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Major surgery is a terrifying concept for everyone,
but for most women needing a hysterectomy
it is, for various reasons, an unsettling experience.
It is difficult for any woman to make the decision
of quite literally cutting off the possibility of having children,
the fear of how the body will react,
let alone the actual fear of being put under the knife
and of course the anaesthesia.
It would also seem that the amount of hysterectomies
in Europe is growing year by year,
which means that there is more research being done on how
to specifically help these women.
I've read a study where the researchers have been looking into how
music or music in combination with relaxing and encouraging suggestions,
can be improved for these patients while they are under general anaesthesia.
and to help with the patient's recovery after a hysterectomy.
In this fascinating study, 90 women were randomly allocated to one of three groups.
All of them wore headphones throughout their surgery.
One group listened to relaxing music while another group listened to
the music together with a recording of positive therapeutic suggestions,
telling the women that they felt relaxed and were perfectly safe,
they felt no pain and that they would quickly recover and return to normal.
The women in the third group listened to the sounds
of an operating room in action.
While the operation was in process, the pain scores of the women
were recorded by a visual analogue scale.
It turned out that after the surgery, the patients in the group
who had listened to music plus the therapeutic suggestions
required fewer painkillers compared to the control group;
who had listened to the sounds of an operation room.
Positive results were seen yet again in the group of women
who had only listened to relaxing music.
The painkillers were seen to have been more effective
in the first day after surgery. and resulted in the patients
recovering and moving around quicker.
The researcher have also stated that when the patients
were discharged from hospital, it was noted that both groups
who had been in the fortunate situation of listening to music
were not as exhausted compared to the control group.
The researchers, would also say the participants in this study,
have stressed how pleased they were with the results from this experiment.
You may very well be asking yourself why music is so effective,
well, there have been many researches that provided data explaining
how the mind and body may interact as a whole,
and how that can influence our healing and immune system,
which leads to the conclusion that when we are more relaxed and
positive we recover quicker.
I guess in a nut shell we could say mind over matter.