Sound / Music Therapy

Music is an important part of many people’s lives. It is mood enhancing and can lift your spirits, or can be a more calming, relaxing influence. Research has shown that just listening to music can reduce stress levels and increase production of the antibodies needed to fight off invading viruses and boost the immune system. However, more recent science is proving that music and sound therapy may have a far greater impact on human health than was previously believed.

Music Director Anthony Holland teamed up with his science colleagues at Skidmore College in 2013, looking at the idea of tuning forks, which cause each other to resonate in unison. They discussed that if finding the right frequency can cause a crystal glass to shatter suddenly, maybe it would be worth investigating if the right frequency could be found to shatter an organism, like a cancer cell for example. Having discovered the magic frequency, in 2015 Novobiotronics published a paper on their lab-based trial on leukemia cells with very promising results. In their findings, they report a 61 percent reduction in cancer cells. It is still early days, but Anthony, a musician at heart, is optimistic that this research could be music to the ears, as well as all other potential cancer dwelling areas of the body.

Ultrasound is a well-known form of sound therapy, but how about histotripsy? Histotripsy is “non-invasive, mechanical tissue ablation” which uses sound energy to blitz cancer cells. The mechanical process of histotripsy is a focused ultrasound causing microbubbles to form under extreme pressure. These bubbles then oscillate furiously creating huge amounts of energy which causes the targeted tissue to normalize. William W. Roberts, M.D., associate professor of Urology and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan, reveals that in their current research, they are looking at how patients suffering with from liver cancer, prostate cancer, congenital heart syndromes, and thrombosis
might benefit from histotripsy .