Want your medicines to be more effective? Research suggests that turning up your favourite song while popping the pills may be of help soon. While previous studies have used music-listening interventions as a tool to treat pain and anxiety, a team from the Michigan State University in the US took a novel approach by studying the effects of music-listening interventions on chemotherapy-induced nausea.

“Music-listening interventions are like over-the-counter medications,” said Jason Kiernan, Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing. “You don’t need a doctor to prescribe them.”

“Pain and anxiety are both neurological phenomena and are interpreted in the brain as a state. Chemotherapy-induced nausea is not a stomach condition; it is a neurological one,” Kiernan said.

The small pilot study, published in the journal Clinical Nursing Research, included 12 patients undergoing chemotherapy treatment who agreed to listen to their favourite music for 30 minutes each time they needed to take their as-needed anti-nausea medication.

They repeated the music intervention anytime nausea occurred over the five days beyond their chemotherapy treatment. The patients in the study provided a total of 64 events.

“When we listen to music, our brains fire all kinds of neurons,” Kiernan said.

While Kiernan did see a reduction in the ratings of patients’ nausea severity and their distress (how much it bothered them to be nauseous), he cautions that it is difficult to isolate whether it was the gradual release of the medication doing its job or the increased benefit of the music.    Source: IANS