A French start-up may have found a solution to relieve certain patients suffering from migraines, this is the case for 12% of French people. She offers to make them listen to music every day.
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A team of French, German and American researchers proposed to 20 migraine patients to listen to 20 minutes of music twice a day for three months. Result after three months, the migraine attacks became less frequent, for half of the group the attacks were even reduced by half. These are small-scale data concerning migraine, but these 20-minute musical sessions have already proven their effectiveness in reducing the intake of drugs in the event of chronic pain, due to osteoarthritis, for example or for better endure painful care in hospital. About fifty clinical trials have been carried out in total.
It doesn’t work with just any music. It is instrumental music without words. You can choose a style: classic, rock, reggae or tango, etc. But this pain relieving music was composed specifically to bring the patient into a modified state of consciousness, much like hypnosis. That is to say that at the beginning, it looks like any musical piece, the volume decreases and the tempo slows down to approach the heartbeat. It is this change that causes relaxation, and the analgesic effect. Obviously all this is perfectly timed over a 20-minute sequence and the music accelerates again at the end, to allow relaxation to come out. Note that this pain-relieving music is only prescribed by prescription, it is a therapeutic device, which was designed by a French start-up called Music Care and which already works with more of 500 hospitals.
One could imagine that one day this kind of music would be reimbursed by social security. For the moment these musical sessions are supported by the hospital budget, but if they are prescribed by the general practitioner in addition to pain medication, (the drug agency gave the green light for this a few months ago) , the patient must pay for the moment 10 euros per month to have access to the musical extracts online. The founder of Music Care indicates that the request for reimbursement by social security is in progress.