Brainwave entrainment is a method to stimulate the brain into entering a specific state by using a pulsing sound, light, or electromagnetic field. The pulses elicit the brain’s ‘frequency following’ response, encouraging the brainwaves to align to the frequency of a given beat.
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He gasps, he snorts, and he is grappling for breath! He likely has sleep apnea. (This can happen with women as well.)
You’ve probably heard these telltale signs.
It’s also scary. If you’ve ever lain beside someone with sleep apnea and literally watched that person stop breathing – it is scary!
Snoring
The actual loud snoring sound is created as the soft palette and the uvula vibrate. The uvula is the little fleshy bit of skin that hangs down at the back of your throat. From physics, we know that any rapidly moving air will try to elevate and vibrate the objects in its path; hence, voluminous airflow passing through the nose or mouth causes this loud, intense vibration. It’s the irregularity of the air movement when it’s not consistently even, that causes the sporadic vibration of the soft pallet. The National Sleep Foundation research suggests that about 44% men and 28% women snore and this snoring affects their bed partners. When someone snores loudly and constantly every night, it is considered chronic snoring. Other times, snoring only occurs on an occasional basis and can be due to excessive tiredness, overeating, sleeping on one’s back, excessive alcohol consumption etc.
Obstructive Sleep Apnea
Obstructive sleep apnea, on the other hand, is where the sufferer’s breathing actually stops for a brief period of time – anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute. The initial culprits that trigger the onset of it are weight gain, aging, and lose of muscle tone, though this can also occur in younger people without the typical triggers. In a home setting, this is often misdiagnosed, as very often, it is accompanied by loud snoring, though snoring does not need to occur for the person to be having apnea events. When the throat muscles relax during sleep, the windpipe collapses. This then prevents the oxygen from flowing. As the blood oxygen level decreases, the brain finally kicks in and say, ‘Hey! It’s time to give me oxygen’, so it wakes you up just enough for you to tighten up the upper airway muscles and open your windpipe. This results in a huge intake of air and causes snorting and gasping, literally for breath. This pattern can repeat hundreds of time through the night and the sufferer is never the wiser. This is why it is so important to monitor your daytime behavior and how you feel. My husband suffers from very mild apnea events and he can always tell when he’s had a ‘bad’ night as his throat tends to be sore the next day, and he is very tired and groggy upon waking. If left unchecked or untreated, it can lead to intense irritability and depression, as well as morning headaches, loss of sex drive and a decline in cognitive functioning. There can also be an increased risk of high blood pressure, irregular heartbeats, and an elevated risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Millions of people have their sleep interrupted with this disturbing medical condition…and millions go undiagnosed. This extremely common sleep disorder is one that definitely needs medical attention. It is diagnosed by spending a night or two in a sleep lab hooked up to Polysomnography equipment that monitors your heartbeat, breathing and brainwave activity.
Once sleep apnea is diagnosed, the common solution is to sleep with a CPAP mask (continuous positive airway pressure) over your nose and mouth. It provides regulated flow of air through the nasal passages, which prevents your windpipe from closing. For milder cases of it, learning to sleep on one’s side often will correct the situation. Extreme solutions involve surgery to correct structural deformities. All solutions must be discussed with your medical practitioner.
Brainwave entrainment is a method to stimulate the brain into entering a specific state by using a pulsing sound, light, or electromagnetic field. The pulses elicit the brain’s ‘frequency following’ response, encouraging the brainwaves to align to the frequency of a given beat.
This ‘frequency following’ response of brainwave entrainment can be seen in action with those prone to epilepsy. If a strobe flashes at their seizure frequency, the brain will ‘entrain’ to the flashing light, resulting in a seizure.
On the positive side, this same mechanism is commonly used to induce many brainwave states; such as a trance, enhanced focus, relaxation, meditation or sleep induction. The brainwave entrainment effectively pushes the entire brain into a certain state.
Brainwave entrainment works for almost everyone. It is a great way to lead your mind into states that you might usually have difficulty reaching, allowing you to experience what those states feel like.
THE HYPE
There is a lot of marketing hype around brainwave entrainment. It is sold with promises of increasing IQ, promoting weight loss, ‘mind-tripping’, enhancing creativity, concentration, inducing spiritual states and more.
While these claims are not entirely true, they are not altogether false either. In practice, the claims are based on an overly-simplistic view of how the brain and the brainwaves function.
THE RUB
People are very seldom deficient in a certain brainwave type in all areas of their brain. Usually the distribution is much spottier, with an excess in one area and a deficiency in another.
We are all different, especially when it comes to the distribution of our brainwaves. Boosting a certain brainwave state may be beneficial for one person, and emotionally uncomfortable for another. Without knowing each person’s starting position, entrainment can be rather ‘hit and miss’.
If brainwave entrainment leaves you with unwanted side-effects (see below) or discomfort, you’re probably encouraging a range of brainwaves that are already excessive in some area of your brain. The way around this is to get a brain map to see what your brain’s strengths and weaknesses are, and see what (if any) brainwaves could use some encouragement.