Anxious? In Pain? Try Music

It's been almost a year since my bike wreck. I'm happy to say that there are no lingering effects from my fractured arm or dental injuries, and in another five months, I'll have replenished my emergency funds.

I'm not quite as pleased to say I'm observing the near-anniversary with a badly stubbed toe. A day and a half ago, I was watering the pots when I tripped over the old, rotted steps I disconnected from the house and stubbed my toe on the brand new steps I built. It still hurts. It hurts more than the fractured arm did. It's almost as bad as turf toe.

It really hurts when I stand. It hurts a lot less when I elevate my foot and rub the bottom of it or elevate it and listen to music. I was at work and in too much pain to go down and get coffee when I put on Alice Cooper and suddenly--no pain. It's just one more reason to love Alice Cooper.

I noticed the same thing back in 2007 when I was infected, recovering from a car wreck and had GI problems. Some researchers at the University of Utah recently studied pain and music(1) and found that certain personality types can mitigate pain with music--anxious people and people who get absorbed in tasks. I don't think I'm anxious, but when I'm busy, people sometimes have to shout at me to get my attention. That's how I feel right now, writing and listening to Nightmare (the Japanese band, not the song): my mind is occupied. I don't feel my foot. An article in Science News says,

Music helps reduce pain by activating sensory pathways that compete with pain pathways, stimulating emotional responses, and engaging cognitive attention. Music, therefore, provided meaningful intellectual and emotional engagement to help reduce pain.(2)

Singing along might really load up the pathways, but I don't think coworkers want to hear me singing "shake it like a bad girl up in Harlem."

"Individual Differences in the Effects of Music Engagement on Responses to Painful Stimulation" by David H. Bradshaw, Gary W. Donaldson, Robert C. Jacobson, Yoshio Nakamura, and C. Richard Chapman. The Journal of Pain, December 2011, pp 1262-1273.
"Listening to Music Can Be Effective for Reducing Pain in High-Anxiety Persons." Science News January 9, 2012.

Comments

Larcana said…

Good thoughts. I use smooth jazz or blues to mellow out while driving. I also, stopped listening to politics on the radio.

July 25, 2013

Lowcarb team member said…

Yes, I do think music can be quite "powerful". It can help you relax, chill out even give you more energy as we pursue a mundane task. Of course music choice is a personal choice and what a wide choice there is.

However, was sorry to hear about your toe and hope it improves soon.

All the best Jan

July 25, 2013

TJ said…

A double shot of Alice in the morning makes me feel better that all the Prozac in Southern California ever could. For your listening pleasure,
two from "Love it to Death":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL82-Cr0ixQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNRrRFe11eg

July 25, 2013

Lori Miller said…

Thanks, everyone. I'll watch the videos when I get home, TJ.

I got a pleasant dose of Glenn Miller at the coffee shop this morning.

July 25, 2013

Dana Carpender's Podcast; Dr. Davis on YouTube; Labor Day Sales

Dana Carpender, who's written several recipe books and other works on low-carb, has a podcast and is still writing articles at carbsmart.com. She's a terrific writer and amateur researcher (otherwise known as reading , as Jimmy Dore jokes ). I use her book 500 Low-Carb Recipes all the time and I'm looking forward to hearing more from her. I've embedded her podcast on my blog (click on the three lines at the top right if you don't see it, or go to Spotify or other podcast source if you're getting this by email). Carbsmart.com doesn't seem to have a blog feed, so if you want to see the latest posts there, you can sign up for notifications at their site. Dr. Davis has been putting a lot more videos on YouTube, so I've added his channel to the lineup. Click on the three lines on my blog if you don't see it, or go to his channel here . * * * * * Primal Kitchen is having a Labor Day sale-- 20% off everything. They sell high quality collagen powder, con...

Fermented bread and butter pickle recipe ft. L. Plantarum

After Dr. Davis said the other night that L. plantarum may reduce some of the effects of the herbicide glyphosate (which is everywhere), I'm re-running my recipe for fermented bread and butter pickles. Pickling cucumbers naturally have L. plantarum bacteria on them, and fermenting them with some brown sugar multiplies these bacteria. (Just don't use chlorinated water to wash them.) And if you're growing your own cucumbers, avoid spraying the fruits with Bacillus thuringiensis , or Bt (leaves and vines are OK). It's unclear what effect a big dose of Bt would have on humans. Another benefit of DIY pickles: no emulsifiers like polysorbate 80, which is a common ingredient in pickles. If you have GI problems, it could be from emulsifiers. These sweet-and-sour pickles are the tastiest I've ever made. There's just a little added sugar (some of which the bacteria will consume) and turmeric that gives the pickles their bright color. Special equipment Quar...

Cardio: A Waste of Valuable Dance Time

"I'd rather hold a girl in my arms than a football." -Joe DeCicco, friend and dancing fanatic Have you heard that it takes a woman 77 hours of exercise to lose a kilogram of fat? (For us Americans, that's half a pound.) That's according to a study cited by Dr. John Briffa .(1) The women who huffed and puffed three hours a week for a year ended up 4.4 pounds lighter than the sedentary women. That doesn't surprise me: my own weight loss involved a lot less exercise than what I'd been doing. I did no cardio workouts, just strength training . I had more time and energy for dancing, which is a stress reliever, helps keep me in shape, and it's a ton of fun. It's not expensive to dance (as long as you stay away from the studios). I've found excellent lessons at clubs where the teachers really care about the students getting it. Here in Denver, there are dancing clubs that are run by nonprofit organizations, where the prices are reasonable and...

Avoiding a Nightmare by Using Math

The answer lies in trigonometry. -Sherlock Holmes Don't worry if you never learned trigonometry--the answers here lie in arithmetic. Medical test results often come back positive or negative, as if the result were a certainty. Of course, there is the accuracy, but if the accuracy is 99% or so, what does that really mean? That you should get your affairs in order? Before you call your probate attorney, let's take an example from the book Calculated Risks by Gerd Gigerenzer. Let's say you're a 40-something year old woman with no symptoms of breast cancer. You have a positive mammogram. What are the odds you have breast cancer? Using some assumptions about test accuracy and rates of disease based on real data, the odds that you'd have breast cancer are one in eleven according to Gigerenzer. (If you were way off, don't feel bad--most of the physicians Gigerenzer tested were way off, too--and they had the data in front of them. Not that that's comforting in every...

Lousy Mood? It Could be the Food

Here's a funny AMV(1) on what it's like to be depressed, apathetic and overly sensitive. Note: explicit (but funny) lyrics in the video. Hearing this song brought a startling realization: I used to be emo, but with normal clothes. Sulking, sobbing and writing poetry were my hobbies. When I was a kid, my mother said that she wouldn't know what to do to punish me if I had done something wrong. And yet things got worse. Over a two-week period in 1996, my best friend moved away, I lost my job and broke up with my boyfriend. I lost my appetite and lived on a daily bagel, cream cheese and a Coke for the next few months. I had tried counseling, and didn't find it helpful; in fact, I found reviving painful memories was pointless. Not thinking about them, on the other hand, worked wonders. Later on, so did studying philosophy and learning to think through emotions instead of just riding through them. But what's blown away all the techniques is diet. Since I s...

Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Search This Blog