Coping: Real Progress @ Old Man Labs

What if you could get online, buy some 2″ elastic strap and some 1″ Velcro strips from Amazon, add to that a few dollars worth of electronic parts and jam your IQ up 10-20%.

Would you do it?

That was the goal of our modest Light Crown Project described for our Peoplenomics.com readers last year (with parts list).  Turns out, the US military is going down the same path we did, only they are “coupling” energy into the brain with a magnetic array rather than off the shelf (OTS) LED lights.

(Continues below)

Sharp-eyed (and long-time) subscriber Roger out in Tucson sent us the link this week to a story that got traction in the British papers:

“The headband that makes you smarter: US military reveals a bizarre device that increases learning by 40% – and it could be commonly used by 2022…”

Now we need to have a discussion, I suppose, about how and why this technology works.

First, the DARPA approach uses low-power magnets.  It’s a trade off, though, as I see it, for a couple of reasons.

The first is that magnetics gets you into the area of high enough magnetic power levels.  As anyone who has tinkered with this tech knows, more is not always better.

Magnetics may be better in terms of learning, but in our Light Crown Project, I opted for low-power LED lights because there is a ton of evidenced that LLLT (low level laser light therapy) is very beneficial in terms of heading.

To be sure, transcranial penetration with magnetics is more predictable than 1000 nm laser light, but that’s still (in the literature) t0 2 cm (3/4″ roughly) and the trigeminal nerve is very near the surface of your temples, so why use a bulldozer approach?  That’s how I think of magnetics.

We were not after a big slam of knowledge.  We were after a mild accent – maybe a 10% IQ hit –  or increase of capacity.  It’s the difference between adding a Holley 4-barrel on a high-rise manifold to your hotrod engine, or the DARPA magnetics approach which is akin to installing nitrous and dialing in the turbo waste gate. At some point, it’s hard on the engine.  Or wetware.

Still, we will be building up another three or four light crowns for friends and sending them out sometime in November or December.  It is very simple technology.

A word about crowns from the applicable chapter of our just-about done book Dimensions Next Door:

“Engineering a “Light Crown”

I won’t get too deeply into the topic here, except in most general terms.

A review of a wide selection of publicly available crown photos on the Internet shows that regal headgear does tend to have a pattern to it.

There is generally one large color at the center of the forehead.  Most common colors are red/ruby which would be in the 660-1000 nm red, dark red, near infrared range.  Some crowns use a larger lower and a smaller upper stone in front.  These are near the pineal gland (the “third eye”) and may have simulative effects.

Let’s face it, basic scientific research into the long-term effects of wearing a near-infrared emitter on your forehead is not one of the biggest agendas in the me-too world of peer-reviewed academia.  Nor in dollar-based pharmacology.

* * * *

While we don’t have any idea which “light goes where”, the basic choices are available by looking at major crowns online.

The next problem is we don’t know whether a specific frequency relationship between the lighting sources is required.  For example, is purple or blue 1?, while the green would be 2? and the NIR right frequency becomes 3??

Could we work it backwards from say a 1000 nm NIR to a 560-nm yellow/green to a 386-nm blue/white?  Perhaps representing a ruby, yellow diamond, sapphire…

There’s an historical basis for the approach:

Crowns were likely once worn because the filtered light they exposure key nerve groupings to light frequencies which effectively were used to recharge the brain.

As I’ve told you before, when the brain fires a neuron, lots of things happen, but one in particular is the release of a photon (or several).  And the theory I’ve cobbled up in my shriveling-up head is that when a neuron fires, losing a photon, it is depleting.

In order to recharge the brain (or other organs which also fire photons) all you should need to do is douse them with biologically friendly light.

Ever wonder why people worshipped the Sun (Ra) [ray]?  Why people associate outdoors in the Sun with re-creation?

There are serious anti-aging effects to be found in light.  This is why both Elaine and I now spend a 15-minutes or more daily under a serious near infrared lamp.  Big one, too. CMVision IR130 198 LED Indoor/Outdoor Long Range 300-400ft IR Illuminator With Free 3A 12VDC Adaptor which will set you back about $65 bucks.

We’re not the only people interested in the technology.  If you read the February article by Dr. Joseph Mercola, on the health benefits of photo biomodulation, I think you’ll be impressed.  Be sure to also read his March article on how PBM / LLLT (low-level laser light therapy) may prevent or slow the development of Alzheimer’s.

While not a direct application of what’s in the literature, the “light crown project” has been lots of fun and when I feel down, tired, or if there’s a cold trying to come on, or maybe I just feel like a mental pop, I go back to wearing the light crown for a few days and gotta say, placebo effect or not, it seems to make a difference.

You’ll also get used to people coming up to you in the store and want to begin talking with you…you drip that much positive energy.  People can sense it.  Like being (as a ridiculously low level) enLIGHTened.  Fun.

Like stropping a blade, if you’re old enough to know that term, it adds an edge.

Nice to see the DARPA magnetics approach, but we like light, thank you.

Show up early tomorrow – long column tomorrow on our latest adventures in the lab…as we’ve completed Dimensions Next Door – hacking space-time.

Write when you get rich,

George@ure.net