A reader sent me to this website for Healing Music Enterprises, which means I can have two whole posts in a row dealing with music and biology. I decided to delve into a little light reading of the relevant scientific literature.

A search on "music AND health" in Web of Science yielded 306 hits. Most of these were not actually on this specific topic, but I did skim a few review papers:

Hilliard, 2005. Music Therapy in Hospice and Palliative Care: a Review of the Empirical Data. eCAM 2:173-178.

Daykin et al., 2006. Music and healing in cancer care: A survey of supportive care providers. The Arts in Psychotherapy 33:402-413.

Pothoulaki et al., 2006. Methodological issues in music interventions in oncology settings: A systematic literature review. The Arts in Psychotherapy 33:446-455.

I personally was amazed to find a whole journal (The Arts in Psychotherapy) devoted to this topic. But, given the proliferation of narrowly focused journals in recent years, I suppose it isn't really that surprising. What was also not surprising to me was how little these papers had to say. As I have aluded to before, the bar is set very low for medical studies, but apparently for "arts in psychotherapy" there isn't a bar at all. Most studies were apparently case studies, which have notoriously nonexistent scientific validity. Others had a lot of obvious biases. I would have been impressed by the ability of these authors to say absolutely nothing in 5-10 pages, but all the psychologists I know seem to be trained well in that skill.

The good news is that if you believe in this enough to fork it over to someone to tell you what music to listen to in order to make you feel better, you probably will feel better. It's not as if you can do a blind test, so people don't know they are receiving music therapy. This is called the placebo effect, and it also explains the multibillion-dollar supplement industry, which is delighted to take to the cleaners those of you who think there is a magic pill for perfect health and happiness. It's certainly an appealing idea. Throughout history, many a fortune has been made on patent medicines (in fact, I am a beneficiary of one myself, 4 generations removed). Most people probably don't make a connection between that and the current supplement boom, because snake oil salesmen are assumed to be a thing of the past, before we had all this science and technology to tell us the truth. But I believe the Age of Science has actually caused these industries to expand, multiply and go global, because one can always find or conduct weak or bogus but scientific-sounding 'studies' to support whatever claim one finds it convenient to promote. It is especially easy for a 'science' built on case studies - the favorite tool of shysters past.

The better news about music therapy is at least it presumably won't cause cardiac arrest, or double vision, or your innards to turn to goo (unless your music of choice is Kenny G, which I'm sure I read somewhere has been determined to cause massive brain hemorraging in rats). The same is not necessarily true of the hundreds of compounds pushed by the supplement industry.

But music seems to have more theraputic validity (perhaps because I'm a musician) than my absolute favorite "wellness" experience, Healing Touch. A club I was in while living in Hawai`i put on a health fair as a fundraiser once (several of our members were health professionals). One member got her Healing Touch crew together to give free "massages." When I got a chance I went over for my eagarly anticipated massage... and was greeted by several people humming and fluttering their hands around my body, a couple inches from the surface. It turned out there's not actually any "touch" involved, they just massage your aura or something. (If you are dying to know more, click the link above - there's a hootful of "testimonials.") I must admit now though that it did turn out to have some theraputic value to me after all, because I was ready to bust a gut laughing; the drawback was I was in serious danger of internal bleeding from holding it in. So weighing the pros and cons, it was probably too risky a procedure to undergo again. Next time I'll just try some Coltrane.

Labels: health, music