Brain fog from chemo & Alzheimer's plaque reduced by gazing at 40 Hz flickering strobe light

[sb4]

I have attempted to make my own simple app letting the user select for Hz and which 2 colors they want. I'm thinking if you have a second monitor you could leave this running on there. Don't know how irritating it would be though.

https://sbingley22.github.io/brainwave-entrainment/

Source Code: https://github.com/sbingley22/brainwave-entrainment

There seems to be a problem with the delta range where it flickers extra sometimes. No idea why.
Obviously Gamma won't work without a 80/120Hz monitor.

Move your mouse to the top of the screen to view controls.

 

[Hip]

I have attempted to make my own simple app letting the user select for Hz and which 2 colors they want. I'm thinking if you have a second monitor you could leave this running on there.

Looks great! Nice work. The red and amber combination you have there seems easier on the eyes, compared to black and white.

On my 60 Hz monitor, there's not much difference between 40 Hz and 20 Hz, but as you say, if you had a monitor or phone with a 120 Hz screen refresh rate, then you would be able to get proper 40 Hz flicker.



Yesterday I gave myself 15 minutes of 40 Hz strobing using the Strobily app to create a flicker on my phone's torch. I laid down on bed, and held the phone torch at the bridge of my nose, with my eyes shut.

I did not notice much, except that around half an hour later, I developed some anxiety (but this could have been a coincidence, as I often get these anxiety symptoms appearing anyway).

I think it would be hard to commit to doing 60 minutes of strobe therapy each day, because you cannot do anything else with your eyes closed. Unless perhaps you were listening to a podcast or music say.



I came across this study which experimented with 40 Hz transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) via electrodes placed on the head, as an alternative to the 40 Hz strobe light. It's not clear from the study whether 40 Hz tACS is as effective as a 40 Hz strobe, in terms of its benefits for Alzheimer's.

But certainly it would be easier to use tACS for an hour a day, compared to the strobe, because at least with tACS, you can be doing something while the therapy takes place.

 

[Dysfunkion]

I have attempted to make my own simple app letting the user select for Hz and which 2 colors they want. I'm thinking if you have a second monitor you could leave this running on there. Don't know how irritating it would be though.

https://sbingley22.github.io/brainwave-entrainment/

Source Code: https://github.com/sbingley22/brainwave-entrainment

There seems to be a problem with the delta range where it flickers extra sometimes. No idea why.
Obviously Gamma won't work without a 80/120Hz monitor.

Move your mouse to the top of the screen to view controls.

I'm going to play around with this myself. Does the light simply need to be on you or do you have to be facing it with eyes closed?

 

[Hip]

I'm going to play around with this myself. Does the light simply need to be on you or do you have to be facing it with eyes closed?

You need to be staring at the flickering light, as it is the flickering effect on the retinas in the eyes that induces this 40 Hz oscillation in the brain.

If you are using a computer or phone screen-based strobe, you probably want to keep your eyes open, as the light on the screen is not very strong, and will not penetrate much through closed eyes.

But if using your phone's torch, this is extremely bright close up, so to protect your eyes, you would want to keep them closed.

 

[Hip]

This paper on 40 Hz light and sound stimulation found that this therapy activates the brain's glymphatic system to remove amyloid plaque. The glymphatic system is a brain-wide waste disposal system analogous to the body's lymphatic system.

It has been hypothesised that ME/CFS might involve glymphatic dysfunction, causing toxic build up within the central nervous system. If there is any truth to this hypothesis, then glymphatic system activation from 40 Hz stimulation may be beneficial for ME/CFS.

This ties up with Dr Raymond Perrin's view that ME/CFS may involve a stagnant lymphatic system, which results in toxins not being efficiently cleared from the body and brain.

 

[Hip]

I found a couple of 40 Hz strobing glasses products:

Clairaty Glasses $150

Gamma 40Hz Light and Sound Stimulation Device $350

 

[Wishful]

Even mains LED lights these days are designed to run with minimal flicker:

Unlike incandescent and fluorescent bulbs, LED lights convert AC to DC, so unless they're dimming it, there should be no flicker.

 

[Hip]

Unlike incandescent and fluorescent bulbs, LED lights convert AC to DC, so unless they're dimming it, there should be no flicker.

According to this article, older LED bulbs were directly connected to the AC supply, and so would flicker at 50 or 60 Hz. But in newer LED bulbs, the AC is first converted to DC. Though even then, you might get a small amount of flicker, depending on the size of the capacitor used in the bridge rectifier circuit that converts AC to DC. If the capacitor is insufficient, then you can get AC ripple appearing on the DC, which may lead to flickering.

 

[cristi_b]

Yes, if you had a monitor running at 120 Hz, you could generate a 60 Hz flicker by having one frame black, then the next frame white, and the next frame black, and so on, repeating this cycle.

Just a few problems that come to mind when trying to achieve a 40Hz flicker on a computer monitor:
- most lcd/led displays run at 60Hz so there is no way to accurately achieve a 40Hz flicker; as you pointed out the display most not only be capable of a certain frequency, it most be set to run at the desired frequency for each session; in order to correctly display a 40Hz flicker, the display must run at a multiple of that frequency, that is: 80Hz(but I know of no display that does that), 160Hz(2 frames white, 2 frames black), 200Hz(not ideal as 2 frames white, 3 frames black), 240Hz(3 frames white, 3 frames black) etc
- if the lcd display has a CCFL backlight, there will be lots of flickering from the CCFL(this kind of light sometimes bothers sensitive people)
- if the lcd display does have an LED backlight, contrast/luminosity must be set at maximum with no powersaving so the LED does not strobe(otherwise you introduce additional strobbing)
- black frame insertion must be turned off as it will screw up what you are trying to do
- pixel latency will be a factor in the amplitude of the strobe

All in all, an old CRT monitor would be more suitable as it does not have the above problems including setting the desired frequency for each session, which as pointed out above should be twice the desired strobe(ideally).

 

[Hip]

Good points, @cristi_b.

in order to correctly display a 40Hz flicker, the display must run at a multiple of that frequency, that is: 80Hz(but I know of no display that does that), 160Hz(2 frames white, 2 frames black), 200Hz(not ideal as 2 frames white, 3 frames black), 240Hz(3 frames white, 3 frames black) etc

120 Hz could produce a 40 Hz flicker too by having 1 frame white and two frames black. But most computer monitors are 60 Hz; you usually find 120 Hz in gaming monitors.



I am getting good 40 Hz strobing effects from my Android phone using the Strobily app to flash the phone torch at 40 Hz.

Though although this app works well on my phone, I have found that it may not work well on older phones. However, the app settings do offer 3 different mechanisms by which the app controls the torch, so you can try each one to see which gives the best effect.

 

[cristi_b]

120 Hz could produce a 40 Hz flicker too by having 1 frame white and two frames black.

Something tells me that the study was more about an equal "strobe" rather than simple "flicker", by that I mean the time the light is OFF should be equal to the time the light is ON: so number of BLACK frames should be equal to number of WHITE frames. This would mean that 1 frame white followed by 2 black frames is not good enough to achieve the effects.
I know from a test I did more than 10 years ago, that I takes a certain amount of time for information to travel from the eyes and reach the brain. If you put a white frame and do not allow enough time for the full information to reach the visual cortex I don't think you can achieve anything. This is why my guess is the researchers used an equal time of BLACK and WHITE.

I am getting good 40 Hz strobing effects from my Android phone using the Strobily app to flash the phone torch at 40 Hz.

Can that app achieve the same duration for light ON and light OFF ?

 

[Hip]

Something tells me that the study was more about an equal "strobe" rather than simple "flicker", by that I mean the time the light is OFF should be equal to the time the light is ON: so number of BLACK frames should be equal to number of WHITE frames. This would mean that 1 frame white followed by 2 black frames is not good enough to achieve the effects.

It would be interesting to see a study examining whether brief pulses of light at 40 Hz might be enough to stimulate brain entrainment, or whether you need equal time with the light on and off (50% duty cycle).

The question would be: does the optic nerve send a signal according to light intensity, or does it send a signal when there is a change in light intensity? When I asked Perplexity this question, it said "optic nerve sends a signal in response to both the intensity of light and changes in light intensity".

In the case of photosensitive epilepsy, repetitive camera flashes (like you get from a bunch of paparazzi) can cause neurons to fire in synchrony, resulting in a seizure. Camera flashes are extremely short in duration, in the order of microseconds.

Can that app achieve the same duration for light ON and light OFF ?

By default it has the same duration, but you can set the duty cycle percentage.

 

[Hip]

Just came across this paper which found that audio binaural beats at 40 Hz will also entrain the brain. They found the brain responded to binaural audio after 15 minutes.

Binaural beats are produced in the brain when each ear is presented with a pure sine tone of slightly different frequency. The beats or oscillations produced are equal to the difference in frequency of the two tones. So for example, if you placed a 300 Hz tone in one ear, and a 340 Hz tone in the other, you would get 40 Hz beats in the brain.

I notice that there are already a few 40 Hz binaural beat audio tracks on YouTube, like this one. For these to work, you have to listen to them with headphones, because you need to get the correct tone delivered to each ear.


Just how effective binaural beats are at evoking a 40 Hz brain wave, compared to 40 Hz strobe, is hard to say.

 

[cristi_b]

Related -> some form of flicker has good results for epilepsy:

Flicker stimulation shines in clinical trial for epilepsy

Date: May 22, 2024
Source: Georgia Institute of Technology
Summary: Researcher leads a new clinical trial testing her flicker technology on patients with epilepsy.

 

[mattie]

If you have apple music:
https://music.apple.com/nl/album/gamma-40-hz-brainwaves-active-thought/849676095?i=849681017

 

[Shanti1]

I purchased a Clarity Lamp from Amazon in 2021 when some of this research started coming out, but I never got in the habit of using it, mostly because of the time commitment of staring at it for an hour each day. Also somewhat concerned if the sensory stimulus from the flickering will have an adverse impact on my dysautonomia or cause a crash. I've now brought it back out and am committed to trying it. It would be great if it helps with brain fog, but I also have a strong genetic risk for Alzheimer's, which was my main motivation for the purchase.

The lamp is bright, but not uncomfortably so. The flicker is very noticeable.

 

[Hip]

I never got in the habit of using it, mostly because of the time commitment of staring at it for an hour each day.

I think it is going to hard for anyone to maintain a commitment of using the strobe light for an hour each day.

I did a test with both a smartphone flashlight 40 Hz strobe light (using the Strobily app) for one hour, and also a test listening to this 40 Hz binaural sound track through earphones for one hour.

Listening to the binaural was much easier, because the sound is gentle and unobtrusive, and you can listen to it while doing other things, such as working on your computer.

Whereas you cannot do much else when staring at the strobe light.

When I tested the smartphone strobe, I did this at a time during the day when I felt I needed a rest and midday nap. I laid down on my bed, balancing my smartphone on my forehead, so that the flashlight was at eye level. Then I just closed my eyes, and drifted into a semi-dazed state, looking at the flickering light through my closed eyelids. Because I was tired, time seemed to pass more quickly, and I managed to do almost an hour of this strobe therapy.

So it may be a good idea to perform the strobe therapy when you are tired and need a lie down.

Unfortunately the next day after the strobe test, I was hit with an exacerbation of mental health symptoms (which might just be a coincidence), and also some PEM.

 

[cristi_b]

I did a test with both a smartphone flashlight 40 Hz strobe light (using the Strobily app) for one hour, and also a test listening to this 40 Hz binaural sound track through earphones for one hour.

Maybe I understood wrong, but I thought that the research was done with both stimuli at the same time: visual and auditory. It probably doesn't work so well with them separately.

 

[sb4]

I think to do this therapy consistently you'd need a 120Hz monitor. then you could have it on the side monitor whilst on the computer. or design an app that is an overlay of your main screen and have it strobe subtly.

 

[Florida Guy]

The process of combining two frequencies to get another frequency is well known. Its used in electronics as well as audio. The new frequency is called the beat frequency and is the sum or difference between two other sounds or radio frequencies. So using 300 hz and 340 hz you end up with 4 different being 40, the difference, 640 being the sum, plus the original 300 and 340 so you don't get just 40hz by combining the two, you get a bunch. What they do is filter out what they don't need. Its actually more complicated than that, this is the simple explanation

I've seen ads for headset and eyeglass type equipment that flashes led lights of different colors into your eyes or into your head. You can control the frequency and color. I see stuff like that on ebay and amazon. They seem to work by an oscillator that puts out pulses and the pulses turn on and off the led's. That probably will be easier than trying to do it with beat frequencies though that is possible too.

What about sound? Would a 40hz hum add to the effect and make it work better? How about 40hz vibration against the skin in various areas? Or other frequencies which might work better. I've tried binaural beats, you need a headset for that. It didn't seem to work any wonders but maybe I should try it again?