The Nuance
Music Can Get Us Through This
Why a good tune is so good at relieving stress, anxiety, sadness, and other negative emotional states
Surgical operations tend to be stressful experiences, and that stress can cause problems.
“The outcome of a surgery is very much predicted by the state a patient is in right before the operation — their emotional and physical state,” says Daniel Levitin, PhD, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Canada and author of, among other books, This Is Your Brain on Music.
Anxiousness can elevate a person’s heart rate and blood pressure in ways that slow wound healing, delay recovery, and increase the risk of infection. Heavy pre-op jitters can also interfere with the onset of surgical anesthesia. “So those preoperative minutes are crucial to the long-term success of the operation,” Levitin says.
To counteract these risks, doctors often give their patients a mild sedative such as Valium — something to settle the heart and nerves. But for a 2009 study, a team at Södertälje Hospital in Sweden took a different tack: Instead of administering a drug, they had patients listen to relaxing music for roughly 20 to 40 minutes before going under the knife. (The patients could choose from several genres of music, such as…
