THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF MUSIC.
THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF MUSIC
David Binanay started
playing the violin when he was five. By age twelve, he performed at the
world-famous Carnegie Hall in New York City and, soon after, at the White
House.
In 2006, fresh off
graduation from Villanova University, Binanay was positioned perfectly to build
his life around music. He had just moved into his own place and started a job
at a high-end violin shop.
That's when he noticed the
bleeding.
Music and The
Mind
It was a gastrointestinal
bleed. Binanay had experienced one before and he called his mom to let her know
what was happening. She wanted to help, but David stopped her.
“Don't worry about it. I'm
going to handle it myself,” he said.
This was the first time
Binanay tried to handle a serious health issue on his own. When he arrived at
the hospital, things began to spiral out of control. His hands started shaking
and his mind began to separate from reality. “It was my first psychotic
episode,” David recalls.
The situation went downhill
fast. After resolving the bleeding issue and leaving the hospital, Binanay's
psychosis continued. He started having delusions and became fearful of
everything. “I couldn't even walk into a grocery store because of the fear,” he
says. “I didn't really know what I was afraid of, but I feared for my life. In
the span of one week I went from being normal to having a complete psychotic
breakdown.”
This was the peak of
David's psychosis, but his battle was just beginning. He would struggle with
schizophrenia for the next five years. His medications worked, but David had
trouble sticking to them. There was one thing, however, that always seemed to
help.
“My dad would look at me
and say, ‘Dave, go get your violin.'”
The Healing
Power of Music
Music stopped the pain.
“Every time I played, I noticed a change,” David said. “I would channel my
emotions through my music. The fear would turn to music. It would turn to
sound.”
A new medication schedule
helped too. David found it much easier to stick to his medication when he
switched from pills to injections, which he only needed once per month.
Today, after a five-year
battle, Binanay has made a full recovery. He plays his violin up to 10 hours
per day and runs a non-profit, Music Over Mind, that performs free music shows at
hospitals for people suffering from mental illness. “Music has been my catalyst
for recovery,” Binanay says. “It has been a 180-degree turnaround. From complete
loss to total re-birth. I recently got married. I have my own place with my
wife. I feel like I'm a better person than before my illness.”
David Binanay's story
raises an interesting series of questions. What is music therapy? Can music
help heal us? What role does music play in our health and happiness? Can music
be a form of medicine?
Let me share what I've
learned about the health benefits of music.
The Stroke
Victim Who Was Healed by Music Therapy
In her book The Power of Music,
author Elena Mannes shares the story of a stroke patient who has lost the
ability to speak. After struggling to re-learn normal speech patterns, the
patient makes a breakthrough by singing her words rather than saying them. This
approach is known as melodic intonation therapy and it engages the right side
of the brain more than normal speech. As a result, this different section of
the brain can stand in as a replacement for the normal language area and be
used to communicate through song.
At first glance, this story
may seem like a very specific way to combine music and health, but it actually
provides a good indication of the state of music therapy. There are many
stories about music being used to help Parkinson's patients move, autistic
children focus and learn, or multiple sclerosis patients reduce spasms. These
stories, however, have no research studies supporting them. My guess is that
these are individualized results which, although true, are difficult to
extrapolate to the entire population.
That said, there are a
handful of health benefits of music that are well-accepted and scientifically
proven.
The Research:
Music as Medicine
First, music can be used to
relieve pain in patients. For example, surgery patients at the Cleveland Clinic that
listened to recorded music saw a 4x decrease in post-surgical pain. Music has
also been shown to reduce the amount of anesthesia needed during
operations.
Second, music can be used
to relieve stress and anxiety. Calming music decreases blood pressure, steadies
the heart rate, and eases stress. Research has shown that music can reduce
stress for patients undergoing surgeries and colonoscopies, for children
undergoing medical procedures, and for patients with coronary heart
disease.
There is also preliminary
evidence showing that listening to music can boost immune system function by decreasing stress
hormones and increasing growth hormones. These changes should prime the body to
be in a better state for recovering from and resisting illnesses, but the
research is weak thus far and needs further investigation.
Finally, there are a range
of studies that link music to happiness and pleasure in different ways. Despite the
differences in the individual studies, the scientific consensus on the topic is
that music does stimulate the same areas of the brain that trigger pleasure in
other activities. A range of studies have found that listening to pleasurable
music stimulates the mesocorticolimbic system in the brain, which is the same
“pleasure center” that is triggered by humor, tasty food, and even cocaine. In
this way, you could say that music is like a drug. If music makes you happy,
then it might be possible that it is good for your health.
These benefits sound great,
but is music unique in providing these benefits? Not really.
Given the current state of
the research, it is not known if music is any better at healing than other
alternatives. Music is not the only way to relieve pain or reduce stress. Music
might work well for Person A while meditation is better for Person B and deep
breathing or exercise help Person C. If nothing else, however, music is another
tool at your disposal when you want to relieve pain, reduce stress, and promote
healing.
The Limitations
of Music Therapy
You can summarize the
current state of research on the connection between music and health by saying
that we know music impacts our brains and bodies, but we don't quite understand
exactly why or how music does this. And because we don't understand the
details, it can be hard to use music for healing.
To be honest, part of these
issues could be solved if researchers performed better studies. Right now,
researchers aren't doing themselves any favors because musical research rarely
follows a typical format.
Here are a few common
errors (and solutions).
1. Current research doesn't
clearly differentiate if it is the act of playing music or the act of listening
to music that benefits patients. For example, if a patient gets better after
playing songs on a keyboard, chanting in different tones, or singing their
favorite song, are they benefiting from the musical notes or from the act of
playing music? Future studies should investigate if active performance or
passive listening yields better results.
2. Current research poorly
categorizes the impact of different music styles. Most researchers lump music
therapy into broad “stimulating” or “relaxing” categories. Future research
should include more clearly defined boundaries, so we can understand which
types of music can be used to heal in specific situations.
3. Current research flip-flops
on who controls the music. Sometimes the experimenter chooses the music.
Sometimes the patient chooses their own music. This can complicate things
because sometimes you are more likely to see music as having a positive impact
simply if you selected the music. Future research should be more clear about
this selection process.
4. Current research varies
between individual listening, individual playing, and group playing. In many
cases, patients may benefit from simply doing an activity with a group and not
the music itself. Future research should investigate these environmental
factors to help clarify the impact of individual vs. group music therapy.
5. Current research, at least
what I found, was universally missing a large, randomized trial. This type of
study is the gold-standard of research and if music therapy interventions are
to be taken seriously, then a high quality randomized study is needed.
The Health
Benefits of Music
Whether it is a pick-me-up
song that brightens your mood or a live-saving violin practice like that of
David Binanay, we have all felt the healing power of music.
From a research standpoint,
the health benefits of music are unproven. However, I have always said that I
try to balance being a scientist with being a practitioner and, from a
practical standpoint, there are very few reasons to avoid music as a way to
improve your health and happiness. Music therapy is noninvasive, inexpensive,
and convenient. And music is one of the lifestyle choices we can make that
relieves stress and anxiety, decreases pain, and protects against disease.
Stefan Koelsch, a senior research fellow in neurocognition at the University of Sussex in Brighton, summarizes the healing effects of music by saying, “I can't say music is a pill to abolish diseases. But … So many pills have horrible side effects, both physiological and psychological. Music has no side effects, or no harmful ones.”
MY REFERENCES
1. The Power of Music by Elena Mannes. pg.
179
2. The Power of Music by Elena Mannes. pg.
168
3. The Power of Music by Elena Mannes. pg.
172
4. Cepeda, M.S. et al.
(2006) Music
for pain relief.
5. Nilsson, U.
(2008) The anxiety and pain-reducing effects of music
interventions: a systematic review.
6. Dileo, C. and Bradt,
J. (2007) Music therapy: applications to stress management. In Principles and
Practice of Stress Management (Lehrer, P.M. et al., eds), pp. 519–544, Guilford
Press
7. Bradt, J. and Dileo,
C. (2009) Music for stress and anxiety reduction in coronary heart
disease patients.
8. Gangrade, A. (2012) The effect of music on the production of
neurotransmitters, hormones, cytokines, and peptides: a review.
9. Breiter, H.C. et al.
(1997) Acute effects of cocaine on human brain activity and
emotion.
10. Small, D.M. et al.
(2001) Changes in brain activity related to eating chocolate:
From pleasure to aversion.
11. Mobbs, D. et al.
(2003) Humor modulates the mesolimbic reward centers.
12. Blood, A.J.and
Zatorre, R.J.(2001) Intensely pleasurable responses to music correlate with
activity in brain regions implicated in reward and emotion.
13. Many of these research
limitations are covered in the guide, The
Neurochemistry of Music by Chanda and Levitin.
14. The Power of Music. pg. 193-194
15. There is one side
effect of music: opportunity cost. Listening to music that makes you happy is a
great way to spend your time, but only if you're not ignoring other things that
make you happy or could improve your health and lifestyle. For example, if you
listened to music that made you happy all day, but never worked out, then how
big of a health benefit are you really getting? The same could be said for
happiness. If you simply consumed music that you enjoyed all day long would you
end up living a better life than if you had spent that time building a business
you loved or mastering a skill that advanced your career? As with all uses of
our time, there are tradeoffs to listening to music and it's important to
balance it with other areas of life that provide a payoff.
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