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.

My Long-Term Experience Eating Safe (and Other) Starches

Years ago, before the Perfect Health Diet came out, I followed a program that involved eating quite a bit "safe starch." It was called Body for Life. It involved eating six small servings of carbohydrate along with six small servings of protein, plus two servings of fibrous vegetables per day. (A serving was the size of your fist or the palm of your hand.) There were six workouts a week (three weightlifting, three cardio) and one free day every week where you ate whatever you wanted and didn't exercise. In all fairness, these two programs are different: BFL allows certain grains, legumes and low-fat dairy and discourages fat. It doesn't call for a wheelbarrow full of vegetation. Nevertheless, my experience eating lots of fruit and lots of starch is relevant to the PHD because the amount and type of digestible carbohydrates are similar, and for the first few years, I didn't eat wheat except on free days. At first on BFL, I felt great. Before, I was continually...

Blog Lineup Change

Bye-bye, Fathead. I've enjoyed the blog, but can't endorse the high-fat, high-carb Perfect Health Diet that somehow makes so much sense to some otherwise bright people. An astrophysicist makes some rookie mistakes on a LC diet, misdiagnoses them, makes up "glucose deficiency," and creates a diet that's been shown in intervention studies to increase small LDL, which can lead to heart disease. A computer programmer believes in the diet and doesn't seem eager to refute it because, perhaps, scientists are freakin' liars and while he's good at spotting logical inconsistencies, lacks some intermediate knowledge of human biology. To Tom's credit, he says it's not the right diet for everyone, but given the truckload of food that has to be prepared and eaten, impracticality of following it while traveling (or even not traveling), and unsuitability for FODMAPs sufferers, diabetics and anyone prone to heart disease (i.e., much of the population), I'm...

Carrageenan: A Sickening Thickener. Is it a Migraine Menace?

Let me tell you about my ride in an ambulance last night. I woke up at six o'clock from a nap with a mild headache. I ate dinner and took my vitamins, along with a couple of extra magnesium pills. Since magnesium helps my TMJ flare-ups, I thought it might help my headache. Then I went to see my mother. A few hours later, I had a severe headache, sinus pain and nausea. During a brief respite from the pain, I left for home, but less than a mile later, I got out of my car and threw up. A cop, Officer Fisher, pulled up behind me and asked if I was okay. He believed me when he said I hadn't been drinking, but he said I seemed lethargic and he wanted the paramedics to see me. (Later he mentioned that a man he'd recently stopped was having a stroke.) Thinking I had a migraine headache, the paramedics wanted to take me to the hospital. But since I knew that doctors don't know what causes migraine headaches, and I didn't know what effect their medicine would have on m...

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

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

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.

Pain, Pain, Go Away!

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