What Ails You: Music may have powers to soothe savage pain

One of the more frustrating conditions I work with is chronic pain. Today I want to share a novel treatment for those experiencing life-altering, unrelenting pain.

Let’s break chronic pain into three categories for the sake of our discussion. Lancinating pain is pain you can trace with your finger. Persistent lancinating pain can happen anywhere in the body, but the leg is the most commonly affected. Folks who have leg pain caused by a bad back know what lancinating pain is. When I ask them where there pain is, they can trace the course of it with their finger tip from start to end. Lancinating pain is caused, normally, by a single irritated or damaged nerve often running from your back all the way to your foot. The pain is sharp, searing, or electric; it feels like someone is cutting you with a knife.

Regional pain affects a particular area of the body. When I ask you about your pain, you can’t really point to it, but you wave your hand around your shoulder girdle and arm. It’s diffuse, nagging and aching; like a toothache. This is pain caused by multiple structures, not just nerves like the lancinating pain.

Global pain is the most frustrating. I give my patients a drawing of a body to map out their pain and they color in the whole thing, front and back. It’s easier for them to tell me where they don’t hurt than to tell me what hurts. They are tired, overwhelmed, and depressed. They want desperately to get back onto life, but their pain makes it impossible. Pain medication doesn’t phase it and restful sleep never comes.

We have billions of nerve sensors in our body. We don’t know what happens, exactly, but we know that for whatever reason, nerves will start firing randomly and frequently. When they do, you feel pain. Whether you have lancinating, regional or global pain, the same thing is happening. Nerves are firing off messages of danger to the brain, one after the other, making it difficult to think about anything else.

Imagine your neural pathways like a freeway with an inspection station. Imagine pain impulses like red cars. This freeway is overrun with red cars. Every lane is full and the red cars are backing up, one after the other until it seems there is no end to them. The inspector at the station is so used to seeing red cars that he never expects to see anything else and he gets really good at spotting red cars.

If you have chronic pain, you know that a hot soak, rubbing it, or using a pain-relieving gel can relieve your symptoms at least for a few minutes. Imagine that the hot water, the touch of your hand or the tingling sensation of the pain-relieving rub puts blue cars on the freeway. It’s not that the red cars aren’t there, but the blue cars are getting through occasionally and, when they do, the inspector goes “Ahhh.” No pain.

The question then becomes how do we get more blue cars on the freeway?

I read an intriguing study this past week. Thank heaven for people who think out of the box and try things other than surgery and drugs. These researchers took a group of patients with chronic pain, divided them into a test group (treatment) and a control group (no treatment). Personal stereos were programmed with music the patient considered soothing. While listening to their music, the test patients reported significantly lower pain and improved function. They even reported lower levels of pain long after they stopped listening to the music.

Now don’t shake your heads at me and call me silly. This research was really compelling. The group listening to soothing music reported a significant decrease in their level of perceived pain and improvement in their level of function. Function is what it’s all about. Your pain would be more tolerable if you could just have your life back, right? While listening to their music, the test patients were able to resume many of their usual activities.

Try this treatment. Worst case scenario you wind up with a personal stereo that plays only music you like. That’s worth giving the treatment shot, isn’t it?

You’ll need a programmable MP3 or CD player with a good set of headphones. You’re not playing this music on the household stereo.

Next you’ll need someone computer literate enough to program your music for you (if, like me, you’re not able to do it yourself). Most of us know a teenager who would love the opportunity to show off their programming skills. There are services online that let you pick and choose from thousands of titles and download individual pieces or whole albums for less than you would pay in stores.

The music you’re looking for is highly personal and soothing; remember we’re not looking for jumpy music that makes you want to dance or run out of the room. I have a friend who loves Indian drums and flutes and another who loves opera. I like music that is highly singable: standards, 70’s pop, Motown. What speaks to you?

Now sit back and listen. Allow yourself to get lost in the music. Here come the blue cars. Before long, the highway is full of soothing blue cars. Keep those blue cars coming long enough and the inspector gets less sensitive to the red cars which drives down the intensity of your pain. Try taking a gentle walk while you’re listening to your music. Before long, as you learn to work your musical cure, you’ll be doing the things you wanted to do. Relax, enjoy, and happy listening.

ABOUT THE WRITER:
Jackie Randa is a physical therapist who owns Back on Track in Barstow. She can be contacted at jranda@aol.com