Music as medicine

Any obsessive music fan can tell you that they love music because something about a certain chord, melody or lyric can make them incredibly happy or calm or relaxed. Music is one of the -- if not the only -- universal languages. Anyone anywhere can move to a beat. It can lift your mood when you're sad and act as company or reassurance when you're lonely.

Is it surprising then that music is increasingly being used as part of a normal course of treatment for a number of ailments? As the American Music Therapy Association website states, music can be useful in a range of ways when working with patients. It can help kids dealing with an illness to express their feelings, it can improve communication, it can help a patient manage pain and reduce stress -- as Jessica mentions here, a recent study shows that patients who listen to music while undergoing a colonoscopy needed less sedation.

So what do you think? Is it best to just stick with a typical medical course of treatments and rehabilitation when dealing with an illness or is there some validity to the idea that music helps with healing?