What kinds of music help people with conditions like Parkinson’s best? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:00 — 1.4MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Individually prescribed music may become part of your treatment if you have a disorder like Parkinson’s disease or a host of other conditions. The therapy is underway at the Johns Hopkins Center for Music and Medicine, directed by neurologist Alex Pantelyat.

Pantelyat: From a cultural standpoint, if somebody is raised in a Western country, some types of classical music, some types of soft rock, may be seen as relaxing, whereas somebody who’s coming from the Indian subcontinent might prefer music that they heard in their childhood. One size does not fit all. Cortisol, the stress hormone, can be reduced in meaningful ways by listening to certain types of preferred relaxing music. Activating this parasympathetic, rest and digest, part of the autonomic nervous system is definitely one way that music can help relieve stress.  :33

Pantelyat says soothing the nervous system with music helps both physical and psychological aspects of health. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.