Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Photo: Laura Chouette/Unsplash.
A study by McGill University in Montreal, Canada, asked participants to listen to different types of music and rate how it affected their pain levels.

The other day on the radio I heard a doctor talk about treating pain in the age of the opioid crisis. His ideas sounded risky and seemed based on a study of one — himself. Having been in recovery from opioid addiction for 15 years, he found he could handle a lot of opioids when he broke his leg. He didn’t get addicted again.

Can every recovering addict do that? Seems like there ought to be better ways. So far, opioids are the only thing that works for severe pain. Today’s story talks about a way to reduce suffering, but only a little.

Nicola Davis writes at the Guardian, “If you are heading to the dentist, you may want to turn up a rousing Adele ballad. Researchers say our preferred tunes can not only prove to be powerful painkillers, but that moving music may be particularly potent.

“Music has long been found to relieve pain, with recent research suggesting the effect may even occur in babies and other studies revealing that people’s preferred tunes could have a stronger painkilling effect than the relaxing music selected for them.

“Now, researchers say there is evidence that the emotional responses generated by the music also matter.

“ ‘We can approximate that favorite music reduced pain by about one point on a 10-point scale, which is at least as strong as an over-the-counter painkiller like Advil [ibuprofen] under the same conditions. Moving music may have an even stronger effect,’ said Darius Valevicius, the first author of the research from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

“Writing in the journal Frontiers in Pain Research, Valevicius and colleagues report how they asked 63 healthy participants to attend the Roy pain laboratory on the McGill campus, where researchers used a probe device to heat an area on their left arm – a sensation akin to a hot cup of coffee being held against the skin.

“While undergoing the process, the participants [listened] to two of their favorite tracks, relaxing music selected for them, scrambled music, or silence.

“As the music, sound or silence continued, the participants were asked to rate the intensity and unpleasantness of the pain. …

“When the auditory period ended, participants were asked to rate the music’s pleasantness, their emotional arousal, and the number of ‘chills’ they experienced – a phenomenon linked to sudden emotions or heightened attention, that can be felt as tingling, shivers or goosebumps.

“The results reveal participants rated the pain as less intense by about four points on a 100-point scale, and less unpleasant by about nine points, when listening to their favorite tracks compared with silence or scrambled sound. Relaxing music selected for them did not produce such an effect. …

“Further work revealed music that produced more chills was associated with lower pain intensity and pain unpleasantness, with lower scores for the latter also associated with music rated more pleasant.

“ ‘The difference in effect on pain intensity implies two mechanisms – chills may have a physiological sensory-gating effect, blocking ascending pain signals, while pleasantness may affect the emotional value of pain without affecting the sensation, so more at a cognitive-emotional level involving prefrontal brain areas,’ said Valevicius, although he cautioned more work is needed to test these ideas. …

“The researchers say it is not yet known if moving music would have a similar chill-creating effect in those who do not favor it, or if people who favor such music are simply more prone to musical chills.

“What’s more, they say the size of the study might mean some relationships cannot be detected, while the relaxing music may not have been played for long enough for an effect to have been seen.”

More at the Guardian, here. No paywall. Guardian readers voluntarily donate to support the news.