Using Music in Pain Management

SoulFlight

More and more hospitals and clinics are using relaxation music and other kinds of music to complement medical and clinical treatment and it is also becoming a fast growing area of cutting edge research. Pioneering work in the use of music for pain relief in hospitals in Germany and the US has managed to reduce the dosage of pain killers by up to 50% for many patients.

In India doctors and musicians are working together to produce music specifically designed to treat different illnesses and conditions, and research in US has opened up the therapeutic use of music in the treatment of degenerative and motor impaired patients. Pain Management Patients undergoing traditional auyravedic treatments in the ashram hospital in Mysore, India, have for some time been treated with relaxation music but it is now being used in other departments specialising in pain management, recovery and relaxation.

When patients are played specifically composed relaxation music and the brain waves are monitored with the aim of increasing the level of low frequency or alpha brain waves. They have found that the relaxing music enables the brain to function in a more relaxed way, lowering the pulse and heart rate and raising the level of oxygen in the blood resulting in patients needing lower doses of pain killer with average recovery times three days faster than usual.

Remarkable clinical research in Germany with over 10000 patients over 20 years has resulted in relaxation music reducing the need for pre medication for pre-surgery by up to 50% and in many patients has reduced the dosage of analgesics and sedatives by 100%!

Therapeutic use of relaxation music has also been shown to significantly affect the production of endorphins and other hormones which aid natural pain relief and speedy recovery.

These extraordinary trails have involved cross-disciplinary collaborations between musicians and doctors who use specific compositions for specific conditions such as muscle tension, head aches and back pain. One of the advantages that relaxation music has over drug treatment is that it has the power to deal with all different facets of a particular condition. Migraine for example is usually caused by a combination of high muscle tension, neuralgia and circulatory problems and whereas drugs tend to treat each cause separately, music can be a very effective treatment on all levels.