Sound And Light Frequencies To Help Your Brain Heal

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

Thank you.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

So we’re gonna be talking about sound and light frequencies to help your brain heal I believe, yes?

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

That is correct. I do think that is the future of medicine which has been here for quite some time as well.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yeah. Yeah, it’s the future finding the past.

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

Indeed, yeah.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

It turns in some of the ancient systems that always used it too. So, and of course you do blend East and Western medicine and what’s your unique combination of doing this and folding in light and sound?

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

You know, it has been an evolution and as you shared in my bio, I really got into, had a life experience let’s say four years ago that really changed the trajectory for me. And in such an odd way, kinda ripped me open to the oneness of all, reinstated my faith. With the passing of Sarieah, who was a really amazing being on the planet and just thought, boy, you know, this is tragic and I don’t wish this on anyone but to be uniquely positioned as loving husband and clinician, I swung for the fence looking for solutions to a really dire, dire situation. You know, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, very rare condition and it’s, you know, one in a million. I always said that Sarieah was one in a million and unfortunately the medical community agreed with me with this rare disorder and it’s about 300 people a year that have CJD. So I didn’t, when I went looking for, you know therapies to change the brain, like how do we do that? CJD is similar to mad cow syndrome which I think people have heard more of which is misfolded proteins. And so I started asking the question, why are these proteins misfolding and how do we get them to stop? And in uncovering a ton of research around sound and light frequencies and that really, you know, is my long winded way of saying you know, blending where East meets West naturally. 

You know, I like to say I’m a clinician’s clinician, I wanna move the needle in the real world to get real life changes for people and their health conditions. And you looking at, you know, all matter vibrates you know, animals, plants, inanimate objects, you know we’re basically getting funneled down here into this friction world, this mattered body. And, but it is in sound and light frequencies that can really change. I mean, we have these ancient technologies from chanting sound therapies to now newer technologies starting with infrared and vibratory messaging into the body of how do we change matter. And so bringing that Western approach more with the energetics of the East, you know I’m a Chinese medicine practitioner, studied Tibet and into the Eastern region of Tibet called Kham and in the Western provinces of China and Sichuan, I have a master’s of science in oriental medicine, 22 years of clinical experience there, coupled with Western training and naturopathic medicine, it’s really uniquely put me in this spot to, you know, speak into these therapies and actually bring them into the clinic with folks.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

So, oops, sorry. My dogs are playing over here. So…

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

They like this topic.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

They do, they do. They like sound.

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

Yes.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

And light. So how does sound, you know, how does a light frequency access and heal and help the brain heal?

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

Yeah, so looking at it, you know, so we’ve got some research. So I’ll start out with that Western component. So on light let’s look at Alzheimer’s in particular. You know discovered in a lab, exposure to light pulsing at 40 Hertz’s, so that’s 40 beats per second, it showed that, caused the brain of these mice to release a surge of signaling chemicals that help stop the misfolding of beta amyloid plaque. So they also activate microglial cells in the brain which is how it’s basically the immune system for the brain. And so looking at that on just an oscillating signal showed that there is a ton of literature on, we call it photo biomodulation which is a mouthful. It’s light therapy. 

There’s 220 published studies on brain bio, photo biomodulation, increasing connectivity of neuronal connection, increasing the microglial, the immune system of the brain, increasing the photo receptors of ATP, of energy production in the brain. And so this is shown in traumatic brain injuries and Parkinson’s disease, in anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder. So that, I wanted to start with like the latest research. Then we can back up to Dr. Nawzher and I’m mispronouncing his name, but the Nawzher scales or frequencies. And he showed in the, let’s see if I have it right in my notes, in the 60s around different frequencies or hertz, which are beats per second, having different physiologic effects on the body. And so this light can come into the body, we have photo receptors on our body as well, that receive this information. And I like to say, we are light beings. We can actually measure light particles being emitted from our bodies at this point in time.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yeah, I just got done talking to Dr. Christine Schaffner and she’s been talking about some of the same studies and what’s going on with the technology right now that’s available to be able to do that photodynamic therapy measuring and you know, this is pretty exciting time to be able to be implementing these modalities, yeah?

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

It is an amazing time to be doing this. And there’s a confluence with receptivity because there is a lot of chronic illness and suffering where we haven’t found a panacea or solution and then looking at it for there’s a lot of research now coming out to show like, hey, this is actually, there is some really hardcore science behind this stuff, yeah.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Hmm, yeah. So there are foundational things that everyone can benefit from when we talk about brain health, tissue health, organ health. And I think sometimes those foundational pillars of health get lost in the shuffle of technology. What are some of those foundations that everyone can benefit from?

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

You know, definitely wanna share those. I also wanna share some stuff around sound as well. So I’ll share foundations here, you know, sleep. These are non-sexy foundational stuff-

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

I know, people’s eyes glaze over, you know-

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

And I like to talk.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Like, no really you do need to sleep.

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

Right. And, you know, getting adequate deep sleep is so necessary because our lymphatics are, basically the way that brain detoxifies is activated with deep sleep. So we can see with chronic sleep deprivation. I mean, you know, that is the new smoking whether people realize it or not. You would never think to take a pack or two of cigarettes a day. That’s the same thing with not enough sleep. So measuring, you know, with a, you know, your apple watch or Fitbit or garment or a ring, there’s plenty of devices now to know, you know, are you getting adequate sleep? And I would say on that front, you want about 20% of REM, 20% of deep and about minimally six hours a night of restful sleep. So not interrupted, not restless, but restful sleep. So how do you do that? Like we, you know, we need to talk about sleep hygiene of like, what are you doing before bedtime? You can’t be watching the boob tube or, you know, movies on the screen with blue light. So there’s, you know, you can get blue light blockers you can get programs for on your computer to block the blue light or better yet you can read an old fashioned book. I’m a librarian at heart. I love print.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Me too.

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

You know? And so having that, you know actual book where you’re reading or you’re, you know, you could light some candlelight. I mean, it’s very romantic. You can even just do that for yourself. Dimming the lights, turning the lights off getting into some, maybe it’s yoga nidra, maybe it’s some meditation time, you know slowing down the activities of the body before bed really sets the stage for you to go to bed. Also fun fact, for every hour after 10 o’clock at night, 10 p.m., you start to waste or burn growth hormone. So to growth hormone starts to, if you are staying up past 10 p.m. So if you’re into longevity, this component around autoimmunity, we’re really wanting our cups to be full. So getting, you know, going to bed with these regular rhythms really does matter. So sleep really is a big one.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

I like a bath before bed.

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

Baths. Those are great.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

You know some Epsom salts in there, some lavender-

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

Yes.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Essential oil, candles around it, and maybe some really quiet music, you know-

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

I love that. Yes.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Calm-

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

Calm and center. You know, for those empaths or energetically sensitive viewers, there are called mother baths that I do recommend. And I think a lot of people maybe viewing maybe fall into that. Like if you experience others’ emotions or have, you know empathic abilities, doing salt, just table salt, you know a lot of it. So you can get a big bag of just sodium chloride and doing that, it pulls the energy off of you. It’s really cleansing for your field, your biofield et cetera, or mixing that with one cup of salt, with one cup of apple cider vinegar. Now that’s not as therapeutic as you were just talking about Keesha with the, you know, essential oils and candles you know, apple cider vinegar has its own flavor but it’s more of a therapeutic bath if you’re out, you know, kind of empathically charged. I mean, there’s a lot of energy on the planet these days. So that is one that I actually do prescribe for some patients too.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yeah, it’s important. And I think the lack of sleep coupled with the morning stimulation with lots of coffee, I mean, it’s just not good for your health and it, you know you can take supplements all day long but if you’re not getting these basic needs met from your body.

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

Yeah. You know, one of those sayings is you’re not gonna supplement your way out of a bag of potato chips, right?

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yep. Yep, yep, yep.

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

You know? So hormones is the next category. As far as basics in foundational work is having your hormones balanced, right? Our hormones, many of them are regulated through the hypothalamus pituitary access and the hypothalamus is the switchboard operator. And sometimes I imagine this little being in there, like all of our nervous system comes up into the hypothalamus and then there’s this being in there connecting the, where does that signal go in the brain? Well, sometimes they’re overworked, right with this stimulus of the caffeine in the morning and then we’re trying to take sedatives at night to go to sleep. You know, we’re kind of going up and down with our health. So hormones, getting hormones checked and tested is a big foundational component because that is a low hanging fruit. Stress hormones, the diurnal variation throughout the day, looking at that, looking at estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, thyroid you know, those are kind of the basics as far as we don’t want that static. Your innate intelligence should not be distracted by hormones. So we wanna have those optimized. The third is an environmental toxicity assessment. So, you know, we’re not just floating around in the gray matter of our brain. We are in the environment and that has an influence on us. So looking at, you know, your home exposures, clean air, clean water, clean food, so organic food. So looking at that on the basic level and then there is some testing that you, we can do from an OATs test to heavy metal screening. You know, really everyone in neurodegenerative states, if you have concerns of dementia, Alzheimer’s, or developing some of these things, we want to check for metals because those are a show stopper. 

And I find them to be implicated because we store them in fat and we need to rule them in or rule them out. Not everybody with those conditions has a metal burden but we definitely wanna look at that because if they’re there, they need to be, you have to get the proverbial let out. Gut health is another foundational component here, looking at the microbiome. Right, we’ve all heard the gut is the second brain. Sure, you’ve got folks talking about it on your summit. But looking at that microbiome, you know, we’d have four to seven pounds of aerobic, anaerobic bacteria which is a little bit gross if we removed it all. But it just speaks to how important that ecosystem is for our health. You know, many millions of dollars going into the heart-brain, heart-gut access and researching those connections between neurodegeneration and brain health. So we wanna look at you, you know your gut is the second brain, your neurotransmitters are manufactured there so that has to be in order. And then finally, you know, the fifth, kinda the fifth access here is movement. I don’t call it exercise, I call it movement. So moving the body. It helps with circulation which then works on blood flow, which then, you know in Chinese medicine we say, you know the blood carries the healing capabilities of the body. So what’s in your blood matters but then also is it getting to your brain? So circulation and movement is really key for this component for your neurologic health. So those foundations are really important.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

And I’d like to speak to the interaction and intersection between all of them, like you don’t ever wanna go in with all guns blazing detoxing heavy metals if your adrenals and hormones are not healthy, just like you also don’t wanna be doing CrossFit every morning if your adrenals are not healthy. So, you know, making sure that you’re in coherence with your systems as you’re doing these things right.

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

That’s right. Yeah, and there is a specific order. So definitely getting connected up with a guide, practitioner, provider who has been in this path with many people before. You know, you don’t wanna just jump off the cliff.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Right.

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

Don’t, don’t, don’t jump, don’t jump. Slow and steady wins the race is my, you know, basically moniker. I love the turtle analogy in that. You want to finish the race and you wanna finish it whole and complete and safely. So, you know, those are the foundational components though that I do find fit the bill for many.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Yeah. You wanted to talk a little bit about sound.

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

Yeah, so that other frequency that is sound and we all have a voice. You know, you look at it, you know, some of the ancient textbooks have mantras of just simple sounds like vom, lom, along these lines. One of the oldest textbook. Yeah, one of these textbooks comes out of the Vedic tradition in India and having a prescribed mantra that goes through every chakra of the body to cleanse for health is, I find it really fascinating that we have this transmission through time that has made it to today from the eons ago that is still effective. You know, they’re doing research on different mantras and different finger positions for Alzheimer’s and dementia and neurological change. I’m always studying, how do we change the brain? I love, you know, what we’ve pulled into our clinic is we do sound healing. We do prescribed mantras and chants with people. I love singing together with people. You know, well what does that do? One, you have a receptor in your ear the tympanic membrane that is on the vagus nerve. That’s why humming is good for toning your vagus nerve, putting you into parasympathetic activity, rest and regenerate. So without that component, I think it’s one of the quickest ways of getting there, of we can actually tone our vagus nerve because we do. It’s crazy out there, right? Like it’s, there’s a stressful world and so we are looking for things that we can implement, do right at home and everybody has a voice. So I love encouraging that and hearing it, actually.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

This is free medicine right here. Right?

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

And it’s very potent, so potent. You know, one of those sounds is just homing. My kids and I was out at the coast for a birthday component. My daughter has the same birthday as me, had some friends of hers at the breakfast table and she’s like, Ugh, here comes my Papa. And we do a morning ohm, and so now, like she shares with me, now when her friends see her in the hallways they ohm with her so I know she loves that.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

How old is she?

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

She’s 17 years old.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Oh, that’s great. Yeah, that’s Jonathan Goldman and I interviewed him for the summit and they talk about conscious humming, you know and just kind boiling it down to the one hum-

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

Yes.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Is just so healing. It’s important to be able to use your own voice in that way. Well, is there anything else that you would like to make sure that we know?

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

You know, one of the things, I think what I am going to share, I do Qi gong, which is energy work-

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Right.

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

And there’s a cloud hands prescription that was given to me from my mentor, Dr. Wong. He’s a lineage holder in out of China, recognized by the Chinese government, which is interesting that he would prescribe patients to correlate the right left hemisphere of their brain. And so that’s the gift that I would love to give this summit. And it’s a simple component of right palm up, left palm down, and then you flip them, left palm up, right palm down. And that will help with making kind of that coherent connection between the right and left hemisphere, creating more heart and brain coherence for our listeners and viewers of the summit.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Mm mm. Do you wanna demonstrate it?

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

Yeah. So what we can do, we can take a minute, you know if you kind of sit at the front of your chair and just take a breath into your belly and let that out. And you’re gonna bring your palms up basically to the belly. So here’s your belly. I’m actually gonna stand up a little bit. So shoulder, your feet or shoulder width apart, palms together like this. And as you breathe in, you’re gonna flip your right hand up, your left palm down and breathing in, stretch as far as you can go. You can feel a little bit of a pull in your palms and then flip them out and exhale down. And stretch that as far as you can. And then you’re gonna flip the palms and inhale, hold your breath at the top, exhale down, flip those palms. And you can do that, that’s three. Inhale up, flip the palms, breathing, inhaling up on that right side, hold the breath, flip the palms down. And then we’re gonna just flip sides. So, you know, as you exhale out, we’re gonna exhale out halfway and then exhale, and then we’re gonna inhale with the left palm coming up, right palm going down. And then flipping, exhaling. So it’s just switching which side you are. You’re gonna inhale again on left, and exhale. And so just do that on equal amounts on both sides. But even just doing that here really quickly, it changes our state, brings us into the present moment. You get that circulation going. So we’re talking about, you know on that sound and light frequencies and the healing abilities of the body. And so I’ve got that a little bit more drawn out in a video for you.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

Nice. Thank you so much. I deeply appreciate you taking the time to share some of your wisdom with us.

Gregory Eckel, ND, LAc

Thanks for having me on.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C​

All right everybody, until next time. Be well.