Why listening to your favorite songs is just as good as taking painkillers, Dr. MICHAEL MOSLEY

Music has the power to stimulate our hearts, but studies are now increasingly showing that music can also have a surprisingly powerful impact on our well-being.

The latest finding deals with pain relief. It turns out that listening to your favorite songs is a great way to relieve pain. I decided to put this discovery to the test during another recent visit to my dentist for a problematic tooth.

After explaining to my dentist why, I put on my headphones and listened to some of my favorite music (U2 and The Prodigy, if you’re interested) while he dug around.

Did it make a difference? Emphatically, yes. The procedure was surprisingly painless until I had to pay the bill.

The research that inspired this particular self-experiment was published last month in the journal Frontiers by researchers at McGill University’s Pain Center in Montreal, Canada. They started gently by asking 63 volunteers to choose from “their favorite music of all time”. ‘.

They then asked the volunteers to listen to the music of their choice, the music the researchers had chosen for them, or to wear headphones that dampened any noise.

While this was happening, the researchers briefly placed a heated rod-like device, called a thermal probe, on their forearms. Although very painful, like pressing a hot cup of coffee against your skin, it is unlikely to cause serious damage.

Researchers found study participants who listened to their favorite music felt the least pain – and the reduction was equivalent to taking a strong over-the-counter pain reliever. The effect was particularly evident among volunteers who reported getting “chills” when listening to their favorite songs.

This echoes a previous review published in the Lancet in 2015, in which researchers examined the results of 72 studies involving almost 7,000 patients who were exposed to music before, during or after surgery and compared their response to control groups who did not hear music. .

The researchers from Brunel University and Queen Mary University of London found that patients who listened to music felt significantly less anxious after surgery and required significantly less painkillers.

As music is a simple, cheap and fun intervention, and one in three older adults in the UK suffer from chronic pain, it would be great to see more research into ways to improve its pain-relieving effects (stock photo)

Although the effect was greatest in those who listened to their favorite songs before surgery, it also worked after surgery and, surprisingly, some people still had less pain after surgery, even if the music was only played during became the operation. This suggests that even though they were unconscious, something was getting through.

It’s not clear why music has this effect, although one theory is that it triggers the release of endocannabinoids, cannabis-like substances that our bodies naturally produce.

A few years ago I took part in an experiment at the University of Nottingham in which a group of us measured endocannabinoid levels in our blood before and after singing in a choir or after a 30-minute workout on an exercise bike.

Although both activities resulted in an increase in endocannabinoids, the effect was doubled when singing (blood levels increased by 42 percent). The researchers concluded that singing can be a great natural way to improve mood. I haven’t seen any research showing that just listening to music has a similar effect, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it did.

As music is a simple, cheap and fun intervention, and one in three older adults in the UK suffer from chronic pain, it would be fantastic if more research was carried out into ways to improve its pain-relieving effects.

The effect was particularly pronounced among volunteers who reported getting “chills” when listening to their favorite songs

And it’s not just about pain. When I researched the benefits of listening to music for my podcast series Just One Thing (available on BBC Sounds), I found a variety of reasons why you might want to spend more time listening to your favorite songs.

First, it is good for the heart. Listening to music helps reduce stress (and as we know, stress is bad news for heart health) and also affects your blood vessels.

In a small but fascinating study from 2005, researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in the US asked ten volunteers to listen to 30 minutes of music that made them happy, music that made them anxious, or a relaxing tape .

You won’t be surprised to learn that the volunteers’ blood vessels dilated by an average of 26 percent when they listened to “happy” music, and that the effects lasted for several hours.

When your blood vessels are more dilated, it not only improves blood flow to your tissues, but also lowers your blood pressure. Listening to the relaxation tape made no difference, while listening to music that made the volunteers anxious narrowed their blood vessels by six percent.

So put on the headphones and find your favorite groove.

Does 3D Printing Cure Hair Loss?

Many people suffering from hair loss are understandably desperate to take action. If you suffer from typical male hair loss, you can try the drug Finasteride; Women can choose minoxidil.

These medications are not for everyone, they can be expensive and only work as long as you keep taking them.

Hair transplants are another, albeit significantly more expensive, option. This involves removing strips of skin containing hair follicles from one part of your scalp and sewing them onto another part – or you can have individual hair follicles transplanted.

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the US have announced that they have succeeded in creating 3D-printed hair follicles on lab-grown human skin tissue (stock photo).

It takes time and doesn’t always last. And what happens when you run out of hair follicles?

Now researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the US have announced that they have succeeded in creating 3D-printed hair follicles on lab-grown human skin tissue. Initially they will be used for drug testing, but in the future they could help people who want a new hair.

What the master brain chair teaches us about stress

You can tell if someone is stressed by watching how fast they blink, according to a fascinating new study from the University of Arizona that examined the blink rates of contestants on the television series “Mastermind.”

I’ve been asked to participate in “Celebrity Mastermind” several times, but I’ve always said no, mostly because I’m afraid of panicking in the famous black chair and getting a really low score.

But it was precisely because of De Leerstoel’s stress that the researchers came to the conclusion that it would be a good way to test certain ideas about stress. They analyzed 25 episodes and carefully measured the blink rate of 100 participants from the moment they sat in the chair to the moment they left it.

We normally blink about 20 times a minute, but when we’re stressed, the pace increases: The participants’ speed almost doubled, to the point where they were almost ready to respond when they almost stopped blinking altogether. The main reason we blink is to lubricate our eyeballs. However, some researchers believe that it is also an unconscious way of communicating with others.

Research shows that when we talk, we blink at the end of a sentence and think the other person has finished speaking.

Such a quick wink could simply be a way of saying to the world, “I’m stressed, get me out of here.”

Thanks to the Danish neuroscientist Dr. Maiken Nedergaard, we know that our brain has a drainage system that removes waste products while we sleep. This “glymphatic system” may explain why lack of sleep increases the risk of dementia. Now her team has shown that this system can also play a role in recovery from severe head injuries, which can cause fluid build-up that causes further damage. In mice, they discovered that drugs for high blood pressure can activate the system and allow excess fluid to flow away. This can be essential for head injuries, strokes and even early dementia.