Tune-In: The Healing Power of Music

The healing power of music has been well known for as long as men and women have played and enjoyed. Music's affect on the mind and body has been utilized as an official health discipline has played an important role in pain management and healing since World War I.

Music therapy is more than just turning on a "happy" song or plunking away at the keyboard. Credentialed, professional music therapists design customized programs for their clients to help them accomplish individualized goals. They use music to assess their clients' emotional wellbeing, physical health, social functioning, communication and cognitive skills. Then they design music sessions that may include writing, performing, discussing, improvising, interpreting and listening to music as part of an interdisciplinary treatment plan, evaluation and/or follow up.

Music therapy works similarly to cognitive behavioral therapy by changing how a patient thinks about their pain experience. It targets negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors associated with pain and trains the patient to replace them with new positive thoughts and connotations. Music therapy deals with stress, muscle tension, anxiety, increased cardiac and respiratory rates and other natural responses to pain by teaching patients to respond to musical cues by relaxing, slowing their respiratory rate, and reducing their stress level. In turn, this reduces their perception of pain.

With practice, music therapy patients become conditioned to enter a deep relaxation state (similar to meditation) in response to familiar, calming music. After awhile, the music alone triggers deep relaxation. This can help patients who live with chronic pain replace previously learned pain responses with music and relaxation. 

Music therapy is designed to:

Distract patients with familiar music and direct their attention away from pain and anxietyProvide musical stimulus for slow, deep, rhythmic breathingCue visual imageryCondition a relaxation responseImprove mood, thought patterns and outlook

Many studies support music therapy as beneficial for pain management. The American Cancer Society says clinical trials have demonstrated music therapy's benefit for short-term pain, including pain from cancer. Other studies suggest music helps decrease pain's intensity, when used with pain medication. In hospice patients, one study found that music therapy improved comfort, relaxation, pain control and quality of life.

Do you have to see a music therapist to experience the healing powers of music? Not necessarily. Try your own experiment and see if music helps you deal with pain:

1. Choose a variety of upbeat, soothing, meditative, fast-paced and slow-paced pieces of music. Try all kinds of music until you find several styles you like--jazz, classical, opera, rock and popular music.

2. Notice how you feel when you play each one.

Does one piece or style lift your mood and another make you feel relaxed? Do particular songs or musical styles make your pain worse? 

3. Try dancing or moving to music and notice if it makes your pain feel better.

4. Pick something deeply relaxing (like Mozart or Beethoven) and practice deep breathing and meditation. Next time you feel your pain increasing, put on that song and see if you can trigger a relaxation response.

If you're not quite able to orchestrate your own music therapy for pain management program, ask your doctor to refer you to a professional music therapist in your area. 

Sources:

American Music Therapy Association

http://www.musictherapy.org/faqs.html#IS_THERE_RESEARCH

American Cancer Society

Music Therapy

http://www.cancer.org/Treatment/TreatmentsandSideEffects/ComplementaryandAlternativeMedicine/MindBodyandSpirit/music-therapy

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5 Tips for Managing Your Bipolar Triggers

Bipolar disorder is characterized by alternating extremes in mood, energy, activity levels, and ability to function day-to-day. Living with this disease can leave you feeling helpless at times. While bipolar disorder is not curable, it is treatable and manageable.

External events often trigger a bipolar mood episode. You can minimize a bipolar episode and maintain some control over your life with a bit of planning and being aware of your environment.

Here are a few suggestions for managing your bipolar triggers.

1. Keep a regular routine. Building structure in your life can help stabilize your moods. In studies, people with bipolar disorder who participated in behavioral therapy designed to improve regularity in their daily routines averted new episodes longer than those who just focused on regulating their mood symptoms and medications.

2. Get plenty of sleep. We all have an internal (circadian) clock that controls many of our biological functions, including when to eat and sleep. People with bipolar disorder often have overly sensitive circadian rhythms and lack of sleep is a common bipolar trigger. Experts recommend you go to bed and get up the same time every day, and avoid caffeine, exercise, and other stimulants before bedtime.

3. Maintain a healthy lifestyle. Eating right and exercising regularly are critical to maintaining good physical and emotional health. In fact, exercise can significantly improve your mood and lessen the variation between the highs and lows. Include sufficient omega-3 fatty acids in your diet and avoid alcohol and drugs. While some stress in life is inevitable, do what you can to minimize unnecessary stress and practice relaxation techniques such as deep breathing exercises or yoga.

4. Learn your personal warning signs. Stress, seasonal changes, lack of sleep, and difficulties at work or at home can all trigger a bipolar mood episode. Keep a daily mood log and chart your emotions, symptoms, sleep, medications, and anything else that affects your mood. You'll begin to spot patterns, making you more aware of potential triggers so you can try to stop a mood episode before it starts.

5. Take personal responsibility. You didn't choose bipolar disorder, but you can choose how you live with it. Learn as much as you can about the disease so you can make informed decisions about treatment. Find support among family, friends, and others (consider joining a support group), and ask for help when you need it. Take your medications as prescribed, stay involved in your treatment, and keep your doctor appointments.

Sources

National Institutes of Health. National Institute of Mental Health. "Bipolar Disorder. Web. 4 June 2010.

http://nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/bipolar-disorder/index.shtml

Helpguide.org. "Bipolar Support and Self-Help." Web.

http://helpguide.org/mental/bipolar_disorder_symptoms_treatment.htm

American Psychological Association. "Consistent routines may ease bipolar disorder." Monitor 39(2) (2008): 10. Web. http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb08/consistent.aspx

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Can Looking at Magazine Pictures Damage Your Body Image?

Flipping through magazines, you see page after page of impossibly skinny and perfect people. Many magazines use photography angles, effects, and techniques to alter what you see, but could these photos be subconsciously affecting your confidence and self-image?

Scientists say yes. They describe the experience of this as "self-objectification." This happens when people-especially women and girls-look at themselves through the filter of how they think the outside world sees them. Several studies show that people who self-objectify are less confident and suffer from self-esteem issues. They often develop an unhealthy relationship with food, tend to yo-yo diet, and are at high risk for developing a serious eating disorder and depression. Self-objectifiers may not be able to enjoy sex. Some studies reveal that self-objectification can impede accomplishing simple tasks and impair motor skills, since the concern over how you appear completing a task can interfere with your ability to perform it well.

Psychiatrists in the UK are so concerned about the effects media can have on our body image, that they advocate developing an ethical editorial code and possibly even laws to regulate how the images and articles in magazines and other forms of media are presented. They recommend marking any image where a model's body has been digitally enhanced with a symbol. Predictably, magazine editors are not in favor of this measure and claim that they're already acting responsibly.

But the stats are staggering. According to the Southern Connecticut State University Women's Center, today the average weight of a model is 23 percent less than the average woman, but 20 years ago, that differential was only 8 percent. Eating disorders have grown 400 percent in the last 30 years. And the diet industry-which was virtually nonexistent a few decades ago-is now a 33 billion dollar industry.

The obsession with body image is clearly not healthy; Americans are heavier than ever. Given that the average girl spends six and a half hours a day interacting with media, that industry must bear some of the responsibility. In recent years, awareness of this issue has grown and initiatives to change the way women are portrayed by the media are gaining traction. Perhaps several years from now models will look more like the rest of us. In the meantime, making smart eating and exercise choices will make you look and feel better than aspiring towards a digitally conceived goal.

Sources:

Southernct.edu: "Media and Body Image": Southern Connecticut State University Women's Center. Web. http://www.southernct.edu/womenscenter/mediaandbodyimage2/

MediaandWomen.org: "What is the GW+M Project": Girls, Women, & Media Project. Web. 2007. http://www.mediaandwomen.org/index.html

TheElisaProject.org: "Media Harming People's Body Image Say Psychiatrists" The Elisa Project. Web. Feb 23, 2001. http://www.theelisaproject.org/news.cfm?NewsID=11

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