Music Helps Memory Recall & Caregiver Burden
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EmailORLANDO, Fla. (WOFL Fox 35) - Music has power. It's also linked to our memory. New studies show that music can treat and even help prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
When the music starts playing, the 20 memory care residents at Spring Hills Hunters Creek get their feet tapping and their brains working.
These Alzheimer's patients may not remember a conversation they just had, or what they had for breakfast, but they can remember every word of a favorite song.
Music therapist Megan Coke uses songs they know and respond to. Music therapy may not cure the disease, but it keeps Alzheimer's patients in the present while still holding onto the past.
"They're here in the moment,” says Coke. “They're picking songs, interacting with me, interacting with each other, which sometimes in the later stages of Alzheimer’s that interaction severely starts to diminish. They don't where they are. They can be very confused, and can think they need to be somewhere else."
"There’s not one magic pill, no one magic bullet for Alzheimer’s,” says Richard Isaacson, M.D., a neurologist and professor and the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine . “There's treatment or prevention."
Dr. Isaacson wrote the book, Treating Alzheimer's, Preventing Alzheimer’s.
"There’s a variety of research out there that shows music therapy will not only help anxiety, help depression, help memory recall of spoken lyrics, but also help caregiver burden, and finally we now know it will influence chemicals in the blood stream," explains Dr. Isaacson.
Just by looking at these Alzheimer’s patients, it's easy to see the music sparks something.
"It keeps them with their family and with us a little bit longer,” says Coke. “Those memories stay vivid just a little bit longer through the music."
Alzheimer's disease and prevention was the main topic at the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine Conference recently in Orlando.
Other recent studies show fasting for 12 to 14 hours may help memory. It causes the body to produce a chemical that acts like a quick energy source for the brain.
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