Healing Sounds Are the Medical Miracle of the 21st Century
It sounds like sci-fi, but it's all coming true
When I started researching my book Healing Songs (2006), I had no opinion whatsoever on the therapeutic properties of sound. I didn’t know if healing music was a reality or a scam. I really had no idea.
But I was determined to find out.
I often do that when starting out on a book. Unlike other authors, who write non-fiction books in order to share their opinions, I do the opposite—I use these projects to shape my opinions. My goal is learning, not pontificating. I really don’t have any narrative until I have spent many years studying a subject.
That’s what happened with Healing Songs. I eventually became a true believer in therapeutic sounds. But it happened gradually over the course of researching and writing the book.
That was when I first got obsessively interested in ultrasound. I saw it as the modern medical counterpart of the healing songs made by shamans, drum circles, singing bowls, and the like. They are all part of a continuum.
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Even before starting on the Healing Songs book, I knew that ultrasound was used in breaking up kidney stones and cataracts—but I now began viewing the devices used for this healing (lithotripters, phacoemulsifiers, etc.) as plugged-in musical instruments, not much different from synthesizers and drum machines.
This shocked people. It still does. How dare I refer to medical devices as musical instruments?
(A fun side note: The guy who invented the machine that treats cataracts with ultrasound was a professional jazz saxophonist.)
But we were still in the early stages of the ultrasound revolution back then. Medical researchers have been slow to grasp the power of sound—probably because it’s intangible. But that’s now changing.
I’ve written about this before (see article links below), but I have to do it again today—because so much is happening right now. Every month, some remarkable new property of sonic healing gets validated by research or clinical practice. And the developments of the last few days are especially exciting.
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Consider the recent news from MIT, where researchers eliminated 50% of the brain plaque associated with Alzheimer’s. And they did it with 40 Hz soundwaves—no surgery or drugs were necessary. The procedure is completely non-invasive.
And look at this brand new study, which reveals the potential to counter inflammation and reduce joint pain with low-intensity ultrasound. Body tissue magically starts to repair itself—with potential for use in everything from treating arthritis to recovering from injuries.
And check out this article, published just yesterday, which describes a significant improvement in motor skills among Parkinson’s patients—all because of ultrasound.
But I’m especially excited by the recent announcement from San Francisco research lab Midjourney. They have developed a new scanning technology involving ultrasound—and it sounds like science fiction. “We’re building a bold new kind of machine to reimagine the foundations of healthcare and our relationships to our bodies,” the company boasts.
It doesn’t even feel like a medical procedure—more like a visit to the health spa. In fact, that’s what the company will call its diagnostic centers: Spas.
It starts by stepping into a shallow pool of golden light. You then begin to descend into the water. Your body passes through a ring of underwater sensors, each acting like a dolphin, using its echolocation. The sensors send ultrasonic sound waves through your body from every angle. With enough waves, and enough angles, we form an image of what’s happening inside your body.
The goal is for this process to take no more than 60 seconds.
You go into the water, you come out of the water, and you’re done.
The result is “a 3D map of your body, down to a fraction of a millimeter.” But here’s the payoff:
We think it's completely possible that with enough early imaging in the future, the world could avoid 30% of all deaths and 50% of all healthcare costs.
I recently underwent both a CT scan and a MRI in preparation for an operation (blessedly successful!)—so I have firsthand experience of scanning today. I know how costly and cumbersome current scanning procedures are—especially because my scans were done with and without contrast (which involves intravenous use of dyes made with rare earth mineral gadolinium).
The bill was three thousand dollars for the MRI and another thousand for the CT scan. I was fortunate to have good insurance coverage, but in addition to costs I had concerns about longterm effects from the dye and scans.
The idea of replacing this with soundwaves in a pool of water is very appealing. But that’s just the first phase of this tech. This new approach is so cheap and easy that people will be able to have weekly or monthly scans—and thus have constantly up-to-date info on the state of their body.
I can imagine future expansion into treatment involving the same gentle technology. Step into the pool of water to get scanned and cured. That’s because these various ultrasound technologies are likely to converge—with diagnostics and therapeutics coming together.
And just think that, until a few days ago, Midjourney was betting its future on AI slop. But it has now discovered a bigger miracle—namely the power of sound. A lot of this magic is based on the ultrasound-on-a-chip tech developed by Butterfly Network, a company that helps expecting couples see the first images of their babies in utero.
Procedures of this sort, even non-invasive ones, still require FDA approval. But Midjourney wants to open its first Spa in San Francisco next year. By 2031, they hope to have 50,000 scanners in use, with the capability of handling a billion scans per month.
Meanwhile, another company (Aleph) is rapidly developing brain scanning with ultrasound, and recently released the most detailed vascular image ever of a living human brain. But that’s nothing compared with its greater ambition—namely to create a kind of telepathy via ultrasound.
I’m not joking. Mind reading is really part of their business plan.
We already know that what people see with their eyes can be determined via brain scanning. This suggests the possibility of a form of communication which bypasses our sense organs entirely. “We think our telepathic future is both imminent and wonderful,” the company states on its website.
The MRI community is suspicious of this rapid evolution in ultrasound—and will fight to prove the superiority of its costly (up to $3 million) technology. I’ll leave it to others to weigh the pros and cons. But I do know, from my many years of research into healing music, that outsiders underestimate the power of sound.
In any event, we will soon know more—because these procedures are getting commercialized at a very rapid pace. If you care about therapeutic sounds, there has never been a better time than right now.
Meanwhile, if you’re looking for more immediate and mundane uses of ultrasound, let me close with this.
Hey, maybe that Midjourney health spa will also offer the best coffee in town.
Posts like this may be well-intentioned, but they're a public health menace.
1. The ultrasound scanning that MidJourney promises can't penetrate bone, air, or deep tissue, so at best it would have limited use (e.g., brain imaging would be impossible). In any case, there are no studies yet on MidJourney's device. We only have the company's claims that their scanner gives us "much" data. They don't tell us what that data is. This is alarmingly sketchy compared to, say, the roll-out of other imaging technologies (CT scanning, MRI, etc.).
2. The statement that "researchers eliminated 50% of the brain plaque associated with Alzheimer’s" is near-criminal, because this was reported in a study done with mice. The hyperlinked paper is actually a review/opinion piece which merely suggests that maybe ultrasound can help people someday.
Two of several examples of misinformation in this post, both of which are cruel (unintentionally, I assume), because they create false hope.
I love sounds. Some of them do feel magical. That doesn't mean they cure diseases.
Yawn. Science is catching up with what we "crazies" in the so-called paranormal community have known for some time now. 1. We already are telepathic. We are conditioned and programmed to ignore and devalue our intuition/instincts/psychic senses/soul senses (whatever name you prefer). Telepathy, in fact, is just one of four soul senses. 2. Of course sound can heal. After more than 100 years, science is finally getting to the full meaning of E = MC2. Matter and energy are fundamental equivalents. But so are consciousness and love. Expand the meaning of Einstein's equivalence equation and it's easy to see why/how sound interacts with matter, like the physical body. 3. Sound can also harm and even kill. This is a two-edged sword. I fully expect the major militaries of the world have already developed sound weapons and are itching to unleash them in another dominance display. God help us.