Page 72 - Time Special Edition Alternative Medicine (January 2020)
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ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE MINDS MATTER
had on patients. Soon facilities were training their likely to provide comforting effects. In some ways,
own on-premises music makers. Only in the past then, music therapy is an art, as therapist and pa-
two decades, though, has the treatment gained a full tient collaborate to match the right melodies to the
measure of legitimacy from patients and physicians right situation.
alike. The reason is simple. “It has a nice intuitive Science has clearly confirmed the value of the
appeal,” says Debra Burns, chair of the department art. Research in Finland, for instance, found that de-
of music and arts technology at Purdue University, pressed patients who received music therapy in ad-
“and you’d be hard-pressed to find any documented dition to standard psychotherapy showed better im-
negative side effects.” provement on measures of depression, anxiety and
Today music therapy is conducted by specially overall functioning after three months than those
trained practitioners. They choose or produce selec- who received standard psychotherapy only. And at
tions tailored to a patient’s tastes and needs, whether the Mayo Clinic, patients who underwent heart sur-
the purpose is to ease anxiety before surgery—or gery experi enced a significant decrease in pain and
distract from pain afterward—or maybe to relieve an easier time relaxing in the days immediately fol-
nausea from chemotherapy or mental and physical lowing their procedure after listening to music that
tension. No musical style is inherently more thera- included nature sounds. As another study suggests,
peutic than others, nor does any one style work for those results could be due to a boost in the levels of
everyone. If you don’t like jazz, for example, it’s un- oxytocin (often referred to as the love hormone). In
Music has been shown to ease anxiety, pain and depression in cancer patients.
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