Binaural Beats: Overcome addiction

YouTube might not be the first place to go for therapy, healing, or substance abuse treatment, but there might be something there that may help with all of those things. Binaural beats are a perceptual phenomenon that occurs when one hears a tone with two slightly different frequencies in each ear.

For example, they might hear a tone in their left ear that has a frequency of 200 Hertz (Hz) and a tone in their right ear with a frequency of 210 Hz.1 The tones travel into the brain separately, where the two tones are perceived as a single beat whose frequency is the difference between the frequencies entering each of the ears (10Hz).1 The reason that binaural beats are a perceptual phenomenon is that the listener essentially hears something that is not there. What they are hearing is the sound that their brain perceives when it receives sounds of two different frequencies in each ear.

These sounds are thought to enhance cognitive functions, such as attention and memory. They have a wide array of benefits that can be used in therapeutic settings and to promote healing. Some companies even claim that the beats are like ‘digital drugs’ which enhance memory and creativity and help tackle migraines, insomnia, stress, and more.