Music and Health
The use of music listening as a self-care modality can offer a wide variety of benefits for health. It is our belief that the use of music as an inexpensive non-pharmacological form of therapy for healing and pain relief has been underutilized by practitioners and patients. While there are many anecdotal accounts on the benefits of music, this page is dedicated to providing citations for recently published literature that reports or reviews evidence or techniques for the effectiveness of music listening in health and wellness.
For the benefit of the average person, the casual listener, our primary focus will be on listening and not on specialized programs of music therapy. Certainly, music therapists can add an important dimension to complementary therapy, but music can also provide benefits for a very broad audience of individuals who use music listening as a personal therapeutic tool. Studies support the benefits of music listening to relieve pain, reduce anxiety and tension, enhance relaxation, improve metabolism, reduce respiratory rates, and improve blood pressure and heart rates.
In the future, we will provide a tip sheet for listening to help readers get the most out of the experience. Initially, it is important to know that music listening is a unique experience for each individual. The benefits of music are experienced best by the selection of music that is enjoyed by each listener and is appropriate for the type of outcome desired. Music that may provide stress relief for one person will differ for another, and melodies that can help provide pain relief may be different from those that aid in tension reduction. There is no single type of music that provides benefits for each person in every situation.
Read a brief summary of recent studies or reviews below; new literature will be posted as it is published.
http://www.jpain.org/article/S1526-5900(09)00449-0/abstract
In a study by researchers at Capital Medical University in China, the affect of the mood of a musical piece was evaluated for its analgesic benefits on participants. A lecture and two pieces of music with different moods—one happy and one sad but pleasant—were tested on twenty healthy females during a heat pain test. At baseline and during each pain test, participants completed assessments to report pain intensity, pain tolerance time, and additional characteristics of pain and distress.
The results showed that both happy and sad melodies had an emotional impact on the participant and resulted in similar significant lower pain ratings during the pain test when compared with scores reported during the lecture. Additionally, the happy melody also significantly reduced overall distress compared to lecture and baseline. In contrast to the original hypothesis, the investigators concluded that the emotional valence (the emotional value associated with a stimulus) of music is more important than the mood of the music in affecting pain reduction. The authors acknowledge that the study was limited by the small number of participants—all healthy Chinese females—and suggest that the results warrant further study in other cultures and patient populations.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122498557/abstract
Researchers at Orebro University in Sweden compared the relaxation benefits of music and bedrest with bedrest alone in postoperative patients following heart surgery. Forty patients who had open-heart surgery for coronary artery bypass grafting and/or aortic valve replacement were randomly allocated to bed rest or music listening during bed rest on their first postoperative day. Patients in the music group listened to 30 minutes of relaxing music of different melodies ranging from 60 to 80 beats per minute at a volume of 50-60 decibels. Levels of relaxation were evaluated using measures of serum oxytocin, heart rate, mean arterial blood pressure, arterial oxygen tension (PaO2), and arterial oxygen saturation (SaO2), as well as the patient’s subjective assessment of relaxation. Oxytocin is a neurotransmitter that has been shown to affect cardiovascular regulation.
Results showed that oxytocin levels in the music group increased significantly when compared with the control group whose oxytocin levels trended downward. Patients in the music group also demonstrated significantly higher levels of PaO2 (necessary for adequate oxygen saturation of hemoglobin) and reported significantly higher subjective levels of relaxation. No differences were shown in mean arterial blood pressure, heart rate, or SaO2 levels between the two groups. The authors concluded that music-listening during bed rest following open-heart surgery can positively affect the relaxation system and, therefore, should be included as an integral part of the multimodal postoperative regimen following cardiovascular surgery.
http://www.mrw.interscience.wiley.com/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD006577/frame.html
Researchers from Temple University examined the potential of music listening to reduce the distress of coronary heart disease (CHD) by performing a systematic review of the psychological and physiological effects of music intervention in this population. In a thorough review of published and unpublished literature, randomized trials that compared music interventions plus standard care with standard care alone for patients with CHD were included. An analysis of 23 studies with a total of 1461 participants showed that the majority of studies examined the effects of listening to pre-recorded music and most studies (n=21) were done without the services of a professional music therapist. While the overall results were inconsistent, music listening did have a moderate effect on anxiety levels but did not show strong evidence for reduced psychological distress.
Results further showed that music listening aided in reductions in heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure in patients with CHD. Results in studies that included 2 or more music sessions showed a small and consistent benefit of pain relief. The authors report that the clinical significance of these results is unclear because the quality of study evidence was not strong, but they conclude that music listening may have a beneficial effect on blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, anxiety, and pain in persons with CHD.
Pain Manag Nurs. March 2009;10(1):14-21.
Researchers from Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University in Ohio studied possible racial variations in response to self-administered music interventions for chronic pain. Data from a previously-completed randomized controlled trial was used for a secondary analysis of 60 adult patients who were being treated for intermittent or continuous chronic pain. Participants in the standard music group chose one tape from a selection of five types of relaxing instrumental music, while the patterning music group could use any tape containing a combination of sounds perceived as relaxing, mood improving music by the participant. Interventions consisted of music-listening for 1 hour each day for 7 consecutive days. Two assessment instruments were administered at baseline and post-therapy to evaluate potential differences in African-American and Caucasian populations to determine if post-treatment pain scores differed by race.
Both music groups, regardless of race, reported a decrease in pain and depression at post-test when compared with the control group. While the difference was only statistically significant for the Caucasian music group, the authors state that people from different racial backgrounds may respond differently even though music appears to be an effective intervention for chronic non-cancer pain. They also suggested that further studies may reveal whether racial differences were due to trends in the patient’s existing medication regimen, small sample size, or insufficient treatment time.