5 ways to use music to soothe your anxiety

LISTEN: Press play below to hear my interview with CBC Radio, Canada’s national broadcaster:

In these plague times, fears run wild. We try to laugh away our anxiety with memes of the feral hairdos we’ll sport after months away from the salon. But jokes are no match for the Invasion of the Body Snatchers unfolding before our eyes.

Huddled at home, many of us can do little but watch as an invisible pathogen overwhelms hospitals and threatens to sicken the people we love. As fresh horrors flash across our screens, some of us can no longer bear to look. “Today I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath,” said a friend on Facebook. She wasn’t coming down with the virus, she realized: “I was having an anxiety attack from reading the news.”

Anyone longing for a Xanax right now is not alone, because this virus not only infects throats and lungs—it’s tightening its grip on our hearts and minds. In a survey of 1,055 Americans, 41 per cent singled out anxiety as a major pandemic concern.

Music can help.

For weeks, I’ve been combing through stacks of research on music and anxiety for my book on music and health. Here’s what I found: In studies of people about to undergo invasive procedures, such as open-heart surgery, music calmed patients as effectively as Valium and other benzodiazepine drugs. Without the side effects.

“Music calmed surgical patients as well as Valium and other benzodiazepine drugs, without the side effects”

Too good to be true? Not according to the Cochrane network, a global authority on evidence-based medicine. After conducting four stringent reviews of music for acute anxiety, Cochrane gave music thumbs-up.

In this age of contagion, people worldwide have turned to music. We rejoiced at the balcony singers of Florence, Siena and Milan, whose plucky faces and dented pots and pans were so very charming, so Italian. Many of us told ourselves that if they could summon beauty and grace amid devastating loss, then maybe we could too.

Even if we’ve never touched a musical instrument in our lives, recent findings from neuroscience can help us tap into music’s stress-reducing effects. Here are five evidence-based listening tips:

1. Choose the music you love most. The more you light up the pleasure and reward system in your brain, the more music activates the same pathways stimulated by morphine and cocaine (but to a safer, milder degree).

2. Try music at 60 to 80 beats per minutes, the pace of a resting heart. Brain areas involved in regulating heart rate and breathing tend to synchronize with the tempo we hear. In a large 2019 review, slow-paced music was the most effective in lowering stress. (Playlists organized by beats per minute are easy to find online.)

3. Listen for 20 to 30 minutes. That’s the typical duration used in studies of music’s sedative effects.

4. Close your eyes and do nothing else. Multitasking increases production of cortisol and adrenaline, driving up stress.

5. Pick a sad song to make it better. Sad songs tend to move us more than happy songs, offering a cathartic release of tension, and feelings of relief. 

In this pandemic, there’s no shortage of glorious music to choose from. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma has serenaded healthcare workers in a series of videos posted under #songsofcomfort. Neil Young reached out to fans with a fireside session in his home. Many other artists, from James Taylor to Jann Arden, have given online performances to lift our spirits.

Amateurs, too, are sharing their music. Martha Smith of Florida posted a video for her 76th birthday of herself playing “Solace” by Scott Joplin, king of ragtime. “Despite mistakes,” she wrote on YouTube, “I kept going, as we all must.”

(P.S. The tips above are for mild to moderate anxiety and stress. If you have moderate to severe anxiety or stress, please seek professional help.)

Disclaimer: Discussions about health topics provided in this blog, or in any linked materials, are not intended and should not be construed as medical advice, nor is the information a substitute for professional medical expertise or treatment. The author accepts no responsibility or liability for any health consequences relating to information published on this blog.

‘Binaural beats’ debunked: These apps offer cool marketing, but iffy health effects

Optical illusions mess with how we see things. “Binaural beats,” a type of auditory illusion, mess with how we hear things—and may play tricks in other ways, too.

Photo credit: Darekm135 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

An odd thing happens when you listen through headphones to two steady tones at slightly different frequencies, one in each ear. You start to hear a low beat that sounds like it’s coming from inside your head. But this third sound is just a figment of your brain’s auditory system. A phantom pulse.

What’s up with that? Scientists have known for decades that our brainwaves tend to synchronize, or “entrain,” with the rhythms we hear. In theory, slightly mismatched tones may confuse the brain. If one ear picks up a tone at 550 Hertz, while the other hears 558 Hertz, the brain will perceive a third frequency—binaural beats—at the points where the sine waves bump together.

Researchers haven’t fully studied binaural beats, let alone the possible health effects. But that hasn’t stopped an overkill of apps from marketing them as “digital drugs” with the power to relieve migraines, sharpen mental focus and blast away stress.

Even Bayer, maker of Aspirin, promotes binaural beats as “good vibes” for relaxation on its Austrian website.

So far, however, the evidence of any health benefits is thin.

So far, the evidence of any health benefits from binaural beats is thin

The latest study to poke holes in the hype comes from an international team led by scientists at the Montreal-based Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research.

In the study, published this week in eNeuro, healthy adults wore head caps with electrodes for monitoring brainwaves using electroencephalography (EEG).

First, they listened to a series of binaural beat frequencies. Next, the same volunteers listened to frequencies mixed on a computer to create a third beat before the sound reached the ears. In this case, the third beat was part of the audio mix (and not an illusion).

After each session, the listeners rated their levels of mental relaxation, alertness and feelings of absorption in the experience.

The researchers found that binaural beats did entrain the brain—but not as much as the premixed beats. What’s more, neither had any effect on mood. A previous study, published in 2017, reached similar conclusions.

This didn’t surprise me. The mood-boosting effects of music, based on a large body of research, stem from the brain’s pleasure and reward response to our favorite sounds. Binaural beat apps use computer-generated frequencies, many of which sound only vaguely like music.

The Montreal study, to be fair, involved just 16 participants and listening sessions of eight minutes each. Chances are this study won’t put the nail in the coffin for binaural-beat diehards.

Whether binaural beats can cause a “high” remains debatable, but the power of suggestion can be intense

Digital drugs have a cult following online. Teens have posted YouTube videos of themselves “getting high” on audio tracks. Reviewers on iDoser’s website have raved about the trippy experiences they’ve had. Whether binaural beats can cause a “high” remains debatable, but the power of suggestion can be intense.

And some studies have shown possible benefits. A 2018 analysis of 22 studies concluded that binaural beats may help lower anxiety and offer modest pain relief.

Behavioral studies, however, tend to search for specific effects, such as relaxation. This approach can bias the results, noted Joydeep Bhattacharya, a cognitive psychologist who has studied the neuroscience of music. Binaural beats, he said, in an interview with Discover magazine, “raise a lot of flags.”

The few studies that have used brain imaging to understand what’s happening during binaural beats have produced inconclusive results, he pointed out. “That gives you a good indication that the story is more complicated than many of the behavioral studies want to convince you.”

Until more research is done, our best bet might be to see this phenomenon as a quirk of our gray matter—a bit of mischief from the proverbial ghost in the machine.

Disclaimer: Discussions about health topics provided in this blog, or in any linked materials, are not intended and should not be construed as medical advice, nor is the information a substitute for professional medical expertise or treatment. The author accepts no responsibility or liability for any health consequences relating to information published on this blog.

Music to cope with cognitive decline

There’s a lot of talk right now about music and Alzheimer’s. Especially in the wake of Alive Inside, the 2014 Sundance hit about nursing home residents who “wake up” after a social worker gives them headphones to listen to Schubert or the Shirelles. 

But it seems we're just beginning to tap into music’s potential to help people with cognitive decline.

Gracia Seal (centre) and St. Andrew's Regional High School students Jessica Coady(left), Claire O'Neill and Mari Chambers on percussion, practice with the Voices in Motion intergenerational choir project led by University of Victoria researchers. Photo credit: Suzanne Ahearne/UVic

I wrote a Globe piece last week about a new choir in Victoria, B.C., which teams up people with dementia, their caregivers and high school students. Researchers behind the project, called Voices in Motion, are studying whether singing in a choir can reduce depression, loneliness and stigma, and improve mental functioning.

This isn't just a “fill out a questionnaire and tell us how you feel” study. Choir members with dementia, as well as their caregivers, consented to monthly tests to measure their emotional states, cognition and physiological markers such as gait and grip strength.

In the study’s pilot phase, the researchers found a lowering of depression in choir participants, and a slight bump in their mental functioning.

Music isn’t a silver bullet. It cannot cure, reverse or halt the mental decline that comes with Alzheimer’s. But here’s what singing in a choir can do:

• Combat loneliness, at a chemical level: Singing with others increases levels of oxytocin, the “cuddle hormone” that gives us warm fuzzies and makes us feel less alone. Loneliness is so harmful to overall health that researchers are calling it “the new smoking” – equivalent to sucking back 15 cigarettes a day. 

• Harness memory centres undamaged by dementia: Memory isn’t just a matter of recalling what we ate for breakfast, or where we left the keys. We also have semantic memory (general knowledge of the world), procedural memory (the skill to remember motor tasks such as riding a bike), emotional memory and other kinds stored in different parts of the brain. Music recruits multiple memory centres at once, allowing choir members with dementia to recall new songs one week to the next.

• Improve mood, and possibly mental functioning: Singing or listening to music stimulates the brain’s pleasure centres. Enhancing mood reduces depression, freeing up valuable brain resources, according to the researchers behind the Victoria choir. Choir members in the pilot study showed slight improvements in their ability to remember words from a list. They had the same brain damage from dementia, researchers said, but got more mileage from cognitive resources they had.

Dr. Stuart MacDonald, a University of Victoria psychologist involved in the study, described music a “super stimulant” for the brain.

And unlike dodgy "brain supplements" sold online, music is cheap, enjoyable and side-effect free.

Behind the scenes of my latest Globe and Mail article

I'm just wrapping up my biggest ever story for The Globe and Mail – a week before going on book leave for a year with my family in France. Normally I'd be packing by now. Murphy's law, right?

I'm not complaining, though.

Hilary Jordan and her son, Mark, a month after her husband's accident in 1987. Photo courtesy Hilary Jordan

It's been a privilege to dive into the story of Ian Jordan, the Victoria police officer who spent 30 years in a mostly unresponsive state following a car accident on September 22, 1987. 

Heart-wrenching, too. His wife, Hilary Jordan, spent hours with me describing what it's like to care for someone who has only fleeting moments of awareness.

From the time their son was 16 months old to their 45th wedding anniversary in the hospital this spring, she did everything possible to give her brain-injured husband the best possible quality of life. 

I visited the hospital room in Victoria, B.C., where Ian Jordan spent 15 of his 30 years in care. I met a healthcare aide who helped look after his daily needs for 27 years. I spoke with Ole Jorgensen, the Victoria constable who suffered devastating PTSD after his vehicle crashed into Jordan's police cruiser that fateful night.

Finally, I had a phone interview with Hilary's son, Mark Jordan, now 32. He can't remember a time when his father could walk or talk. 

But this injured police officer’s life is far more than a movie-of-the-week tearjerker. Ian Jordan’s story ties in to the evolving science of consciousness. 

Scientists are still cracking the code of human consciousness.

Medical understanding of the human brain has come a long way since 1987. Cutting-edge diagnostic tools have revealed that many patients thought to be unaware are more conscious than we think. Which brings me to the story scoop.

Ian Jordan had two music therapists. What could they do for someone who was barely conscious?

I can’t say more without revealing the story’s clincher. Check here to read more.

I'm off to pack.