Skip to main content

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."

  1. "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.
  2. "Listening to Music Can Be Effective for Reducing Pain in High-Anxiety Persons." Science News January 9, 2012.
Labels:

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
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fly with Reuteri

If you're planning to travel by plane and you want to keep enjoying the benefits of l. reuteri yogurt, you might have gotten sticker shock from the price of l. reuteri probiotics. MyReuteri * costs $46 to $83 for 30 capsules, depending on the CFUs (colony-forming units, or the number of viable microorganisms). If you're thinking about economizing by putting some yogurt in a sturdy container and taking it with you, you can do that. I'll break down the pros and cons and look at some alternatives.  Photo from Unsplash . Cost Yogurt might be less expensive than probiotics, but it isn't free. A half-cup serving costs about 70¢ to make if you start with a previous batch. It contains about 90 billion CFUs if fermented for 36 hours.  This is a lot less than $5.56 for two capsules of 50 billion CFU MyReuteri, but for a one-week vacation, you'd only save $34 by eating yogurt instead. (You can freeze any unused capsules for later.)  Furthermore, the yogurt would have to go in ...
Post a Comment
Read more

30-second Fix for a Cracked Stick Blender

Use Mighty Fixit (if you still have some from 2012) or Rescue Tape (which looks like a similar product) to fix a cracked stick blender. After I fixed the attachment, I washed it in the sink and the tape held up. I also wrapped a knife handle several years ago, and it's been through thousands of washings.
Post a Comment
Read more

Holiday Dinner Tip from Restaurant Pros: Limit the Menu

After watching some people online getting freaked out about trying to put on holiday dinners and getting overwhelmed to the point that they're thinking about canceling the whole thing, I thought I'd put out a restaurant tip that will help people put on a dinner with less aggravation. A big complaint among the frustrated home cooks I've seen is that family members are not contributing to the dinner. But a bigger problem I see is that their menu is just too big. One lady's family is having her make 12 dishes all by herself, and some of these dishes look pretty complicated. Watch the video here or read on. The reason this is aggravating is that more dishes mean more shopping, more prep, and more cleanup. It's hard to make several dishes that will all be ready at the same time. Even though I used to be a prep cook at a restaurant, I've put on Thanksgiving dinners myself, and I cook from scratch almost every day, there's no way I'd try to make a 12-course di...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Inner Circle Site is a Maze!

If you're a member of Dr. Davis's Inner Circle site, you know how hard it is to navigate. But I have a YouTube Playlist of videos I've created on using the site--finding yogurt recipes, using the search function, uploading lab tests, finding which lab tests you should take, and more. All videos are under 11 minutes, the longer ones have chapters and time stamps in the description, and in about 30 minutes, you'll be navigating the site like techno-boss. Link here . 
Post a Comment
Read more

Results of my Carrageenan-Free Diet

Certain things should be left in the aquarium. Readers may recall my ordeal last Saturday with a migraine headache and a trip by ambulance back to my parents' house. Thanks to one of the paramedics jogging my memory, I researched the almond milk I'd started drinking around the time I quit dairy. One of the ingredients was carrageenan, a substance used to induce inflammation, sensitivity to pain and other problems in laboratory animals. Supposedly, the "undegraded" form is safe for human consumption, but undegraded carrageenan has been found to be contaminated with degraded carrageenan, and there are ways that the digestive system could degrade carrageenan itself. For the past few months, I've felt a little bloated, and was starting to have some mild pain in my lower stomach. I thought it might have been the effects of the antibiotics, oral steroids or decongestant (which gave me an allergic reaction) from back in February. I didn't connect it to the sev...
10 comments
Read more