Nurse Rod Salaysay works with all kinds of instruments in the hospital: a thermometer, a stethoscope, and sometimes his guitar and ukulele.

In the recovery unit of UC San Diego Health, Salaysay helps patients manage pain after surgery. Along with medications, he offers tunes on request and sometimes sings. His repertoire ranges from folk songs in English and Spanish to Minuet in G Major and movie favorites like “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

Patients often smile or nod along. Salaysay even sees changes in their vital signs: lower heart rate and blood pressure, and sometimes reduced requests for fewer painkillers.

"When you play music and they start to tap their hands, maybe move their foot to the beat and then they kind of adjust their position into the pillow. That for me, including the changes that you see on the monitor about the patient's heart rate and blood pressure, those are the physiological signs that tells me that this type of therapy is working." he said.

Salaysay is a one-man band, but he’s not alone. Over the past two decades, live performances and recorded music have flowed into hospitals and doctors’ offices as research grows on how songs can help ease pain.

Scientists explore how music affects pain perception

The healing power of song may sound intuitive given music’s deep roots in human culture. But the science of whether and how music dulls acute and chronic pain — technically called music-induced analgesia — is just catching up.

No one suggests that a catchy song can fully eliminate serious pain. But several recent studies, including in the journals Pain and Scientific Reports, have suggested that listening to music can either reduce the perception of pain or enhance a person’s ability to tolerate it.

What seems to matter most is that patients — or their families — choose the music selections themselves and listen intently, not just as background noise.

How music can affect pain levels

Two people with the same condition or injury may feel vastly different levels of acute or chronic pain. Or the same person might experience pain differently from one day to the next.

Acute pain is felt when pain receptors in a specific part of the body — like a hand touching a hot stove — send signals to the brain, which processes the short-term pain. Chronic pain usually involves long-term structural or other changes to the brain, which heighten overall sensitivity to pain signals. Researchers are still investigating how this occurs.

Researchers know music can draw attention away from pain, lessening the sensation. But studies also suggest that listening to preferred music helps dull pain more than listening to podcasts.

Music genres and active listening

The idea of using recorded music to lessen pain associated with dental surgery began in the late 19th century before local anesthetics were available. Today researchers are studying what conditions make music most effective.

Researchers at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands conducted a study on 548 participants to see how listening to five genres of music — classical, rock, pop, urban and electronic — extended their ability to withstand acute pain, as measured by exposure to very cold temperatures.

All music helped, but there was no single winning genre.

AP video by Javier Arciga

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