Updates on Music with Surgery

Good Monday morning to you! As you may know, helping people to use music with their surgery is one of the main things that I do. There is so much research out there on the multiple and varied benefits of music THROUGH HEADPHONES during surgery that it's no surprise that more and more hospitals are offering music to incoming surgery patients during the pre-surgery phase. I'm working hard to create a powerful and easy-to-use system that patients can take into surgery or having waiting for them in the waiting area. I'm working on an eBook right now that will provide a step-by-step process for creating your own surgery playlist and talking with your physician/surgeon about using music before, during and after the procedure.

As I travel around the country I try to talk with as many interested physicians as possible about these ideas. On a recent trip to Sarasota, Florida, I had the pleasure of meeting with Dr. Marlene Buckler, an ER doc who is very excited about my music and surgery ideas and has given me many insights and suggestions already. I'd like to refer my readers to her website http://www.stayoutofmyer.com/ and suggest that you sign up for her free "Tip of the Week." I've worked with hundreds of people now, helping them choose the perfect music for their procedure. I hope you'll consider it and tell your friends to visit my website for more info! Have a great week!

Music and Anesthesia

Earlier today I was talking with an old friend about the benefits of music during surgery. Of course the number one benefit that I usually tell people is the fact that reasearch has documented that people using music during surgery have been known to need less than 50% of the usual amount of anesthesia. Why is this important? Because anesthesia is one of the main things that one must recover from after surgery. Pretty much all of the bodily functions such as peristaltic action, come to a grinding halt during surgery. You do know about peristaltic action? Let me quote from Wikipedia: Peristalsis is the rhythmic contraction of smooth muscles to propel contents through the digestive tract. The word is derived from New Latin and comes from the Greek peristaltikos, peristaltic, from peristellein, "to wrap around," and stellein, "to place." In much of the gastrointestinal tract, smooth muscles contract in sequence to produce a peristaltic wave which forces a ball of food (called a bolus while in the esophagus and gastrointestinal tract and chyme in the stomach) along the gastrointestinal tract. Peristaltic movement is initiated by circular smooth muscles contracting behind the chewed material to prevent it from moving back into the mouth, followed by a contraction of longitudinal smooth muscles which pushes the digested food forward."

In other words, you are likely to be very constipated after surgery. The anesthesia causes not only this but lots of other potentially life-threatening conditions. If music through headphones can help, let's do it!!

Super Bowl and Surgery

Are you watching the Super Bowl? I've got one eye on it and the other on my laptop where I'm working on ways to let people know about all the benefits of music during surgery. Each day brings more requests from people who've just found out that they need surgery and are looking for holistic tools to create a safer surgical experience and improve their chances for a speedy and healthy recovery. In the recent past I've worked with patients having hip replacements, heart surgery, prostate surgery, hysterectomies, and C-sections. It's a fact that listening to your favorite music through headphones greatly decreases patient anxiety and the need for benzodiazepenese and other potentially addictive medications.

It also reduces the amount of anesthesia you'll require during the procedure and the amount of pain medication you'll require after surgery! Is this wishful thinking or superstition? NO! This is documented scientific research that you can read about on my blog "Surgery with Music," listed in the box below. Please check it out and share it with friends and family who might be having surgery in the near future. You can also sign up for a personal surgery consultation HERE. Give yourself every possible benefit for surgery with music chosen especially for you and your procedure.

Hospitilizations and Music

I've just found out that my mother is back in the hopital. I'm so disappointed and sad because she seemed to be doing so well, but when you have multiple chronic conditions, it really is to be expected I guess. The picture here was made of my mother on her 82nd birthday just a little over a month ago. She was feeling just great then! Anyway, she will undoubtedly be listening to her favorite music while there but she'll also be listening to basketball games on TV because she loves sports of all kinds!! I think when a person is in the hospital the best plan is to let them listen to what they choose but just be sure to offer lots of good music to them. I'll keep you posted!

Should you use Christmas Music with your surgery?

You know, that may sound like a silly question, but I have gotten it and many more like it and it is actually a very logical question. Is there a magical formula for the music that works best during surgery? Believe it or not, there is! And I'm going to give it to you in a general way The music you already love that is:

• slow and steady-tempo of the healthy, resting heartbeat
• purely instrumental
• no more than three gentle instruments

What do I mean by "gentle instruments"? I mean something like a flute, a harp, a cello, or even a quiet piano. What wouldn't work?...a trumpet, a tuba, anything that has a bit of an "edge" to it. Feel free to disagree, but these are the instruments that people report that they find relaxing, soothing, comforting.

Can Christmas music fall nto this category? Of course! This year I made a CD that is mostly soft, quiet Christmas music. At least one person I know used it during their surgery and reported good results!

Music and Hip Replacements

This morning I was working with a new client of mine who is having total hip replacement surgery. She's 75 years old and has had a couple ofunfortunate surgical experiences lately in large hospitals. This time she's decided to go with a small local hospital and to try some alternative therapies along with the traditional. In looking online she found my site, http://www.healingmusicenterprises.com/ and loads of information about music and surgery. She immediately set up a 30-minute consultation which we had this morning. She's come up with the idea that she'll get two brand-new Ipod shuffles and use one fo the pre ad post surgery music and one for the surgery music. In talking with her, we came up with several different ideas for her music and I told her how to download it on her computer and then upload it to her iPod. Technology is amazing! Having surgery? Please give me a call so that I can help YOU!

The Hospital of the Future

Music is being utilized today in hospitals and clinics around the world. Music has an ability to minimize pain, leading to the combination of music and anesthesia in operations where routine medical sedatives are not effective. Music medicine is beginning to be considered a complimentary therapy. "People undergoing surgery require less anesthesia, awaken from anesthesia more quickly and with less side effects, and heal more rapidly when healing music is played before, during and after the surgical procedure. Patients recovering from heart attacks and strokes respond much more quickly to treatment when soothing music is played in their rooms." 1 In 2004, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation released a report based on 600 studies showing that design in hospitals, including sound and light, can have a dramatic effect on how fast and how well patients recover. The concept is to program the hospital with musical selections, one for every place, time and stage of recovery. From the intensive care unit to the chapel, music will be used in each space to speed up the healing process, assure optimal performance by hospital staff, and help visitors best pass the time and peacefully find their way around. The designers of today's hospitals are thinking about the idea of 'prescriptive sound', sound designed for direct application to ease specific traumas, as part of an effort to create a new holistic healing environment. Many diverse hospitals around the country are incorporating music as therapy in a variety of applications. At St. Agnes hospital in Baltimore , Maryland , critical care patients listen to classical music. "Half an hour of music produces the same effect as 10 milligrams of Valium," reports Raymond Bahr, MD, director of coronary care. At Nathan Goldblatt Memorial hospital in Chicago , Ill , music precedes anesthesia in the operating rooms. The University of Chicago 's Medical Research Center combines music and anesthesia. "Music can reduce anxiety and stress, lower heart rates and blood pressure and help minimize cardiac complications after an operation." "Picture your hospital experience in the year 2084. Your first floor room opens onto a lush courtyard garden. The TV & soap operas have been replaced with the gentle sounds of healing music. Fresh scents of various flowers, spices and herbs waive through the room in prescriptioned response to your ailment. A nearby lamp bathes you in soft colors, which seem to soothe your pain. Barely audible words of encouragement, joy and humor come from the tiny speaker near your pillow. A fantasy? Not so say the participants at the Hospital As Temple conference which took place earlier this year in the Netherlands . Creating a healing environment was the theme of this second of a series of three conferences, organized by the Forum Health Care division of the Davidhuis Foundation in Rotterdam . These series of conferences endeavor to foster a new vision of medicine as it might be practiced in the Hospital of the future."