Music can take the pain away, study finds

by Mary Richard | February 18, 2009 at 07:49 am

6144 views | 52 Recommendations | 11 comments

A recent study done at Glasgow Caledonian University found that people who were listening to their favourite music felt less pain and could stand pain for a longer period of time.

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Music can take the pain away, study finds

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Pain researcher Laura Mitchell believes her research can make a difference in how people deal with chronic pain or deal with painful medical tests. "We want to give clinicians and health care professionals a means to make it more comfortable for patients. To take their minds off the scariness of being in hospital and the noise and people rushing about that can make you feel worse," she said.

Pain researcher Laura Mitchell has measured how people respond to pain with various forms of distractions, including relaxing music, listening to humorous audio tapes, doing math puzzles and looking at art.

"Favourite music has come out consistently, even to an extent that's really surprised me in designing these studies, as being extremely effective in how people can tolerate the pain and in actually reducing how much pain they feel," Mitchell said.

Pain management has only recently been given the importance it deserves, Mitchell said. "It's something that really, just in the last five years, become really really important."

"In Europe now about one in five people suffer from chronic pain and they have it on average for seven years and two-thirds of them feel their medication just isn't enough to really give them the relief that they need."

"We were looking to see whether music would have an effect on people's tolerance of pain - to how long they could tolerate some kind of painful stimulus and also whether it would reduce the actual feeling, their actual pain perception for them and whether it would reduce the anxiety of human pain and whether it would help them feel a bit of control over pain they're going through," she said.

People reported their ability to distract themselves from pain more than doubled if they were listening to their favourite music, while their perception of the amount of pain they felt fell significantly.

She's been studying art and pain management for eight years, and believes it's the emotional association of music that lessens human perception of pain. "It's the distraction of music that you love and you have a relationship with. And you're so emotionally tied to it, you're so emotionally engaged, that it can actually take the pain away," said Mitchell.

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Yellow Guitar

at 08:41 on February 18th, 2009

Music as medicine - too cool. It's neat to see how research is giving credence to something we kind of know to be true intuitively. I'm convinced that music has the power to heal on an emotional level too - eg. nothing fixes up a shaky start in the morning like "Exile on Main Street." :) Thanks for sharing this story.

JeffHuang

at 10:27 on February 18th, 2009

Music is definitely a good way to help people cope with pain. Very interesting. Thanks

Fripouille

at 11:21 on February 18th, 2009

Oh that's absolutely true. I mean the study is surely scientific and valid but any music lover knows that music sooths pain, emotional pain of course, but physical pain too to an extent. How many times have I put (mostly quieter) music on to help me forget the symptoms of flu, headaches, hangovers! The same thing must also be true for more serious pathologies where the pain isn't too great, I suppose...

(@ Yellow Guitar: My shaky start cure? The solo on the studio version of "Yo Mama".

Cool post Blue Crush, thanks...

mudricky

at 12:18 on February 18th, 2009

That's one dose I don't mind taking.

Alicia Zak (not verified)

at 15:08 on February 18th, 2009

Too true - good music always make me feel better.

mtammas

at 20:43 on February 18th, 2009

My mom suffers chronic and increasingly stronger pain. She has always loved to sing and I've noticed that, in the last few years, she sings softly to herself much of the time. I believe that this is because the music gives her comfort and some relief.

Fred Miller

at 20:59 on February 18th, 2009

Nice story !

In case you missed it, here's how making music is helping kids deal with Cancer:

http://my.nowpublic.com/health/purple-reigns-children-cancer

allison mikel

at 13:01 on February 19th, 2009

I love music!

allison mikel has contributed a photo to this story.

158

at 10:48 on February 25th, 2009

Thanks, that is good to know.

Thanks, that is good to know.
Sorry for the delay in commenting. I am in the process of moving. I will be back on regularly by 5 March.

158

TDG (not verified)

at 17:04 on March 2nd, 2009

This article is so true. This is one of the main reasons I create positive music, to help heal and empower listeners mentally, emotionally, phsyically, and spiritually. I call it WHOL-E (Mending broken hearts to become WHOLE for Eternity). Take the WHOL-E Challenge and let me know how my music helps you at my website, WHOL-E.COM.

eagoodlife

at 23:08 on March 18th, 2009

You might like to have a look at my piece on Chronic Pain. Music is very helpful, good the researchers have finally proved it and the medics are taking chronic pain seriously.