A Rhythm for Recovery: Music Therapy and Multiple Sclerosis
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- 4 min read
Imagine getting out of bed in the morning and walking to the bathroom to brush your teeth, only to find that your legs are shaking while you walk. Imagine rushing to the bathroom because your bladder feels completely full, yet being unable to urinate. Nearly 1 million Americans are living with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and face problems like these every day . MS is a chronic autoimmune disease affecting the central nervous system, commonly causing fatigue, vision problems, and impaired balance and movement.
Currently, the most common treatments for MS use high-efficacy antibodies, such as Ocrevus and Tysabri, and physiotherapy, including muscle relaxation and fatigue-management. However, drugs like Ocrevus are known to cause significant emotional side effects, especially anxiety, sadness, and negative mood swings. This got me thinking: If MS involves motor dysfunction, and the most common treatments have negative emotional side effects, could music therapy be a potential option? In the past, I’ve researched how music therapy can help with motor disabilities and emotional regulation. In this blog, I’ll explore if the same treatment could benefit individuals with MS.
MS ruptures the myelin sheaths covering neurons in the central nervous system (CNS). This includes all the main communication pathways of the body, starting from the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerves. Myelin sheaths are the protective coverings around neurons that allow electrical signals to travel faster. Therefore, destruction of these sheaths in certain regions of the body, often the legs, results in delayed signal transmission and bodily dysfunction in affected regions.As such, the most common motor symptom of MS is a loss of balance and coordination. To an onlooker, this may look like shaky legs and trouble control one’s limbs.
Fortunately, it turns out music therapy can be beneficial for confronting motor challenges facing individuals with MS. There are two reasons music therapy can be effective:
MS directly results in a reduction of white matter in the brain, which contributes to the dysfunction initiated by the destruction of myelin sheaths. However, playing music has been shown to facilitate white matter formation in the brain and even rebuild myelin sheaths through the various fiber tracts around myelin sheaths utilized when playing music. Systematic reviews of clinical trials show playing music does in fact improve balance, gait speed, and hand-eye coordination in individuals with MS.
Listening to music and a beat activates the auditory cortex. Let’s imagine an example to help explain this:
Suppose an individual with MS is in a music therapy session. They are told to try to move their leg back and forth while music with a steady beat is playing. Since the auditory cortex is processing the steady beat, the brain is able to synchronize the movement of the leg with the beat. In other words, the beat acts as an “indicator,” making it easier for the brain to send the signal to move the leg.
In addition to the physical symptoms of MS, I want to acknowledge the emotional toll living with a neurodegenerative disease. Although [benefits of Ocrevus], the commonly-perscribed drug has well-documented negative emotional side effects, which include depression, anxiety, and dramatic mood swings.
In addition to the physical symptoms of MS, I want to acknowledge the emotional toll living with a neurodegenerative disease. Adding to that, one of the most commonly prescribed drugs for MS is Ocrevus, which has well-documented negative emotional side effects, which include depression, anxiety, and dramatic mood swings. At the same time, Ocrevus is a drug that reduces inflammation, leading to improved gait and stronger leg muscles for individuals with MS. I’ve written before about Atul Gawande’s philosophy of treating the whole person, not just the disease.
Let’s switch gears to looking at the emotional side, and since Ocrevus is the most common treatment for MS, we’ll use it as our primary example. Studies have shown that Ocrevus harms the quality of life (QOL) of individuals using the drug through its I truly believe in Atul Gawande’s idea that it is very important to treat the person, not just the disease, meaning that a person should still be happy and feel relatively comfortable while they are undergoing treatment. Similarly, an individual with MS should have a good QOL instead of having to live with anxiety and depressive symptoms. This is where music therapy can also come in.
Neurologically, music stimulates dopamine and endorphin secretion in the brain, leading to feelings of happiness and comfort: feelings very important for an individual undergoing intense treatment. Given music therapy’s motor and emotional benefits, I think music therapy may be a great option for an individual with MS. While drugs like Ocrevus provide important benefits and symptom relief for individuals with MS, music therapy could be an important complement. A patient’s treatment plan could include both Ocrevus, Tysabri, and other drugs, as well as music therapy, in order to provide the most comfortable yet effective plan to treat an individual with MS.
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