Music Is An Effective Painkiller And Immune Stimulant

You probably enjoy listening to music in your daily life, and you might even be aware that it can help relieve the effects of stress or improve your mood. Can music really play a role in healing and fighting infections, though, or in alleviating serious pain? You would be surprised.

More and more doctors are using music to help their patients control pain without medications. And more and more scientific studies are backing them up.

A study at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Göteborg, a major medical center in Sweden, found that children aged 7 to 16 who were allowed to listen to music after they had surgery needed less morphine and reported lower levels of anxiety.

A study at the RSC School of Nursing in Gwalior in India found that toddlers who had the opportunity to listen to music experience less pain and distress when given immunizations.

Researchers at the Weill Cornell School of Medicine in New York cite a study of women who have rheumatoid arthritis who listen to their favorite music 20 minutes a day, finding that it reduces pain. And multiple studies have documented the benefits of listening to music while undergoing procedures in the dentist's chair.

Dr. Daniel Levitin of the Psychology Department at McGill University in Canada makes some general conclusions about the reasons behind this phenomenon:

• Both words and music can relieve pain, but the brain picks up rhythms in music that it does not as readily recognize in speech. This doesn't mean that a nurse singing off key will necessarily make a patient feel better, but it's the rhythm, rather than the melody, that has the greatest anti-pain effect in the brain. As a result, even deaf people respond to music; they can perceive the vibrations.
• Music has especially strong effects in two parts of the brain known as the nucleus accumbens and the hypothalamus. Listening to music leads to changes in the hypothalamus, responsible for processing emotions, that in turn change how the hypothalamus sends signals to the pituitary and adrenal glands for the manufacture of stress hormones.
• The brain continues to respond to music even when a piece is complete. There are at least a few seconds in which the right brain continues to be more and more activated by music even after the playing or performance is over.
• Music helps people understand social relationships better, as well. A study in which Dr. Levitin collaborated found that highly functional teens with autistic spectrum disorder were better able to attribute social relationships to characters in a television program when there was music in the soundtrack. Understanding social relationships may relieve emotional pain caused by difficulties in social interaction. And perhaps most interestingly of all,
• The power of music to relieve pain depends on a mixture of familiarity and surprise. The most soothing music is surprising, but not too surprising.

Also surprising are Dr. Levitin and colleagues' findings on the effects of music on the immune system.

Music Boosts Immune Response

In analyzing over 400 of the 700-plus studies of the healing effects of music found in the medical literature, Levitin and colleagues found convincing evidence of two effects of music on the immune system:

• People who listen to music have higher bloodstream levels of a substance known as Immunoglobulln A, or IgA, which fights infections at the "borders" of the body, the skin, the digestive tract, and the linings of the nose and throat.
• People who listen to music frequently produce higher numbers of natural killer (NK) cells, which fight bacteria, remove infected cells, and fight cancer.

Music Also Stimulates the Healing Process

Healing, of course, isn't all about the immune system. The immune system is great for fighting pathogens and for clearing out dead or injured tissue so healthy tissue can take its place, but there is a point in most diseases when the regenerative process has to take over. A series of scientific studies and a growing body of physicians experiences tell us that listening to music is helpful in the healing process, too.

Harvard-trained surgeon Claudius Conrad, who also holds doctoral degrees in stem cell biology and the philosophy of music, says that the benefits of music in supporting the healing of injured tissues are due to changes in the secretion of a growth hormone.

Mozart, more than other composers, wrote his music in phrases that build on each other. A phrase of just two, three, or four measures introduces the piece, and then it is repeated but embellished. The melody is repeated, but it is accompanied by changes in chords and arpeggios that the listener may not notice, but which alternately stimulate and surprise the brain.

The net result on the brain is that the listener feels good, and part of the reason the listener feels good is that healing growth hormone stimulates the repair of tissues. In connection with relief of pain, stimulation of the immune system, and faster tissue repair, listening to music, especially listening to Mozart, helps the body come back faster after illness and injury and supports the body's response to medicine and medical treatment.