“Indeed, music is a potent tool for the future of precision medicine. As the scientific community continues to elucidate the emotional landscape of music, as well as how it differs from listener to listener, new methods for alleviating disease severity and improving overall well-being await both patients and otherwise healthy members of the general public.

The effect of music on our brains has clinical implications as well. Growing evidence suggests, for example, that listening to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major can reduce the frequency of seizures in some people with epilepsy.

Identifying the exact type of music able to provoke a particular cognitive, motor, or emotional response, there could be progress toward healing, improving, or compensating for disrupted brain function in various diseases. An increased understanding of brain mechanisms can facilitate this.

David Silbersweig, the Stanley Cobb Professor of Psychiatry at HMS and chair emeritus of the Department of Psychiatry at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is interested in uncovering answers to these questions. A leader in functional neuroimaging research in psychiatry, he investigates how brain regions and networks function when we perceive, think, feel, and act.

“We seem to be very much tuned for music”

“It’s at the systems level with brain imaging that you can directly correlate mental states and brain states — and measure them.” Silbersweig says. “Neuroimaging provides a noninvasive way of correlating brain structural and functional abnormalities with specific aspects of music processing.”

STRESS

Another factor in music’s ability to reduce pain likely stems from its competition for our attention. “If you’re thinking about something else, then you’re not thinking about your pain, and you feel less pain,” says psychologist David Bradshaw, who studies pain relief at the University of Utah’s Pain Research Center.  Bradshaw’s research shows that the more actively engaged a person is in music, the less pain they feel. For instance, a group of non-musicians asked to listen for errors in a musical passage reported less pain when receiving small electric shocks than those who passively listened to the music. 

Other work out of Bradshaw’s lab suggests that certain personality factors, such as a propensity toward anxiety or the ability to become easily absorbed in activities, may lead individuals to experience greater relief from engaged music listening. These findings suggest that physicians should consider patients’ personalities when recommending pain treatment programs. 

Listening to a song can have a real effect on various parts of the brain, with studies showing that areas responsible for aspects, such as memory and vision, can ‘light up’ in response to music.

“There’s a very wide range of reactions in the body and mind to music, and brain imaging studies have shown that various parts of the brain may be activated by a piece of music.”,  says Dr Victoria Williamson, lecturer in psychology at Goldsmith’s College, London.

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‘For example, a recent study in Canada showed that there’s a real causal relationship between music and the reward system, a core part of the brain that reacts to stimuli, which are good for us – food, light, sex for example – and reinforces these behaviors meaning that we do them more.’

Researchers at McGill University in Montreal showed that listening to pleasurable music of any description induced ‘musical chills’, which triggered the release of the feel-good chemical dopamine.

“We all know from our own individual experiences that listening to music can affect mood”, says Bridget O’Connell, head of information at the mental health charity Mind.

Music may even be able to help you concentrate.

A new ‘digital tonic’ called Ubrain, which can be downloaded onto smartphones, claims to be able to help people focus, energise, wake up as well as relax.

The process uses two different beats in each ear to create a third ‘perceived’ beat (a binaural beat), which can stimulate certain activity in the brain.

“By helping the brain cortex to generate specific brain waves, we can induce different states of alertness, depending on what we aim to do”, explains Paris-based clinical psychologist Brigitte Forgeot.

If we’re feeling anxious or stressed, we can encourage our cerebral cortex to produce slow alpha-frequency brain waves, while on the other end of the scale, if we help our cortex to produce faster beta waves, we will be better equipped to concentrate and focus our attention on a fairly lengthy task.

FOCUS

Music may even be able to help you concentrate.

A new ‘digital tonic’ called Ubrain, which can be downloaded onto smartphones, claims to be able to help people focus, energise, wake up as well as relax.

The process uses two different beats in each ear to create a third ‘perceived’ beat (a binaural beat), which can stimulate certain activity in the brain.

“By helping the brain cortex to generate specific brain waves, we can induce different states of alertness, depending on what we aim to do”, explains Paris-based clinical psychologist Brigitte Forgeot.

If we’re feeling anxious or stressed, we can encourage our cerebral cortex to produce slow alpha-frequency brain waves, while on the other end of the scale, if we help our cortex to produce faster beta waves, we will be better equipped to concentrate and focus our attention on a fairly lengthy task.

PREVENTION OF DISEASE by increasing the immunity through music—AMAZING!

Can listening to music actually help prevent disease? Some researchers think so.

Wilkes University researchers looked at how music affects levels of IgA — an important antibody for our immune system’s first line of defense against disease. Undergraduate students had their salivary IgA levels measured before and after 30 minutes of exposure to one of four conditions — listening to a tone click, a radio broadcast, a tape of soothing music or silence. Those students exposed to the soothing music had significantly greater increases in IgA than any of the other conditions, suggesting that exposure to music (and not other sounds) might improve innate immunity.

Another study from Massachusetts General Hospital found that listening to Mozart’s piano sonatas helped relax critically ill patients by lowering stress hormone levels, but the music also decreased blood levels of interleukin-6 — a protein that has been implicated in higher mortality rates, diabetes and heart problems.

According to a 2013 meta-analysis, authors Mona Lisa Chanda and Daniel Levitin concluded that music has the potential to augment immune response systems, but that the findings to date are preliminary. Still, as Levitin notes in one article on the study, “I think the promise of music as medicine is that it’s natural and it’s cheap and it doesn’t have the unwanted side effects that many pharmaceutical products do.”

FOR THE DISEASED PATIENTS

Music can actually have a significant positive impact on patients with long-term illnesses, such as heart disease, cancer and respiratory conditions (Home, in nursing homes, hospitals, the office, etc…)

Numerous trials have shown that music can help lower heart rate, blood pressure and help relieve pain, anxiety and improve patient quality of life.

“Music can be incredibly useful for somebody who is in a situation where they have lost a lot of control from their external environment – say they are in hospital for a long period of time with a serious illness and less able to move around,” says Dr Williamson.

‘It can give them a sense of control back, as well as creating a calm personal atmosphere and blocking out some of the disturbances around the patient.

According to sports researchers Peter Terry and Costas Karageorghis, “Music has the capacity to capture attention, lift spirits, generate emotion, change or regulate mood, evoke memories, increase work output, reduce inhibitions and encourage rhythmic movement — all of which have potential applications in sport and exercise.”

MUSIC IS AMAZING ON OUR HUMAN BODY REGARDING OUR HEALTH!! WHAT A GREAT MEDICINE!!

“If you want to firm up your body, head to the gym. If you want to exercise your brain, listen to music.

Pain relief with a pain relieving nature-MUSIC.

The improvement of physical wellbeing through music isn’t only about perceived pain relief. Studies show that playing music for patients before, during, and after medical procedures can help lower blood pressure, reduce anxiety and stress, ease muscle tension, and more.  At the Chronic Pain Care Center at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, music therapy is part of the array of techniques that patients learn to help control their pain, according to osteopathic physician Steven Stanos, medical director of the center. As Stanos sees it, there is no reason not to take time to listen to music.  “What we’ve learned from our pain patients is that any intervention that can be distracting, relaxing, and enjoyable — whether it’s music or another therapy — can decrease the experience of pain,” Stanos says. 

Listening to a song can have a real effect on various parts of the brain, with studies showing that areas responsible for aspects, such as memory and vision, can ‘light up’ in response to music.

‘There’s a very wide range of reactions in the body and mind to music, and brain imaging studies have shown that various parts of the brain may be activated by a piece of music,’ says Dr Victoria Williamson, lecturer in psychology at Goldsmith’s College, London.

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‘For example, a recent study in Canada showed that there’s a real causal relationship between music and the reward system, a core part of the brain that reacts to stimuli, which are good for us – food, light, sex for example – and reinforces these behaviors meaning that we do them more.’

Researchers at McGill University in Montreal showed that listening to pleasurable music of any description induced ‘musical chills’, which triggered the release of the feel-good chemical dopamine.

Music so impacting to our brain that music is even considered having a pain-relieving nature, scientists are exploring how the brain processes music during pain. Look at when we go to the doctor or better the dentist. More are less out to go to the dentist as opposed to the MD since a doctor’s visit doesn’t include the day of the visit or soon later a drill going in out mouth to take care of a cavity or worse Root Canal Surgery, you get the picture. Remember when you have or if you still do regularly go to the dentist there is always soft music in the background. This is because it calms the body through how the brain reacts to soft music as opposed to hard rough music.

When the body encounters something painful — you step on a tack or having a drill applied to a cavity with no novacaine if allergic or the patient just refuses the medication, for instance — electrochemical signals travel from the site of the injury to the spinal cord and on to the brain. There, several brain regions work together to process pain signals — ultimately resulting in the conscious experience of, “Ow, that hurts!” In contrast, brain scans reveal that listening to pleasing music increases activity in parts of the brain’s reward center. 

“Pleasant music triggers the release of the brain chemical dopamine,” explains Robert Zatorre, of McGill University, who studies emotion and music. This change “is strongly associated with other rewarding and motivating stimuli, such as food, sex, and certain addictive drugs,” Zatorre adds. Scientists believe that music’s ability to make you feel good may be one way it helps to alleviate pain.

PLEASING TUNES = RELIEVING PAIN

Studies also suggest that how good a song makes you feel affects your perception of pain. Although musical taste is subjective, there are common features of music that evoke fairly universal responses. For instance, most people find musical consonance (harmonies or chords) to be pleasant and dissonance (clashing notes) to be unpleasant.

When scientists asked study volunteers to evaluate pain while they listened to different types of music, researchers found that people who listened to excerpts of music judged by most to be pleasant (such as the Romantic music piece “The Blue Danube Waltz“) reported less pain than those who listened to unpleasant music (such as Steve Reich’s modern classical piece “Pendulum Music“). The more pleasing the listeners found the music to be, the less pain they felt. 

Other studies suggest that music can interfere with pain signals even before they reach the brain — at the level of the spinal cord. In these studies, scientists examine how different types of music change the withdrawal reflex: an involuntary organized entirely in the spinal cord. 

In one study, scientists measured how forcefully volunteers withdrew their feet after being mildly electrically zapped on an ankle as they listened to music. Compared with pleasant music, unpleasant music resulted in stronger leg reflexes and greater reports of pain. 

Psychologist Mathieu Roy, of the University of Colorado, Boulder, who conducted the study, says these results suggest that music can prevent the transmission of pain signals from the spinal cord to the brain.

“Since 2006, two UCF professors — neuroscientist Kiminobu Sugaya and world-renowned violinist Ayako Yonetani — have been teaching one of the most popular courses in The Burnett Honors College. “Music and the Brain” explores how music impacts brain function and human behavior, including by reducing stress, pain and symptoms of depression as well as improving cognitive and motor skills, spatial-temporal learning and neurogenesis, which is the brain’s ability to produce neurons. Sugaya and Yonetani teach how people with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s also respond positively to music.

We can usually pick if a piece of music is particularly happy or sad, but this isn’t just a subjective idea that comes from how it makes us feel. In fact, our brains actually respond differently to happy and sad music. Even short pieces of happy or sad music can affect us.

When we hear a form of music we actually match the tone of the music with our mood or reaction to it. This means that sometimes we can understand the emotions of a piece of music without actually feeling them, which explains why some of us find listening to sad music to enjoyable, rather than depressing or sad to others.

We all like to pump up the tunes when we’re powering through our to-do lists, right? But when it comes to creative work, loud music may not be the best option.

It turns out that a moderate level of noises is the sweet level for creativity. Even more than low noise levels, ambient noise apparently gets our creative juices flowing, and doesn’t put us off the way high levels of noise does.

The way this works is that moderate noise levels increase processing difficulty which promotes abstract processing, leading to higher creativity. In other words, when we struggle (just enough) to process things as we normally would, we resort to more creative approaches.

In high noise levels, however, our creative thinking is impaired because we’re overwhelmed and struggle to process information efficiently.

This is very similar to how temperature and lighting can affect our productivity, where paradoxically a slightly more crowded place can be beneficial.

Of course, generalizing based on some studies is very hard. However looking at the science of introverts and extroverts, there is some clear overlap showing the following:

To break it down, here is the connection they has been found about people (again remember this is generally speaking):

• Blues fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle and at ease

• Jazz fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing and at ease

• Classical music fans have high self-esteem, are creative, introvert and at ease

• Rap fans have high self-esteem and are outgoing

• Opera fans have high self-esteem, are creative and gentle

• Country and western fans are hardworking and outgoing

• Reggae fans have high self-esteem, are creative, not hardworking, outgoing, gentle and at ease

• Dance fans are creative and outgoing but not gentle

• Indie fans have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard working, and not gentle

• Bollywood fans are creative and outgoing

• Rock/heavy metal fans have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard-working, not outgoing, gentle, and at ease

• Chart pop fans have high self-esteem, are hardworking, outgoing and gentle, but are not creative and not at ease

• Soul fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle, and at ease.  Playing music expands our thinking. We generally assume that learning a musical instrument can be beneficial for kids, but it’s actually useful in more ways than we might expect.  Studies have shown that children who had three years or more musical instrument training performed better than those who didn’t learn an instrument in auditory discrimination abilities and fine motor skills.
• Instrument playing is a form of exercise that is great for your health as opposed to sitting watching t.v. where no creativity or imagining or brain concentrating takes place.
• It seems that unfamiliar, or uninteresting, music is best for safe driving. Reason: Less Distracted.

Research on the effects of music during exercise has been done for years. In 1911, an American researcher, Leonard Ayres, found that cyclists pedaled faster while listening to music than they did in silence.

This happens because listening to music can drown out our brain’s cries of fatigue. As our body realizes we’re tired and wants to stop exercising, it sends signals to the brain to stop for a break. Listening to music competes for our brain’s attention, and can help us to override those signals of fatigue, though this is mostly beneficial for low- and moderate-intensity exercise. During high-intensity exercise, music isn’t as powerful at pulling our brain’s attention away from the pain of the workout.

Not only can we push through the pain to exercise longer and harder when we listen to music, but it can actually help us to use our energy more efficiently. A 2012 study showed that cyclists who listened to music required 7% less oxygen to do the same work as those who cycled in silence.

Some recent research has shown that there’s a ceiling effect on music at around 145 bpm, where anything higher doesn’t seem to add much motivation, so keep that in mind when choosing your workout playlist.

We all have a genre; for those wondering what is that actually it is a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content

“The kind of music one listens to determines one’s reaction to it. No genre is harmful, but there is a preferable choice in different situations. For instance, studies have found that percussion stimulates the left side of the brain, so if one were solving Mathematics problems, or having to reach a logical conclusion, that music would be beneficial. Similarly, for an artiste, instrumental music or Soul would work better,” explains Khurana.

According to Dr Shaan Manohar, ENT specialist, Nanavati Hospital, “Japan has done a study on applying music to water as it freezes and check the patterns of crystals formed. It was concluded that loud drumbeats and music with violent poetry tend to have a destructive effect on the crystals versus Classical music, soft love tracks or devotional lyrics had an enhancing effect on the crystal formation. Loud drumbeats are also known to interfere with the pace of the heart in the very young and the elderly. It is a known fact that listening to Classical music enhances the mathematical ability of a growing child. Also, chanting helps release endorphins in the body creating a calm person, full of positive energy.”

“Blood clotting, or coagulation, is an important process that prevents excessive bleeding when a blood vessel is injured. Platelets (a type of blood cell) and proteins in your plasma (the liquid part of blood) work together to stop the bleeding by forming a clot over the injury. Typically, your body will naturally dissolve the blood clot after the injury has healed. Sometimes, however, clots form on the inside of vessels without an obvious injury or do not dissolve naturally. These situations can be dangerous and require accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment.

Clots can occur in veins or arteries, which are vessels that are part of the body’s circulatory system. While both types of vessels help transport blood throughout the body, they each function differently. Veins are low-pressure vessels that carry deoxygenated blood away from the body’s organs and back to the heart. An abnormal clot that forms in a vein may restrict the return of blood to the heart and can result in pain and swelling as the blood gathers behind the clot.”

American Society of Hematology (https://www.hematology.org/education/patients/blood-clots)

Why blood clotting is a vital important part of the bloodstream through platelets and how it works is what would we will review first to understand disseminated intra-vascular coagulopathy (DIC).  It is a vital important process of the platelets that make up part of our bloodstream cells that help prevent excessive bleeding or excessive hemorrhage.

In how clotting works is platelets, which is a type of blood cell, with plasma that is in our liguid part of blood work together to stop the bleeding by forming a clot over the injury (a bruise or cut in the skin) which stops the bleed.  Both veins and arteries transport our blood (both solids=cells) and the liguid (the plasma) that are read by out hematocrit and hemoglobin in a CBC=complete blood count which also tell the MD our reading of red/white blood cell counts with platelets.  Typically, your body will dissolve the clot after the injury has healed.  However, there are times clots form on the inside of our vessels (there are variables of why this would happen that are discussed later in this topic).  These situations can be dangerous and put the pt at risk for problems.  This needs to be diagnosed and given appropriate treatment by your doctor or MD specialist.

Clots can occur in our veins or arteries and can occur is various areas causing

1-DVT=Deep Vein Thrombosis

DVT commonly in our large veins that are commonly found in our lower extremities and less likely in our upper extremities or pelvic region or other areas where there are large veins. The problem (one the clot is wedged and stuck against the vessel) with this the clot blocks off circulation to the area below the clot to a percentage low to 100% blockage.  This is where in the skin there is pain to necrosis below the clot area (for this to happen it takes numerous hours-pain to days-changes in skin color or week or more-necrosis depending on the blockage).   The greater the blockage is the quicker the symptoms arise no matter where the clot is.  It is estimated that each year DVT affects as many as 900,000 people in the United States by the American Heart Association and kills up to 100,000 by the Centers for Control and Prevention (CDC).

-Paget-Schroetter Syndrome (PSS) – It’s a rare kind of DVT that typically happens to a young, healthy person who plays sports that use the upper arms a lot, like swimming and baseball. The vein can get squeezed by the muscles around it. This pressure, along with repeated movements, can cause a clot in your shoulder. Symptoms like swelling, chest pain, and a blue color to your skin may come on suddenly. PSS can be serious if it’s not treated right away.

2-Atrial Fibrillation

Another area where blood clotting can occur is in the heart.   We see commercials all the time about atrial fibrillation=irregular rhythm with the heart beat.  In the commercial its usual an add for a med called a anticoagulant that does the opposite of what platelets do=clotting to prevent this problem from happening in the heart which indirectly prevents clotting in all vessels as well.  The med thins the blood.   The major problem with this diagnosis, atrial fibrillation without being on a anticoagulant, is blood can pool in the heart causing a clot to form in the heart and at some point, especially when the rhythm is rapid and more irregular that usual=RVR-rapid ventricular rate over 100 beats per minute and usually over 130 to over 150, the clot can break off.

3-Heart Attack

Know this, more often than not, a broken piece of plaque within the arteries triggers the formation of a blood clot. This blood clot is the reason for a heart attack. As the blood clot potentially restricts the flow of blood and oxygen to the heart, depending on the severity, the heart attack can cause sudden death.

There are other areas where blood can form clots but not as common in what was mentioned above. Blood clots can arise anywhere in your body. They develop when blood thickens and clumps together. When a clot forms in a deep vein in the body, it’s called deep vein thrombosis. Deep vein blood clots typically occur in the lower leg or thigh.

The biggest consequence of any blood clot no matter where it is it can break off in time for many especially with a DVT.   Than there is  atrial fibrillation patients not on a anti-coagulant or anti-platelet like Coumadin, Eliquis, heparin, and lovenox to Plavix, Brilinta, Ticlid and Integrilin with other medications (listed commonly used in my nursing career) it puts them at risk for a clot to break off in the heart due to pooling blood causing a clot formation and when it breaks off it could go the the lungs causing pulmonary embolus or the brain a stroke.

For understanding the meaning lets review; Deep vein thrombosis (DVT) is a condition in which a blood clot develops in the deep veins, usually in the lower extremities. A pulmonary embolism (PE) occurs when a part of the DVT clot breaks off and travels to the lungs, which can be life-threatening. Venous thromboembolism (VTE) refers to DVT, PE, or both.

When a clot breaks off it floats now in the bloodstream and can in time make it back to the heart putting the pt at risk for a heart attack if it didn’t get stuck elsewhere, like going to the lungs putting the pt at risk for a pulmonary embolism or now in circulation making it to the brain putting the pt at risk for a stroke!  Clots are common in making the strokes in what we call ischemic stroke and another name “silent stroke”.   Silent strokes are much more common than strokes that cause classic symptoms such as face drooping, arm weakness and speech difficulty and affect nearly 800,000 Americans each year. According to the statement, one in four people over 80 have one or more silent strokes.

SARS, MERS, and Corona Viruses  are all caused by some CORONA VIRUS!

Through the National Library of Medicine they state:

“In the 21^st century, we have seen a total of three outbreaks by members of the coronavirus family. Although the first two outbreaks did not result in a pandemic, the third and the latest outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) culminated in a pandemic. This pandemic has been extremely significant on a social and international level. As these viruses belong to the same family, they are closely related. Despite their numerous similarities, they have slight distinctions that render them distinct from one another!”

Both COVID-19 and SARS are caused by coronaviruses. The virus that causes SARS is known as SARS-CoV, while the virus that causes COVID-19 is known as SARS-CoV-2.  So what does this mean?  A severe respiratory illness that is caused by a coronavirus (Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related virus of the genus Betacoronavirus) 

SARS is caused by Betacoronavirus that is one of four genera of coronaviruses. Member viruses are enveloped, positive-strand RNA viruses that infect mammals, including humans.  The first generation of covid.

COVID-19, which is caused by the 2019 coronavirus, has been dominate news starting 2019. However, you may have first become familiar with the term coronavirus during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003.

Both COVID-19 and SARS are caused by coronaviruses. The virus that causes SARS is known as SARS-CoV, while the virus that causes COVID-19 is known as SARS-CoV-2. There are also other types of human coronaviruses.

Despite similar names, there are several differences between the coronaviruses that cause COVID-19 and SARS.

Copyright © 2020 European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.”

Their references: