Stroke natural remedy - Music song

Music with words (songs) apparently can help brain damaged stroke patience rewire their damaged brain. According to Dr. Aniruddh Patel of the San Diego Neurosciences Institiute, there is now an explosion of research on music and the brain over the last 10 years. It seemed music can engage huge areas of the brain, implying I suppose that music would have huge influence on the brain.

The results of one such research led by Gottfried Schlaug, Neurology Professor of the Beth Isreal Deaconess Medical Center and Boston Harvard Medical School was presented at the annual meeting of AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science). Professor Schlaug's study was the first to combine "Melodic Intonation Therapy"with brain imaging which can help show what is actually going on in the brain as patients practice singing the words. "Melodic Intonation Therapy" is a therapeutic process used by music therapists and speech pathologists to help patients with communication disorders caused by brain damage. This method uses a style of singing called melodic intonation to stimulate activity in the right hemisphere of the brain in order to assist in speech production (Wikipedia: Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT))

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The therapy involves stroke patients being taught to put words to simple melodies plus tapping out each syllable with their hands. Teaching stroke patients to sing (put words to music) helps them form crucial neural connections on the right side of their brain. According to Professor Schlaug, after just a single session, stroke patients who were unable to form intelligible words have begun to learn say simple phrases by combining each syllable with a note of the melody.

Source: BBC News: Singing 'rewires' damaged brain

Pleasant music restore vision of visual neglect patients

Here is another research which proved that music is the best medicine. Researchers from Imperial College London led by Dr. David Soto studied the effects of listening to music on stroke patients who have developed visual neglect (loss of ability to track objects in the visual field on the side opposite to the part of the brain damaged by stroke).

Visual neglect is a very distressing disability suffered by 60% of stroke patients with extreme cases where victims can only eat only the food on half side of the plate or shave only half of the face.

The researchers gave 3 visual neglect patients various tasks like identifying colored shapes or red lights in the impaired side of vision in 3 circumstances - listening to music they like, music they did not like, and in silence. It was found that the 3 patients could identify more accurately colored shapes and red lights in their impaired side of vision while listening to music they liked.

According to Dr. David Soto, "Music appears to improve awareness because of its positive emotional effect on the patient, so similar beneficial effects may also be gained by making the patient happy in other ways."

The researchers found that listening to pleasant music can restore visions of visual neglect patients.

Opera best medicine for the heart

Photo of Luciano Pavarotti (Opera) courtesy of Pirlouiiiit

This another of the best medicine series. In this case it is the right kind of music is good medicine for the heart.

Dr. Luciano Bernardi led a team of researchers from Pavia University, Italy, in a study of the effects of five random tracks of classical music on 24 healthy volunteer subjects by monitoring how their body respond to the music. The music include selections from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Nessun Dorma, an aria from Puccini's Turandot, Bach's cantata Number 169, Nabucco: Va Pensiero and Libiamo ne'lieti calici from La Traviata.

The researchers found that musical crescendo (gradual volume increase) stimulated the body which caused narrowing of blood vessels under the skin, increased blood pressure and heart rate and increased respiratory rates. On the other hand, diminuendos (gradual volume decreases) caused the opposite, that is, relaxation which led to slowed heart rate and lowered blood pressure. Operatic music which alternates from fast to slow was found to be the best for the heart and blood circulation.

Source: BBC News: Opera 'is music for the heart'

Videos of classical music

Beethoven's Ninth Symphony

Exercise regime to control blood pressure and diabetes

I had a scare many months back. The doctor said my blood pressure was 150 over 90. The next day he said it was 150 over 100. He said I have high blood pressure. He wanted to put me on hypertension medication. I said if I start, I will have to take the hypertension medicine for life. I negotiated to try exercise and diet control.

I first tried cooking my food using no salt and only garlic, onions and spices like kunyit (Curcuma longa or tumeric), pepper and oregano. I cooked with oats instead of rice as it was easier to cook. I exercise only sparingly. It helped but my blood electrolyte (sodium) went down.

Next I tried exercise more regularly. It worked. My blood pressure is now under control. However, exercises are very dull. What I did was to put on the music and march up and down following the beat of the music. It is just like soldiers marching or dancing to the beat of the music. It becomes more enjoyable and not dull. When I saw that it had a good effect on the blood pressure and heart beat (pulse) rate, I had extra motivation to exercise plus I know exercise also helps to keep diabetes at bay and lowers the resting heart beat rate. Now, motivated by the positive results, I exercise for half and hour everyday and believe me, it is not dull. It has become enjoyable.

This is the exercise regime I followed: I had downloaded songs into appropriate folders in my computer arranged according the how fast are the beat, starting with the slow ones and increasing with tempo. When it is time to exercise, I opened the folder and played the songs with Windows Media Player. I then march or jog up and down the stairs according to the music. The music not only keeps me entertained, motivated and help regulate the rate I walked up and down the staircase, it also keeps the time. I now know how long I exercised depending on which song in the playlist I stopped exercising. At the moment I am able to exercise up to Maybellene by Chuck Berry which means I have exercised for slightly more than half and hour. I also check the blood pressure and heart beat rate with a blood pressure monitor immediately after the end of the exercis and it showed that when I exercise up to Maybellene by Chuck Berry, I have achieved 97% of my maximum heart beat rate.

This is the playlist I used:
Respect by Aretha Franklin
I wanna hold your hands by the Beetles
She loves you by the Beetles
Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones
Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys
Good Vibrations by Chuck Berry
What's I do by Ray Charles
Blowing in the wind by Bob Dylan
Maybellene by Chuck Berry
Hound Dog by Elvis Presley
Whole lotta shakin' going on by Jerry Lee Lewis
Sunshine of your love by the Cream
Jail House Rock by Elvis Presley

So far I had been successful in exercising right up to Maybellene by Chuck Berry which has an extremely fast beat and I practically have to run up and down the stairs and it induced my heart beat rate up to 155 beats per minute which is a little bit below the maximum heart beat rate of 160 for a sixty year old (220 - age = 220 - 60 = 160).

Music therapy restores vision

A majority of stroke victims loses the ability to track objects in their visual field on the side opposite to the part of the brain damaged by the stroke. This condition is known as VISUAL NEGLECT and the cause of this visual impairment is damage to those areas of the brain responsible for the integration of vision, attention and action, not the actual area of the brain responsible for sight itself.

UK researchers led by Dr. David Soto from Imperial College London in a study on 3 patients with visual neglect found that all 3 could identify colored shapes and red lights in the impaired side of vision when they are listening to music they liked. The researchers believe that listening to pleasant music give rise to positive emotions which help efficiency in signaling in the brain. Here is another case of music being the best medicine

Bee Gees hit Stayin' Alive can saves lifes (CPR)

Music is the best medicine? Well, you better believe it because according to a study by the University of Illinois College of Medicine, doctors and smedical tudents practiced CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) on mannequins while listening to Stayin' Alive by the Bee Gees and timing their chest compressions with the beat.

If you haven't heard the song before or want to refresh your memory, play the video tape of Bee Gees hit song below (hint: let the video run through the first time with the loud speakers turned off, then repeat with the loud speaker turned on. The is to avoid the irritating stop-go-stop-go playing for those with slow connections):



Five weeks later, they repeated without the music, but were told to think of the song while doing compressions. The average number of compressions the first time was 109 per minute; the second time it was 113. The recommended rate by the American Heart Association is 100 chest compressions per minute while the Bee Gees song Stayin' Alice contains 103 beats per minute, very close to the recommended beat. And according to Dr. Matlock, the average number of compressions of 109 and 113 after listening to Bee Gees song Stayin' Alive is better than too few.

It seems the American Heart Association too had used the Bee Gees hit song as a training tip for CPR instructors for 2 years already, according to Dr. Vinay Nadkarn.

Source: BBC News (Health)