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How can music be used as medicine?
For example, engaging with music can: Activate regions of the brain and influence memories, emotions and decision-making. Lower heart rate and blood pressure. Relax muscle tension. Yes, we all have been there! Music works like a ‘food’ to your soul and sometimes medicine to heal and comfort your heart. It can boost your mood when you are down, give you energy when you feel low, and inspire you to bring out your creativity. Music has the power to bring out the deepest emotions. It is a magic medicine as it can make one cry or bring smile on one’s face and many seek refuge in it when they are depressed or stressed. Music Helps Us Heal Music is the best studied of art therapy, and helps to lower anxiety, depression, trauma, psychosis and stress. Important components of music therapy are the meaning of lyrics, improvisational music playing, active listening, and songwriting. Plato remarked that “Music is the medicine of the soul.” But why is it so beneficial? We can all understand how a piece of music can influence our emotions, but one study showed that rhythm may also be important in our development.
Why is music important in medicine?
Therapeutic benefits of music, dance and art The complex and compelling concoction of melody, harmony, and rhythm activates many parts of the brain, areas that also handle language, memory, perception, cognition, and motor control functions. We use music and dance to treat patients with Parkinson’s disease. Your brain on music They found that music had documented effects on brain chemistry and associated mental and physical health benefits in four areas: Management of mood. Stress reduction. Boosting immunity. Music has the power to bring out the deepest emotions. It can make one cry or bring a smile on one’s face. In fact it is a magic medicine and many seek refuge in it when they are depressed or stressed. It is this intimacy that makes us listen to music or even hum or sing sometimes. Music and Mood Listening to (or making) music increases blood flow to brain regions that generate and control emotions. The limbic system, which is involved in processing emotions and controlling memory, “lights” up when our ears perceive music. The melodies alone are able to convey messages, soul to soul. A beautiful melody can bring tears to one’s eyes. It is powerful enough to soften the hardest heart and heal the most painful memory. Music breaks barriers of time and space, provides comfort for the grieving, and calms the anxious mind.
What is the relation between music and medicine?
The researchers found that listening to and playing music increase the body’s production of the antibody immunoglobulin A and natural killer cells — the cells that attack invading viruses and boost the immune system’s effectiveness. Music also reduces levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Clinical and experimental research in the literature has demonstrated the efficacy of music to promote relaxation, communication, creative self-expression, psychophysical activation, insight, and emotional processing. Music is the soul of life and gives immense peace to us. In the words of William Shakespeare, “If music is the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it; that surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die.” Thus, Music helps us in connecting with our souls or real self. More and more, classical music has found a new sense of place in the most unlikely environment: the doctor’s office. Certain composers’ works have been found to be effective in the alleviation of chronic and acute health conditions like depression, high blood pressure, anxiety, chronic pain and many others.
Is it true that music is a form of medicine?
Thanks to its evolutionary roots, music has deep biological foundations—and therefore can be deployed as a form of medicine for a huge range of conditions: people undergoing spinal surgery require less anesthetic when played music. Memory recall in people with Alzheimer’s improves with music. It provides a total brain workout. Research has shown that listening to music can reduce anxiety, blood pressure, and pain as well as improve sleep quality, mood, mental alertness, and memory. Research findings have demonstrated that music supports our physical, mental and emotional health. It can help in regulating our emotions, improving our mood, and enhancing productivity and concentration, and it can even help us sleep better. Music therapy is an evidence-based treatment that helps with a variety of disorders including cardiac conditions, depression, autism, substance abuse and Alzheimer’s disease. It can help with memory, lower blood pressure, improve coping, reduce stress, improve self-esteem and more. Music reduces stress and anxiety: Research has shown that listening to music with a slow tempo or instrumentation can put people at ease and calm them down even during highly stressful or painful events. Music can prevent anxiety, increase heart rate and blood pressure.
How music is the best medicine?
Research has shown that blood flows more easily when music is played. It can also reduce heart rate, lower blood pressure, decrease cortisol (stress hormone) levels and increase serotonin and endorphin levels in the blood. It elevates mood. Music can boost the brain’s production of the hormone dopamine. Music is said to enhance intelligence and focus, improve mental health, and boost the immune system as well as self-esteem and confidence. It can be used to relax, to boost and lift our mood, or to improve concentration. Music can also be used to aid in insomnia, helping to encourage and induce a deeper sleep. Now research shows music is as addictive as alcohol, fast food and cocaine. Scientists say it triggers an area of the brain known as the nucleus accumbens – the reward centre. Music accomplishes many things. It has practical utility that can be applied to many endeavors, it can be used to communicate information and emotions, it plays a substantial role in culture, it provides entertainment, it gives people an outlet to be creative, it helps us understand beauty, and it has value on its own. Biomedical researchers have found that music is a highly structured auditory language involving complex perception, cognition, and motor control in the brain, and thus it can effectively be used to retrain and reeducate the injured brain. The recognition and understanding of pitch and tone are mainly handled by the auditory cortex. This part of the brain also does a lot of the work to analyze a song’s melody and harmony. Some research shows that the cerebellum and prefrontal cortex contribute, too.
How does music help in healing?
It’s been shown to provide positive results in reducing pain, anxiety, stress, and even the need for restraints in agitated patients. In the hospital setting, music therapy can be an effective adjunct to conventional medicine that the nurse offers patients supporting their healing. To accomplish specified goals in a music therapy session, music therapists will prepare interventions within one of four broad intervention categories, which include receptive, re-creation, improvisation, and composition/songwriting. The earliest known reference to music therapy appeared in 1789: an article in Columbian Magazine titled Music Physically Considered. The first recorded music therapy intervention & systematic experiments in music therapy were conducted in the 1800s. Scientists have found that the pleasurable experience of listening to music releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain important for more tangible pleasures associated with rewards such as food, drugs, and sex. The highly refined skills developed in musical training—listening, collaboration, empathy, attention to detail, and aspiration to excellence—are skills that are equally highly valued in the practice of medicine. Several innovative physicians in the last 300 years were also highly accomplished musicians: In France, Dr.
Why music is a drug?
Music and drugs both create pleasure by acting on the brain’s opioid system. Singing can release endorphins, which many drugs do as well. Many drugs, like prescriptions, can dull pain. Music has also been shown to provide a sense of relief in stressful or painful situations like surgeries. Nucleus Accumbens “Music can be a drug — a very addictive drug because it’s also acting on the same part of the brain as illegal drugs,” Sugaya says. “Music increases dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, similar to cocaine.” Music is an art form that combines either vocal or instrumental sounds, sometimes both, using form, harmony, and expression of emotion to convey an idea. Music represents many different forms that play key factors in cultures around the world. In part one of our study we noted that several empirical studies suggest grouping musical functions according to four dimensions: cognitive, emotional, social/cultural, and physiological/arousal-related functions. Listening to familiar music that has a personal meaning can be a way for people to remember who they were before experiencing trauma. The non-traditional approach, known as music therapy, has been shown to have significant potential treating grief, guilt and loneliness in addition to depression and anxiety.