Sometimes her legs feel as if they are wrapped tightly with barbed wire. That is when Karen DeNeve needs Beethoven the most.
At 49 and moving into a second decade of multiple sclerosis, DeNeve has tried the conventional medical treatments. She also visited an acupuncturist, attended yoga class, even spent time in deprivation tanks. The various therapies succeeded for only a while.
DeNeve has had to go on long-term disability, partly because of deteriorating eyesight that qualifies her as legally blind, and exacerbations of the illness have landed her in the hospital twice. Then, about two years ago, DeNeve fell, breaking her shoulder so severely it required a prosthesis to be implanted to keep shoulder and arm together.
It was about then DeNeve discovered the healing power of melody and rhythm.
"I basically spent the next seven months listening to music," said DeNeve, who was forced to use a wheelchair as she recovered at her parents' suburban home. "I started moving again to the music. I realized music might be the best way to get my life back."
A North Sider, DeNeve returned to the city armed with her vinyl albums of Beethoven, bebop jazz saxophone and Puerto Rican salsa. She also began asking around about music therapy, a specialty that has been hitting high notes with a growing number of patients, doctors and medical centers.
Music therapy also isgaining support from scientific research.
Studies have shown, for example, that soothing music can help premature babies use oxygen more efficiently, gain weight faster and leave the hospital quicker. A 1996 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that stroke patients who listened to synchronized heartbeat-like tones embedded in music for 30 minutes each day over three weeks significantly improved cadence, stride and foot placement when compared to a control group. Classical music has been played in hospital critical-care units to cut down on sedatives; anesthesiologists have used it to reduce drugs needed for surgery.
Singing or otherwise creating music can be valuable for health, too. One study showed Alzheimer's patients recall words to long-familiar songs better than other forms of information; the songs allowed family members to engage their loved one in brief vocal communication. In autistic children, learning to play a percussion instrument has been documented to encourage communication skills.
There are many more examples in the research literature, but what stands out is the contribution music therapy can make to quality of life, a too-frequently overlooked part of care, especially among elderly patients or individuals with a terminal illness.
One hot investigative area in the field could improve personal health and growth for all of us. Popularly known as "the Mozart effect," it focuses on whether certain types of music can help the brain learn more effectively. In the study, students at the University of California-Irvine scored 30 percent higher on spatial reasoning tests if they had listened to the famed composer's "Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major" beforehand. (The other students in the experiment were exposed to more repetitive music or to silence.)
The effect lasts only 10 to 15 minutes once the Mozart stops, but the findings have been impressive enough that Mozart music has been piped into the background at some public schools and civic buildings. Officials at the Washington state immigration department play it during English class for newcomers from Laos, Cambodia and other Asian countries. And parents of young children are buying special releases of Mozart tailored for toddlers and infants. Whether any of these steps achieve the intended results is not yet under formal study.
Gordon L. Shaw, a physicist at UC-Irvine, reasons that Mozart may "warm up the brain" because it has similarities to the patterns of brain activity. Music therapists contend other classical composers can yield similar results; Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Schubert and Strauss are most frequently mentioned.
No one disputes the lift we can get from music, at least no person who has ever danced a step or tapped a toe. Music stirs the emotions and body energy by finding its way into a sensory brain center called the limbic system. The greatest excitement about music therapy is that sounds somehow enter the body at a cellular level. Brain waves play a role, too.
"There are different theories about tones and healing," said Dr. David Moore, an internist at Illinois Masonic who runs the HIV program. "The human body vibrates at a certain frequency, which is an accepted fact among doctors involved in sonic therapies used in hospitals and medical practices. Music and other tones can positively change DNA and altered (diseased) cells."