Practical Wellness
Most people consider getting a root canal pretty stressful, but imagine having to undergo brain surgery while you’re still awake.
For brain surgery patients in one study, though, it was no big deal. In fact, many were so relaxed that they fell asleep in the middle of surgery. Some even began snoring. And if the surgeons needed to wake the patient to ask them to move a limb, they just popped off the patients’ headphones and gave them instructions. The patients, as it turns out, were listening to soothing music that slowed their neural activity to the point of dozing off.
The surgeons predicted that the patients’ lack of anxiety would result in less post-op pain, less medication, and shorter hospital stays. Such results have already been confirmed in patients undergoing abdominal surgery, heart surgery, and dental procedures. And no wonder — when people listen to relaxing music, they have lower heart rates and blood pressure, and produce lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
This isn’t exactly new information. Ever since World War II, when musicians were brought into hospitals to ease the suffering of wounded soldiers, researchers have been discovering more and more ways that music can heal the human body. Now, they’re beginning to understand why.
Ancient roots
It’s no mystery that cultures throughout the world have traditionally used music in celebrations, religious rites, funerals and prayers — our ability to experience music is deeply imbedded in our nervous systems. Our love of rhythm can partly be explained by our body’s tendency to ‘entrain,’ or get in synch, with a beat. Rhythms cause our brainwaves to resonate in time with the beat; slow beats encourage slow brainwaves (think meditation or hypnosis), while fast beats encourage alertness and concentrated thinking. And as brainwaves change, so do heart rate and respirations, which slow down or speed up with the tempo of the music.
The healing power of music
Though music is processed mostly on the right side of the brain, there is no specific ‘music area’ of the brain. Neural pathways for music are widespread and complex, which is why stroke patients who have suffered damage to the left side of the brain (the speech center) are sometimes able to still sing lyrics to songs. Therapists can work with these patients to first sing the lyrics, then speak them, then substitute other words for the lyrics. This technique allows the patient to reestablish speech in the undamaged right hemisphere of their brain.
Stroke patients have also benefitted from simply listening to music a few hours a day. And if they play an instrument, like piano or drums, their rehabilitation is even faster.
Listening to music can help Parkinson’s patients, too, by improving gait and stride, and helping smooth the jerky motions that are so characteristic of the disease. Patients who joined drumming groups reported less shaking and more control of their movements. Some found that playing instruments in group sessions provided greater relief than traditional physical therapy.
Drumming has even been shown to boost immunity by increasing natural killer cell activity.
At the University of Texas, researchers found that when elementary and middle school students with ADD were treated with rhythmic light and sound stimulation, their concentration and performance on IQ tests improved, and they had a noticeable drop in behavioral problems. Similar rhythmic light and sound therapy has helped boost cognitive function in elderly patients by increasing blood flow throughout the brain.
Music can even help people with Alzheimer’s improve communication, recall, attentiveness, sociability, and overall functioning. Researchers suspect this is because music stimulates areas deep in the amygdala and hippocampus, where long-term memory and emotion are stored.
The American Music Therapy Association stresses that people don’t need a musical ability to benefit from music therapy. Active music-making, as well as passive listening, can benefit people of all ages and abilities.
Is classical better than rap?
Does it matter what kind of music you listen to? In one study, classical music lowered blood pressure and heart rate more than either jazz (Miles Davis) or ‘relaxing’ Top 40 artists, such as Sarah McLachlan. This response to classical music may, in part, be hardwired, because even rats that listened to Mozart experienced a drop in blood pressure.
But as we all know, music is subjective, and what relaxes one person may not relax another. In one interesting study, college majors in music and biology were asked to listen to two different pieces of music — one peaceful and one lively. The biology students reacted as predicted, becoming energized by the lively music and relaxed by the peaceful music. The music students, however, were energized by both kinds of music. Because of their training, these students became mentally engaged in the music, analyzing the pieces and even ‘playing along’ in their heads.
Other studies show that when people choose their own music, the effect is relaxing, even if the music would not be considered ‘peaceful’ by everyone. (Any parent can tell you that the music that relaxes their kid might very well send their own blood pressure into the red zone.)
Get pumped
Music, of course, isn’t just for relaxing. After all, who wants to fall asleep at a concert? One way to harness the energizing power of music is during exercise; researchers found that listening to tunes helped people extend their workouts by as much as 24 percent. What’s more, people who exercised to music scored higher on tests of verbal fluency than those who exercised without music. Though fast music has the potential to increase heart rate and respirations, one study found that experienced runners maintained a steady heart rate regardless of the music they listened to, possibly because of their level of conditioning.
