The Healing Power of Music

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By Timothy Gower

Discover how the soothing sounds of music can help you get well.

The day may come when your doctor tells you, "Take two aspirin and listen to a little James Taylor before going to bed." Soothing sounds have long been players in the medical traditions of other cultures, and scientists and physicians in this country are beginning to recognize its healing power. "On a physiological level, everything changes when you listen to certain forms of music," Dr. Mitchell L. Gaynor says. He uses sound and music therapy in his practice as the Director of Medical Oncology and Interactive Medicine at the Strang-Cornell Cancer Prevention Center in New York City. Different types of music have different effects, and Gaynor notes that classical music and some forms of New Age music can aid in relaxation.

Gaynor, author of Sounds of Healing: A Physician Reveals the Therapeutic Power of Sound, Voice, and Music (Broadway Books, 1999), explains that hearing makes up only a small part of how we experience music. About 70 percent of the human body is water, which is an excellent conductor of the vibrations that produce sound. "You feel sound with every cell in your body," Gaynor says.

Listening to the music you find pleasing increases brain waves associated with relaxation while decreasing heart rate and blood pressure, Gaynor says. There's also evidence that listening to comforting music helps your body cope with stress and pain. For example, German doctors studied anxiety in patients undergoing gastroscopy, an uncomfortable procedure in which a probe is snaked down the throat into the stomach. The researchers detected much lower levels of stress hormones, indicating less discomfort, in patients who listened to calming melodies than those who suffered in silence.

Colds and infections also may march to the beat of a different drum. In one study, scientists found that the immune systems of students listening to easy-listening instrumental music for 30 minutes produced greater amounts of germ-destroying antibodies than those who listened to other forms of music, random sounds, or nothing at all.

Music also may help some people sleep. A 1999 study found that patients with Alzheimer's disease were less aggressive and slept better after participating in a month-long music-therapy program. The patients' levels of melatonin, the brain chemical that helps regulate sleep patterns, had increased significantly. Other studies confirm what aerobics instructors figured out long ago: Upbeat music can add spring to your step during a workout.

Mind you, getting health perks isn't simply a matter of "putting on music in the background while you panic over your checkbook," says Cathy McKinney, Ph.D., a music therapist at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Music therapy is a serious field of study that has been taught and practiced for more than 50 years. A trained music therapist can teach hospital patients, nursing home residents, and others how to focus on music in a structured setting in a way that is believed to promote both physical and mental health.

That said, McKinney points out that any music you enjoy will help you unwind after a long day at work or dealing with a houseful of kids. In fact, a tune is more likely to relax you if it's familiar, at least familiar in style. But McKinney advises keeping the following in mind when you pop in the compact discs:

• Ideal relaxation music has an easy tempo—no more than 72 beats per minute, or roughly the pace of a leisurely stroll.
• A relaxing composition doesn't have too many surprises, such as abrupt shifts from low to high notes. That's probably why bebop jazz and the music of certain avant-garde classical composers put some people on edge.
• Go easy on the volume, but don't play music so softly you have to strain to hear it; strain leads to stress, and that defeats the purpose of the music.