Transcription
You know, there's something I want you to try right now. Not in a minute, not after this video, right now. Close your mouth, take a breath, and just hmm. That's it. Any note, any pitch, just hum for a few seconds. Did you do it? Good.
Because in the next 60 seconds, 60 seconds, that's all, something extraordinary is happening inside your skull. Something that scientists at Stanford, at Karolinska Institute in Sweden, at Harvard Medical School, they've been quietly studying this for the last 15 years. And what they found, well, it changed how I think about the human body.
You see, I've spent my whole life trying to understand nature. And every now and then nature hides something so simple, so absurdly simple, right under your nose. Or in this case, inside your nose. That when you finally see it, you laugh. You laugh because it's been there the whole time. Free, available, and nobody told you. Humming. This silly little thing your grandmother did while cooking. This thing children do without thinking.
Humming is doing something to your brain >> [music] >> that pharmaceutical companies would charge you $400 a month for if they could bottle it. And I'm going to show you exactly what. The chemistry, the physics, [music] the biology. All of it. And by the end of this video, you'll understand why a Swedish research team called humming the most underrated neurological tool of the 21st century.
But first, and this is important, I need you to stay with me. Because the real surprise isn't what happens in the first 60 seconds. >> [music] >> The real surprise is what happens at minute three. And then again at minute seven. Your brain goes through stages. And most people stop at stage one and never feel the rest. [music]
So, let's begin properly. Now, I'm a physicist by training. So, forgive me, I have to start with the physics because that's where the magic begins. When you hum, you're not just making a sound, you're creating a vibration. And vibration, my friend, is just physics. It's waves. It's frequency. It's energy moving through matter. A typical human hum sits somewhere between 100 and 150 hertz. That means the air inside your nasal cavity, your sinuses, your throat, it's oscillating about 120 times every single second. Back and forth, back and forth, faster than your eye can see.
And here's the beautiful part, the part that made me sit up in my chair when I first read the paper. Your skull, your sinuses, the bones of your face, they have a resonant frequency. Just like a wine glass, just like a tuning fork. And that resonant frequency, it overlaps almost perfectly with the frequency of a human hum. So, when you hum, you're not just making noise, you're literally, and I mean this scientifically, you're literally massaging your own skull from the inside. The vibration travels through bone, through tissue, through fluid, and it reaches places no massage therapist could ever touch, including, and this is where it gets interesting, including your brain.
In 2002, a researcher named Eddie Weitzberg at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm did an experiment that nobody believed at first. He measured the gas coming out of people's noses while they hummed. Sounds ridiculous, right? Measuring nose gas. But what he found was so unexpected that the paper got published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, and it's been replicated dozens of times since. He found that when you hum, the amount of nitric oxide in your nasal passages increases by 15 times. 15 times, not 15%, 15 times. That's a 1,500% increase.
Nitric oxide is one of the most important molecules in your body. It does three things, and all three are remarkable. Number one, it dilates your blood vessels. It opens them up, which means more blood flow, more oxygen to your brain, to your heart, to every cell. Number two, it kills bacteria and viruses. It's part of your immune system. The Swedish team actually showed that high nasal nitric oxide is associated with fewer respiratory [music] infections. Some researchers, and this is still being studied, some researchers believe humming for a few minutes a day could reduce your chances of catching the common cold. Number three, and this is the one that gets me. Nitric oxide acts as a neurotransmitter inside your [music] brain. It helps neurons communicate. It's involved in memory formation, in learning, in thinking itself.
So, when you hum, you're flooding your body, mind, and your brain with one of the most important signaling molecules nature ever invented, and it's free, and it [music] takes 60 seconds. Now, if I stopped here, you'd already have something useful, but I haven't even told you about the vagus nerve yet, and this this is where humming becomes something close to a superpower.
The vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve in your body. It starts at the base of your brain in a region called the medulla, and it wanders down. That's actually what vagus means in Latin. It means wandering. It wanders down through your neck, into your chest, around your heart, down to your lungs, your stomach, your intestines. It touches almost every major organ, and it does something incredible. It's the main switch between your fight or flight mode and your rest and digest mode.
When your vagus nerve is weak, what scientists call low vagal tone, you feel anxious. You can't sleep. Your digestion is bad. Your heart rate is high. Your inflammation goes up. You age faster. When your vagal tone is strong, the opposite. You're calm. You sleep deeply. You recover from stress quickly. Your immune system works better.
Now, here's the question that puzzled scientists for decades. How do you strengthen the vagus nerve? You can't go to the gym and do vagus nerve curls. You can't take a pill for it. It seemed beyond our reach. Until they discovered this, the vagus nerve passes directly behind your larynx, your voice box. And when you hum, the vibration physically stimulates the vagus nerve from the inside through the tissue.
A study published in the International Journal of Yoga in 2011 measured heart rate variability, which is the gold standard for measuring vagal tone [music] in people before and after humming for just 5 minutes. The increase was dramatic, comparable to what you'd see after a full meditation session. 5 minutes of humming gave the same nervous system benefit as 20 minutes of meditation. I want you to sit with that for a moment.
Okay, let's get specific. The title of this video promised you 60 seconds, so let me walk you through second by second >> [music] >> what's happening inside your head.
Seconds 0 to 10. You begin humming. Immediately your vocal cords start vibrating at around 110 to 130 hertz. The vibration [music] travels up through your throat into your nasal cavity, into your sinuses. Pressure changes. Air molecules in your sinuses [music] begin oscillating.
Seconds 10 to 20. Nitric oxide production in your paranasal sinuses spikes. By the 20th second, levels are already five to seven times higher than normal. This nitric oxide begins to mix with the air you're breathing in through your nose and travels down into your lungs. >> [music] >>
Seconds 20 to 30. In your lungs, the nitric oxide causes the tiny [music] blood vessels surrounding your alveoli, the little air sacs, to dilate. Oxygen absorption increases. Within 30 seconds of humming, the oxygen content in your blood measurably rises.
Seconds 30 to 40. That oxygenated, nitric oxide rich blood reaches your brain. Cerebral blood flow increases. The prefrontal cortex, the part of you that thinks, plans, decides, gets a fresh wave of fuel.
Seconds 40 to 50. Your vagus nerve has now been receiving steady mechanical stimulation. It sends signals up to a structure in your brain stem called the nucleus tractus solitarius, which then signals the rest of your brain to release calming neurotransmitters, GABA, serotonin, acetylcholine.
Seconds 50 to 60, your heart rate begins to slow. Your heart rate variability increases. Cortisol, your stress hormone, begins to drop. Brain wave activity shifts. EEG studies show an increase in alpha waves, the brain waves associated with relaxed alertness, the same brain waves seen in experienced meditators. All of this in 60 seconds from humming.
Now, here's something funny, something that frankly made me a little humble when I read it. Everything I just told you, the nitric oxide, the vagus nerve, the brain waves, Western science discovered all of this in the last 20 or 30 years. But, humming has been used as a healing practice for at least 3,000 years.
In ancient India, there's a yogic technique called Brahmari Pranayama, the bee breath. You close your eyes, you cover your ears, and you hum like a bee. Long, sustained hums. Practitioners have claimed for millennia that it calms the mind, sharpens memory, [music] and improves sleep.
In Tibetan Buddhism, monks chant Om, which is essentially a long resonant hum. They claim it produces clarity, focus, deep peace.
In Sufi traditions in the Middle East, there are humming meditations called Zikr that have been practiced for over a thousand years.
In Gregorian chant, the music of European monasteries, >> [music] >> there's a sustained resonant tone very close to humming that monks performed for hours each day. There's a famous story about a French monastery in the 1960s where the monks were ordered by a new abbot to stop their daily chanting. Within months, the monks became exhausted, depressed, and sick. [music] A doctor named Alfred Tomatis was brought in. He reintroduced the chanting, [music] the monks recovered.
How did all these traditions, separated by oceans, by religions, [music] by thousands of years, how did they all arrive at the same conclusion? That making this specific sound with your own body was somehow medicine? Well, that's the thing about nature. The truth is the truth, whether you find it in a laboratory in Stockholm or in a cave in the Himalayas. The vagus nerve doesn't care what century you live in.
Now, I want to tell you about something even stranger, something that surprised even the researchers. In 2016, a study at Northwestern University looked at humming and memory consolidation. They had participants memorize a list of words. The hummers remembered significantly more words. Not a small difference, a measurable, statistically significant difference. Why? The leading theory is this. Humming stimulates the hippocampus, the part of your brain that converts short-term memories into long-term memories. The vibration, combined with increased blood flow, combined with the vagal stimulation, seems to create ideal conditions for memory encoding.
There's another study from 2020 that looked at humming and focus. Participants hummed for just 3 minutes before a difficult cognitive task. They performed measurably better than the control group. Their reaction times were faster. Their error rates were lower. Of course, you think more clearly afterward.
Some of the top performers in the world have figured this out instinctively. Opera singers, public speakers, athletes, many of them hum before they perform. They didn't read the studies, they just knew. Their body told them.
But, I want to be honest with you, because I'm a scientist, and a scientist's job is to tell you the whole truth, not just the comfortable part. There are some things about humming you should know. First, it's not magic. If you have a serious medical condition, depression, [music] anxiety disorder, chronic illness, humming is not a replacement for treatment. It's a tool, a useful tool, but a tool.
Now, I want to tell you about something even stranger, something that surprised even the researchers. In 2016, a study at Northwestern University looked at humming and memory consolidation. They had participants memorize a list of words. Third, most people do it wrong. >> [music] >> They hum too softly. They don't sustain the note. They breathe shallowly. The research shows the benefits come from deep diaphragmatic breathing combined with sustained humming. You inhale slowly through your nose for about 4 seconds, then you hum out for as long as you comfortably can, >> [music] >> 8, 10, 12 seconds, then repeat.
Fourth, and this is the one nobody talks about. There is one group of people who should be careful. If [music] you have a current sinus infection or severe sinusitis, vigorous humming can sometimes worsen the inflammation. In those cases, gentler practice is recommended. But for the vast, vast majority of people, humming is one of the safest, cheapest, most powerful interventions available, and it costs nothing.
So, let me give you something practical. Because I don't want this to be just information. I want you to actually use this. Here is the protocol that emerges from the research. I call it the 5-minute reset.
Step one, sit comfortably, spine straight but not rigid, shoulders relaxed, eyes closed if you like.
Step two, inhale slowly through your nose, 4 seconds. Fill your belly first, then your chest. Don't gasp. Smooth.
Step three, as you exhale, hum. Lips closed, teeth slightly apart. Pick a note that feels comfortable, somewhere in your lower middle range. Sustain it. Let it vibrate through your face, [music] through your skull. You should feel a slight tingling in your lips, your cheeks, your forehead. That tingling is the vibration physically affecting your tissues.
Step four, hum until your breath naturally runs out. Don't force it. Maybe eight seconds, maybe 12, whatever's comfortable.
Step five, pause for two seconds, then repeat. Do this for five minutes, just five minutes, once in the morning, once before bed if you can.
After one week, and I'm telling you this from personal experience and from what the research suggests, after one week, you'll start to notice it. After one week, and I'm telling you this from personal experience and from what the research suggests, after one week, you'll start to notice it. Your sleep will be deeper. You'll feel slightly calmer. Your mind will feel clearer. After one month, the people around you will start to notice.
Now, I want to step back because there's a bigger lesson here. A lesson that goes beyond humming. We live in a strange time. We're surrounded by problems, stress, anxiety, sleeplessness, lack of focus, and we've been taught to solve them with things we buy. Just your own body. Just a sound you can already make. >> [music] >> A sound you knew how to make before you could even speak.
This is the part that gets me. This is the part that makes me love science. Because science at its best isn't about creating new things. >> [music] >> Sometimes it's about uncovering things that were already there. Things our ancestors knew. >> [music] >> Things our bodies knew. Things we forgot.
The Swedish researcher, Eddie Weitzberg, [music] when he was asked about his discovery, he said something I've never forgotten. He said, "Sometimes the most important medicines are the ones you make yourself." Sometimes the most important medicines are the ones you make yourself.
You have, sitting inside your throat, a pharmacy. A pharmacy that produces nitric oxide that stimulates your vagus nerve, that floods your brain with calming neurotransmitters, that boosts your memory, that fights infection, that lowers your blood pressure, that improves your sleep. And the prescription is 60 seconds of humming.
So, where does that leave us? I think it leaves us with a choice. You can close this video and forget everything I said. That's fine. Most people will. Or, and I hope you'll do this, you can try it. So, where does that leave us? I think it leaves us with a choice. You can close this video and forget everything I said. That's fine. Most people will. Or, and I hope you'll do this, you can try it.
Because here's the thing, you can listen to me talk about nitric and vagus nerves and brain waves all day, but until you feel it, until your own body shows you, the words are just words. Nature, my friend, doesn't argue. It demonstrates. So, go on. 60 seconds. Hmm. And then, when you feel it, when you feel that strange, quiet calm spread through your chest, that slight tingle in your face, that little shift in your mind, come back. Watch this video again. And this time, you'll understand it. Not with your head, with your body. Because that, in the end, is what science is. It's not memorizing facts. It's not believing experts. It's experiencing truth for yourself. And the most beautiful experiment you'll ever run is the one happening inside you right now.
Thank you for staying with me. Hum well, live well, and I'll see you in the next one.