SOAAK App Review: Sound Healing for PMDD

PMDD is a psychological health situation that impacts about 10 p.c of all menstruating folks, per the Cleveland Clinic. It’s a extreme type of PMS characterised by shifts in temper, anxiousness, vitality, and ache ranges within the 10 to 14 days main as much as your interval. Doctors aren’t precisely positive why it occurs, however it possible has to do with the steep drop within the hormone progesterone within the days earlier than menstruation, affecting your “feel-good” neurotransmitter serotonin, which regulates sleep, temper, and ache, per the National Institutes of Health.

The typical therapies for PMDD embody remedy, antidepressants, and life-style adjustments like lowering stress, getting higher sleep, and consuming a balanced diet with wholesome protein and fat, all of which I’ve applied. While these strategies do work to maintain my PMDD in examine, I nonetheless typically want one thing extra to take the sting off every month (particularly if I’m underneath a number of stress).

This is the place pure healing modalities come into play. Enter: SOAAK, a sound healing app that simply launched its new frequency composition referred to as “PMS Support,” to assist folks handle the signs of PMS and PMDD. I’d by no means tried a pure methodology for my PMDD, however when given the prospect to attempt the app free for 30 days, I jumped on the likelihood.

Related Stories

Here’s my assessment of the SOAAK app’s “PMS Support” frequency, the app itself, and whether or not sound healing labored to alleviate my most annoying (and typically debilitating) PMDD signs.

First, what’s SOAAK?

SOAAK technologies is a health tech firm in affiliation RenuYou—an in-person pure clinic in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The firm began about 9 years in the past when co-founder Henry Penix and firm president Laura Widney mixed their information of know-how and naturopathic healing. When the duo’s in-person purchasers started asking how one can reap the advantages of sound healing remedy within the consolation of their properties, the pair started working with scientists, medical doctors, and app engineers to create the SOAAK app.

While the idea of a sound healing app is pretty new, sound healing remedy itself has existed for generations as a staple of Traditional Eastern drugs. You’ll usually discover tuning forks, Tibetan singing bowls, or gongs utilized in sound bathtub therapies, to assist folks loosen up and scale back a mess of bodily and psychological health signs, based on December 2020 assessment in Integrative Medicine (Encinitas). Even spa-like music throughout a therapeutic massage, or the sounds of nature, will be thought-about sound remedy.

The SOAAK app has 30 totally different sound frequency compositions to select from primarily based in your wants. The hottest embody:

• “Sleep well” (for insomnia)
• “Anti-anxiety”
• “Mood boost”
• “Focus” (for higher focus through the day)
• “Headache and migraine support”
• And now, “PMS support”

Each 20-minute frequency composition will be downloaded and performed at any time, very like a meditation. Each composition has a wide range of tones set at totally different Hertz (Hz)—a measurement of sound. The mostly used frequency in non secular healing is 432 Hz, which has additionally been related to lowered heart fee and blood strain, per an August 2019 assessment in Explore: The Journal of Science & Healing. But there are zero to (mainly) a trillion totally different Hz frequencies that may be mixed and customised to fulfill your want, based on Widney.

You can hearken to frequency compositions of their authentic kind, or layered underneath sounds of nature or music. Other app options embody:

• A sequence of 21-day packages on varied psychological health and motivational matters from scientists, physicians, life coaches, and extra. One instance is “Healing Your Inner Child” with psychotherapist Amy Van Slambrook.
• A health biometrics part—the place you’ll be able to join your wearable machine (like an Apple Watch) to maintain observe of issues like heart fee, heart fee variability, sleep cycle, and extra.
• A digital health concierge—a chat the place you’ll be able to ask questions in regards to the app’s frequencies, packages, and different self-care ideas. This software may suggest frequencies primarily based in your present health biometrics.
• A gratitude journal—the place you’ll be able to mirror in your day or expertise with a frequency.
• A twin audio characteristic—which lets you play the frequencies whereas watching a video, listening to a podcast or audiobook, or listening to your personal music.
• A pacesetter board—the place you’ll be able to “gamify” your sound healing expertise by seeing the way you match up with different prime app customers.

SOAAK App — $29.99

• User-friendly
• Comes with 30 totally different frequencies
• Bluetooth pairing to your Apple Watch
• Can play and pause the frequencies while you want

• Does not record the hertz (Hz) frequency data within the app
• Monthly fee will be dear for some

My 30-day SOAAK app assessment

I made a decision to start out utilizing SOAAK’s “PMS support” frequency in the beginning of the month (my interval normally hits on the finish of the month) to get the complete impact earlier than and through that 10-day window.

When I opened the app on day one, I used to be greeted by my identify on the prime, a weekly calendar, and a every day affirmation with the optimistic message,”I can adapt to any situation that comes my way.” (You can choose to have every day affirmations despatched to you through electronic mail or textual content, too.) Overall, I discovered the app very user-friendly and straightforward to navigate. Plus, it simply appears to be like high-tech and aesthetically pleasing.

I clicked on the “frequencies” icon on the backside of the web page, and scrolled till I discovered “PMS support.” The description of the frequency mentioned it helps help “balanced emotions, hormones, pain relief, and decreased bloating.” As I started to play the unique model of frequency, it appeared like I used to be floating by means of outer house, however with decrease, extra grumbling undertones than I’d imagined. (It did not sound as high-pitched and flighty because the stress-relief composition, for instance.)

I discovered myself gravitating towards the music model of this frequency—a guitar strumming sound with the frequencies enjoying beneath—which I listened to throughout my lunch break on the primary day (with an alarm set on my telephone in case I dozed off, after all).

For the remaining days, I made a decision to both hearken to it at evening or in morning, in mattress with my cozy sleep masks on. I began by listening to them out loud, however found that sporting headphones provides a extra elevated expertise. Some days, I could not get round to listening to all the 20 minutes, so it was good that I used to be capable of pause and play it every time I wished. I acquired into the routine of listening after which logging how I felt afterward within the gratitude journal.

During my “good time” of the month, I discovered that SOAAK’s “PMS support” frequency was a pleasing method to cap off or begin my days. I entered a meditative-like state, the place I used to be conscious, however my mind felt calm and sluggish. It felt just like once I hearken to binaural beats—i.e., beats set at two totally different frequencies and recorded utilizing two separate microphones, for a layered impact in every ear— which can have the potential to change brainwave exercise, per the Sleep Foundation. (However, extra analysis is required to verify any health advantages.)

On some days, “PMS support” additionally gave me a soothing, head-tingling sensation that I really feel once I watch or hearken to ASMR (a bodily sensation in response to visible or auditory stimuli, additionally referred to as autonomous sensory meridian response, per UCLA Health). I undoubtedly added “PMS support” to my rotation of enjoyable content material that I hearken to frequently, and really feel that it might assist me loosen up even when I’m not within the throws of PMDD.

Then got here the true check: the ten days earlier than my interval.

Did SOAAK assist my PMDD signs?

One of the primary methods I do know I’m headed into that pre-period time is once I begin having repetitive, intrusive ideas. They are likely to get caught on a loop, and are sometimes adverse self-talk in nature. When this occurred this month, I turned on “PMS support,” irrespective of the time of day, along with my morning or evening ritual. I even performed it as soon as whereas strolling with my canine, and whereas cleansing my residence.

Listening to the frequency helped my mind instantly concentrate on one thing else, and the racing thought loop simply…stopped. Even if I attempted to get the ideas going once more, it was more durable to conjure them up. It felt nice to get fast aid from certainly one of my most annoying PMDD signs—particularly when I’m underneath extra stress. I additionally really feel like my anxiousness on the whole was barely lowered after listening to it spontaneously.

While I would not say “PMS Support” relieved my bodily signs (like cramping, complications, bloating, and fatigue), it did assist take my thoughts off any ache for a short while till any medicines I took, like Advil or Midol, kicked in. (Though some folks might discover ache aid whereas listening; everybody’s totally different!)

Overall, I do really feel that SOAAK’s “PMS Support” frequency composition helped me have a calmer, much less emotionally tumultuous time main as much as my interval. It actually wasn’t a cure-all (I nonetheless use my conventional therapy strategies), however it did assist, and I consider I can begin utilizing it along side remedy, remedy, and different stress-relieving methods.

This leads me to a bigger query: Does sound healing on the whole truly work? (More on this beneath.)

Does sound healing remedy actually work?

There’s no strong proof to counsel that sound healing remedy can remedy any illness. The research on sound healing remedy for each bodily and psychological health circumstances are restricted, have combined outcomes, and infrequently showcase a wide range of outcomes. That mentioned, it might nonetheless be a useful supplemental remedy along side different clinically backed therapies, particularly to assist promote rest.

On a broader scale, we do know that our nervous methods reply to sound—for the higher, and typically, for the more serious.

“Our autonomic nervous system has the tendency to respond and co-regulate to the rhythms around us,” says Ellen Vora, MD, a board-certified psychiatrist specializing in girls’s psychological health, and creator of The Anatomy of Anxiety. “This means, in times of stress, our bodies can pick up and sync with sounds around us—like noisy city life or people shouting, which have certain sound frequencies—causing us to feel even worse.” These sounds can improve our heart fee and even ship our nervous methods into fight-or-flight mode, she provides.

But after we hearken to extra enjoyable frequencies, like wind rustling by means of bushes, birdsong, ocean waves, or sure music, our heart fee may sync up (and decelerate) with this rhythm, enjoyable us, says Dr. Vora. This is also why the sound of issues like singing bowls elicit a chilled response. Dr. Vora says it might assist us transfer by means of pent-up feelings, or what she calls “emotional constipation.”

In reality, a small July 2017 observational research within the Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary & Alternative Medicine discovered that contributors who listened to a low-frequency, Tibetan singing bowl meditation scored considerably decrease on anxiousness and melancholy scales than previous to listening, suggesting it does have some psychological profit.

Bottom line: Sound healing remedy, within the type of sound frequencies, can not essentially remedy or heal you, and extra scientific research are wanted so as to totally perceive its impact on mind chemistry. But if it brings you a way of calm, and helps you higher take care of issues like PMDD or PMS, it is innocent and will be price a attempt, particularly along side care out of your physician.

And have in mind: If you are having depressive ideas, ideas of suicide, or ideas of harming your self or another person, that is thought-about a psychological health emergency that requires skilled care. Call your physician and go to the closest emergency room as quickly as doable. You may name or textual content “988,” the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, for fast help.

Is there a future for sound healing remedy?

Sound healing remedy may very well be the wave (pun supposed) of the way forward for holistic health care. There’s no denying that apps like SOAAK are providing handy and straightforward choices to cease the results of stress and anxiousness in its tracks, and allow you to lead a calmer existence. Though we nonetheless have an extended method to go in fully understanding the impact of frequencies on health and the human body, I’ve a sense we’ll begin to see increasingly sound remedy apps (and different holistic apps) crop up within the coming years.

Both Penix and Widney say they need to assist folks “reclaim their health, and take their care into their own hands.” Using this app has actually made me assume extra in regards to the methods I can higher care for myself throughout my 10-day, pre-period section, and reclaim this month-to-month routine.

If you need to attempt SOAAK

If you’ve got PMDD, PMS, need to get higher sleep, or are simply plain curious in regards to the results of sound healing, obtain SOAAK right now on IOS or Android and begin a seven-day free trial. From there, you’ll be able to choose for a month-to-month subscription of $29.99 monthly, or a yearly subscription at $24.99 monthly (or $300 per yr).

Our editors independently choose these merchandise. Making a purchase order by means of our hyperlinks might earn Well+Good a fee.