We’ve all heard the belief that music heals your soul. Whether it’s for a celebration, for grieving, or whatever else, music can make you feel a lot of things.
But what if it could also help you with physical pain?
Studies have shown that listening to music can be linked with better quality of life for those who experience physical pain, and even lead to reduced consumption of painkillers.
But why does it work?
Psychology Today describes pain as “both a sensory process felt in the body, and a subjective phenomenon, influenced by the psychological and emotional processes of each individual brain.”
So to an extent, pain is a physical experience, but there is a large psychological aspect to it as well. For example, being stressed and in physical pain magnifies that pain.
The extent to which someone feels pain varies person to person. So if someone’s leg is hurting, but there’s a really good song playing, the brain may devote less of its focus to how much the leg is hurting and more of it on how good that song is. ##MN_RESP##
For a lot of people, music helps them relax. And pain, in part, is controlled by relaxation or stress. So it makes sense that music could help someone deal with pain, since it’s both a distraction and a relaxant for the patient.
Music can also release opioids in the brain, which control pain sensors, and reduce cortisol release, since the music controls feelings of stress.
But it’s not just any music that works. Most studies found that patients who picked their own music were more effectively treated, and that a lot of those songs were about contentment, regardless of genre.
More research needs to be done before music becomes a clinical treatment for pain, but it does look like it’s going that way. We can only hope that one day this will be the cheapest prescribed method for pain relief!
