Can binaural beats improve your mood?

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
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Just when you thought you’d heard everything - a man drinking Baileys.

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Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, Juntas Doorman, we’re glad to have you with us.

When you start a thread, it’s helpful to other readers to provide a link to the column. Yeah, it’s this week’s column and prominent on the front page of our website, but in a few weeks it will fall into the abyss of the Archives. So, to save searching time and to be sure we’re all on the same page, it’s useful to give a link. In this case: Can binaural beats improve your mood? - The Straight Dope

No biggie, you’ll know for next time, and, as I say, welcome!

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Aaarrgghh!

I wouldn’t mind only I went to the trouble of reading the stickies. I must have forgotten in the excitement of a lamer than usual joke. Thanks.

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Cool. That means you’re the type of person we like to have around here.

Anyways, I popped into the thread to point out something I noticed: the Page2RSS page has this listed as

*Can binaural beats improve your mood?
Submitted by Ed Zotti *

I know, I know, he’s “just the editor.” But I still think it’s funny.

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I used a program to create embedded binaural beats as part of a hypnosis CD. This program allowed me to make a beat map that could change the pace of the beats up or down over time.

I created a map so that as the speaker counted down, the beats slowed down to match. They remained at a beta pace thoughout the portion where the suggestions were made. When the speaker counted out, the beats sped back up to an alpha pace.

We were very suprised at the results with our testers. It was the most effective CD we had produced to date.

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What was the CD for? How do you test something like that? How effective was it?

I’m very interested to hear the details, if you can share them.

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I have tried several and my own personal experience is that beta and gamma are effective at combatting low moods (I have melancholy and issues with mild depression), but listening to them too often causes me to become hypomanic. Especially gamma. But the benefits and side effects tend to take 3-4 days before I notice them.

But in my own personal life I have noticed mood boosting benefits to them.