Scientists study the ways music can boost health

http://www.reviewjournal.com/life/health/scientists-study-all-ways-music-can-boost-health

Nov. 9, 2014
By JOAN PATTERSON
SPECIAL TO THE LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

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Hearing is the last sense to fade away at the end of life, she said. Even if patients are unresponsive, more than likely they can still hear what’s going on. And if minds are full of worries and fears that can’t be expressed, music is a way to provide some peace of mind.

“Anxiety can exacerbate all kinds of physical issues that are going on. You bring somebody in and they sit at the end of the bed and they play beautiful, soft classical music for half an hour and the anxiety goes away.

“Sometimes you find that the breathing gets better, they sleep better, it means they don’t need sleeping pills. … If you can have somebody come in and do that, what a blessing,” she said.

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But it’s only recently, with the advances in brain research, that science has begun to understand just how far-reaching music’s benefits can be for our physical and emotional health.

Because music is so complex, with our brains processing elements such as pitch, rhythm, key, meter and language all at once, it engages the mind more fully than any other sensory experience, lighting up multiple areas of the brain, said Concetta Tomaino, executive director of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function in the Bronx, N.Y.

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If you look at some of the newest studies surrounding music and health, it’s like skimming through a glossary of medical specialties. The research is linking specific music protocols to everything from reducing anxiety in hospital patients and increasing immune function, to improving sleep and heart rates for premature babies in intensive care.

There are also the more dramatic medical benefits, some of them getting recent attention in the media.

Music therapy, for example, can spark amazing recuperative abilities in the brain, helping it make reconnections or even circumvent damaged areas and create new pathways, Tomaino said. Singing and rhythm, for example, were used extensively in the treatment of former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., to help her regain the use of language and speech.

A documentary called “Alive Inside,” which won the Audience Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, shows patients with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia responding, in some cases quite dramatically, as they listen through headphones to music from their pasts.

The film centers around the work of a nonprofit program called Music &Memory, which trains professionals and caregivers how to use iPods to create playlists for dementia patients so they can “reconnect with the world through music-triggered memories,” according to its website.

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Judith Pinkerton, a certified music therapist and president of the Western Region Chapter of the American Music Therapy Association, has worked with clients in Southern Nevada for several years, specializing in areas such as addiction and mental health. Earlier this year, she gave a talk at the TEDx conference at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on managing stress through music.

The key, she said, is to use music daily in a balanced way rather than creating playlists that will continually fuel feelings such as depression, anger or anxiety, and to understand that music is affecting health measures such as heart rate and blood pressure.

“There are so many of us that are stuck in these moods and now we know that people instinctively play music where they’re at, they’re pushing play on music that’s unsettled,” said Pinkerton, who is also a classical violinist and founder of Music 4 Life.

“The music industry is complying because this is what people are craving, because there is so much unsettledness in the world right now,” she added.

But the “magnificence” of music, and what science is learning more and more all the time, is that its potential is vast and, in many cases, only beginning to be discovered, she said.