Listening to music may ease cancer patients' pain

[ad_1]

(Reuters Health) - Listening to music at home may reduce cancer patients’ pain and fatigue and ease symptoms like loss of appetite and difficulty concentrating, according to research in Taiwan.

In the study, 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, researchers report in the European Journal of Cancer Care.

The patients said the music helped their physical and psychological wellbeing because it distanced them from negative thoughts about cancer.

“Music therapy is convenient, does not involve invasive procedures, and can easily be used by people in the comfort of their homes,” said senior study author Kuei-Ru Chou of Taipei Medical University.

“Home-based music interventions can also be used with no cost,” Chou told Reuters Health by email. “Healthcare services have become expensive in the present time.”

The researchers recruited 60 breast cancer patients and randomly assigned half of them to a group that would listen to music at home on an MP3 player provided by the study team with a selection of classical, parlor, popular, Taiwanese and religious music to choose from. The other patients were also given a player and the same instructions about how often to listen, but their selections were various types of ambient music, mainly consisting of environmental sounds, which research has shown does little to reduce pain or symptoms, the study team notes.

Before the women had surgery, and after six, 12 and 24 weeks of music listening, all patients rated the severity of 25 physical symptoms on a five-point scale, as well as rating five categories of fatigue on a separate five-point scale, and the level of pain they felt on a 100-point scale.

The average symptom severity scores of the music therapy group had dropped by five points at the six-week assessment, seven points at 12 weeks and nearly nine points after 24 weeks. Pain scores and overall fatigue scores fell at each assessment as well.

For those listening to music, physical and mental fatigue had also dropped at six weeks but not later.

In contrast, pain and symptom severity scores in the control group increased and remained higher than at the start of the trial.

Based on the results, music therapy may not relieve long-term physical and mental fatigue, the study authors caution. And future studies should use objective measures of pain and fatigue, in addition to the subjective measures used in this study, Chou said.

The researchers are also interested in learning how and why music therapy reduces symptoms and pain. 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, the study authors speculate.

Music could affect functions of the cardiovascular, respiratory, muscular, skeletal, nervous and metabolic systems as well, relieving muscle tension and pain, they add.

“From the neurophysiological point of view,” said Tereza Alcantara-Silva of the Federal University of Goias in Brazil, music-evoked emotions can modulate activity in a variety of brain areas.

“Music plays a major role in self-regulation of emotional contexts,” said Alcantara-Silva, who wasn’t involved in the study, by email. “Music therapy can bring several benefits to cancer patients, helping them to find ways to deal with stress, fear, and loneliness.”

SOURCE: bit.ly/2Idu5cY European Journal of Cancer Care, online June 5, 2019.

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

[ad_2]

Source link

Female soldiers wanting to suppress periods face barriers

[ad_1]

(Reuters Health) - Military women wanting to stop menstruating while they are deployed may face a number of barriers, a new commentary suggests.

The majority of surveyed military women say they would like to suppress menstruation during deployment but very few are doing so, according to the paper in Obstetrics & Gynecology that explores why more military women are not accessing that option.

One answer may be that not enough military women and their health providers even know that hormonal contraceptives used continuously will suppress menstruation.

“Women are counseled to stop taking contraceptives before deployment and that negates all the valuable health benefits, including suppression, that come with them,” said the commentary’s author, Sheena Eagan, an assistant professor at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, and a specialist in military medicine ethics. “There’s a recurring theme in surveys: women want to access cycle control and they want to suppress menstruation before they are deployed.”

Unfortunately, there are many barriers blocking women’s access to menses suppression in the military, Eagan said, including the instructions to stop taking contraceptives before deployment because there is a rule against sexual intercourse while deployed. “I wanted to highlight the misconception I saw throughout the literature that equates contraceptive use with pregnancy prevention,” she said.

After reviewing the medical literature on the topic of menses suppression in the military, Eagan found that 66% to 86% of women surveyed wanted the ability to stop menstruating during deployment. In contrast, a mere 7% reported having done so.

Part of the problem may be lack of education among both the women and their health providers, Eagan said. A 2009 report found that only a third of service women had received any pre-deployment counseling on menstrual regulation and suppression. Moreover, nearly 70% of women reported that their primary healthcare providers were medics or corpsmen. Although training varies depending on the branch of service, these types of providers normally do not hold professional or graduate degrees, Eagan noted.

Eagan said she isn’t suggesting that menses suppression be mandated for all female soldiers, but “it should be part of women’s autonomous choice.”

The issues of menses regulation and control aren’t limited to military women, said Dr. Charles Ascher-Walsh, director of gynecology for the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. “Obviously, when women are deployed it’s more convenient not to be menstruating,” he said. “But there are many women who would have the same kinds of benefits, such as when they are traveling for work.”

In general, Ascher-Walsh said, “there’s a lack of education among women and their doctors that this is a possibility - and a safe possibility. And doctors don’t offer it as much as I think they should.”

Still, the article may have made the process sound more straightforward than it sometimes is, Ascher-Walsh said. “It’s not as simple as: do this and you are guaranteed not to bleed,” he explained.

That’s because not all women will stop cycling on hormonal contraceptives, Ascher-Walsh said. With some methods, “you can end up with spotting every day and that’s worse than having your period,” he added. “So you don’t want to do it right before you are deployed since that can make it worse rather than better.”

The best option if a female soldier wants to try a method to halt menstruation is to experiment with it well before deployment, Ascher-Walsh said. Among the possible options, continuous birth control is “the most likely to stop a woman’s periods and be reliable,” Ascher-Walsh said.

SOURCE: bit.ly/2F89nsS Obstetrics & Gynecology, online June 11, 2019.

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

[ad_2]

Source link