Health Corner by Lydia Harris

As a musician, entertainer, or music lover, you know that music makes you feel really good. Music creates a vibration and organic response used to treat medical conditions. Music therapy is low to no-cost, rarely has negative side effects, is mood-elevating, and contributes to healing. But it is not profitable like drugs are for Big Pharma.

Dr. Kimberly Sena Moore is a Miami neurologic Music Therapist, who “uses music to make lives better.” Music helps you physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Music speeds up developmental processes in infants and toddlers. It strengthens social skills and focus.

Applied the right way, music controls the emotions, lowers stress levels, treats pain from several health conditions, and creates positive sense-related behaviors. According to Moore and reams of scientific and medical data that supports her theory, music affects negative areas of your life, positively.

Your brain is hardwired to respond to music. Even in cultures centuries past, mothers used rhythmic rocking, soft humming, and soothing lullabies to put their babies to sleep. On the evolutionary timeline, music emerged long before spoken language. Day-old infants respond to different rhythmic patterns and sequences. For whatever reason, humans were created to be predisposed to the effects of music.

Have you ever walked down the street, humming or singing some tune, only to find that you are walking, hopping, or dancing in step with that song? That is because your brain receives musical vibrations that dictate your physical behavior. The quality of the music does not matter, since you rarely recreate the sound of an instrument or the voice in your favorite song, perfectly.

However, when you repeat a song by humming or singing it, your brain understands that you are recreating a positive moment. Aside from emotional and spiritual upliftment, your physical behavior changed. You changed your gait to match the rhythm of the music you are recreating. So, music alters your behavior, making it a therapeutic device.

Researchers found that music heals physical pain and relieves stress. So, the next time your body aches, take your mind off of the pain by singing your favorite song. Play your favorite tunes on Alexa. Enjoy your favorite music to make the health connection to improve your level of wellness.

Music has a profound impact on your emotions and your physical state of being. Music therapy is used to treat patients with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, physical pains and ailments, stress, and anxiety. Music has been proven effective for calming premature infants and their concerned parents. The following information illustrates how music works with your brain to make you healthy, providing benefits for young and old, including those who suffer from physical or neurological problems. 1. When you hear music, your brain sends physiological response orders to your body, regardless of positive or negative reception. By experimenting with different types of music at different frequencies and volume levels, you can discover how music makes your brain emit positive, calming, and restorative physiological commands that lead to mental and physical health rewards.

2. Music is an emotional experience. Your emotions are activated by hormones controlled by the brain. Your emotional system is directly related to the hormones in your body, while the release and presence of those hormones has to do with how your brain perceives sounds and music. Play music that you consider positive and your mind will reward your body by releasing hormones that create positive emotions.

3. Your ability to pay attention is dictated by your brain. When your mind is functioning, clearly, and you focus, properly, your attention level is high. Several studies found that music creates cognitive health. As a therapeutic tool, music clears the fog in your mind, improving your attention skills.

4. Musical lyrics enhance communication skills. Music therapists use lyrics to help

stroke victims talk, again. The connection between musical lyrics and speech is why toddlers who listen to music with lyrics learn to speak before children who grow up without music in the home.

5. Music triggers memories.

People have good and bad memories of past experiences that make them smile or frown. When music is attached to an especially pleasant experience, that song can be used in to lower stress levels and diminish physical pain.

When you hear song and sing it, you get a boost because it is attached to a positive memory in your brain.

6. All sounds that the human ear hears are based in vibration. Sound and music are vibrations. Researchers in Toronto wondered if the vibrations from sound could be harnessed as healing power. Dr. Lee Bartel, a Music Professor at the University of Toronto believed that sound vibrations have healing properties. The vibrations in music have been used to treat several physical and emotional ailments.

Low frequencies that sound similar to a low rumble were used to create vibrations applied to the bodies of volunteer test subjects, suffering from depression, fibromyalgia, Parkinson’s disease, and other physical, or neurological health concerns. This practice is known as vibroacoustic therapy.

Bartel’s tests produced data mirrored by results obtained under similar circumstances in a study in Waterloo, Ontario. In a short term, vibroacoustic therapy improved the symptoms in Parkinson’s disease patients that walked better and faster, and had fewer tremors and less rigidity.

Alzheimer’s and fibromyalgia sufferers benefited from this therapy, also. During these and other neurological disorders, a disorientation or imbalance in healthy, rhythmic brain activity is present. When fibromyalgia and Alzheimer’s patients experienced low-frequency, 30 Hz vibrations for 60 seconds, followed by a 60-second break, their symptoms diminished.

As a musician, entertainer, or lover of music, you may have a greater exposure to homemade vibroacoustic therapy that delays, minimizes, or prevents some uncomfortable ailments. If nothing else, you know that music makes you feel really good.

Lydia Harris, RN CCM DTM LydiaGrows@gmail.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/ lydiaharris/ Info: fb.me/LydiaHarrisDTM