“When Music is good… for our health!” », on France 5: the harmony of life

FRANCE 5 – TUESDAY DECEMBER 17 AT 9:05 P.M. – DOCUMENTARY

We know that listening to music can bring strong emotions. What we less know is that music has astonishing powers over our health. Thanks to their therapeutic properties, certain melodies are used to help patients at all stages of life: from premature babies to adults with neurodegenerative disorders.

Through numerous examples, this issue of the “Enquête de santé” magazine takes stock of these beneficial effects. Music, a miracle cure to reduce pain, promote sleep or stimulate memory? In part. And music, a fundamental element in influencing our mood and our emotions? It’s obvious.

A great music lover, Marina Carrère d’Encausse, presenter of the magazine, played guinea pigs: equipped with sensors measuring her blood pressure and heart rate, she attended the rehearsals of the Symphony No. 4 of Brahms by the Radio France Orchestra.

By the end of the concert, his heart rate had gone up a notch and the musical thrill caused an influx of dopamine, the pleasure hormone, into his brain. In summary, music triggers the same brain mechanisms as those activated by sugar, drugs or sex!

Mozart against epileptic seizures

A soft voice that quietly sings a soothing melody: this is how Doctor Aïcha N’Doye, specialized in breast cancer surgery in Bordeaux, calms her patients lying on the operating table. His method has proven itself: “When I sing, patients are less stressed. »

At Dijon University Hospital, in the neonatal intensive care unit, Delphine, singer at the city’s Opera, regularly comes to sing in a soft voice to babies born too early and very fragile. The melody triggers a small sucking movement in these premature babies. Positive effect? “Music could limit language delays, common in these very premature babies”underlines Emmanuelle Ledeuil, music therapist at Dijon University Hospital.

Victim of epileptic seizures, Eva Menard, composer, tried drug treatments which did not work. To reduce the frequency of attacks, she changed her lifestyle and introduced even more music into her daily life: “Music helps soothe and regulate my brain activity. » From there to claim, like a study carried out in 2021, that the Sonata in D major for two pianos by Mozart would reduce epileptic seizures by 30%…

Another artist saved by music: Mathias Malzieu, singer of the rock group Dionysos. Suffering from a rare blood disease, he spent eleven weeks in a sterile room. “I said to myself: “I’m not going to underlive!” I had my ukulele, my guitar, and, between the diagnosis and the transplant, I made three records! The power of music in such a cold world is to be able to grasp joy in places where there is hardly any left. »

Acting either as an effective anxiolytic or as a sleeping pill, helping to reduce in certain cases the damage caused by Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease and promoting physical exercise, music is good. As neuropsychologist Sylvie Chokron and pianist André Manoukian remind us, around some musical themes by Mozart or Wagner.