Skip the Asprin, Pick up the Rolling Stones

Music can reduce chronic pain and depression according to research published this week in the Journal of Advanced Nursing, and reported by the BBC and EurekAlert.

According to the BBC report, listening to music can lower chronic pain by 21 percent and depression by 25 percent.

My first question when reading this was, how can you measure pain? Over at EurekAlert, I learned that study participants rated pain on a scale of one to ten. Pain is a very subjective thing, and a "complex phenomena," explains the BBC.

One researcher told the BBC, "The perception of pain is very complicated, and is influenced by factors such as emotion, experience and mood." The researcher concluded that, "it was possible that music simply provided a distraction which stopped people concentrating on their pain," reports the BBC.

Additional benefit
The BBC article also pointed out that, "previous research published in the same journal found listening to 45 minutes of soft music before going to bed can improve sleep by more than a third."

So, next time you have a back ache, or can't sleep, skip the Advil or the Ambien and reach for the play button on your stereo.