What is proven, what is tradition and what is myth

In short: it is proven that sound and vibration help people relax and dull pain. Nothing has been proven that would link a specific frequency to a specific organ. And separately there are claims that were tested and refuted — those are worth knowing too.

How to read the labels

Reproducible

Arithmetic you can repeat yourself: the same period and the same formula give the same hertz. It is a statement about a number, not about a person.

Proven

Controlled studies in people exist, and they showed an effect. The study is linked right next to the claim.

Tradition

A system of correspondences with its own inner logic and many years of practice, but no clinical confirmation. Not worse and not better, just a different kind of statement.

Unverified

The number or claim appears in sources, but the original source could not be found.

Myth

Tested and not confirmed, or traced back to a source that does not exist.

Studies

Studies of sound and vibration: the design, the result and the limitations of each
Topic	What was found	What it does not prove	Level
Vibration reduces painMeta-analysis, 35 studies	Vibration applied next to the injection site noticeably reduces the pain of injections, blood draws and cosmetic procedures. The mechanism is known: thick touch fibers override the pain signal where it enters the spinal cord.Comite et al., J Clin Aesthet Dermatol, 2024 (PMID 39445323)	This is about vibration as the physics of touch, not about any particular planetary frequency. The authors themselves note that the devices and techniques in the studies are not standardized, so the review does not name a “working frequency” at all.	Proven
Vibration on a tendon tricks the sense of muscle positionExperiment in people, 100 Hz, replicated since 1972	Vibration applied to a tendon creates a distinct illusion of movement: with their eyes closed, people misjudge the position of their elbow, and when the muscle is tensed the error reaches 40°. It is one of the most reproducible effects in sensory physiology.Goodwin, McCloskey, Matthews, Science, 1972 (PMID 4258209)	It explains the strange bodily sensations people report in a session, but it explains them by how receptors work, not by any effect on energy.	Proven
Singing bowls vs. muscle relaxationBlinded randomized trial, n = 50	After 50 minutes, anxiety dropped more in the singing bowl group than in the standard relaxation group, and heart rate variability rose more noticeably.Río-Alamos et al., 2023 (PMC9955072)	The authors say plainly that they did not separate the effect of “simply lying down for 50 minutes” from the effect of the specific tones.	Proven
Bowls on the body: EEG and heart rate64-channel EEG plus ECG, 20 minutes, n = 34	Overall EEG power decreased, and heart rate fell on average from 75 to 71 beats per minute.Medicina (Kaunas), 2022 (PMC9144189)	There were no significant changes in heart rate variability, which means the instruments did not register any “deep relaxation”.	Proven
Vibroacoustic therapy and painReview, 20 studies selected from 430 found	The most common choice is 40 Hz, in sessions of 20–45 minutes.Kantor et al., BMJ Open, 2022 (PMID 35383053)	The authors' own conclusion: there are too few studies to tell which features of the method are useful at all. That is an honest assessment, not nitpicking.	Unverified
Beats, anxiety and attentionMeta-analyses (15–22 studies each)	Anxiety goes down moderately, but consistently from one analysis to the next. Binaural beats also have an effect on memory and attention, again moderate, though uneven: it depends on the frequency, the duration, and whether the beats are played before a task or during it.Garcia-Argibay 2019 (g ≈ 0.45); Basu 2023 (PMID 35842538, g ≈ 0.40); EEG review: Ingendoh 2023 (PMID 37205669); comparison with sound without beats: Xiong 2025 (PMID 41176178), Wiwatwongwana 2016 (PMID 27740618)	Comparisons with sound that has no beats are few, and they disagree: a pooled analysis of eight trials favored the beats, but with a huge spread between studies, while in a separate trial the difference from ordinary music was not significant. The data on brainwave entrainment are contradictory: of fourteen EEG studies of binaural beats, five find it, eight do not, and one gives a mixed result. None of these studies that stimulated in the beta range found it.	Proven
Beats on their own and beats with musicRandomized trial, monaural beats at 1.07 Hz, n = 308	Three groups, and each had its own result. Beats played TOGETHER with music noticeably lowered anxiety. Beats ON THEIR OWN had no effect on anxiety at all and only dampened the feeling of alertness. And the control, a pure 220 Hz tone, slightly RAISED anxiety.Venkatesan et al., Front Psychol, 2025 (PMID 40606876)	The right way to read this: it is the combination that works, not the beat. The effect may well be carried by the music itself, and the fact that the pure tone worked in the opposite direction, if anything, supports that guess.	Proven
Humming and nitric oxideMeasurement of exhaled air	Humming raises nitric oxide in the nasal sinuses about fifteen-fold compared with a normal exhale. It is the only “sound” effect in this whole subject that has been measured directly.Weitzberg, Lundberg, Am J Respir Crit Care Med, 2002	This is about your own voice, not a tuning fork. The claim that “a 128 Hz tuning fork releases nitric oxide in 30 seconds” has nothing to do with this study.	Proven
432 Hz vs. 443 HzRandomized trial, monochord on the body, 15 minutes, n = 43	The comparison was not with the familiar 440 Hz but with 443 Hz, the tuning used by German orchestras. On most measures the two tunings did not differ, but pulse wave velocity fell significantly more at 432 Hz (−0.5 m/s), heart rate dropped by 3 beats versus 1, and heart rate variability increased only at 432 Hz.Hohneck et al., BMC Complement Med Ther, 2025;25:18 (PMID 39844155)	Forty-three cancer patients, one study, an effect on a vascular measure. This is not “432 Hz heals” and not “the tuning doesn't matter”: it is one careful result that is still waiting to be repeated.	Proven
The PC6 point and nauseaCochrane review	The only acupuncture point with a convincing evidence base, and it concerns nausea and vomiting.Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews	For other points, specificity has not been confirmed: in blinded studies the “right” point and the “wrong” one most often work equally well.	Proven
Planetary frequencies as medicine—	Not a single controlled study exists.Search of PubMed, Cochrane and ClinicalTrials.gov	This does not mean “not proven yet” or “science is hiding it”. It means, quite literally, that nobody has tested it, and there is nothing to claim.	Unverified

Note the last row. Controlled studies of planetary frequencies do not exist — neither positive nor negative. This is not “science hasn't got there yet” or “the truth is being hidden”: nobody has simply run such an experiment. Any statement like “136.10 Hz acts on the heart” rests today on practice and tradition, not on measurement, and it is more honest to say exactly that.

At the same time, the relaxation people feel during a session is real. It is simply explained by things that would work without any planets: a calm setting, twenty minutes of stillness, slow breathing, a pleasant sound, another person's attention. This does not devalue the practice — it gives it back an honest description.

Claims that were tested and refuted

Myth“528 Hz repairs DNA”

No study showing this exists. The paper usually cited measured the survival of cells in a test tube, not DNA repair, and it was published in a journal with questionable peer review.

Where it came from: The number comes from the “solfeggio frequencies”, a list put together in the 1970s from numerical calculations based on a biblical text.

Myth“A 128 Hz tuning fork raises nitric oxide within 30 seconds”

The publication people cite is a theoretical hypothesis; nothing was measured in it. Not one experiment with a tuning fork and nitric oxide has ever been carried out.

Where it came from: A mix-up with the real study on humming: there, nitric oxide really does rise, but the source of the sound is the person, not a tuning fork.

Myth“You should listen to the 7.83 Hz Schumann resonance because it is the frequency of the Earth”

7.83 Hz is an electromagnetic phenomenon between the planet's surface and the ionosphere, not a sound. It cannot be heard: human hearing starts at about 20 Hz. What is sold as “Schumann” is ordinary sound modulated at that rate.

Where it came from: Two different “Earth frequencies” get confused: the electromagnetic resonance (7.83 Hz) and the tone of the Earth year according to Cousto (136.10 Hz). They are different quantities, arrived at in different ways.

Myth“Solfeggio frequencies are the ancient frequencies of Gregorian monks”

There was no reference to measure from: no single pitch standard existed until 1939, when A = 440 Hz was adopted by international agreement. Choirs sang from whatever note the choirmaster gave, so “singing 528 Hz” makes no sense in that frame of reference.

Where it came from: Joseph Puleo derived six of the frequencies (396, 417, 528, 639, 741, 852) in the 1970s by numerical reduction of the text of the Book of Numbers; Leonard Horowitz later added 174, 285 and 963.

Myth“Every organ has its own healing frequency”

Tissues do have mechanical resonances, but they are broad and depend on posture, on how full an organ is and on the surrounding tissue, and “hitting” them does not make an organ any healthier. Tables such as “liver: 317.83 Hz” are not based on any measurements.

Where it came from: The engineering idea of resonance carried over to a living body: an attractive metaphor taken for a fact.

Myth“A study has proven that 40 Hz helps with fibromyalgia”

That paper was retracted in 2020. It cannot be cited, yet it still is, including by equipment sellers.

Where it came from: News of a retraction almost never reaches the people who have already copied the paper's conclusions onto their own websites.

Myth“A tuning fork sounds the way the planet sounds”

Space has no medium for sound to travel through, so a planet makes no sound at all. The frequency is obtained mathematically: the orbital period is turned into a frequency and raised by octaves into the audible range.

Where it came from: NASA's recordings of “planet sounds” are radio waves and plasma oscillations translated into the audible range, and they have nothing to do with Cousto's tuning forks.

Why we write this at all

A section about sound practice could do without this page — almost everyone does without it. We think otherwise for a simple reason: a person whom sound helped to relax is not deceived just because we called things by their names. People are deceived when they are promised a medical result and charged money for it.

That is why there is not a single medical promise here, and every line carries a label. None of this stops anyone from doing the practice — whereas putting off a visit to the doctor because you believed in an “organ frequency” is a serious matter.

Next: contraindications · what is known about beats · where the “solfeggio frequencies” came from

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