DNA energy field laser frequency vibrations!

Every once in a while I'll run across a claim that is so wildly ridiculous that I question, for a time, if it is meant as a joke.  Sadly, the majority of them aren't.  As hard as it is for me to believe, given that we currently live in the most scientifically and technologically advanced society that the Earth has ever seen, there are a lot of people who believe stuff that is unrefined bullshit.

I ran into an example a few days ago, when a friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me an article entitled "Scientists Prove DNA Can Be Reprogrammed By Words And Frequencies," by Grazyna Fosar and Franz Bludorf.  The word "frequency" always acts like a red flag to me, as it is for some reason a word woo-woos like a lot, and throw about in absurd ways despite its having a rigid, and not especially thrilling, definition in the scientific world (three others are "energy," "vibration," and "field").  So I read the article, and found ample fodder for faceplanting right in the first paragraph, to wit:

THE HUMAN DNA IS A BIOLOGICAL INTERNET and superior in many aspects to the artificial one.  Russian scientific research directly or indirectly explains phenomena such as clairvoyance, intuition, spontaneous and remote acts of healing, self healing, affirmation techniques, unusual light/auras around people (namely spiritual masters), mind’s influence on weather patterns and much more.  In addition, there is evidence for a whole new type of medicine in which DNA can be influenced and reprogrammed by words and frequencies WITHOUT cutting out and replacing single genes.

So -- DNA causes auras and clairvoyance, not to mention "weather patterns." And here I thought weather patterns were caused by air masses moving around, and all that sort of thing.

But what do I know?

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons gerlos (original picture), modification: Mielon, Thunderstorm 003, CC BY-SA 2.0]

In any case, the authors are far from done:

The Russian biophysicist and molecular biologist Pjotr Garjajev and his colleagues also explored the vibrational behavior of the DNA...  The bottom line was: “Living chromosomes function just like solitonic/holographic computers using the endogenous DNA laser radiation.”  This means that they managed for example to modulate certain frequency patterns onto a laser ray and with it influenced the DNA frequency and thus the genetic information itself. Since the basic structure of DNA-alkaline pairs and of language (as explained earlier) are of the same structure, no DNA decoding is necessary.

Ooh, there we are -- "vibration!" That's two down, two to go.  My favorite part of this is that "no DNA decoding is necessary."  You don't have to know anything about how DNA actually works, apparently, to experience "endogenous DNA laser radiation."  Maybe it'll grant you superpowers, you think?  If so, I want to be able to fly.  You know, big feathery wings coming from my shoulders.  It'll make fitting into shirts tricky, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

But let's not get sidetracked, here.  Back to the article:

One can simply use words and sentences of the human language!  This, too, was experimentally proven!  Living DNA substance (in living tissue, not in vitro) will always react to language-modulated laser rays and even to radio waves, if the proper frequencies are being used...  Esoteric and spiritual teachers have known for ages that our body is programmable by language, words and thought.  This has now been scientifically proven and explained.  Of course the frequency has to be correct.  And this is why not everybody is equally successful or can do it with always the same strength.  The individual person must work on the inner processes and maturity in order to establish a conscious communication with the DNA.  The Russian researchers work on a method that is not dependent on these factors but will ALWAYS work, provided one uses the correct frequency.

"The human language" reprograms DNA?  Hmm.  I wonder if it has to be a specific language?   Russian, given that that's what the "scientist" who did this "research" speaks?   Would English do?   How about Sanskrit?  Or Swahili?  What about Pig Latin?  "This is Ordon-gay attempting to eprogram-ray your NA-Day."

But that's not all your DNA can do, when the proper "frequency" is achieved:

The Russian scientists also found out that our DNA can cause disturbing patterns in the vacuum, thus producing magnetized wormholes!  Wormholes are the microscopic equivalents of the so-called Einstein-Rosen bridges in the vicinity of black holes (left by burned-out stars).  These are tunnel connections between entirely different areas in the universe through which information can be transmitted outside of space and time.  The DNA attracts these bits of information and passes them on to our consciousness.  This process of hyper communication is most effective in a state of relaxation.  Stress, worries or a hyperactive intellect prevent successful hyper communication or the information will be totally distorted and useless.

I've been kind of stressed lately, which is probably why there have been no wormholes forming in my vicinity.

When hyper communication occurs, one can observe in the DNA as well as in the human being special phenomena.  The Russian scientists irradiated DNA samples with laser light.  On screen a typical wave pattern was formed.  When they removed the DNA sample, the wave pattern did not disappear, it remained.  Many control experiments showed that the pattern still came from the removed sample, whose energy field apparently remained by itself.  This effect is now called phantom DNA effect.  It is surmised that energy from outside of space and time still flows through the activated wormholes after the DNA was removed.

Yay! "Energy" AND "field!" We've scored four for four with this one! At this point, my DNA was tired of hypercommunicating at high frequencies and my wave frequency patterns felt like they needed a double scotch, so I pretty much stopped reading, although I did notice further along that the article mentioned the Schumann resonance, Princess Diana's funeral, remote sensing, UFOs, "troubled children," and anti-gravity.  So they've got their bases pretty well covered, woo-woo-wise.

And yes, this article appears to be entirely serious.  As do the comments, the first one of which was, "This appears to be how Jesus performed miracles.  The power of God is within us!" 

 Because Jesus had lasers, and all.

I find all of this simultaneously hilarious and discouraging.  Hilarious because the claims are so bafflingly stupid that I can't help but laugh when I read them; discouraging because there is, apparently, a large group of people who actually find them plausible.  As a science teacher, we try to provide what Carl Sagan calls "a candle in the dark" -- a way of seeing the world that gets past superstition and credulity, and bases our knowledge instead on evidence, logic, and rationality.  And to be sure, we've come a long way since the Dark Ages, when people believed that there were only four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) and frogs were spontaneously created from muddy water.   When I read stuff like this, however, it makes me realize how far we still have to go.

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This week's recommendation is a classic.

When I was a junior in college, I took a class called Seminar, which had a new focus/topic each semester.  That semester's course was a survey of the Book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter.  Hofstadter does a masterful job of tying together three disparate realms -- number theory, the art of M. C. Escher, and the contrapuntal music of J. S. Bach.

It makes for a fascinating journey.  I'll warn you that the sections in the last third of the book that are about number theory and the work of mathematician Kurt Gödel get to be some rough going, and despite my pretty solid background in math, I found them a struggle to understand in places.  But the difficulties are well worth it.  Pick up a copy of what my classmates and I came to refer to lovingly as GEB, and fasten your seatbelt for a hell of a ride.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Frequency flim-flam

One of the things that strikes me, both about many purveyors of alt-med bullshit and their customers, is how little effort they exert even to make their arguments sound like legitimate science.

I mean, it's not like the science is inaccessible, or something.  Whatever else you can say about Wikipedia, it's a pretty good resource for quick, substantially accurate information.  (In fact, a 2005 study found that Wikipedia was close to Encyclopedia Brittanica in terms of overall accuracy.)

So finding out how stuff works is, honestly, only a click away.  Which is why the link a loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me a couple of days ago is appalling on so many levels.

It's called "A Bright Future for Lyme -- AmpCoil."  What it claims is that it can reduce the symptoms of Lyme disease by 84-93% through "non-invasive sound wave vibrations" delivered by a "pulsed electromagnetic field."  I live in an area of the United States where Lyme is common, and have two friends who have struggled dreadfully with it, so naturally, I wanted to know what this was all about.  I clicked the "Science & Technology" link they provided.  Here's what I found:

When parts of your body become stressed or diseased, they no longer produce the correct sound vibrations.  In other words, your body and its organs are not vibrating at its optimal resonant frequency.  By introducing the tones of healthy organs, minerals, nutrients, electrolytes, enzymes, flora, etc. back into your body, you can relax knowing that the rejuvenation and restoration process is underway... 

All matter (everything around us) is a result of a frequency and if you amplify the frequency, the structure of the matter will vibrate and change.  To many, sound vibration is simply something you hear such as music.  The idea that frequency can have an effect on our familiar physical reality seems a far-fetched notion.  But it's not far-fetched at all - it's quantum mechanics! 

It’s hard to argue against the fact that music makes you feel good, but can sound vibration actually shift your body?  Everything in nature owes its existence solely and completely to frequency and sound vibration.  Sound is the basis for form and shape and the component that holds life together.

Well, I think this might be the odds-on favorite for the Most Highly Distilled Bullshit Ever contest.  Amongst the inaccuracies I found:

1. Disease has nothing to do with "resonant frequencies."  Resonant frequencies (also called natural modes of vibration) are the modes of vibration that an object tends to oscillate at in the absence of a driving or damping force.  A simple example is a child's swingset.  You may have noticed how hard it is to get a swing to oscillate at anything but one frequency -- this is because that is its resonant frequency, the one that requires the least amount of energy input.  It's true that everything has a particular resonant frequency, but it has nothing to do with disease, all it has to do with is mass distribution around the axis of oscillation, which is why you so seldom see sick swingsets.
2. "Amplifying the frequency" doesn't make things improve, all it does is (if you're talking about light) move it toward the violet end of the spectrum, or (if you're talking about sound) raise the pitch.  High frequencies aren't good and low frequencies bad, or else everyone would instinctively prefer piccolos over cellos.  If anything, I suspect the opposite is true.
3. Matter is not the "result of a frequency."  Matter, or at least its distinctive property of mass, is apparently the result of the interaction of its constituent fundamental particles with the Higgs field.  "Matter is a result of frequency" comes as close to a meaningless pseudoscience-babble statement as anything I can think of.
4. Sound vibrations and electromagnetic field vibrations are not the same thing.  At all.  Sound vibrations are compression waves in a medium such as air or water.  EMF vibrations are oscillating changes in the electromagnetic field in space (and do not require a medium to travel through, which mystified the hell out of scientists at the turn of the 20th century, until Einstein came along and said, "Hey, guys, take a look at this.")  Light is an example of an EMF oscillation.
5. Quantum mechanics has zero to do with the effect of sound waves on matter.
6. Sound vibrations have zero to do with holding matter together.

And that's just from the bit I posted.  If you'll check out the link, you'll see that it goes on for pages and pages in that fashion.  Along the way, you find out that the AmpCoil -- the thing they're peddling -- is supposed to cure not only Lyme disease, but fibromyalgia, headaches/migraines, chronic back pain, arthritis, and a host of autoimmune diseases.

One other statement from their home page stood out, that I just have to tell you about:

Imagine the possibilities if harmful pathogens could no longer hide from beneficial hertz frequencies by burrowing into cell walls?

From one sentence, I have two further responses:

1. What the fuck is a "hertz frequency?"  "Hertz" is the unit for measuring frequency.  So "hertz frequency" is a little like saying "inch distance" or "liter volume."
2. I'm not terribly concerned about Lyme pathogens burrowing into my cell walls, for the very good reason that my cells don't have cell walls, given that I'm not a plant.

Then, at the bottom of the page, in teensy print, is the following:

AmpCoil units have not been evaluated by governments and are Consumer Products for personal use.  Disclaimer: The AmpCoil System is not intended for use in the diagnosis, treatment, cure or prevention of any disease, medical condition, physical or psychological disorder.  It should not be considered a replacement for medical advice or treatment.

Say what?  What, exactly, do you call the following statements, taken right from their website?

• Safe & simple alternative Lyme treatment for everyone.
• The AmpCoil, powered by the BetterGuide App, can help reshape the form and function of vibrational imbalances in the body by re-tuning each and all parts of one’s physiology and anatomy.  AmpCoil is like a tuning fork for the human body!
• The AmpCoil is a non-invasive PEMF sound technology that brings the body back in tune, vibrating in its original, pure state faster than you might expect.

So okay, enough for the ranting.  But what appalls me about all of this is how quickly these claims would vanish into a puff of foul-smelling vapor if you just looked up some of this shit on Wikipedia.  That's all you have to do.  You don't need a Ph.D. in physics or biology.  You don't need to be a microbiologist.  You don't have to understand how to build a machine that can deliver a pulsed electromagnetic field.

All you have to be able to do is to go online and read critically for about five minutes.

What's worst is that there's legitimate research out there on the effect of electromagnetic field stimulation on a variety of disorders.  TCMS (trans-cranial magnetic stimulation) has shown promise in treating cases of intractable depression, for example.  But you will get nowhere (1) diagnosing yourself, and (2) buying an electric field generator, and (3) applying it to random body parts.  All that'll happen is either the placebo effect, or worse, you'll avoid getting legitimate medical care for an actual disease.

Amazingly, the scientists actually know what they're doing.  Listen to them.  [Image is in the Public Domain]

So that's today's dip in the deep end.  Bottom line: do some research.  If someone makes a claim, see if you can find independent corroboration.  And remember what Tim Minchin has to say about this kind of stuff: "There's a name for alternative medicine that works.  It's called... medicine."

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This week's book recommendation is from one of my favorite writers and documentary producers, Irish science historian James Burke.  Burke became famous for his series Connections, in which he explored the one-thing-leads-to-another phenomenon which led to so many pivotal discoveries -- if you've seen any of the episodes of Connections, you'll know what I mean when I say that it is just mindblowing fun to watch how this man's brain works.  In his book The Pinball Effect, Burke investigates the role of serendipity -- resulting in another tremendously entertaining and illuminating read.

Food vibrations

Apparently, Australia being nonexistent and people selling homeopathic black holes weren't enough, so a friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me a link to a site called "iTOVi," which sells "nutritional scanners."

The website tells us that the scanner is designed to "provide a list of top oils and supplements your body has a response to."  How, you might ask?  Well, here's their explanation:

Our portable nutrition scanner allows you and your clients to receive personalized product responses at any time of day!  How? The  iTOVi scanner uses innovative and institutionally recognized technology to measure the body’s response to electronic frequencies.  The scanner records the body’s reaction to these frequencies and matches the user with products that have complimentary frequencies.

So we're on thin ice already, but it gets a lot thinner.  I went to the page on "technology" -- call me a doubter, but I always want to know how things work.  And I wasn't disappointed.  We're told that everything, biological and non-biological, vibrates at a particular frequency, including "supplements and essential oils."  The machine figures out your vibration with a technique that should sound vaguely familiar:

During an iTOVi scan the device passes small electrical currents through the skin to measure the body’s resistance to frequencies, each of which is the natural energy signature of various supplements and oils.  The passing of electrical frequencies induces a measurable response from the body which is then recorded and shown in the iTOVi report.

If you're thinking, "but... isn't that how a polygraph machine works?", you're spot-on.  Polygraph machines -- which, to be up front, are of dubious use in telling whether people are lying -- measure small changes in skin conductivity, which occur primarily because of the amount of sweat a person has on their skin.  Sweat, being weakly saline, is quite a good conductor; and since the theory is that a person would sweat more under conditions of emotional stress (such as lying), changes in skin conductivity could give interrogators a clue about someone's veracity.

A polygraph machine [Image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

You may have noticed that nothing in the preceding paragraph mentions "frequencies."  That doesn't stop the iTOVi people, who claim that these conductivity changes are a clue to the body's "frequency," and they derive one from the other by means of an unspecified algorithm.  We're never given any specifics -- not even the number of Hertz we all should be shooting for.

Most of the places that blather on about "frequencies" (and "energies" and "vibrations" and "resonance") seem to think that the higher the frequency the better.  I did some digging and found the website "Vibrational Frequency 101," which I read, at great cost to the cells in my prefrontal cortex, which were screaming in agony by paragraph three.  It features passages like the following:

First off, we are not just our physical body {aka matter}. We are all made up of energy – all matter is – and bound together by an energy field. We’re talking atoms, protons, and neutrons…  This is science, people! 

So, everything vibrates with an energy. And, the higher the energy, the higher the frequency.  Positive feelings and thoughts evoke a higher frequency vs. negative feelings and thoughts evoke a lower frequency. 

The energy we’re made up of connects us to all living things and the universe.  When you really break it down, we are all just balls of energy walking the planet. 

Our energy is blocked when we experience negativity, fear, or you guessed it… unhealthy substances.  Think about it.  When you consume really unhealthy food, alcohol, or drugs, doesn’t your energy feel low, or dull or blocked?  Low vibrations mean a dampened energy field. It also means a disconnection to other things, the universe, and ourselves...  Plus, a constant negative state can lead to sickness and disease in the body.

For example, "fresh organic vegetables" supposedly have "high vibrations," while deep-fried food has "low vibrations."

Look.  You can say "this is science, people!" and "institutionally recognized technology" all day long, but until you can show me, using an oscilloscope, that kale is vibrating at 14,500 Hertz and KFC is vibrating at 7 Hertz, I'm calling bullshit.  Besides, if our food really is vibrating, shouldn't we be able to hear it?  You know, like kale emits this high-pitched whistle, and KFC a low, sad buzz, or something?  But despite listening carefully to my bowl of oatmeal this morning, I heard nothing but my wife sighing in resignation at her husband doing yet another ridiculous thing in the name of scientific research, and my dog wagging his tail, the latter presumably figuring that if I was doing something weird with my food, maybe it meant he was going to get some.

In short: the entire claim is nonsense.  You, and your organs, do have a natural (or resonant) frequency, because everything with mass does.  (Think of the natural swing rate of a kid on a swingset -- it's hard-to-impossible to make the swing oscillate at any other frequency.)  But all this means is that if your body is shaken at that frequency, it'll make (for example) your spleen vibrate, which sounds painful.  It has nothing to do with "feelings" or "negativity" or, for fuck's sake, "essential oils."

And, in fact, if you really believe that higher frequencies are better for you, let's run this experiment.  You listen to a piccolo playing a high D at full volume for an hour, and I'll listen to a cello playing a low note.  Let's see who comes away from the experience with a headache.

So about iTOVi: save your money.  The whole claim is nonsense, as you might figure out if you see the notorious disclaimer on their page, "This device is not meant to treat, cure, or diagnose any illness, nor should it be construed as medical advice."  Which, as always, is a good indicator that what it's proposing is horseshit.

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This week's Featured Book on Skeptophilia:

This week I'm featuring a classic: Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.  Sagan, famous for his work on the series Cosmos, here addresses the topics of pseudoscience, skepticism, credulity, and why it matters -- even to laypeople.  Lucid, sometimes funny, always fascinating.

Patchwork

We've had psychic vampire repellent.  We've had people selling "raw water."  We've even had jade eggs that women are, for some reason, supposed to insert into their vaginas.

So the whole alt-med community has really been working overtime lately.  Which is why I shouldn't have been surprised when a loyal reader sent me a link to something called "Amino Neuro Frequency Patches."

I know how you feel, dude.  [image courtesy of photographer Alex E. Proimos and the Wikimedia Commons]

What are "Amino Neuro Frequency Patches," you might ask?  I know I did.  Here's what the website says:

ANF is a revolutionary holistic approach to pain and inflammation.  Practitioners examine the body following the nerve paths and focus on finding the root cause of the patient’s problem.  They apply ANF discs to the skin to reduce pain, remove inflammation and prevent it from spreading via the nervous and lymphatic systems.  They use the discs in conjunction with manual therapy.

I'm guessing the "manual therapy" they're referring to is writing out a check to pay for the discs, and the course you're supposed to take before you're allowed to use them.  (No, I'm not kidding; you actually have to sign up for an online course before they'll send you your patches.)

So how could this possibly work?  The website explains that, too:

It uses a combination of frequency emitting wearable devices, the ANF Discs.  Each disc is applied directly on the skin and activated by the body heat.  They transmit a unique range of frequencies through the neurons in the body.  The nervous system picks up these frequencies, starting a self-healing and self-regulating process.  By improving the nervous system signaling directly at the cellular level, the effect of the treatment is much faster and has remarkable durable results.  The ANF Therapy does not require the use of any drugs or chemicals...  The connection from the patch to the body is made through the nervous system and the seven layers of bio energy the body naturally produces, the patch providing the signal to promote cellular communication to reduce stress and anxiety while restoring imbalances, as an example.

Okay, first, let's get something clear.

Frequency isn't some kind of hand-waving, Cosmic Connection To The Quantum Energy Field concept.  (Now that I think of it, neither are "quantum," "energy," and "field.")  Frequency means the number of times something oscillates in a given amount of time.  It's measured in units called hertz, which is an oscillation per second.

So a kid on a swing has a frequency.  A guitar string has a frequency.  Light has a frequency.

Your intestines do not have a frequency, unless something is making them vibrate, which sounds painful.

Of course, that hasn't stopped people from claiming that they do.  Here's a concise list of some alleged frequencies of different things:

Genius Brain Frequency 80-82 MHz
Brain Frequency Range 72-90 MHz
Normal Brain Frequency 72 MHz
Human Body 62-78 MHz
Human Body: from Neck up 72-78 MHz
Human Body: from Neck down 60-68 MHz
Thyroid and Parathyroid glands are 62-68 MHz
Thymus Gland is 65-68 MHz
Heart is 67-70 MHz
Lungs are 58-65 MHz
Liver is 55-60 MHz
Pancreas is 60-80 MHz
Colds and Flu start at: 57-60 MHz
Disease starts at: 58 MHz
Candida overgrowth starts at: 55 MHz
Receptive to Epstein Barr at: 52 MHz
Receptive to Cancer at: 42 MHz
Death begins at: 25 MHz
Fresh Foods 20-27 Hz
Fresh Herbs 20-27 Hz
Dried Foods 15-22 Hz
Dried Herbs 15-22 Hz
Processed/Canned Food 0 Hz

The amusing thing about this is the implication that the faster something vibrates, the better it is.  If you think that's true, I propose an experiment: I'll sit for an hour listening to someone play the cello, and you sit for an hour listening to someone play the piccolo, and we'll see which one of us has a headache afterwards.

And I have to admit that I burst out laughing when I saw that a can of asparagus doesn't vibrate at all.  How this is supposed to translate into "bad for you," I don't know, although I will agree to the extent that canned asparagus is one of the most disgusting things the human race has ever created.

So once again, we have some completely unscientific horseshit being passed off as serious medical advice.  My recommendation: don't trust anyone whose knowledge of actual scientific terms convinces you that they failed high school physics.  Good rule of thumb, that.

The Satanic Symphony Orchestra

Here at Skeptophilia, I try not to focus day after day on people who believe crazy stuff.  After all, loony ideas are kind of a dime a dozen, and loony people just as common, so at some point this kind of thing starts seeming like low-hanging fruit.

But every once in a while, I run into an idea so loony that it almost seems kind of... inspired.  Which is why today we're going to discuss: how the Freemasons are altering your DNA using a musical pitch to make you hate Donald Trump.

This may sound like a ham-handed attempt at satire, but sadly, it appears to be real.  According to a link sent to me by a long-time loyal reader of Skeptophilia, this is the claim of one Mark Taylor, self-styled "firefighter prophet," who has this to say about his own credentials:

I am no longer simply Mark Taylor, but also Shakina Kami, a name that translates from a combination of the African and Indian languages into “Beautiful One Whose Desires Are Fulfilled, and in Whose Life the Lord Dwells with the Divine Wind of Providence.”

So I think we can all agree that sounds pretty authoritative, even though I have to admit that I speak neither "African" nor "Indian."  Be that as it may, Taylor/Kami used his Divine Winds of Providence to write a book with the somewhat cumbersome title The Trump Prophecies: The Astonishing True Story Of The Man Who Saw Tomorrow… And What He Says Is Coming Next, wherein we find out that not only is Trump the Anointed One of God, Taylor himself had a vision in which he saw how Trump would win, and how this would be a tremendous defeat to the Forces of Darkness.  It's filled with passages such as the following:

The Spirit of God says, ‘America, get ready, for I AM choosing from the top of the cream, for I AM putting together America’s dream team, from the president and his administration, to judges and congress to ease America’s frustrations!’  The Spirit of God says, ‘Rise up, My Army, and get in the fight…  Rise up! stomp the enemy’s head with bliss; send the enemy back to Hell and into the abyss.’

All I can say is that even if we're being ruled by the Dream Team Cream, lately the news has made me want to Scream.  Overall, I can't say my frustrations have been eased much.  In fact, most of the time I feel like I need to double my anti-anxiety meds just to make it through the day.

Anyhow, I guess Taylor et al. didn't stomp the enemy's head blissfully enough, because the Bad Guys are now fighting back.  According to an interview he gave on right wing activist Sheila Zilinsky's radio program, Pass the Salt Live, last week, we are now being bombarded by "frequencies" designed to alter our DNA:

I believe what happened on November 8th is that the enemy has sent out a frequency, if you will -- and if you'll remember, when we did your show on "frequency" we literally got shut down and had to start over again... those who are tapped into this frequency, and it agitated and took control of those who had their DNA that was turned over to the enemy.  And that's what's happening.  The Illuminati, the Freemasons, their main goal is to change the DNA of man, and they're doing it through these frequencies, whether it's the bombardment of the news media, whether it's rock and roll music, I mean we could go on and on with these frequencies as we've talked about before.  So you need to surround yourself with the good news, not the apocalyptic messages right now.  Not to say that things aren't going to happen, because we're always going to have fires and earthquakes and hurricanes.  It's not the apocalyptic message that everyone's talking about.   

I'm being bombarded by emails from Christians right now, saying, "Look, I support Trump.  But everybody in my family has isolated me.  Everybody in my church is not talking to me."  It's because their DNA is being controlled by the enemy.  By broadcasting the news media, the audio part of it, at 440.  That's why when you watch the news media you get agitated.  It creates fear, it creates panic.  And this is what is going on in the church.  The body of Christ has got to stop being vulnerable to this stuff.  You've got to stop listening to the mainstream news media.  Look, if I want to know what's happening, I'll go to Fox's website to catch the headlines...  That's not being broadcast, where I'm hearing it in a frequency or anything like that.  See, the thing about that 440 hertz is that it will damage your body organs.  That's another reason why people are so sick.  It changes your DNA.  That's the goal of the Freemasons, the Illuminati.  They want you to be part of that Illuminati bloodline.

Okay, I have only one question about all of this, which is:

What?

A news broadcast sent out solely at a frequency of 440 hertz wouldn't be damaging so much as it would be annoying, because it would be a single continuous musical tone at A above middle C, which would make it a little hard to glean information from, good or bad.  Also, if 440 hertz caused DNA to change, orchestra members would undergo horrifying mutations every time the oboe plays an A so the rest of the musicians can tune their instruments.

Which could be kind of entertaining, even if it wouldn't really be conducive to a good performance afterwards.

Also, you really get the impression here that, besides the fact that Mark Taylor is nuttier than squirrel shit, he also has no concept of how DNA works.

Or maybe I've just listened to too many symphonies in my life, and I'm now part of the "Illuminati bloodline."  Which, now that I come to think of it, would be kind of cool, especially if it came with evil superpowers.

But I'm guessing that's not really all that likely, because here I sit, drinking coffee and trying to reboot my brain with only marginal success thus far, instead of cackling maniacally while shooting lightning from my fingertips, which would be a lot more fun.

The real problem, of course, is that once you start looking into this stuff, you very quickly go down the Bottomless Rabbit Hole of Lunacy, and start watching videos with names like "432hz vs 440hz pt 2 Nazi Fluoride How Illuminati 440hz Music Poison Pineal Gland," which not only has to do with Nazis, fluoride, the pineal gland, and "frequencies," also involves astrology, the All-Seeing Eye, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, John Lennon, Elvis Presley, the year 1776, and pacts with the devil.  It ends by asking, "Did they deceive the mass and Themselves while they didn't knew IT?", which I think is a pretty good question.  After watching all of this stuff, I'm not sure what I knew anymore, myself.

So many thanks to the loyal reader who sent me the link, which has left me feeling like I need a double scotch even though it's only eight in the morning.  I suppose I should buck up, as I have a big day ahead, retuning all of my musical instruments to 432 hertz so that my pineal gland doesn't freeze up and turn me into a Trump-hating Nazi Freemason.  I hate it when that happens.

Brain energy frequency

If there's one thing that gets me really bent out of shape, it's people using scientific words in completely screwy ways.

After all, these days it's not hard to find definitions of words.  If you want to know what a quantum is,  all you have to do is take a thirty-second trip to Wikipedia, wherein you can find not only the scientific definition of the term, but the following wonderful paragraph:

The adjective "quantum" is frequently used in common parlance to mean the opposite of its scientific definition.  A "quantum leap" has been used colloquially since the 1950s to imply a large change, as opposed to the smallest possible change.  It is also used in a range of pseudoscientific beliefs (quantum mysticism), where the adjective is used to imply that a paranormal event is a consequence of quantum physics.

So complete misunderstanding and misuse of scientific terms is nothing more than laziness.  Which is why I read an article over at Qultura called "Energy and the Brain" while making increasingly agitated noises of barely-stifled rage.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

What this article claims is that your brain exists to "process energy."  And I'm not talking about the conventional, physics definition of energy (which once again, a quick trip to Wikipedia would clear up completely); they're talking about some woo-woo bullshit idea about Cosmic Connections To The Universe.  But let me give it to you in their own words:

All information is actually energy in different forms and thinking is the process of reducing energy frequency by processing that information.  Senses are designed to detect, perceive energy in different forms and evaluate the energy frequency.  Sight for example, perceives light energy, working with the right cerebral hemisphere of the brain much in the same way as your hearing perceives audio or sound energy within a certain frequency range.  Senses also differentiate between different energetic states, for example touch differentiates between energy and physical mass and matter (which is actually energy but in a much more inert state).  Even taste and smell can differentiate between different energy states.  Your sense of smell, for example, can tell when the energy within a piece of meat or in milk is of a higher frequency, and either the meat or milk is off, and you should not consume it.  Your senses provide you with sensory input, which all goes to the brain as energy or information to be processed.

Which might win some kind of world record for packing the most scientific inaccuracy into a single paragraph.  Let's look at a concise list of stupid claims in this passage:

• Thinking does not "reduce energy frequency."  Whatever the fuck that means.
• Sight does not "work with the right cerebral hemisphere."  The visual cortex is in the occipital lobe of both hemispheres.
• Touch does not "differentiate between energy and physical mass."  Once again, I'm not even sure what that's supposed to mean.
• Matter is not "energy in an inert state."  Energy and matter are not the same thing at all -- although Einstein's famous equation shows that you can convert one into the other.
• Taste and smell are both chemoreceptors -- they work by having receptor proteins that are capable of binding to compounds dissolved in the saliva or floating around in the air (respectively).  They do not "differentiate between different energy states."
• Spoiled meat does not have a lower frequency than fresh meat.  I'm a bit baffled as to how you could calculate the frequency of meat to start with, as most meat I've seen just tends to lie there.  (On the other hand, if your meat is vibrating, it probably is a bad sign.  And yes, I am aware that this is a double entendre.  And no, I don't care.)
• High frequencies are not somehow better than low frequencies.  Anyone who thinks so should be required to listen for twenty minutes first to a high note on a piccolo and then to a low note on a cello, and see which they prefer. 

Then they end by stating that your sensory organs provide your brain with input to be processed, which is more or less correct.  So I guess the whole thing about monkeys typing randomly and eventually coming up with the script for Hamlet might have some validity after all.

But even this passage reads like a doctoral dissertation in physics as compared to the last bit.  Here's how the article ends:

[The brain's hemispheres are] what serve to take in energy in different frequencies from the atmosphere around you and process it in a way so as to change or reduce the frequency of the energy and project it back out into the atmosphere.  This is done constantly in different ways and collectively human beings throughout the world are a major influence on energetic frequencies in atmospheric energy.

Right!  Sure!  What?

I mean, tell me if I'm wrong, but what this sounds like is that they're claiming that you can change the weather by thinking about it.  Now, no one would be gladder than me if this were true; heaven knows I'd like to be able to conjure up a warm sunny day in the middle of an upstate New York January snowstorm.  But somehow, atmospheric energy frequencies notwithstanding, I don't think that'd work.

Or maybe I'm just not vibrating at a high enough frequency myself.  I dunno.

You might be thinking that all of this bullshit falls into the "stupid but harmless" category.  And in one sense, you'd be correct.  But as I've said more than once here at Skeptophilia, laziness becomes a habit.  If you simply assume that you know what you're talking about, and blather on without bothering to find out if you're using terms correctly or (in fact) have any idea how science in general works, you are much more likely to fall for pseudoscientific nonsense of more toxic sorts.

Much better to find out what the scientists themselves have to say.  Because, you know, they generally have a pretty good understanding of stuff.  Including "atmospheric energy frequencies."

Don't drink the water

It's been a while since we've had a new bizarre alt-med claim to poke fun at, so I was delighted when a loyal reader sent me a link yesterday to a site for something called "Starfire Water."

What is "Starfire Water," you might be asking?  Let me allow the website to speak for itself:

Starfire Water™ is a proprietary alkaline (pH 8.5) performance water produced using breakthrough 21st-century quantum water technology.  Starfire Water is treated with ultraviolet ozonation, infrared stimulation and electromagnetism for a negative ion charged water, as in nature, allowing deep, cellular intake through aquaporins, the floodgates to hydration.

So we're starting off the right way, with the mention of "quantum."  Everything in alt-med has to be "quantum."  As far as the rest, it appears to me that the writer of the above paragraph came up with this text by opening the glossary of a college chemistry text and pointing at random words, then stringing them together into sentences.

"Ultraviolet ozonation," my ass.

So then we get to find out how "Starfire Water" is made, and that adds a whole new layer of wacky woo-woo pseudoscience to the mix:

Our process utilizes a centrifugal vortex to implode the water and set the water in motion for several hours. This reorganizes the molecular order into a receptive state to receive high frequency vibration. The water is then passed through a chamber where magnetic resonance imprints a series of frequencies in an infinitely modulating sequence. Molecular order and frequency loading mutually reinforce each other to maintain the transformation of the water. 

The result is a liquid with the water formed into small, biocompatible water crystals that resonate at a designed and predictable frequency. The specific frequencies of the crystalline structured water solution are designed to be amplified by the cells of the human body, and transferred through resonant paths to tissues in need of “tuning”.

So, let's see here.  We have:

• a "centrifugal vortex."  Because apparently there's another kind.
• "reorganized molecular order."  Don't want to drink disorganized water, after all.
• "high frequency vibrations."  The higher the frequency the better, apparently.
• "infinitely modulating sequences" imprinted by "magnetic resonance."  I have a bachelor's degree in physics, and I have no idea what the fuck that means.
• "water crystals."  You mean ice?
• "frequencies of crystalline structured water solution amplified by cells and transferred through resonant paths."  Okay, fine, you win.  I give up.

But one more thing bears relating, which is the diagram that shows the highly scientific method they use to make this stuff:

So evidently electrons get sucked down whirlpools, and positive ions get flung out of it, or something.  But at least now we know how the water is "imploded in a centrifugal vortex."

What this product appears to be is mineral water that they spin around for a while and then sell for six dollars a gallon to unsuspecting gullible types.  And there are a good many gullible types, apparently; even their Facebook page has been "liked" 3,960 times, probably because they make a point of telling us that their water is "treated with S.S.R.T. , Sacred Sound Resonance Transmission, making it the world’s finest premium Cell Ready performance 'living' hexagonal water ever produced."

Which you have to admit sounds pretty impressive.

So that's our dip in the deep end of the ordinary-water-filled pool for today.  Spending an hour pawing through the nonsense on this site -- and believe me, what I've written here represents only the barest fraction -- is making me consider giving up on water entirely.

At the moment, I'm thinking of switching to scotch.

Deep waters

There's something about water that is mysterious.  It comprises, by some estimates, an average of 65% of the mass of living tissue.  We're drawn to it, and not just because we need a steady source of it to remain alive.  Look at how attracted we are by lakes, rivers, and oceans; consider how much more people will pay for houses with a view of a body of water.

Even the chemists tell us that water is weird.  It has a number of odd properties, including high polarity, specific heat, and heat of vaporization, and is (to my knowledge) the only common substance that expands when it freezes.  (If it weren't for this peculiarity, ice would sink, and bodies of water would freeze from the bottom up -- so there would probably be a permanent ice layer at the bottom of the world's lakes and oceans.)

So I guess it's no surprise that the woo-woos love making claims about water.  It seems like lately I've been seeing more and more of them -- mostly advertisements for devices that allegedly make your water... better.  Or healthier.  Or more nutritious.  Or waterier.  It's hard to tell, sometimes, exactly what they are claiming, because they don't seem all that sure about it themselves.

Take the "MRET Water Activator," offered for sale by the Sound & Consciousness Institute of San Francisco.  Here's the claim:

The patented i-H2O Activation System is the most effective hydration technology available today. This easy-to-use wellness breakthrough allows you to transform ordinary, filtered water into ultra-hydrating, "living water" within 30 minutes. During the automated i-H2O activation process, the chaotic structure of water molecules is transformed into a single-file alignment, mimicking the body's own natural state of healthy cell water, thereby creating optimally energized, bio-available water.

I don't know about you, but the idea of my water molecules marching along in single file is a little... creepy.  But no worries, because they put you on notice right away that they haven't the vaguest idea what they're talking about:

This device infuses the Schumann Resonance (7.83 hertz) into the water. The Schumann Resonance is an electromagnetic frequency that resonates in our atmosphere between the earth and the ionosphere. It is triggered by lightning, which strikes every second somewhere on the planet. Based on the laws of brainwave entrainment, this frequency entrains every brain on the planet (including animals) into this state, which is right on the threshold of the brainwave states of theta and alpha. In fact, over millions of years, we have become addicted to this frequency and it is a core part of who we are as humans. However, the problem is that this frequency gets obscured in cities by all of the ambient electromagnetism. NASA has found that astronauts actually get sick when they go outside of the atmosphere and don't receive the frequency. Currently, all astronauts now receive this frequency electromagnetically.

What is it with these people and the Schumann Resonance?  They love the Schumann Resonance.  For those of you who aren't aficionados of obscure features of atmospheric physics, the Schumann Resonance is an ultra-low-frequency electromagnetic standing wave in the ionosphere.  Here's how Wikipedia describes it:

This global electromagnetic resonance phenomenon is named after physicist Winfried Otto Schumann who predicted it mathematically in 1952. Schumann resonances occur because the space between the surface of the Earth and the conductive ionosphere acts as a closed waveguide. The limited dimensions of the Earth cause this waveguide to act as a resonant cavity for electromagnetic waves in the ELF band. The cavity is naturally excited by electric currents in lightning. Schumann resonances are the principal background in the electromagnetic spectrum beginning at 3 Hz and extend to 60 Hz, and appear as distinct peaks at extremely low frequencies (ELF) around 7.8 (fundamental), 13.7, 19.6, 25.5, 31.4, 37.3 and 43.2 Hz.

It has nothing to do with brainwaves.  It is not "obscured in cities."  NASA doesn't "give this frequency to astronauts."  And we are not "addicted to this frequency."

Oh, and there's no way to "infuse a frequency" into water.

If you keep reading, though, the claims just get wilder and wilder.  "Activated water" that has been "infused with the Schumann resonance" has the property of "super liquidity."  It's "bio-available."  (As opposed to ordinary water, which is just "available.")  And then after telling you how all of this nonsense has to do with the special properties of water, they tell you you can use their device to "activate" other substances...

...such as oil.  Which last I checked doesn't have much water in it.

If "MRET Activated Water" isn't bad enough, just today I ran into another claim, this one that we should all be drinking water in its "fourth phase."  What the hell could that mean, you might ask?

Well, you all learned in grade school how substances usually exist in one of three states -- solid, liquid, and gas.  (As you'll see in a moment, that is a dramatic oversimplification.)  But these people claim that these phases somehow aren't good enough, that we should be drinking water in a "fourth phase:"

4th Phase is a liquid water purifier!

It removes and renders harmless an enormous number of contaminants that are commonly found in water, whether from natural or man-made sources. It then puts water into what scientists are now calling the fourth phase of water (a liquid that has a beautiful, crystalline structure to it).

Ah, yes, those conveniently anonymous "scientists," always ready and waiting to be trotted out to support whatever idiotic claim is being made.

So what, exactly, is this stuff?  Check out the FAQs, and you find out:

4th Phase is a concentrated, water based solution of ionic minerals. The mother concentrate is made by extracting mineral salts from the stone, biotite mica, which are then diluted in purified water, bottled and sold, primarily as a liquid based water purifier. The resulting minerals are in sulfate form rather than the chloride form that most companies offer (The requirement for sulfur is nearly twice the requirement for chloride in the human body).

This, they tell us, comes out of the work of Dr. Gerald Pollack of the University of Washington, who tells us the following:

Dr. Pollack asserts that water, in it’s [sic] maximum potential as a substance that enlivens and hydrates us, needs to be highly energized and it reaches this high energy state through a variety of ways, one of which is that it creates this liquid crystalline structure when it is in the presence of external energy sources like light (sunlight, for example.) When water is in this high energy state, it mimics the water that surrounds our cells and is found throughout the body, and it has many other properties as well.

I'm so relieved to hear that now the water in my body will have many other properties!  That sounds great!  I'd hate to think that my water had "few properties."

What's interesting is how these people are using half-truths, incorrectly interpreted research, and out-and-out falsehoods to sell a product.  For example, the whole premise of a "fourth phase" of water, a mystical and energized phase, ignores the fact that the chemists have known for decades that water can exist in at least eighteen different phases (fifteen solid phases, plus liquid, vapor, and supercritical fluid), depending on temperature and pressure:

And unfortunately for these claimants, here at sea-level atmospheric pressure and typical room temperature, we're stuck in one boring old phase: liquid.

Now, Dr. Pollack himself, as far as I have been able to find, seems to have some degree of credibility in his field, and has been the author of a good many peer-reviewed papers.  On the other hand, the fault may not lie entirely with the purveyors of "4th Phase" hijacking Pollack's work.  At least one of Pollack's colleagues, neurobiologist Alexander Stein, has given an evaluation of Pollack's research that is nothing short of scathing:

Dr. Pollack is an embarrassment to his field and his University. This book [Cells, Gels, and the Engines of Life] is a collection of old results (from as far back as 50 years ago) that puzzled the world's scientists at the time they were first published. There has been much progress in the intervening decades that Dr. Pollack would do well to read and understand. All of the ancient science upon which Pollack's argument depends has since been explained or refuted. People are entitled to write, or say, whatever they choose. However, that doesn't necessarily make it true. Before purchasing this book, people should browse Dr. Pollack's publication record. They should note that in those instances when his science has escaped the peer-review process, references to his ridiculous opinions about cell biology have been omitted. Prospective buyers should also note that this book was published using the private funds of Pollack's family, and not solicited or endorsed by any scientific organization. I fully support anyone who wishes to read this comedy of ignorance, provided they then turn the pages of a good cell biology textbook. This book may change the way you look at the world around you, but so will psychoactive drugs and head trauma. Pollack is a laughing-stock. He will tell you that he is a persecuted genius. It is important to remember, though, that sometimes people are laughed at because they are genuine fools.

Ouchie.  So suffices to note that Pollack himself may not exactly be the solidest foundation on which to rest your claim.

Now, I'm not a chemist, and I would be unqualified to comment upon Pollack's research into the properties of water; but I do teach biology, and I can say without particular fear of error that the claims of the "4th Phase" people with respect to the biological effects of this Magic Water are bogus.  The bottom line: save your money.  Plain old tap water (in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe, at least) is safe, hydrates you just fine, and has the additional advantage of being cheap.

So, there you have it; yet another example of combining "a fool and his money are soon parted" and "there's a sucker born every minute."  Myself, I think you can solve the whole thing by switching to red wine.  Except... uh-oh...

Tomorrow: Do the antioxidants in red wine actually prevent cancer?  Or do people just like getting drunk?

Smell-o-therapy

I'd always wondered how "aromatherapy" was supposed to work.  I mean, I like nice-smelling things as much as the next guy, but treating diseases by having you smell something just always seemed a little weird to me.  But I'd never really looked into it.

And then a friend sent me this page, wherein we find that it all has to do with "frequencies."

I shoulda known.

Frequency is one of the most misused words in all of woo-woo.  So let's get the definition straight right from the get-go, okay?  Frequency is a measurement of the rate of vibration of anything that is exhibiting rotation, oscillation, vibration, or simple harmonic motion, and is measured by counting the number of cycles completed per second.  A hertz is the standard unit of frequency, and is equal to one cycle per second -- so in a pendulum clock that is keeping good time, the pendulum is swinging at exactly one hertz.  The frequency of sound waves audible to the human ear runs from about 20 hertz to about 18,000 hertz (18 kilohertz).  The electromagnetic spectrum has a much wider range, with the "low" end (radio waves) running all the way down to one hertz or lower, and the "high" end (gamma rays) up into the range of 10²⁴ hertz.  The bit of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes are sensitive to -- the familiar rainbow of visible light -- runs in the vicinity of 10¹⁴ hertz, with red having the lowest frequency (around 4 x 10¹⁴ hertz) and violet the highest (around 8 x 10¹⁴ hertz).

All right, thus endeth the science lesson for today.  Let's look at aromatherapy oils, okay?  Hold onto your hats, because we won't be re-entering the realm of science for a while.

The site I linked above begins thusly:

The effectiveness of aromatherapy essential oils cannot be fully understood without some discussion of their frequency or vibration. Frequency is a measurable rate of electrical energy that is constant between any two points. Every living thing has an electrical frequency. Robert O. Becker, M.D., documents the electrical frequency of the human body in his book, The Body Electric. A "frequency generator" was developed in the early 1020's [sic] by Royal Raymond Rife, M.D. He found that by using certain frequencies, he could destroy a cancer cell or virus. He found that these frequencies could prevent the development of disease, and others would destroy disease. Substances with higher frequency will destroy diseases of a lower frequency.

So, we already have:  (1) a typo that makes it sound like someone was developing electronic devices before the Norman Conquest of England; (2) a guy named "Royal Raymond Rife;" and (3) enough bullshit to fertilize a 50-acre cornfield.  Pretty good start for only one paragraph, don't you think?  But it gets better:

In one test, the frequency of two individuals – the first a 26 year old male and the second a 24 year old male – was measured at 66 MHz each. The first individual held a cup of coffee (without drinking any), and his frequency dropped to 58 MHz in 3 seconds. He put the coffee down and inhaled an aroma of essential oils. Within 21 seconds, his frequency had returned to 66 MHz. The second individual took a sip of coffee and his frequency dropped to 52 MHz in the same 3 seconds. However, no essential oils were used during the recovery time, and it took 3 days for his frequency to return to its initial 66 MHz. One surprising aspect of this study measured the influence that thoughts have on the body's electrical frequency.

Me, I usually vibrate faster after drinking coffee, especially given that I'm from Louisiana, where they don't consider it real coffee unless it's so strong you can stand a spoon upright in it.  I periodically have to replace my coffee mug because the coffee I make has eaten through the ceramic.

But I digress.

So what, then, is the "bioelectric frequency" of various familiar items?  I'm sure you wanted to know, and lo, they provide you with a handy chart:

Fundamental Frequencies of People and Things
(frequencies given in Megahertz)

• Healthy Human Brain...........................................................71-90
• Healthy Human Body (overall).............................................62-68
  • When you have cold symptoms........................................58
  • When you have flu symptoms...........................................57
  • When you have candida infection.....................................55
  • When you have Epstein Barr Syndrome...........................52
  • When you have cancer......................................................42
  • When one begins to die.....................................................25
• Processed or Canned Foods...........................................................0
• Fresh Produce (depending on how fresh)................................10-15
• Dry Herbs................................................................................12-22
• Fresh Herbs.............................................................................20-27
• Therapeutic Grade Essential Oils......................................52-320

So let's see -- canned tuna isn't vibrating at all, and infections of various sorts make you vibrate slower until finally you die when you reach 25 megahertz.  Presumably after you die you continue to decrease in vibration until you reach the canned-tuna stage.

And last, we find out two important things: (1) if you pray over your aromatherapy oils, they vibrate faster; and (2) exposing the body to the highest frequencies causes "spiritual changes."  Thus, I suppose irradiating yourself with gamma rays would just make you experience all sorts of spiritual growth, or possibly just turn you into The Incredible Hulk.  Which, now that I come to think of it, is a spiritual change of a rather impressive magnitude.

So once again, we have some people making unsubstantiated health claims that could potentially convince someone with a life-threatening disease to abandon conventional therapy for sitting around inhaling rose oil.  And despite the disclaimer at the bottom of the page -- "These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.  These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease," it sounds like that is exactly what they are suggesting.  And when you read the bit that comes immediately before the disclaimer, it becomes even clearer:

The penetrating characteristic of essential oils greatly enhances their ability to be effective. Essential oils will penetrate into the body when applied to the skin. Placed on the foot they will be distributed to every cell in the body in 21 minutes. They will even penetrate a finger or toe nail to treat fungus underneath.

Essential oils stay in the body about 20 minutes to 2 hours and leave no residuals. The effects and frequency are accumulative when the mental attitude changes. We must have a desire to change and work on it or the old programming will keep coming back. Oils are a precursor to set up stage for action and a catalyst to do the work (the blood stream). Oils go where the need is present and are activated in that area. Testing on the thyroid, heart and pancreas showed that the oils reached these organs in 3 seconds! When layered, one oil applied over another, it is faster. The body absorbs the oils fastest by inhalation and second fastest by applying to the feet or ears. The oils also cross the blood brain barrier; they piggy-back the energy waves to get into the cells.

All the essential oils deliver cell wall penetrating oxygen, and it is the unhealthy cells that need the oxygen for the road back to health. When the cell wall thickens, oxygen can’t get in – life expectancy of a cell is 120 days to 4 months). Cells divide making 2 duplicate cells, and if it is diseased, it will make 2 new diseased cells. When we stop the mutation of the cells and create healthy cells, we stop the disease. Therapeutic grade essential oils can restore cells to normal in 7 seconds.

Do not wait until you have the “right” essential oil before administering to a symptom. You cannot be doing it wrong if you use any of the oils for any symptom! When an oil causes discomfort, it is because it is pulling toxins, chemical, heavy metals, poisons, parasites and mucus from the system. Either stop taking the oils for a short time to make sure your body isn’t eliminating too fast or dilute the oils with V-6 Mixing Oil until the body catches up with the releasing. These toxins go back into the system if they cannot be released. If a person does not like the smell of an oil, it is usually because of an acidic condition.

How is this not a claim to "diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent disease?"

Once again, I think the thing we need to cure first here is ignorance of biological science.  Given a basic background in biology -- I mean, come on, the sophomores in my Introductory Biology class could debunk this stuff -- anyone would be able to recognize the falsity of these claims.  And we wouldn't have to get the FDA involved, because no one would buy the "essential oils" unless they wanted to use them for the one purpose they have -- to make your house smell better.