this from e&e

Therapies: Music May Offer Pain Relief Beyond Medication
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
In a small study of patients with back, neck or joint pain, researchers found that regularly listening to music provided pain relief beyond that brought on by standard pain management techniques.
The scientists randomly divided 60 patients ages 26 to 64, all of them receiving traditional pain treatment, into three groups. Over seven days, the first listened for one hour a day to one of five tapes chosen by the researchers, the second to music of their own choosing, and the third received only standard care. All patients kept diaries recording their level of pain, depression and disability.
The music groups experienced a 20 percent decrease in pain compared with a 2 percent increase in pain in the control group over the week of the study. Pain was measured using two standardized pain questionnaires.
The authors did not suggest any specific mechanism that would explain the finding.
"It is always possible that something other than the experimental treatment brought about the results we saw," said Sandra L. Siedlecki, a co-author of the study, financed by the National Institutes of Health. "However, we did use several techniques to minimize this possibility." Dr. Siedlecki is a senior nurse researcher at the Cleveland Clinic.
The study, which appears in the May issue of The Journal of Advanced Nursing, has some limitations. The sample size was small, the authors write, and it is impossible to generalize the findings to a larger population.
Marion Good, a co-author of the study and a professor of nursing at Case Western Reserve University, said the musical intervention was not a substitute for traditional pain management. "It is important," she said, "to maximize relief by adding nonpharmacological methods that relax and distract patients from their pain in addition to their analgesic medication."