Are you in terrible pain? Try music therapy now

And according to science, music can alleviate pain making it a powerful therapy. Research has established that the impact is greater when you're listening to the music you have chosen, where you have control over the track.

Published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, the study found that people who had control over the music they heard experienced more pain relief than those who had no such control.

This suggests that being able to make decisions about the music, the volume it is played at and duration is more important for pain relief than the basic musical features, such as tempo or energy.

Man listening to music Pulse

Dr. Claire Howlin of Queen Mary University of London, U.K., and colleagues from University College Dublin, Ireland conducted the study to explore the use of music listening to relieve acute pain.

The study included 286 adults, who were dealing with acute pain. The participants rated the intensity of their pain before and after listening to a music track. Some of these participants were given the impression that they had some control over the musical qualities of the same track. This group experienced greater relief in the intensity of their pain compared to the groups that were not given such an impression. This may be because people listen more closely, or more carefully when they choose the music themselves, the researchers noted.

However, the researchers found no association between music complexity (low or high version) and amount of pain relief. The pain-relief benefits were even greater in participants who engage more actively with music in their everyday life.

Based on these findings, the researchers concluded that choice of music and subsequent engagement are important for optimizing its pain-relief benefits.