigue can disrupt your sleep is when your adrenal hormone levels become low. If that happens, your blood sugar levels can also be lower than they should be. In that case, the reason you wake up in the middle of the night is probably that your body needs to refuel.
If you often wake up between 1 and 3 AM, the reason could be low glycogen reserves in the liver. Or, imbalanced adrenaline and cortisol levels. This is particularly common with people who struggle with panic attacks or nightmares.
If low blood sugar is disrupting your sleep, try having a light meal before going to bed. Lean protein, healthy carbs, and healthy fats will keep your blood sugar levels stable throughout the night.
On the other hand, lack of sleep is not only a consequence of adrenal fatigue. It can also contribute to this condition. If your sleep pattern is often disrupted, it takes several days or more for the body and cortisol levels to adjust. This happens if you work in shifts. Or if you party all night and sleep during the day. Our bodies are genetically programmed to operate on a circadian rhythm. However, with some professions, this kind of lifestyle is difficult to avoid. In this case, your adrenals are repeatedly exposed to the stress of irregular sleep-wake patterns.
Fortunately, our body has an internal built-in mechanism for handling stress. It is called NeuroEndoMetabolic (NEM) Stress Response.
Although stress is very bad for our health, it is not always overwork or financial or health problems that cause it. Stress can come from more subtle sources, such as having family or friends stay with you, eating unsuitable foods, or even living in an old building.
One of the best ways to recover from stress is by getting a good night's sleep. However, if you have AFS, your body is flooded with norepinephrine and epinephrine, making it difficult to fall asleep. This means that a body that is already under stress has to deal with the additional stress of sleep deprivation.
The key to a healthy circadian rhythm is the biological clock which regulates various rhythms of our body. Neurotransmitters and the biological clock affect and regulate each other. So, an imbalance in one of them causes an imbalance in the other.
For the biological clock to function well, all the hormones it depends on need to be balanced. Insufficient or too high hormone levels can have a huge effect on the health of the biological clock. For example, the biological clock can get out of tune when levels of serotonin and melatonin are low, if cortisol levels are high, if there is a lack of GABA, if there are high levels of catecholamines, or if there is too much histamine, along with many other hormone imbalances.
Although sleep deprivation is a complex disorder with many possible causes, slowing your brainwave activity is a good way to start addressing this problem. Binaural beats can help you relax and have a restful sleep. This is because studies show they have an effect on three of the hormones that are very important to sleep:
This is one of the key hormones and is particularly important for regulating sleep. DHEA suppresses cortisol, preventing it from keeping you alert when you should be winding down and getting ready to sleep.
This hormone makes you feel alert and focused and is highest around 8 AM. Sometimes, instead of dropping in the afternoon and staying low throughout the night, it continues to peak, keeping you awake at night. Many people experience a significant drop in cortisol levels after exposure to relaxing binaural beats.
This hormone is the opposite of cortisol. It is highest in the evening and it prepares the body to fall asleep. One study found that over 73% of people who use binaural beats experience higher levels of melatonin.
One of the common symptoms of an imbalance in the Neuroaffect circuit of the NEM Stress Response is a sleep disorder. Caused and worsened by chronic stress, this condition can have far-reaching and life-threatening consequences. However, what's even more damaging than the lack of sleep is using energy drinks or stay-awake pills to keep yourself going without sleep.
It's true that women are much more likely to experience sleep problems. The reason for that is their hormones. Just as hormonal changes can disrupt regular sleep patterns, sleep deprivation can affect hormone levels. This is why sleep disorders are more likely at times when hormone levels spike or drop, such as during menopause and pregnancy.
If you have trouble sleeping, it could be a good idea to have your adrenals checked. This is necessary because they produce cortisol, DHEA, and adrenaline hormones which help regulate sleep.
Another common cause of sleep disorders is chronic gut inflammation. Because of the gut-brain axis, inflammation in the gut may cause an imbalance in neurotransmitters and vice versa.
Because all your body systems work closely together, you cannot address a health condition without considering the organs whose imbalance may have caused it. And it is also important to look at the organs that may be affected by this condition.
When you are looking to improve your health, get into the habit of looking at a bigger picture. Try to see yourself as a whole system where everything happens for a reason and has a consequence.
When you improve your gut health and hormone balance, you will also improve your sleep. And when you sleep well, you'll cope with stress better. This, in turn, could help you avoid adrenal fatigue as well as other stress-related disorders.
Being healthy is all about balance and staying in tune with your body. And using binaural beats to help modulate your brain activity, whether you are trying to be more alert and creative or reach a deeper state of meditation and get deeper sleep, could be a good way to do that.
© Copyright 2020 Michael Lam, M.D. All Rights Reserved.
Adrenal fatigue disrupts your sleep patterns because your adrenals no longer produce cortisol at the right times. Binaural beats therapy helps you re-establish the diurnal curve of cortisol. It helps you bring cortisol down at night and keep it down throughout the night.
