Tips to a Happier You in 2012~Be careful little ears what you hear

Summer months are lazy months. Kids are home from school and all they want to do is sleep late and then when they finally do get out of bed, they plop down on the sofa to television. And I fall right into the trap with them! Especially if there’s housework to be done. Procrastination is often my adversary. 

When I start feeling like a sloth…

                                                                                                         …I get my iTunes going. 

Listening to fun, upbeat music will cure my lazies almost every time. 

At least it does these days. 

During my years of depression, you would never find me listening to music. Why? It made me think. I didn’t want to think, I didn’t want to hear anything that might make me feel something. I didn’t want to hear any of the voices inside my head (an upcoming blog post you don’t want to miss.) So television was my go-to. I could sit numbly on the sofa absorbed in someone else’s made up life. Actually kind of like the One Tree Hill marathon I watched with Miranda last week…but that’s a different story. 

I’ve been blogging about the five senses God gave us and today we will talk about hearing. 

What we hear has a direct route to our brains and has a direct effect on the way we think. In the elderly population, depression is often triggered by a loss of hearing. This sparked the idea that sound therapy could be a solution for depression in the hearing population…they just need to be listening to the right stuff. 

This is where my research got really technical…and actually really boring…reading about difference in frequency and sound waves. I’ll just depend on those providing sound therapy to handle that part. I’m much more interested in what it does to the brain. Here’s what a found (it’s bit technical too, but much more interesting—if the sciency stuff loses you, skip down til you see the ***):

Sound Therapy is a non-pharmacological option in the treatment of depression and a tool that could make counseling more effective by supporting it with a physiological impact on brain activation. Creative, focused work or meditation also stimulates the left hemisphere. Research showed that the stronger is the left orientation, the happier the person is likely to be. Sound Therapy directly stimulates the left-brain, so long term Sound Therapy listening is likely to increase levels of happiness. Someone who had had a tendency to depression may need a significant period of time to reshape the brain’s responses. Sound therapy has also side effects, but they are all good: better sleep, more energy, better audition, memory, concentration and learning abilities improved… Don’t you think it is better for you or your child than the drugs with all these terrible side effects?

Okay, so it works on the left hemisphere of the brain. Here’s a little more of my research: 

Several brain centers are involved in how we feel and in keeping our moods stabilized. Research on the effects of meditation has shown that prolonged practice of meditation stimulates certain centres in the left brain that stimulate feelings of happiness and peace [10]. Specific stimulation of the left-brain may play an important role in treating depression.

Music affects our moods through rhythm, melody and harmony. Sound Therapy has great complexity in these three areas, leading to the engagement of various brain centres:

• Stimulation of certain centers in the left pre-frontal cortex has been shown through EEGs to lift the mood, causing feelings of peace, serenity and optimism.
• Stimulation of the medial temporal lobe system brings about adaptations of the central nervous system to induce appropriate integration with the limbic system, which is the seat of the brain’s emotional responses.

***

Remember that brain diagram I gave you the other day to illustrate the awe of God’s creation? It’s a diagram of the limbic system—right where our emotional responses come from and right where sound therapy works. The left pre-frontal cortex mentioned above is the first responder in our brains to any type of emotional event. If it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to, we don’t know how to recover from very sad events. That’s often when depression occurs. So anything that can keep these parts of our brain functioning like God planned, and in a manner pleasing to God, is a good thing. 

Do I think sound therapy is a cure all? No. But I do believe God gave us what we need. He made us in his image. He gave us a brain that is unbelievable and five senses that have a direct effect on that brain. We need to lean on him, not on our own understanding and the trends our world has conformed to. 

I hope I didn’t lose you with all the sciency stuff. All five senses can be used to fight depression. We just have to know how to use them correctly. 

 

• Smell
• Sight
• Touch
• Taste
• Hearing

Remember the song we sang in Sunday School? 

God tells us in today’s prescription verse above we should not conform to this world, and our society is all about the quick fix. I’ll be the first to tell you that antidepressants are very helpful for some people. But not this many: 

Antidepressants used by 11% of Americans ages 12 and older

October 19, 2011

Antidepressants apparently keep a lot of people functional, according to new data from the federal government.

The most recent statistics about antidepressant use in the United States, released Wednesday, show 11% of Americans ages 12 and older take the medication. Antidepressants are the most common prescription drug used by people ages 18 to 44. Almost one-quarter of all women ages 40 to 59 take antidepressants. 

Click here to read the entire article. You will be stunned.

What if some disaster happened and drugs were suddenly unavailable? Where would that leave us? Our need for medication keeps us imprisoned. Sometimes this is unavoidable, and we deal with it.

But are 11% of all Americans over 12 years of age really clinically depressed?

I don’t think that’s part of God’s plan. Do you?

P.S. Click here to go to my delicious stack with more articles on sound therapy and depression. 

          P.S.S. In case you’re really interested in Sound Therapy specifically, Here are some links for    sound therapy providers, but I think the right music on iTunes can be pretty effective 😉

• Sound Therapy Synergy 
• Sound Therapy, Perth, Austraila 
• Sound Therapy International