Alternative Treatments: Music Therapy for Asthma

by Stephanie Colombini | 05/15/2015 | 1:49pm

asthma doll

Imagine you're a kid with asthma on the playground at school. Suddenly, you start to feel your chest tighten, and next thing you know, you're gasping for air. Your doctor's told you what to do in this situation; but you were too busy thinking about what flavor lollipop you wanted when he finished talking to pay any attention to his instructions. Your first instinct? Find Mommy. But she's not there. So you panic.
 
But what if there was a way to prevent things from escalating?
 
Dr. Petra Gelbart conducts music therapy sessions at p.s. 142 in Lower Manhattan. She's an intern with the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, and her sessions are part of the center's Asthma Initiative Program. Gelbart says the program uses music to break down coping techniques for children with asthma in a language that speaks to them.
 
"If you just tell them or show them, most kids are going to have a hard time responding," Gelbart said. "So we use different ways in music to really help encode that into not just their minds, but their bodies directly."
 
Gelbart does this with meditation, catchy songs and 8 year-old Andrew's favorite?
 
"Mostly, I like to make the songs with the instruments," he said.
 
For some people, a chorus of recorders might bring back fond memories of childhood. For others, flashbacks to cringing through their own children's recitals. But Dr. Joanne Loewy, Director of the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine says these instruments can help save lives.
 
"When they play a wind, you can actually see changes in their peak flow," Lowey said. "You can see them have more control, their breath more elongated.  You can see more room in the lungs physically for air because they're relaxed."
 
And it's not just the kids who are more at ease. Gloria Collazo says having her 8-year-old son Gregorio in the Asthma Initiative Program has been a huge relief for her as a parent.
 
"Before it was right away run to the ER, because he would start to panic and literally stop breathing," Collazo said.
 
Collazo recalls how Gregorio used techniques he learned in music therapy during his most recent asthma attack. 
 
"He remembered, 'Oh calming music, Mom put the radio on, give me my iPad!'" Collazo said. "So I gave it to him and he sat down with his nebulizer and the oxygen machine, and he's like, 'Because this is what they told me to do, close my eyes and picture the ocean.'"
 
Her son's music of choice? Collazo says it ranges from Selena Gomez to the Monkees! Dr. Petra Gelbart says it doesn't matter, so long as children like Gregorio are in control of their symptoms.
 
"It could be heavy metal, it could be anything, but it has to be accessible to them without any external stimulus," Gelbart said. "They have to bring it up all by themselves because an asthma exacerbation can happen anywhere."
 
Gelbart says developing a sense of autonomy is crucial for children with asthma. She says it gives them the confidence to participate in activities like sports, field trips, or even just showing up to school at all. P.S. 142 administrator Jackie Munos says music therapy has done wonders for the school.
 
"Our kids are always sick with asthma, we have a lot of kids with asthma," Munos said." And the attendance at one point was in like the 60-something [percentile] range. But in the past few years its been like 80's, 90's."
 
The American Lung Association estimates nearly half a million children in the New York metropolitan area have asthma.  
 
Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine Director Dr. Joanne Loewy says the center's working with the De Blasio administration to expand the Asthma Initiative Program into more schools, to help as many children as possible "breathe easy."
 
Parents and caregivers interested in enrolling a child in the study can visit musicandmedicine.org or call the AIP hotline at (212)-420-3592 for more information.
 

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