A new study by an SFU PhD student has found that women suffering from chronic pain have increased sensitivity to specific frequencies and therefore might respond differently to sounds and music — a discovery which opens up new options for treatment through acoustic therapy.

During a study on the therapeutic use of music for chronic pain (CP) patients, lead researcher Mark Nazemi discovered that chronic pain patients were more sensitive to sounds than the control group. Even more notable was the fact that women experienced this pain more significantly than the male participants.

“Not only did we find this through the data set that we collected using a software that we designed, but also reinforced by the results of the qualitative questionnaires in which female CP patients reported greater sensitivity to everyday environmental sounds,” explained Nazemi.

“For example, [women] tend to listen to music at speech level versus listening to [it] loud, they prefer listening to speakers rather than use headphones, so they have this kind of phobia in terms of wanting to be farther away from sound source.”

A student in SFU’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT), Nazemi first became interested in the topic while working on other health related projects. “I noticed that in the field of music therapy they weren’t really looking at the frequency content in music, and they would just generalize the type of music that would have therapeutic qualities example, ‘play some classical music’ or ‘let’s play some jazz,’” related Nazemi.

They have this kind of phobia in terms of wanting to be farther away from sound source.”

– Mark Nazemi, lead researcher

The problem he noticed, based on existing research, was that chronic pain patients tend to be in a hypersensitive state, so environmental factors can be more damaging than previously thought. Therefore, there is a real need for greater awareness of the effects of sound on chronic pain patients. “Let’s say if there is a construction site, being able to shut the windows can actually help them feel less pain at home,” said Nazemi.

Building on this research, Nazemi is now looking to develop an interactive sound system for therapy, which could help those suffering from chronic pain. He is doing so by creating a database of “comfortable sounds,” which mainly includes nature sounds, such as birds, the ocean, and even the sound of wind.

Nazemi and his team hope that by compiling these sounds, they can potentially provide patients in medical waiting rooms and similar stressful or uncomfortable environments with “soundwalks” to help lower anxiety and stress while they are waiting.

Said Nazemi, “If patients are really affected by listening to these recordings, if their anxiety levels are reduced, then I would actually want to make this into an actual system that we could implement in clinics and hospitals around the world.”