Evidence the cause of ME/CFS is in the kidneys: my experiments targeting my kidneys with bacterial biofilm-destroying ultrasound

[Hip]

I just found some information about the depth of penetration of low frequency ultrasound waves. The image below indicates that ultrasound waves at 28 kHz penetrate about twice as far as 1 MHz ultrasound waves.

Penetration Depth of Ultrasound Waves of Different Frequencies

Source: here​

 

[Garz]

i found this paper that may be of interest Hip

they were testing tissue penetration and patterns in an eg white mixture so they could visibly see the zone that was penetrated and denatured - much higher power though - hence the denaturing via heating effect

unfortunately they did not test different frequencies

https://koreascience.kr/article/JAKO201518050733492.pdf

 

[hapl808]

I think it's fascinating, but I have zero idea if it's helpful or harmful. It does seem like it 'should do nothing', yet obviously seems to be doing something.

I know someone with EDS who always gets really bad side effects from any ultrasound (scan or treatment). Which of course doctors deny and disbelieve, but that's unsurprising.

 

[Hip]

In my experiments, I noticed that regular 1 MHz ultrasound on my kidneys did make me feel mildly more tired the next day, but it was no big deal.

Then I read that lower frequency ultrasound works better to disrupt biofilms, so switched to using the 18 kHz lower frequency. That's when I got really strong adverse effects the next day, which lasted for 3 days.

My assumption was that these much stronger adverse effects were due to the more powerful effect on biofilms.

But now, having learnt today that 18 kHz can produce a cavitation effect in the tissues, which may be temporarily damaging kidney cells, this cavitation damage seems like a good alternative explanation for the stronger adverse effects.

So these stronger adverse effects may not actually be evidence for a biofilm in the kidneys, but may just be due to temporary tissue damage from the cavitation.

 

[Wishful]

Cavitation can be quite powerful. The possibility that the heat&pressure of collapsing bubbles was enough to cause nuclear fusion was plausible enough to get federal funding, although the supporting findings were proven to be a hoax. Still, cavitation pits hard metals, breaks down (or causes) different chemicals, alters membrane permeability, and has other significant effects. I think there's a strong possibility that you're doing something other than breaking down biofilms. I don't know what power levels at a given frequency will cause cavitation in the body. My ME symptoms seemed to correlate with immune system activating events, so maybe what you're doing is doing enough cellular damage to activate immune cells.

Here's a page about cavitation at different frequencies: https://prosysmeg.com/cavitation/

BTW, cavitation can cause sonoluminescence. If your ultrasonic transducer makes your tummy glow, you've got the power level too high.

 

[Garz]

i suspect the power levels used in your experiments so far are below those needed for significant cavitation to develop in tissues - but its necessary to do the groundwork to check for safety reasons

my gut feeling is your original thoughts around biofilm disruption are on track

 

[Hip]

i suspect the power levels used in your experiments so far are below those needed for significant cavitation to develop in tissues - but its necessary to do the groundwork to check for safety reasons

I am not so sure. My resonance loudspeaker is rated at 20 watts.

This article says loudspeaker efficiencies range from 0.5% to 20%. So let's assume 10% efficiency, that means my resonance loudspeaker is outputting about 2 watts of sound power.

I attached a circular plate of around 5 cm diameter to the resonance loudspeaker, which then gives a vibrating surface area of about 20 cm2. Assuming the sound power is evenly distributed throughout this plate, that is a power of 0.1 watt/cm2 = 100 mW/cm2.

That is the same power level used in the study mentioned before, where the authors believed that skin damage observed at 300 mW/cm2 was due to cavitation.

 

[Hip]

What I am thinking now is that it may be better for me to go back to the original 1 MHz ultrasound machine I was using on my kidneys. This is not as effective as lower kHz frequency ultrasound for disrupting biofilm, but we know it is safe, as this is a standard frequency used in ultrasound scans and ultrasound therapy. Possibly 1 MHz produces less cavitation than kHz frequencies.

In any case, I found the mild adverse effects from 1 MHz bearable (just 1 day of mildly increased fatigue), whereas the adverse effects from the 18 kHz were unbearable (at least from the power levels I used with the 18 kHz — I was using a 100 watt amplifier near full volume).

Alternatively, I could try the 18 kHz again, but at greatly reduced amplifier volume, in the hope that the adverse effects will be minimal. Though I am not keen on this, as I felt terrible from the 18 kHz.

 

[Garz]

This article says loudspeaker efficiencies range from 0.5% to 20%. So let's assume 10% efficiency, that means my resonance loudspeaker is outputting about 2 watts of sound power.

its good to have a start point for calculations Hip - but the 20% figure is really a highly optimised setup for large scale PA's where efficiency matters most - and these are an entirely different form of loudspeaker - ie a voice coil attached to a speaker cone or horn with an enclosure to acoustically load and control the speaker which allows them to reach these higher efficiencies.

the resonance style loudspeaker in your first page is a very different animal - and is really optimised to produce base sounds. as far as i can gather these typically have resonant frequencies around 60hz and efficiency will typically fall away the further from this frequency you operate them. But these devices are known to be highly non linear and i am pretty sure they are biased towards base sounds - so at the extremes high end of its range - like at frequencies ie 18khz - which is 300x higher frequency the efficiency could be 10x lower or 100x or even 1000x lower - i wish i had something more specific and constructive for you - but just wanted to highlight that its quite possible the reality is a long way from assumptions in the calculation above

unfortunately i have not seen any frequency response curves for this type of speaker - probably because they are intended to be attached to a surface or plane of some kind - table surface, etc - and whatever its attached to will alter its response dramatically.

also adding more mass ( eg the metal plate you mention) will tend to move the resonant frequency lower - and the efficiency at 18kHz lower - as the greater the mass the greater the energy needed to move it back and forth at the same frequency and amplitude - this is why hifi tweeters for instance are designed to have very small and light moving parts - and bass speakers have larger and heavier moving parts.

the physics around loudspeaker design and their interaction with the environment gets rather involved - without some form of frequency response curve - or sensitivity data for the driver when using it as a standalone device ( perhaps the manufacturer has data on this - a change at least ) unfortunately I doubt we can calculate a meaningful sound power output at 18kHz without putting error bars on that numbers in the order of +/- 100x

A meaningful test is perhaps more practical - eg a hydrophone placed 3cm away from the emitter and a slice of liver between the emitter and the hydrophone would be a good approximation

just wanted to flag the reasons i think the biofilm disruption theory has more legs / should perhaps not be discounted based on the above calc

i would also expect to see some skin damage as is pictured in some of the ultrasound experiment papers - if indeed cavitation was occurring.

keep up the good work!

 

[Pearshaped]

Interesting experiment Hip. My kidneys are completely involved and i often wonder if they just could clear out these viruses and possible fungal or bacterial infections at times, that i would not be in the predicament i am. I keep working on strengthening my kidneys and working to decrease the viral load in them. I feel i was making some progress pre getting COVID in July. Its quite a slow process for me that if i speed up too much, i end up in severe crashes.....and then i begin at all new permanent baselines that are even worse.

My kindeys are def. involved , too.
But how do you strengthen your kidneys?
It seems to be a difficult thing to do.

 

[Hip]

just wanted to flag the reasons i think the biofilm disruption theory has more legs / should perhaps not be discounted based on the above calc

I am not discounting the biofilm theory; that could still explain the adverse effects I experienced from the 18 kHz sound wave.

But I am concerned with safety: so if the 18 kHz sound wave is causing cavitation in the kidneys, and if this is damaging kidney cells, then that may be an issue. We don't want to damage the kidneys.



There is a simple way of testing whether a sound wave causes cavitation, just using an egg. If an intact egg yoke placed in a glass of water disintegrates after about 5 minutes of exposure to the sound wave, this indicates cavitation. See this video.

I could test both my I MHz ultrasound machine and my 18 kHz resonance loudspeaker on two eggs, and observe whether the yokes disintegrate.

 

[Garz]

absolutely - safety is important - we don't want you to hurt yourself - or encourage others to hurt themselves either

worth a try as an easy to do test

- not sure cavitation is the only mechanism that could rupture the delicate yolk sack - but worth a go

- the device in the video seems to be a ultrasound generator of the type i posted in my earlier post about cheap sources of ultrasound generators - ie those that are intended for ultrasonic cleaning - they are optimised for making sound at a single frequency in the 40-60kHz range - and are pretty efficient at doing that i think - eg compared to a loudspeaker that is optimised for 60Hz - so i would expect its output at 40kHz to be much much higher for a similar power input.

 

[Garz]

this very old paper explores the denaturing of egg white via cavitation - and so it seems that this might be the basis of a useful DIY test - in that egg white - being an easily denatured protein - could act as a proxy for a sensitive human tissue - and will become increasingly opaque if the proteins within it are denatured either by cavitation or by heating effect.

both of which are useful in terms of a safety test

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scien...3f59054&pid=1-s2.0-S0021925820651985-main.pdf

 

[Wishful]

also adding more mass ( eg the metal plate you mention) will tend to move the resonant frequency lower

Only if the mass is directly attached to the driven part (coil, piezoelectric element, etc). I think the units Hip showed pictures of would have an interface of some sort between the driven surface and the exterior surface. For a typical audio speaker, gluing a mass to the cone would reduce the resonant frequency, but adding a plate to the speaker enclosure wouldn't.

 

[BrightCandle]

Egg cavitation test - at the full 20W of the transducer (so around 2/5 amp volume) and nothing happened at all to the egg, it was more damaged in the movement around the house with the water sloshing a bit than it was with the transducer pumping energy into the water and bowl. We are not pumping sufficient energy to damage this.

Todays dose did nothing, I didn't get a spike of headache afterwards.

 

[Garz]

Only if the mass is directly attached to the driven part (coil, piezoelectric element, etc). I think the units Hip showed pictures of would have an interface of some sort between the driven surface and the exterior surface. For a typical audio speaker, gluing a mass to the cone would reduce the resonant frequency, but adding a plate to the speaker enclosure wouldn't.

agreed -

i may have misunderstood what exactly Hip did with his setup - but the way i had interpreted it was that he had added a metal plate to the moving element of the speaker

 

[Garz]

Egg cavitation test - at the full 20W of the transducer (so around 2/5 amp volume) and nothing happened at all to the egg, it was more damaged in the movement around the house with the water sloshing a bit than it was with the transducer pumping energy into the water and bowl. We are not pumping sufficient energy to damage this.

Todays dose did nothing, I didn't get a spike of headache afterwards.

interesting - thanks for the update BrightCandle

 

[Hip]

i may have misunderstood what exactly Hip did with his setup - but the way i had interpreted it was that he had added a metal plate to the moving element of the speaker

More or less, yes, I attached the moving element of the resonance loudspeaker to a flat glass lid of a jar, to increase the diameter. The diameter of the metal plate at the end of the moving element is only about 3.5 cm, so I attached that to a glass lid using Blu Tack in order to increase the diameter, so that it covers the whole of the kidney.


The metal plate at the end of the moving element of the resonance loudspeaker you can see in the pictures below (the plate is a few mm in thickness):

Resonance Loudspeaker

 

[Hip]

I just performed an egg test on both my resonance loudspeaker at 18 kHz, and my 1 MHz ultrasound therapy machine on full power (at 3.5 W/cm2). Neither was able to damage the egg yolk after 5 minutes, even though I placed the moving metal plates of these devices in the water just millimetres from the egg yolk.

So this suggests that cavitation damage to my kidney cells is not the cause of the strong adverse effects I experience with the 18 kHz sound wave on my kidneys.

Maybe the sound wave is able to produce other adverse effects on the kidneys though, like for example maybe it makes the kidney mucous membranes temporarily more leaky, so that more bacterial toxins from bacteria in the kidneys enter in to the bloodstream.

 

[Garz]

I attached that to a glass lid using Blu Tack in order to increase the diameter, so that it covers the whole of the kidney.:

Ah, OK

in that case the compressible medium ( blue tack ) between the primary driven mass - the moving element of the loudspeaker) and a secondary moving element ( the glass jar lid ) will have further affects on the resulting power output of the whole system into the intended medium ( human body)

it will do this mainly by decoupling the secondary mass from the primary driven mass - and damping the energy transfer from one to the other - i have no data on the damping characteristic of blue tack at these frequencies - but i would expect it to behave much like an elastomer - and the effect is likely to be considerable.