Pregnant mums: Listen to music to relieve your pregnancy stress

Taiwan, October 7: Listening to music during pregnancy may significantly bring down a woman’s stress levels, a new research suggests. Experts from Kaohsiung Medical University in Taiwan found that mums-to-be who listened to lullabies and classical music were less likely to be stressed about their pregnancy.

To reach their findings, researchers’ team, led by Prof Chung-Hey Chen who is now based at the National Cheng Kung University, recruited nearly 250 pregnant women. The experts then split the participant women, who were between 18 and 34 weeks pregnant, into two groups. 116 women were given music CDs and 120 received normal pregnancy care and acted as controls.

The women, whom researchers asked to play a CD for one hour a day, every day for two weeks, received four CDs, each containing about 30 minutes of music.

One CD featured classical music like Beethoven and Debussy with a beat of 60 to 80 beats per minute, the same as the human heart rate, a second CD contained lullabies, while a third and fourth featured nature sounds and soothing crystal music of Chinese nursery rhymes and songs, respectively.

Prof Chen and colleagues found that women who listened to CDs of lullabies, classical music and sounds of nature felt more relaxed than those who did not. They also found that women in music group were less stressed, depressed and anxious at the end of the study.

“The music group showed significant reductions in stress, anxiety and depressiondefine after just two weeks, using three established measurement scales,” said Professor Chen. “In comparison, the control group showed a much smaller reduction in stress, while their anxiety and depression scores showed little or no improvement.

“Women in the music group also expressed preferences for the type of music they listened to, with lullabies, nature and crystal sounds proving more popular than classical music,” he added.

At the beginning of the study, the women in the music group scored 17.44 on the Perceived Stress Scale, which ranges from zero to 30. And, when measured after the study, the stress levels of the music group women were found to have fallen by an average of 2.15, compared with 0.92 in the control group.

“Pregnancy is a unique and stressful period for many expectant mothers and they suffer anxiety and depression because of the long time period involved. Our study shows that listening to suitable music provides a simple, cost-effective and non-invasive way of reducing stress anxiety and depression during pregnancy,” Prof Chen concluded.

The study has appeared in a special complementary and alternative therapy medicine issue of the Journal of Clinical Nursing.

Music has been used throughout human history to express and affect human emotion. Even health experts use music therapy to help patients overcome physical, emotional, intellectual, and social challenges.

Music therapy is a technique of complementary medicine that uses music prescribed in a skilled manner by trained therapists. Applications in this type of therapy range from improving the well being of geriatric patients in nursing homes to lowering the stress level and pain of women in labor. Music therapy is used in many settings, including schools, rehabilitation centers, hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, community centers, and sometimes even in the home.

Source: http://www.themedguru.com

Labels:women, stress, music, pregnancy stress, relieve your pregnancy stress, Pregnant mums