Brainwave Entrainment and Pain Control

by Lance | Articles, Entrainment, Healing, Research

PandoraStar can help with pain control

IMPORTANT NOTE IF YOU SUFFER FROM PAIN

What has become obvious to me over the years researching pain and other related health challenges is that there is rarely a solution that works for everyone. The same applies to using brainwave entrainment for pain relief in that there are a number of different studies showing different protocols that are effective. This is why I have created three different approaches to pain relief for PandoraStar owners and their clients. All three may work for you, but more likely is that one or two may work faster and more completely.
Whether you choose to try BWE for pain relief or not.., don’t give up! There is always another thing to experiment with.

Let me start by making perhaps a bold statement but a neurologically correct one..,

‘Physical pain is a function of the mind and not the body’.
If the signal from the affected body part is interrupted from getting to or from the brain, the pain disappears.
In fact without a signal from nerves reaching the brain to be decoded.., there is no sensation at all. This is what many pain-relieving drugs try to achieve.

Short term pain is an appropriate response by the body/mind to let you know that something is wrong and/or to remove yourself from the cause of the pain.
What happens though when the pain continues and becomes chronic? IE: what happens when the pain goes beyond a short term signal and becomes a long term suffering even though healing is taking place or in some cases has already finished?

BWE (Brainwave Entrainment), seems to have some promise and positive research results showing pain relief in a non-invasive and drug-free way.
And let’s face it.., if you are in pain, then anything requiring effort is a big ask. This is where BWE can be so useful because you don’t have to do anything as far as effort beyond turning the device on.

In this article, I will outline a few of the idea’s around using this technology and a couple of testimonials of people using the PandoraStar deep trance machine with amazing results in pain relief.
It’s important to know that not all pain is the same and there is more than one protocol that can be followed to get results in pain control and relief using BWE.
Owners of PandoraStar have at least three custom made programs to help with pain.
HEADCALM
PAINFREE
PAINFREE-2
It is also important to know that although I have included some peer-reviewed research here to back up the use of BWE for pain relief.., the amount of research supporting alternative ways of treating health problems is sadly lacking. Non-drug related methods for health and wellbeing get very little funding or attention (at least initially) compared to a new pill that you can take. No judgement made or implied in that statement. I support anything that helps people feel better. I’m simply pointing out that a certain amount of responsibility needs to be taken by all of us to explore, with your doctors agreement, other ways of helping yourself that may not be well known if your current treatment is not giving you the results you desire.
Again.., no claim is made here of medical benefit. That is up to you to decide if you want to explore. But do know that I would not be writing about this subject at all if I had not seen first hand some near-miraculous results from this technology.

Theta brainwaves and pain intensity:

Recent findings with EEG brainwave measuring technology shows that at least for chronic pain, there is a correlation with an increase in Theta brain activity. In fact, by measuring the amount of Theta brainwave levels in a persons brain, doctors are able to get more accurate feedback than any other current method about the intensity of pain a person is feeling and a significant reduction is false-positive results.
This then allows doctors to prescribe the right amount of medication.
This does not, of course, make Theta brainwaves bad. It is simply an indication as far as BWE is concerned that for pain relief they are unlikely to be useful and potentially maybe the opposite in that they should be avoided. This is purely a logical conclusion and not necessarily accurate. And in fact, if you look you will find study results of using Theta entrainment to reduce pain. Again, there is no one size fits all solution.
Below is a typical study showing this relationship between pain and Theta waves:

Theta brainwaves and pain intensity:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-34594-2

Alpha stimulation and pain relief:

More common as a useful frequency for pain relief seems to be in the Alpha range. 10Hz being the sweet spot in some studies.
This Alpha range of frequencies (and in particular the middle 10 Hz frequency) gets more attention than any other frequency range for a number of potential mental and/or physical benefits.
Why? Because it’s one of the most easy places for the brain to get to when someone closes their eyes and begins to relax. It shows up quickly on EEG tests and a lack of Alpha has been shown in many cases to be an indicator of cognitive challenges.
For example, people who have had head trauma or are prone to anxiety or stress often have little Alpha brain activity. Studies with alcoholics and people with PTSD also show that by increasing the amount of Alpha waves in their brains, symptoms improve dramatically and levels of personal control also increase.
Stress-related hormones like Cortisol and Beta-Endorphins have been shown to respond positively to Alpha brainwave stimulation.
It is, of course, true to say that ANY method of relaxing more can be beneficial to reducing pain.
And in the case of Alpha, being that it is an easier brainwave state to entrain/synchronise with than some of the others, makes it an ideal choice for someone to use.
Below is a typical Alpha study on pain relief that shows an analgesic effect of external Alpha stimulation with a 10-minute treatment. The strongest effect was found in the group that used 10Hz photic/light stimulation.

Alpha stimulation and pain relief.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ejp.960

Sub and low Delta/Epsilon frequencies:

There seems to be a soothing effect by entraining to sub-Delta/Epsilon (< 1Hz) and low Delta (1-3Hz) frequencies in some research.
The super-slow brainwaves (<1Hz) seem to have the ability also to jump breaks in neuronal connection and act like a driver for higher frequencies. Very hard to measure, but low frequencies like those under 1Hz have an apparent feedback/feed-forward connection with super high frequencies of about 200Hz plus often referred to as Lambda frequencies. So contrary to logic, people using super high frequencies like this often report very deep feelings of relaxation and comfort rather than stimulation.
This effect is most powerfully experienced by PandoraStar users in the program called TIBET.
Not surprisingly, a lack of deep levels of this Delta brain activity due to bad sleep patterns has been shown to increase pain including headaches and Fibromyalgia.
And interestingly, people on morphine, when measured with EEG, show the biggest change in the Delta range of 2-4 Hz. Again, slow-wave brain rhythms seem to correlate with comfort.
In one of the studies below, 18 out of 20 people experienced less pain during a usually extremely uncomfortable and painful Endoscopic procedure by using Photic slow wave stimulation.
Drugs are usually used in this procedure but the side effects of the drugs can be pretty unpleasant.
In the second study below, 24 out of 27 patients received complete headache or migraine relief after just 5 minutes of visual slow-wave treatment. None of the control group using a placebo treatment got any relief at all.

Slow-wave stimulation and pain relief:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16706812

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1526-4610.1985.hed2508444.x

Gamma and pain relief:

What about Gamma?
This is also interesting for a number of reasons.
There seems to be growing evidence that there are a feed-back AND feed-forward relationship between Gamma frequencies and lower frequencies as well. IE: They control and/or magnify each other working in synchrony.
Hypnosis states, for example, show an effect called Theta Gamma coupling where the two types of wave interact with each other.
The use of Gamma in the treatment of migraine is covered below but in general, it seems that when people in pain are given a choice of frequencies, they opt for faster ones in the Gamma range more often than slower ones.
My suspicion is that this is in part helped by the nearly imperceptible flicker rate on the eyes at that speed. The results are clear that it helps a large proportion of the people who use it though.
Interestingly in the study below, of the 50 participants in the study suffering from Fibromyalgia (which is an incredibly uncomfortable and painful condition), there was a significant reduction in the severity of symptoms in both the control group and the treatment group. Normally this would mean a fail in the test, but in this case, the control group was still given Gamma stimulation but it was random instead of a steady frequency as in the treatment group.
It would seem possible then (as the researchers allude to) that the positive benefits of Gamma on pain relief are not limited to one frequency.
Other studies on Gamma and pain relief support this idea also by using differing frequencies than this particular one in their studies.

Gamma and Fibromyalgia:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30822311