Another Music-and-Medicine Story: Live Music Soothes Premature Babies
Okay, so you have to be careful with what kind of live music. Taking a premie to a Tool show is probably out of the question. But a little gentle acoustic Beatles? That works. From the New York Times:
Even the Beatles would have had trouble recognizing their peppy song in the lullaby that Andrea Zalkin sang to the tiny, fragile baby clutched to her chest in the neonatal unit. But there was something unintentionally poignant in the title she chose for her son: “Eight Days a Week” is more time than can fit on the calendar. Ms. Zalkin’s baby, Hudson, born 13 weeks early, has had too little time.
As she sang, monitors showed Hudson’s heartbeat slowing and his oxygen saturation increasing. Effects like that were among the findings of a new study on the use of music as medicine.
