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relaxation music
More and more hospitals and clinics are using relaxation music and other kinds of music to complement medical and clinical treatment and it is also becoming a fast growing area of cutting edge research. Pioneering work in the use of music for pain relief in hospitals in Germany and the US has managed to reduce the dosage of pain killers by up to 50% for many patients. In India doctors and musicians are working together to produce music specifically designed to treat different illnesses and conditions, and research in US has opened up the therapeutic use of music in the treatment of degenerative and motor impaired patients.

pain management
Patients undergoing traditional auyravedic treatments in the ashram hospital in Mysore, India, have for some time been treated with relaxation music but it is now being used in other departments specialising in pain management, recovery and relaxation. Patients are played specifically composed relaxation music and the brain waves are monitored with the aim of increasing the level of low frequency or alpha brain waves. They have found that the relaxing music enables the brain to function in a more relaxed way, lowering the pulse and heart rate and raising the level of oxygen in the blood resulting in patients needing lower doses of pain killer with average recovery times three days faster than usual.

Remarkable clinical research in Germany with over 10000 patients over 20 years has resulted in relaxation music reducing the need for pre medication for pre-surgery by up to 50% and in many patients has reduced the dosage of analgesics and sedatives by 100%!

These extraordinary trails have involved cross-disciplinary collaborations between musicians and doctors who use specific compositions for specific conditions such as muscle tension, head aches and back pain. One of the advantages that relaxation music has over drug treatment is that it has the power to deal with all different facets of a particular condition. Migraine for example is usually caused by a combination of high muscle tension, neuralgia and circulatory problems and whereas drugs tend to treat each cause separately, music can be very effective on all levels.

Therapeutic use of relaxation music has also been shown to significantly affect the production of endorphins and other hormones which aid natural pain relief and speedy recovery.

rehabilitation
Research being carried out at the Beth Abraham hospital in New York with degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia and the rehabilitation of stroke patients has shown that alpha brain waves in the low frequency range of around 40 cycles is very often totally absent in sufferers of these conditions. Relaxation music rich in these frequencies played as background can have a profound effect on memory, speech and motor skills.

Playing the drums is also very beneficial for movement and motor skills - feeling the rhythm and the fact that a patient is working creatively seem to be able to bypass blockages and enable more muscle control than in non musical exercises. Working with rhythm helps to organise movement without having to think about the actual action - in many cases of serious brain injury the ‘executive function’ the actual act of thinking about movement or speech is damaged but music and especially rhythm can trick the brain into working spontaneously.

It used to be thought that music was processed in only one area of the brain, but it is now known that different elements of music such as rhythm and melody are centered around different regions of the brain. Its is common that patients who have problems with speech can sing without difficulty, and that the lyrics of a song will stay even when the memory is severely impaired.

The brain relies on a huge interconnected network to arrive at any single response, and if one part is not functioning other networks can be ‘patched in’ to compensate and bypass damaged networks by repeatedly triggering the new areas. Music seems to be an effective way to stimulate this process and has helped hundreds of patients to improve speech, memory and movement.

Research Links:

Music Thought To Enhance Intelligence, Mental Health And Immune System
24 Jun 2006
A recent volume of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences takes a closer look at how music evolved and how we respond to it. Contributors to the volume believe that animals such as birds, dolphins and whales make sounds analogous to music out of a desire to imitate each other. This ability to learn and imitate sounds is a trait necessary to acquire language and scientists feel that many of the sounds animals make may be precursors to human music.
more..

Mozart Music Improves Peripheral Vision Of Glaucoma Patients
05 Jun 2006
A Brazilian study has found that Mozart music improved patients' performance in a sight test aimed at checking peripheral vision of people with glaucoma. You can read about this study in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.
more..

Listening To Music Can Reduce Chronic Pain And Depression By Up To A Quarter
25 May 2006
Listening to music can reduce chronic pain by up to 21 per cent and depression by up to 25 per cent, according to a paper in the latest UK-based Journal of Advanced Nursing. It can also make people feel more in control of their pain and less disabled by their condition.
more..

How Exactly Does Music Elicit And Express Emotion?
15 May 2006
Philosophers have been fascinated by the question since Pythagoras. At the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Elaine Chew, assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering, now teaches a graduate course on using computational and other engineering tools to look for answers.
more..

How does music training affect the brain
21 Nov 2005
New research shows that the special training of music conductors seems to enhance the way their senses work together - enabling them to quickly tell who played a wrong note, for example. Scientists hope the research will lead to new discoveries about how music training may change the brain.
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Musical tempo, not style, is the greatest stress buster
29 Sep 2005
Musical training might be good for the heart, suggests a small study, which shows that it is musical tempo, rather than style, that is the greatest stress buster. The findings, published ahead of print in Heart, are based on various aspects of breathing and circulation, in 24 young men and women, taken before and while they listened to short excerpts of music.
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Musicians' Brains Differ from Those of Non-musicians
20 Jun 2005
Music can change your life, and it also can change your brain. Musicians spend long hours practicing with their instruments, and this practice gives them skills that the rest of us lack. For example, violinists develop special hand motor skills by intensive practice, that could lead to differences in both their hand movements and their brains.
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Patients' favorite music during surgery lessens need for sedative
26 May 2005
Patients listening to their favorite music required much less sedation during surgery than did patients who listened to white noise or operating room noise, according to a Yale School of Medicine study published in May.
more...

Mixing Music and Messaging to Improve Asthma Treatment
08 May 2005
Researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and The John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County are embarking on an intriguing study to measure the impact of mixing music and celebrity messaging to improve asthma outcomes among low income, urban adolescents.
more..

Music therapy can help people with schizophrenia
20 Apr 2005
When added to standard care, music therapy helps people with schizophrenia improve their global state, mental state and social functioning.
more..

Music Thought To Enhance Intelligence, Mental Health And Immune System
24 Jun 2006
A recent volume of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences takes a closer look at how music evolved and how we respond to it. Contributors to the volume believe that animals such as birds, dolphins and whales make sounds analogous to music out of a desire to imitate each other. This ability to learn and imitate sounds is a trait necessary to acquire language and scientists feel that many of the sounds animals make may be precursors to human music.
more..

Mozart Music Improves Peripheral Vision Of Glaucoma Patients
05 Jun 2006
A Brazilian study has found that Mozart music improved patients' performance in a sight test aimed at checking peripheral vision of people with glaucoma.
more..

Listening To Music Can Reduce Chronic Pain And Depression By Up To A Quarter
25 May 2006
Listening to music can reduce chronic pain by up to 21 per cent and depression by up to 25 per cent, according to a paper in the latest UK-based Journal of Advanced Nursing. It can also make people feel more in control of their pain and less disabled by their condition.
more..

Music helps the elderly sleep better
07 Apr 2005
Study says sleep improves by more than a third.
more..

New Research Provides the First Solid Evidence that the Study of Music Promotes Intellectual Development
20 Aug 2004
The idea that studying music improves the intellect is not a new one, but at last there is incontrovertible evidence from a study conducted out of the University of Toronto.
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Music plus exercise is good for your brain
26 Mar 2004
Apparently, music is good for your brain, it is supposed to make you smarter. Exercise is supposed to help brain function. So, logically, thought some researchers, music plus exercise must be good for your brain. And so it seems to be.
more.

Study finds music can ease labour pain
13 Sep 2003
Many women approach childbirth fearful of the pain they may experience, but are also unwilling or unable to take medication to ease the pain. However, a new study provides hope for those seeking to lessen delivery pain without medications: through the use of music.
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Music therapy strikes a chord with cancer patients
30 Jul 2003
Bone marrow transplant patients report less nausea and pain, and a faster recovery. Music therapy for patients who have undergone a bone-marrow transplant reduces their reports of pain and nausea and may even play a role in quickening the pace at which their new marrow starts producing blood cells, according to a pilot study to be published later this year in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine.
more..

Research Links Music and Listeners’ Emotions
02 Nov 2003
If you really want to get out of a foul mood, try listening to a little music. A new study out of Penn State (USA) finds that music really can soothe the savage beast, up to a point, and it really doesn't matter what kind of music you listen to. As long as you like it.
more..

music eases perception of chronic pain
A study published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing found that music can significantly ease a patient's perception of chronic pain. Researchers from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation examined the effect of music on 60 patients who had been experiencing chronic pain for an average of six-and-a-half years.
more..

More Research Links

www.musik-als-medizin.de/

www.bethabe.com/index1.html

www.unt.edu/tcmm/index.htm

www.symbiosis-music.com/research.html