Music is Medicine

Music is Medicine

by Mel Samples

I can’t remember a time when music wasn’t a part of my life. That’s not to say I considered us a musical family, per se. We didn’t play instruments and only my older sister participated in the church choir. But we sure did listen to it a lot. My parents had a stereo system envied by neighbors. Let’s just say it was a good thing we lived in the country.

Music as a Lifelong Companion

On Saturdays, my mom would put on her “cleaning music,” which consisted of some tapes she’d put together of some of her favorite songs and artists. To this day, I still can’t hear “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want To” without smelling the ghost of lemon Pledge.

Like every kid my age growing up in the 80’s, my mom got me a Columbia House membership, and I went through that list with precision: REO Speedwagon, Van Halen, Madonna made the list twice, Chicago,, Bon Jovi, and, of course, Michael Jackson. There were a few others, but that gives you a glimpse of my musical taste at the time.

Flash forward to 2023, almost 40 years later. Guess who’s still listening to those albums? Not the original cassettes or even DVDs, but I have digital copies of all those albums, and about 11,000 more, plus my Spotify playlists.

Music as a Lifeline

Now, the question is “WHY do you have SO much music?”

The simple answer is because it makes me feel better.

Aside from depression and anxiety that I’ve fought since childhood, I was diagnosed in 2014 with chronic Lyme disease, which affected a lot of my cognitive function. I forgot everything, names, words, how to speak correctly, how to do a lot of things. I’ll never know how much of my brain was affected, but the damage was massive.

I learned, as I went through the rehabilitation process, that music stimulated my mind. I’d made so many core memories involving music that I could manipulate my brain into remembering actions or memories surrounding the music. The lemon Pledge thing, for instance. I would hear songs and my brain would click and memories would come forth. Not every memory, mind you – I'm still working on that every day, but so many memories that were lost until then. Even now, things come back to me, and I do a little cheer because that brain of mine still works!

Music as Medicine

Since then, I’ve done a lot of reading and researching about how music affects the brain, cognitive abilities, memory, and mental health. I’ve learned so much, and every time I look, there’s a new article about musical therapy for physical healing, cognitive rehab, and more. Thousands upon thousands of people have been physically and emotionally healed with music.

As stated in this article from Dana.org, learning music makes the auditory and motor areas of the brain grow and interact more effectively with the rest of the brain. “After novice pianists have just a few weeks of training, for example, the areas in their brain serving hand control become larger and more connected.” In another article written by Emily Pawlak for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), she writes, “I have found that music is the single thing I can rely on to get me through my darkest times.” So you can see music doesn’t just physically affect the brain and its many facets, it helps with mental health, as well. This information is so prominent in the medical community now that in 2019, the National Institute of Health, joining with the Kennedy Center, funded a five-year $20 million initiative called “Sound Health” to prove all the ways music and music learning can affect the brain.

As for myself, I can always tell when I’ve not been listening to music; my temper is shorter, my mood is in the dumps, and I can’t seem to pick myself up when I get knocked down. My solution is always to turn on one of my many Spotify playlists to get my groove back…literally.

Music really is the medicine of the mind.