2023-10-29 14:00:00
Your favorite song can act as a painkiller
Listening to music you love might slightly reduce pain, according to Canadian researchers.
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Lauren Cavin-Hostettler
PublishedOctober 29, 2023, 3:00 p.m.
Listening to pieces of music you like might help reduce pain, according to Canadian researchers.
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If for some, music can be a source of motivation or help to fight once morest anxiety, it might also reduce physical pain, according to a Canadian study published on October 25 in the journal “Frontiers in Pain Research”.
Effect of an over-the-counter pain reliever
“We found a very strong correlation between the pleasant nature of music and the unpleasant nature of pain,” says Darius Valevicius, author of the study conducted by the Faculty of Psychology at McGill University in Montreal. To do this, around sixty participants wore a heating probe on their arm to generate slight pain, while listening to two of their favorite pieces, then relaxing music selected for them and then silence.
The results showed that participants felt pain less intensely when they listened to their favorite song. “We can estimate that favorite music reduces pain by regarding one point on a 10-point scale, which is at least as strong as an over-the-counter pain reliever like Advil,” says Darius Valevicius.
Moving music relaxes
Among the songs selected, there were all genres. Some participants, who chose dynamic pieces, indicated that these songs gave them energy. For others, these songs made them happy, helped them shift from a negative to positive mood, and made them smile. Moving music, like relaxing songs, had calming and allowed some participants to relax and meditate. “Touching music might have an even greater effect,” believes the researcher, who now hopes to be able to continue the research in order to generalize these results to clinical and chronic pain.
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