How Music Can Help Relieve Pain
As the 17th-century English playwright William Congreve said: "Music has charms to soothe a savage breast." It is known that listening to music can significantly enhance our health and general feelings of well-being.
正如17世纪英国剧作家威廉·康格里夫所言：“音乐有抚慰野蛮人心灵的魅力。”众所周知，听音乐可以显著改善我们的健康，并提升我们的幸福感。
An important and growing area of research concerns how music helps to relieve pain and its negative effects.
一个很重要且不断发展的研究领域就是——音乐是如何帮助人们缓解疼痛及其负面影响的。
Music has been shown to reduce anxiety, fear and depression. It has been found to lower pain-intensity levels and reduce the requirements of patients with painkillers.
音乐已经被证明可以减少焦虑、恐惧和抑郁。研究发现，它可以缓解疼痛程度，减少患者对止痛药的需求。
So what makes music so effective at making us feel better?
那么，为什么音乐能够如此有效地让我们感觉好一些呢？
Music attracts and holds our attention and is emotionally engaging, particularly if our relationship with the piece is strong.
音乐能够吸引并保持我们的注意力，也会吸引我们的情感投入，特别是当我们与歌曲的联系非常紧密的时候。
Our favourite music is likely to have stronger positive effects than tracks we don't like or know. Researchers have demonstrated that the music we prefer has greater positive effects on pain tolerance and perception, reduces anxiety and increases feelings of control over pain.
我们最喜欢的音乐可能比我们不喜欢或没听过的音乐有着更加积极的影响。研究人员已经证明，听喜欢的音乐在感知和忍耐疼痛上的作用更加积极，还可以能减少焦虑，增加对疼痛的控制。
Alongside the benefits of listening to what you prefer, the nature of the music has also been shown to be important in enhancing how emotionally engaging it is for patients.
听你喜欢的音乐，除了这些好处以外，音乐的性质也被证明与加强患者的情感投入有关。
Music which is bright, with low intensity and slower tempo has been shown to have the most positive effect on the degree of pain that we experience, for example.
例如，明快、低强度、慢节奏的音乐已被证明对于缓解疼痛有着最积极的影响。
Music has been suggested as an attractive option for patients to manage their pain by themselves. Because it can be tailored around the everyday activities of the individual and has few of secondary effects like prescription drugs.
音乐可以帮助病人控制疼痛，而且被认为是一个理想的选择。因为音乐可以根据个人的日常活动与喜好量身定做，而且不会像处方药那样有副作用。
There is also much to study, however. If being emotionally engaged with music is key to maximising our distraction in this regard, there are myriad factors affecting our emotional relationship with music that we still need to explore.
然而，关于音乐，我们还有很多东西需要研究。如果沉浸于音乐之中是最大限度地分散我们注意力的关键，那么还有许多因素会影响我们与音乐的情感关系，我们仍需探索。