OTHR-02. Ways to lower anxiety and influence pain perception by reducing stress hormones and impacting the neurochemicals of patients

Abstract

Abstract In this session, you will learn how things in everyday life such as music, laughter, gratitude, acts of kindness and pets can take the edge off a patient’s experience by affecting them physically. The speaker can describe these things first hand by sharing what she experienced through her meningioma brain tumor scare and the corresponding radiation treatments. She can also speak to the benefits of “salient stimulus,” whereby patients who listen to music that is relevant to them during radiation treatments are more apt to be less stressed than other patients because the songs that have meaning can increase dopamine levels. The same can be said for people with dementia who listen to their favorite songs. The balance and stride length of people who have Parkinson’s disease can improve as well when they dance to music that has meaning for them and dopamine levels are influenced along the way. Promoting such things in a hospital setting can benefit the underlying patient and their caregivers, e.g., their families and the people who help them at the hospital. The hospital itself has the potential to benefit too through lower turn over rates with staff and lower sedation rates of patients. Great reminder that even though we can’t control the quantity of life, we can still influence the quality of it, regardless of who you are or where you’re from.