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Music soothes cancer patients
07:09 PM PDT on Wednesday, October 26, 2005
By JEAN ENERSEN / KING 5 News

Sound fills the room and touches Alexis Vanden Bos like nothing else can, especially when she joins in. "It's just like, 'Wow, I can just have fun,' and just bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam - just really knock away at it," she said.

Alexis has breast cancer. She just finished her chemotherapy and radiation treatments. "When I'm playing the instruments, I don't feel like I'm in pain, and I'm pretty much in pain 24/7," she said. Dr. Anthony back with the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance says music therapy can help lessen the side effects of chemo and reduce pain.

A recent study shows music therapy reduced anxiety by 27 percent and moodiness by 37 percent. "Clearly, there's a special part of the brain that responds to music and that can take that in even if you're quite impaired in other ways," said Dr. Anthony Back.

Music therapists are trained to counsel patients and find them the right music.
"The sound that's going to be most effective is something that is pleasing to the person that they like that's meaningful for them," said Sha'ari Garfinkel, a music therapist at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle. While some patients prefer just to listen to music, others, like Alexis, regain a sense of control by playing. "There may be things that I can't do anymore because of the cancer or because I'm in a lot of pain right now, but there are new things that I can do," she said.

Those new things give her strength to fight her disease. Some studies have found music therapy can also lower heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rate. What's even better is you don't have to have any musical talents to benefit from it.