From: Bill Habets,

9 Pitreavie Drive

Hailsham,

East Sussex BN27 3XG.

Phone: {01323} 728760

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Music’s magical healing powers

Got a headache? Or experiencing some other pain?

Or perhaps you're unduly stressed?

According to the latest medical discoveries, playing or listening to music can at times be just as helpful as anything you might find in your medicine cabinet.

Truly, music can help make you a whole lot better!

By Bill Habets

When your nearest and dearest reproaches you - as better halves are wont to do now and then in even the best-ordered of households - of spending too much time at 'that keyboard', you now have a perfect answer: 'Well, my dear, I'm only doing this for the good of my health.'

And you can make that retort safe in the knowledge that there are hundreds of scientific studies to back up your claim..

While we’re all aware that music can have a profound emotional effect upon us, scientists have also been busy discovering that it can be of immense help with a wide variety of everyday aches and pains as well as with many more serious medical conditions.

Although most recent studies into the links between music and health have been primarily concerned with the medical effects of listening to music, much of what the researchers have found also has a direct bearing upon how playing music can be just as beneficial - because, of course, when you're playing, you're also listening.

Indicating just how powerful an aid to better health music can be, the studies have shown that the right kind of music can help people cope more successfully with all kinds of pain, recover faster from operations, and can even help them live longer.

What's more, it is the belief of many researchers that medical science has only barely begun to explore some of the many forms of therapeutic aid that music can offer. These are just some of their very latest findings:

PROMOTING NATURAL PAIN CONTROL

Several American studies have confirmed that soothing music can both lower blood pressure and the pulse rate as well as set off the release of beta-endorphins, the body’s own natural painkillers produced in the brain. One such study was conducted by Dr Raymond Bahr, of St Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, who commented: 'Music in our coronary unit has been proven to help the patients by promoting rest, reducing elevated blood pressure as well as relieving pain by increasing tolerance to it.'

Further evidence of music’s ability to combat pain comes from a report in the Canadian Medical Association's Journal, which reported that when drugs were unable to control a cancer patient’s pain, music 'caused her to relax and her respiration to deepen until she fell into a peaceful sleep.'

Music can also help you get better faster. 'Listening to music can have a powerful impact upon how quickly patients recover from surgery,' said Dr James McCarron, chief of surgery at Jefferson General Hospital, Port Townsend, Washington, where it was found that patients who were allowed to listen to music of their choice were ready for discharge considerably sooner than a control group who did not listen to music.

How you can use music to help you

If you’d like to try your own music therapy either for inducing relaxation or to control pain, here are some tips compiled from the combined wisdom of the experts to guide you:

• Whether you'll be playing the music yourself or merely listening to it, choose compositions with a relatively slow tempo, this being ideally somewhat below 72 beat per minute, which is the normal heart rate. Researchers have discovered that listening to music with a beat slower than your heart’s will eventually make your heart slow down to match the music's rhythm, this reducing wear and tear on this vital muscle as well as gradually conditioning it to beat more slowly at other times.
• For most people, quiet instrumental music will work best. Ideal for easing both body and mind is music that has no great or sudden variations in volume, and which has a relatively simple, but clearly discernible and tuneful, melody. Many music therapists specifically recommend baroque compositions - such as those by Bach or Vivaldi - as being most effective.
• Music performed mainly on string instruments - or using sounds imitating these, such as violins, violas, cellos, harps and dulcimers - is usually more effective in inducing feelings of relaxation and well-being than that played on brass or other wind instruments. Experts believe that one of the reasons for this may be that the overtone content of notes played on strings is very high and that any notes note being sounded are therefore automatically set within their own 'personal' chordal context, the listener therefore perceiving these notes as 'settled' and harmonious even when they are not part of the current underlying harmonic context. Although acoustic pianos create their sounds by hammers striking strings and are very rich in overtones (as are top quality electronic or sampled pianos), they don’t seem to nearly as good at creating a musical setting that’s therapeutically restful as the sounds made by instruments whose strings are bowed, stroked or plucked.
• As a generality, researchers have also found that music written in a major key - particularly C, F, and G major - is usually the most restful to play or listen to. It also helps if the chord sequence - that’s the underlying harmony - is fairly limited, perhaps restricted most of the time to chords based on the fundamental, the dominant and the sub-dominant. For example, if the song were in C major, then it’s best if most of the other chords were based on G and F, these, however, also including G7 and F6.
• As you might expect, music in which most of the melody notes, especially the longer ones, are 'chordal', that is they’re the same as one of those of the current underlying chord is more soothing than compositions in which there are lots of non-chordal notes, these, by definition, jarring the ear and brain to some extent.
• To create the maximum benefit, the notes of the composition should fall mainly within the middle four octaves, those that are placed equally on either side of middle C on a piano. Notes of a higher pitch than that tend to be too shrill; lower ones, being most commonly 'perceived' rather than heard as a specific pitch, can become very distracting - either way their overall effect is not conducive to promoting tranquility and relaxation.

Sing out to live longer

Want to even further improve your health as you play your instrument? Well, then just sing along as you pound the keys because the more you sing, the longer you’ll live - that’s the astounding but totally proven conclusion reached by a research project at the National Institute on Ageing in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Explains Dr Kathleen McCormick, who headed the study: 'Singing conditions the respiratory muscles and tones up the chest wall very efficiently in a manner similar to swimming, rowing or yoga'

In her study, Dr McCormick compared the heart and lung functions of 20 professional opera singers - aged between 20 and 65 years - with those of non-singers who were all under the age of 40. 'Although some of the singers were smokers and never did any exercises, they all had stronger lungs', she reported. 'They also had lower heart rates, stronger chest wall muscles, and their hearts pumped blood more efficiently. Regardless of their age, they performed like conditioned athletes as far as their breathing and heart were concerned. So my advice is: sing in the shower, sing in the rain, sing anywhere you want to, because that way you’ll sing yourself to healthier lungs as you grow older.'

The other side of the coin

While music can have powerful positive effects, be warned that it also has a darker side and, in extreme circumstances, even become injurious to health.

For example, listening to or playing music that’s too loud can lead to permanent hearing loss as repeated and/or prolonged exposure to very loud sounds can damage the organ of Corti, an intricate and delicate structure within the inner hear where sound vibrations received by the ears are interpreted into impulses the brain can understand. Tinnitus - an unfortunately altogether too common condition in which the sufferer 'hears' non-existent sounds - is most frequently also the direct result of previous exposure to loud noises.

Equally, music in the wrong context can all too easily become irritating to the extent where it can cause you actual harm. One research project found that 'electronic Muzak' - the kind of music that's often piped down the telephone when you’re waiting for your call to be transferred or imposed upon you in elevators or shopping centers - can in fact lead to a substantial rise in the listener’s blood pressure. Hypertension is, of course, one of the main underlying causes of strokes and heart attacks.

Finally, as an extreme example of how music can have a truly adverse effect, consider the case of Gloomy Sunday, a depressing dirge written in 1935 by a heartbroken Hungarian poet. This melancholy tune has been associated with countless tragic deaths all over the world, most usually having been listened to by its victims just prior to their suicide, its glum lyrics often quoted in their last note.

- ends -

(about 1,500 words)

Comments (2)

Informative article
written by admin , November 05, 2008

Bill !!

Good job, this was a very pleasant read.

music's magical healing powers
written by elaine , November 08, 2008

Yes, indeed a very informative article and really no surprises.
Some historians are of the opinion that the strings, flutes, were
invented before any more sophisticated agricultural implements.
Thanks for posting............. elaine , motekmusic

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