Sound Health: Music as medicine for
the New Millennium, Part 2
By Lily G. Casura
The beautiful thing about music and healthcare, says Dr. Arthur Harvey, one of the keynote speakers at the first annual international conference of the "Music for Healing and Transition Program," recently held at Seattle University, is that "music doesn't need a prescription!" Dr. Harvey, who teaches at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in the music department, and has worked for years with clinicians and medical schools, spoke on the topic, "Music That Brings Connection," with an emphasis on the scientific evidence behind the music-brain connection.
Dr. Harvey is also the executive director of Music & Health, "music for health services," based in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is one of the authors of Learn with the Classics: Using Music to Study Smart at Any Age," and is a consultant to the LIND Institute in San Francisco, where he worked on the series of audio CDs, "Relax with the Classics," and the "Health and Wellness Collection," a two-CD set featuring Bach for the morning and Handel for the evening. He's also at work on a forthcoming book, about the music-brain connection.
Harvey's presentation at the conference, despite a difficult mid-evening time slot to accommodate his travel schedule, was remarkably enlivening, given the lateness of the hour, and combined a variety of formats, from song, piano-playing, and audience participation, to an excellent PowerPoint presentation about the scientific evidence for music-brain connection, and an extensive series of video clips, mostly from previously-aired television broadcasts, of work with actual patients. The conference attendees, many of whom were lifelong musicians turned music educators and practitioners, seemed particularly intrigued by the material Dr. Harvey presented, especially the video clips which appeared to show how quickly music could have a positive effect on, for example, Alzheimer's patients, "often within the length of time of a single song," said Harvey.
A recent Alzheimer study, using two of the Relax with the Classics recordings, "largo" and "adagio," cited in the Journal of Gerontological Nursing (July, 1997) found that music profoundly decreased patient symptoms. Physically agitated behaviors decreased by 56%, and verbally agitated behaviors by 57%. "Clearly," Harvey says, music that is capable of calming these seriously disordered patients can do at least as much for the rest of us." (The "Health and Wellness" collection, featuring selections of Bach for the morning and Handel for the evening, was created for use in healthcare and medical facilities, as well as for the general public; and the CD that goes along with the Learn with the Classics program is intended to help produce the desired "body relaxed, mind alert" state optimal for learning and remembering new material.)
Music, says Harvey, is "capable of creating change in almost every system in your body, and about all it takes is one song." What affects us most in music? "Tempo, loudness, degree of dissonance, tone quality (timbre) and texture," says Harvey. "Music affects cognitive development, it facilitates changes in energy states and consciousness," and can be used to stimulate "both physiological and psychological health." Sound, he says, changes the neurochemistry of the brain, by having an effect on central nervous system, the peripheral nervous system and the autonomic nervous system. "It connects with the endocrine system and immunity," he adds. "Music can't make you well," he's quick to point out, but "music can be a vehicle for making us healthier."
Harvey listed numerous benefits of music's physiological effects on the human body, which are recently beginning to be discussed in the scientific literature. Music, he says, can stimulate thymus activity, improving levels of lymphocytes, macrophages and salivary IgA. Music affects the limbic system-the "emotional brain." "Music is perhaps one of the strongest stimulators of amygdala response," and can help mediate aggression, fear, etc. The hippocampus, which controls long-term memory and recall, is also positively affected by music, as the studies which document Alzheimers' patients improvement with music underscore. It affects the hypothalamus and thalamus positively, says Harvey, and has a great effect on levels of serotonin in the body, which increase emotional stability. "Music can put more serotonin into your system, literally bathing your brain," he says. It can also affect melatonin levels. Studies have found, he says, that those who study music or play music also sleep better. The endorphins that m usic creates also help you feel good, despite being in pain. "Music helps mask pain," Harvey says, through the pain gate theory, so that someone in pain appears not to attend to or to notice the pain as much. (Dentists have known for a while, he says, that music creates distraction, and employ background music as a kind of "auditory analgesia"). Music, according to Harvey, also improves levels of beta-endorphins and enkephalins, and blocks receptor sites of Substance P, much like morphine does. Rheumatologists are even finding that making music can reduce the spread of arthritis, he said.
On the psychological side, music can increase positive changes in mood, emotional security (important because the very ill can become disoriented), bring about catharsis, be a consciousness changer or integrator, help the autistic get past bafflers, increase attention, better integrate thinking and feeling, and increase reality orientation. Not to mention, "the more emotionally healthy a patient is, the more quickly they'll recover" from illness or surgery. Even the work with music and Alzheimers has shown that music is "equally effective for both the well and the frail elderly, helping patients eat and sleep better, and improving mood." Best of all, in the healthcare arena, says Harvey, is the simple fact that "music is cost-effective!"
An Austrian study, presented at the 10th World Congress of Pain recently, bears out some of Dr. Harvey's conclusions. Researchers from the General Hospital of Salzburg studied the effect of relaxation imagery and music on pain relief, and concluded that the group of patients who listened to music had "substantially better pain relief," as well as improvements in their sleep. When asked if the results of the study indicated that patients could try this at home, one of the study's authors gave the definitive thumbs-up. "Patients can very well do this at home," he said.
Resources:
Dr. Arthur W. Harvey
Executive Director
Music for Health Services
University of Hawai'i at Manoa
2411 Dole Street
Honolulu, Hawaii 96822 USA
Phone: 808-956-2129
Fax: 808-956-9657
www.hawaii.edu/uhmmusic/welcome.htm
Email: aharvey@hawaii.edu
Dr. Harvey is a co-author of Learn with the Classics: Using Music to Study Smart at Any Age [Lind Institute], as well as a forthcoming book on music and stress management. Dr. Harvey authored an article entitled. "An Intelligence View of Music Education," that is available on the Web as of this writing at www.menc.org/publication/articles/academic/hawaii.htm; as well as an article entitled "On Developing a Program in MusicMedicine: A Neurophysiological Basis for Music as Therapy."
The Lind Institute
P.O. Box 14487
San Francisco, California 94114-0487 USA
Phone: 1-800-LEARN-R-US/1-800-532-7678
Fax: 415-864-1742
www.relaxwiththeclassics.com
The Lind Institute carries the "Relax with the Classics" audio series, on cassette tape and CD formats.)
The Music for Healing and Transition Program, Inc.
22 West End Road
Hillsdale, New York 12529 USA
www.mhtp.org
(They train and certify music practitioners, and hold an annual international conference in music for healing and transition. Graduates of the program are called "music practitioners.")
MMB Music, Inc.
Contemporary Arts Building
3526 Washington Avenue
St. Louis, Missouri 63103-1019 USA
Phone: 800-543-3771
Fax: 314-531-8384
www.mmbmusic.com
Email: info@mmbmusic.com
MORE INFORMATION
Copyright [c] 2003 by Lily G. Casura.
Lily G. Casura, P.O. Box 50467, Bellevue WA 98015-0467 USA.
Email: lily@casura.com
The article was first released in October, 2002 from Townsend Letter to Doctors and Patients. Visit their website at www.townsendletter.com
Music without words means leaving behind the mind. And leaving behind the mind is meditation.
Meditation returns you to the source. And the source of all is sound. — Kabir
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