Music could help ease pain from surgery or illness – Scientists

Hospitals and doctors’ offices are inviting singers and musicians to help patients manage their pain, as music’s ability to reduce pain is gaining attention.

In the recovery unit of UC San Diego Health, Nurse Rod Salaysay helps patients manage pain after surgery. Along with medications, he offers tunes on request and sometimes sings. His repertoire ranges from folk songs in English and Spanish to Minuet in G Major and movie favourites like “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.

Patients often smile or nod along. Salaysay even records changes in their vital signs, like lower heart rate and blood pressure, and some may request fewer painkillers.

According to Salaysay, “There’s often a cycle of worry, pain, and anxiety in a hospital, but you can help break that cycle with music.”

Salaysay is a one-man band, but he’s not alone. Over the past two decades, live performances and recorded music have flowed into hospitals and doctors’ offices as research grows on how songs can help ease pain.

The healing power of song may sound intuitive, given music’s deep roots in human culture. But the science of whether and how music dulls acute and chronic pain — technically called music-induced analgesia — is just catching up.

No one suggests that a catchy song can fully eliminate serious pain. But recent studies, including those in the journals Pain and Scientific Reports, have suggested that listening to music can either reduce the perception of pain or enhance a person’s ability to tolerate it.

Adam Hanley, a psychologist at Florida State University, explained that “Pain is a really complex experience. It’s created by a physical sensation and by our thoughts about that sensation and emotional reaction to it.”

Two people with the same condition or injury may feel vastly different levels of acute or chronic pain. Or the same person might experience pain differently from one day to the next.

Researchers know music can draw attention away from pain, lessening the sensation. Also, studies suggest that listening to preferred music helps dull pain more than listening to podcasts.

Kate Richards Geller, a registered music therapist in Los Angeles, declared, “We know that almost all of the brain becomes active when we engage in music. That changes the perception and experience of pain—and the isolation and anxiety of pain.”

Researchers at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands conducted a study on 548 participants to see how listening to five genres of music—classical, rock, pop, urban and electronic—extended their ability to withstand acute pain, as measured by exposure to very cold temperatures.

All music helped, but there was no single winning genre.

Dr Emy van der Valk Bouman, the study’s co-author, declared, “The more people listened to a favourite genre, the more they could endure pain. A lot of people thought that classical music would help them more. Actually, we are finding more evidence that what’s best is just the music you like.”

The exact reasons are still unclear, but it may be because familiar songs activate more memories and emotions, she said.

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