A couple years ago I got the impression from Mob that most folks got the best results on the M1 with intensity of 9 or 10 and using Omni8 or Schumann 4. That might have been specific for inflammation but I’m curious of setting others have found useful and also if they have found some not so useful.
Doug,
I did use Omni at 8 or 10 with my foot and ankle injury and it did shrink swelling and help significantly with pain. I used other settings, which seemed to work, too, Mostly, for me, the Omni had a sound, which bugged me when I was trying to deal with shoulder pain, so I either had to switch programs or turn down the volume. I tried the A9 and a few others. I no longer have pain or inflammation, but I am not so sure which setting worked. Using it at all did work. I get nerve pain when I use it too high a power for too long. It seems to be that it was bugging me by the end of a week, each time. If I am trying to heal from an injury, it will always be low power and long.
I did use Schumann, but not for inflammation. I considered that more of a “grounding” type of setting. It is interesting that it was a setting, which got the best results. I don’t have as much inflammation anymore since I switched to an anti-inflammatory diet, but I will try it sometime.
I use different settings for different things… If I am doing a 30 minute TMS, I will do high power. If I am doing a delta or theta for sleep, I use the lowest possible power.
I use TMS for “psych” type things.
I use gamma for Alzheimer’s type symptoms - paired with gamma sound and gamma light. (MIT did studies on gamma light and there was a study on gamma sound and it seems like somehow people with Alzheimer’s are low in gamma and they need it to improve the immune system of the brain to clean up the tangled proteins.
I use delta and theta for sleep.
I use Schumann more meditative for grounding my day.
I have used the 5 pulses from the traumatic brain injury study because I am trying to heal my brain.
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I used TMS on my vagal nerve to reprogram my food preferences and I just saw a cool study where they used TMS to cause people to change their minds about things, so that verifies the use of that setting to me.
That is a potentially dangerous setting meaning that it is fabulous that it can increase brain plasticity, but don’t program anything in that you don’t want to learn. I ended up shutting off the television because I didn’t want to program creepy show information by accident.
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My opinion: Omni8 or Schumann 4 are a good place to start, but individual responses vary, so it is essential to experiment for yourself to see what works best for you.
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Do you think, in general, the Omni 8 works better than the new B5-C5 protocol?
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For me, yes it does.
For several other people who beta-tested those protocols, mostly yes.
For people who give me feedback on it, it varies by individual, but I would say mostly yes.
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Can you share some detail as to how you worked with your vagal nerve? Which program/s omg the M1 did you use, what location/s did you place the coils at?
Thank you
Platinum,
I started with a PubMed study. Not sure it was this one, but this one will do.
It is also used for things like depression and I ended up reading a lot of studies. Then, I found Self-Hacked was talking about it, so I tried things within those parameters.
After PubMed, I went to Google Images and looked up things like these
I put my coils where they put the electrode.
Self-Hacked doesn’t do the same position they used in the official studies and part of the day, I would try his concepts. I was mostly winging it, but I used the studies and the photos and then adjusted by how things felt.
I couldn’t go high power for too long, so I just adopted a concept that if I am doing TMS setting, I go higher power and shorter length of time. If I am doing other settings, I go longer time and lower power.
I tried several different settings. It is hard for me to say which one worked, but I can say that some make more noise than others so when I had the coils near my ears, I would switch to less annoying settings and when I used Self-Hacked’s concepts, I would use the other settings. I definitely did Omni 8 and 5 pps and I definitely used TMS a lot and that was an easy way to keep track of time for me to pair it with videos because it would shut off after 30 minutes to an hour.
I felt like I was flying blind trying to figure out which setting. Some felt better than others. Some bothered my hearing more than others.
Very interesting.
I felt no benefit with either TMS program.
Maybe I did not use it long enough.
I did feel immediate benefit from C5 protocol at 8 or 9 above my frontal left Lobe.
Have used this protocol for many months.
Could you please state which of the 5 protocols you used for TBI and elaborate abit?
What I will tell you is that I went to PubMed and looked up studies and tried to replicate them. If they were a TMS study, I used the TMS setting, usually for a few hours.
I use gamma daily because of the MIT studies with Alzheimer’s.
I use the 5 pps because of Bob’s study with TBI.
I chose locations of coil placement based on the studies and based on where they put the coils with real TMS. I don’t have much to say other than that if something is working for you, use that.
Apart from the ones used in studies, I like Schumann 4, but that one doesn’t have a study attached. Just personal preference.
I got my social anxiety breakthrough using Alpha along with Binaural Beats and I think that was based on a study, too.
I do some degree of variety in coil placement. I do some nerves - the optical and vagal nerves, for instance and those were studied. Some of the studies I have used were based on stroke research and I think they mostly stimulate nerves to the brain and with their studies, I do brain stem, forehead, feet, and I put it on my mouth because they stimulated the tongue successfully for some things.
I am not doing a whole lot of my own thinking. I try all of the studies.
When I was researching stroke, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, a drug company said that they considered them all similar - just varying in how much damage to the brain and which parts of the brain. They considered it that a lot of the neurons were still there in those “dead” parts of the brain, just needing something like oxygen, circulation to improve their functioning. There are different theories like that out there by real science people.
That is my simplistic explanation of what they were doing. I say that because I never got diagnosed. When I first had brain problems, I couldn’t process well enough to even think to go get diagnosed and now I am years into the healing my brain process and I am making headway and I don’t want to go on drugs, which didn’t help my relatives. I walked people through things like dementia and none of the drugs helped at all. I can’t afford fancy medical care either, so I read the studies for every type of brain condition and try them out and my brain has improved tremendously and I still get a stupid 5 on the TOJ test as of last night. I have a long way to go to heal my brain, and I am probably not the one to ask for exact anything. I just try all the studies.
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I also just focus on whether I can tell how much improvement isn’t as important as the mechanisms themselves.
If gamma causes the microglia to clean up the brain, then doing it is a mechanism, which I want.
Bachyrita said that stimulating all of the nerves to the brain worked for brain plasticity, but some nerves worked better than others. I believe that he said that the tongue was the most powerful. This isn’t using the same electric current, which he was using, but it uses Faraday’s Law so I just do it anyway.
The TED Talk woman used TMS for brain plasticity and they use TMS for depression and I just do the studies and count on their being some real science with some real mechanisms some place.
I don’t even care if it doesn’t seem to work. If it increases circulation and decreases inflammation, those are mechanisms and that is enough.
I do “science by faith” half the time.
I sit around thinking how to increase Brain-derived neurotrophic factor and pondering whether the ICES will help me with heat shock proteins.
I am not a scientist, so I just grab hold of sentences and I don’t worry about messing up too much.
Some effects are rapid, direct and easy to detect, others are subtle and take a while, but build up over time. And different people respond differently. And most people are looking for somewhat different effects, so they report them differently as "effective: or “ineffective”.
I would take this all as anecdotal and entirely self-experimental, but many people do have good observations, and those are probably the best place to start. From there, you can see how changing their approach might change the way you respond individually.
That is an astute observation.
With physical injury issues, I got quick improvement and that was easy to measure.
With brain plasticity and brain healing, it has been more of a process.
If I expected the brain healing to have the same progression as the one I saw with my ankle, I might have called it “ineffective” but I didn’t even have a brain gauge or any way of measuring, except subjective measure.
Now, I do have the brain gauge, and things like TOJ aren’t budging, I might be tempted to say it is “ineffective” but I have had so many tangible improvements.
Social anxiety improving blew me away. It has been years since I didn’t dread social occasions, and I have a wedding to go to this weekend and it is the 5th social thing I have gone to and I have enjoyed all of them. It could be the broccoli sprouts, but that is the problem with doing adjuncts, you don’t know which one was more effective.
It is likely that this increases the antioxidants which pass through my blood brain barrier.
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… And this is precisely my point. I put all of my effort and focus toward finding a solution to the chronic pain problem. But to the extent that the technology works for other things, that are entirely unrelated (or seem to be), such as “brain fog”, vision, etc., I honestly am quite happy that it seems to help people, but equally honestly, I do not know much about these uses of the technology.
I have been reading your book. I am still in the safety section. I am up to the hoarders section. I have known several hoarders and have helped them clean up their apartments more than once when they were turned into the fire department.
I am evaluating it from the brain perspective because my grandmother, who was a nurse and who had a discipline of “never leaving a room without picking things up” had a very neat house all of the years I knew her until she got dementia. Then, she started doing things like tucking newspapers and Kleenex between her bed and the wall and putting things away in odd places. Kitchen stuff in her clothes drawer, who knows where the clothes went. Her house got so cluttered, but a lot of it was hidden clutter. I filled up 2 double dumpsters with things from her closets, but she was still pretty good at hiding all of it.
When my brain broke down, I ended up buying the same things over and over again, as if my brain didn’t register that I had bought it the first time. I ended up with 4 or 5 Instapots, plus a few Crockpots, and so many little glass jars of tomato paste that I am not sure how I will ever use them all. I might fill up the food pantry. Same with cleaning products and laundry products. My father called me a hoarder when he looked at my cleaning products, but none of it was on the floor. I had an, “If it still fits on the shelves in the laundry room, then, I can’t be a hoarder” mentality, but, now, years later, I realize that my brain was broken and that I had to start getting control over that area. You were talking about awareness of spaces and that is one of the things, which I don’t have. Though I am aware that my floors don’t have stuff on them. At times, my counters do. My storage areas are ridiculous. So, I have come to agree with my father. One more brain injury and I might just end up running out of storage space and figure out that I might really be a hoarder who didn’t know it yet.
I am working hard at not buying things and I did give away 2 of my Instapots.
When I had started wondering whether I was recovering from a stroke, a few years ago, this was one of the men who had recovered from a stroke who I watched.
(Yes, I watched every Ted Talk and every YouTube video I could find, but his impacted me because he kept recovering for 7 years.)
That is GREAT!! I absolutely agree. He had to figure it out for himself too, because NO ONE TOLD HIM to keep practicing the things he couldn’t do. I keep improving also, but I am just at the 11-month time point. But I can feel myself getting better and better.
Good video, thanks.
You have inspired me to go back and review everything again.
I realized that I have ended up with a lot of head knowledge, which is good, but knowing that walking will decrease my risk of stroke by 50% is different than walking every day. I do not know whether I had a stroke or whether I have Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. I just know that I genuinely lost my mind and lost function without really understanding what happened. It took me a few years before I came to a sense of “Maybe I should try things.” I had injured my foot and ankle and was in pain all of the time and couldn’t walk normally on top of it, so I just lost a lot of what I now call my “so-called disciplines.” At some point, they become more theoretical. Anyway, I am working on all of them again and I am re-learning everything as if I was back at the beginning.
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