This week: Your favourite tunes can reduce pain
LISTENING to music for an hour a day helped to lower people’s levels of chronic pain by as much as 21 per cent, according to a 2006 study published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing.
And it’s not just a placebo effect – more recently, scientists in China and Australia used scans to discover that the pain centre of the brain was less active in those listening to music, reported the Journal of Pain Research in 2019.
"Music can act as a distraction that prevents the brain from feeling all the pain," explains Elizabeth Coombes, a music therapist at the University of South Wales.
"Sensory pathways that would normally promote the feeling of pain are instead taken up with listening to the music."
It might seem obvious, but to get best results, Coombes suggests choosing a track that you enjoy or that conjures up happy memories.
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