Listening to music lowers anxiety
during breast biopsies
Listening to live or recorded music significantly
reduces anxiety for women undergoing surgical breast biopsies for cancer
diagnosis and treatment, new research has found.
The two-year study involved 207 patients.
"We discovered that anxiety levels dropped significantly from pre-test to post-test in patients who heard one preferred song of either live or recorded music before surgery," said lead author Jaclyn Bradley Palmer, music therapist at University Hospitals of Cleveland in Ohio, US.
Patients were randomly assigned to one of three study groups.
One group listened to preferred live music before surgery, one listened to preferred recorded music, and one experienced usual care with no music before surgery.
"In this trial, both live and recorded preoperative music therapy interventions reduced anxiety significantly more than usual preoperative management by 28 and 27 points, representing percent reductions of 43 percent and 41 percent, respectively," she said.
"There wasn't a significant difference in anxiety between live music and recorded music," Bradley Palmer said.
"It seems like music, no matter how it is delivered, had a similar effect on reducing a patient's preoperative anxiety," she said.
"We know that music touches parts of our brain: The emotional centre that creates release of our body's natural opiates, for example, endorphins, enkephalins and serotonin. All of those things that are released, are triggered by auditory stimulation, and music is prime in that," said one of the co-authors of the study, Deforia Lane, from University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Centre.
The music groups and controls did not differ in the amount of anaesthesia requirement needed to reach moderate sedation.
The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
20.08.2015
Can’t concentrate? Here’s what to do
Thanks to the numerous forms of communication and
electronic gadgets that have flooded the market (and our homes today), being
unable to concentrate has become a common complaint.
And one of the biggest distractions today happens to be social media. Whether you're on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (or something else for that matter), millions of people check their social media accounts every couple of minutes to see the activity and what people are up to. While all this is okay to an extent, when it starts affecting your daily chores, work performance or family life, you have a problem on your hands. This is when concentrating on important tasks starts becoming difficult.
While some companies have anyway blocked social media sites from their servers, most haven't. So, the next time you feel like sneaking a look at those sites (on your computer or smartphone), resist the temptation.
- Use your commute time to spend time on your smartphone instead. If you work from home, don't go on social networking sites while you're working.
- Recognising the distraction and realising what it is doing to you is half the battle won. Very often, the urge to immediately reply to an email or a comment distracts you from the task on hand. This will affect your concentration and affect your performance.
- Check your email once every hour. This way you can work uninterrupted and with full concentration. Very often, we take on too many things at once, which causes us to multitask but this could lead to one or several tasks not getting completed properly. While multitasking is not a bad thing, it might not be for everyone.
- Stress is another thing that will not allow you to concentrate properly. Stressful thoughts don't allow you to concentrate on the task properly. To deal with this, try meditation and deep breathing techniques.
20.08.2015
Nobody can go back and start a
new beginning, but anyone can start today to make a new ending
Maria Robinson
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