New Taiwan study finds that music might lessen pain, fatigue, appetite problems of breast cancer patients

Listening to music at home may reduce breast cancer patients’ pain and fatigue.

At least in the short run.

That activity, according to a recent story by Carolyn Crist in Reuters Health, can also “ease symptoms like loss of appetite and difficulty concentrating.”

Research in Taiwan, the article continues, found that breast cancer patients “assigned to 30 minutes of music listening five times a week had ‘noticeably’ reduced side effects of cancer and its treatment over 24 weeks.”

A report on the study appeared in the European Journal of Cancer Care. 

Why did the music help?

Crist’s piece says it aided patients physical and psychological well being “because it distanced them from negative thoughts about cancer.”

Professor Kue-Ru Chou

Kuel-Ru Chou, professor in the School of Nursing at Taipei Medical University, senior author of the study that looked at 60 patients, notes that “music therapy is convenient, does not involve invasive procedures, and can easily be used by people in the comfort of their homes.”

Home-based “music interventions,” she continued in an email to Reuters Health, “can also be used with no cost.” 

The study offered patients a choice of classical, pop, Taiwanese and religious music. 

A control group could only select from environmental sounds, which, Crist’s story says, “research has shown does little to reduce pain or symptoms”

There is a caveat about the benefits of music, however.

Based on the study’s findings, Crist writes, “music therapy may not relieve long-term physical and mental fatigue.”

The scribe also explains that the study’s authors speculate “because listening to music promotes endorphins, dopamine and serotonin in the brain, the chemicals may spark joy and positive emotions that distract patients from the negative emotions.”

In addition, the authors maintain, “music could affect functions of the cardiovascular, respiratory, muscular, skeletal, nervous and metabolic systems as well, relieving muscle tension and pain.”

Healing benefits of other things, such as humor, are addressed in “Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer,” a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.