Chronic pain is a debilitating condition that significantly impairs quality of life.
According to the British Pain Society, more than 28 million people in the UK are living with chronic pain (lasting longer than 3 months), that's 44% of the population.
As well as the debilitating impact of pain experiences, there are additional physical and mental wellbeing complications associated with long-term use of pain medication to manage symptoms.
Binaural beats (BB) are being trialled as an easily adopted, at-home therapy to ease pain and reduce medication for people living with chronic pain. BB has the benefit that it can be added without complication to any other therapy regime that a person is undertaking to manage their symptoms.
A medical study published in the European Journal of Pain conducted a gold-standard test; a double blind, randomised, cross-over trial.
Testers were given a 30 minute session of BB, where outcomes were measured using EEG, which involves wires applied to the scalp to record the brain’s electrical activity. Their results were compared to a control group who had the same testing experience but were given sham tracks, the same music with no BB.
During this lab session the team of doctors and researchers detected brain entrainment to BB in the test group. The rhythms of the testers’ brains changed to synchronise with the BB.
What is more, the BB group reported an average 40% reduction in pain intensity during the session, whereas the sham group reported no significant reduction.
After the lab session the chronic pain patients trialled on-demand use of the soundtracks, however much they wanted, for a week.
At the end of the week only the BB group reported reductions in their stress and pain medication consumption.
Binaural Beats - just ONE of the active ingredient in the Audicin solution - could offer a double victory in the future care of chronic pain patients as it offers flexible at-home application of an enjoyable sound experience that can be added, without fear of interactions, into regimes with other therapies.
Enjoyable binaural beat soundtracks can lower pain intensity and reduce the dangers of long-term medication use.