Want to be smart? Listen to Mozart. Feeling depressed? Listen to sad music.

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Health Benefits of Music

Singing and enjoying music is a natural instinct. Simple rhythm and melody, to of the most important features of music, are as old as man himself. Your mother may have instinctively sung a lullaby when you were crying as a baby.
Origins of music is almost certainly older than painting, sculpture, poetry or any means man has found for expressing his thoughts and feeling.
The word music is derived from the Greek word Muse. The Greeks believed that each mode was related to a certain state of mind. In the same way today different scales or keys, are sometimes linked with particular state of mind. Some keys are are thought to be happy and others to be sad. Such comparisons are a matter of personal feeling. For the Greeks, however the character of each mode was definite and music played in a particular mode was supposed to bring on a certain state of mind in the listener.
In 1993 Rauscher et al  postulated that, after listening to Mozart’s sonata for 10 minutes a normal person becomes smarter, more creative and showed significantly better reasoning skills. The IQ scores were 8 and 9 points higher after listening to the music. This is known as Mozart effect.
Music therapy plays an important role in clinical conditions such as cardiovascular disorders, cancer pain, epilepsy, depression and dementia.
Studies showed involvement of limbic and paralimbic cerebral structures (such as amygdala, hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, temporal poles, insula, ventral striatum, orbitofronal, as well as cingulate cortex) during the processing of music.
Soothing music is known to boost immune response. There is evidence of increase in the activity of natural killer cells, lymphocytes and proinflammatory cytokine interferon-γ.
Music not only improves quality of life, it also has effect on the heart rate and cerebral blood flow and probably prolong life. The greatest benefit on health is observed after listening to classical music and meditation music. Listening to music by Bach, Mozart has a calming effect on the patients. In contrast loud, aggressive rock music  can be dangerous and can lead to stress and cardiac arrhythmias.
Patients with coronary heart disease often suffer from severe mental distress due to diagnosis, hospitalization, surgical procedures. Music relaxes patients who have undergone major cardiovascular surgery.
Reduces anxiety and improve quality of life of patient with depressive symptoms, frail sick elderly patients, patients in acute pain and those in intensive care.
Many nervous patients suffer from uncertainty of outcome of a major surgery and fear of dying. Many patients have doubts about progress in recovery, feel helplessness and loss of self control. In these anxious patients carefully selected music has a calming effect.
Music that conveys sadness can be give real pleasure. Music related to grief and sorrow is more often found beautiful than music that related to joy and happiness.
We all know music, plays, films and paintings with a sad content are very popular. Many films with sad songs and unhappy endings have been blockbusters. We have seen people coming out with tears in their eyes and smile on their lips.
It is believed that the pleasure people experience in music is related to emotions induced by the music. They have often reported that  listening to music changed  their emotions.
Some scholars stated that  hormone prolactin was responsible for feeling pleasure.
According to some researchers feeling of sadness caused by music clear out negative emotion and gives a feeling of satisfaction. The person is able understand his own deep emotion and learns to regulate is feelings. A connection is formed between feelings of the composer and the listener.
Insomnia is a common sleep disorder in modern society. Prenatal sleep disturbance has been associated with pregnancy related complications. Research showed music may be effective for improving sleep quality in adults with insomnia, senior citizens and pregnant women.
If you want to be smart listen to Mozart and if you are depressed listen to sad music.
If you are a night owl listen to the soft relaxing music and go to sleep.

20 signs you are an Empathetic Doctor:

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Empathy is an important  part of medical profession.  It is the ability to understand other people’s experiences, emotions, and feelings.

20 signs you are an Empathetic Doctor:

1.  You understand the emotional state of the patient
2.  You effectively communicate to the patient that you understand the  situation.  This improves the quality of the patient’s experience and the outcome of the treatment.
3.  Empathy is directly related to clinical competence. You are happy and satisfied with your professional life.  You have not complained of stress or burnout.
4.  You are a doctor of a developing country and often refuse to take professional fee from underprivileged patients.
5.  You have worked in primary health centres in remote villages and in refugee camps.
6.  You have performed more than 1000 autopsies. You are familiar with the emotions that a doctor normally experiences after the death of a patient. You  effectively give professional  support to bereaved families.
7. You often volunteer to do night duty for your unwell colleague. Your colleagues respect you and know that they can depend on you at time of crisis.
8.  You often donate blood as part of donation camp.
9.  You are not in the profession to earn money but to help the sick people. This gives you tremendous sense of achievement.
10.  When you fall sick, you don’t complain. You try your best to take minimum sick leave.
11.   You don’t need to think twice when it is a choice between buying an expensive gift for yourself or making a huge donation for the cancer fund in your country.
12.  Instead of selling your old computer and cell phone, you have given them as  gifts to those who cannot afford to buy them.
13.  There are slums in various parts of your country. You spent time with slum dwellers and have listened to their sad stories with compassion. You have tried your best to help them with medicines and free medical advice.
14.  You have many free educational websites for medical students who cannot afford to buy books.
15.  You always give jobs to married women with grown up children. They need more money to support a family and cannot afford to take holiday from work.
16.  You often raise your voice against rape and sexual exploitation of women at work.
17.  You are actively involved in organisations  dealing with autism and Alzheimer’s disease.
18.  Empathy and compassion runs in your family. You are lucky to have been born in a family of givers. You have seen your parents giving generous donation to the poor and providing shelter and employment to many helpless people.
19.  You are a global traveller which helped you to develop humility and compassion.
20.  You are actively providing support and psychological councelling to peers and  juniors  addicted to drugs and alcohol. Learning to respond to distress with  empathy is a critical task which is associated with positive health outcome and personal achievement.

26 things to remember before starting a new project

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Working in a new medium is always challenging for a doctor who has no knowledge on programming and latest digital technology.  I quickly wrote down these 26 points to boost my morale.

1.  If you are working on a new project, take it as a game. Children are not afraid of trying new things. Be like a child who is playing with a new toy.
2.  Don’t try to be perfect.
3.  If you fail at the first attempt, try again. Don’t give up.
4.  Don’t try to multitask. Focus only on one thing.
5.  Remember, if you do something wrong  it will not impact or hurt anyone.  It is just a hobby.
6.  Don’t worry about anyone judging your new project. Everyone is too busy with their own life, family and children. Go ahead and have fun.
7.  Take it as a challenge and do it on your own. Don’t ask for help.
8.  A good friend will always find a way to help you, even if you don’t thank him/her. Don’t  disturb or poke someone. If you find something irritating, it is likely even others will not like it.
9.  Don’t waste time on technical details . Go out, relax and then start again
10.  Eat your meal on time.  Never eat your dinner on your writing table.
11.  If a friend drops in suddenly. Be polite. It is Sunday. Don’t think of the project and don’t look at the watch.
12. Don’t try to check social media. It is a waste of time when you have started something new.
13.  Please don’t panic if something went drastically wrong.
14.  Organize and keep a backup of all the photographs.
15.  Don’t blame anyone for destroying and hacking any of your website. It is your fault if you cannot keep your digital assets safely.
16.  Make sure you are in a happy mood. Listen to music.
17.  Pride, anger, hatred, jealousy, resentment are negative traits and will not help you to create something beautiful.
18.  Make a plan for the working week to achieve more in short time. Keep aside 3 hours everyday for your blogs.
19.  The holiday shopping  season is coming up fast.  Keep the next weekend free for shopping. Complete whatever you can before next weekend.
20.  Go to sleep early.  Make a regular routine to sleep for at least 7 hrs. Try to get up by 6.30 in the morning.
21. Find some real life cheer leaders who will who encourage you at every step and give you helpful feedback when you are doing something wrong.
22.  Always surround yourself with high achievers and successful risk takers whom you can call up during an important project.
23. Ignore negative feedback from people who mean nothing to you in your real life.
24.  Write whatever you want as long as you are not preaching, attacking, or hurting anyone by your writing.  Remember “Pen is mightier than sword”.  Choose your words carefully.
25.  Always think of a positive heading of every post, be brief and think of a possible solution to any problem.
26.  Don’t bother about who is sharing  your post and ranking in search engine.  Be happy if only your family is reading and enjoying it.   Good luck