The pain killers and other medications used for arthritis and fibromyalgia come with reams of serious side effects. Some may even make your problem worse.

But listening to music? That’s both pleasurable and safe.

A new study from Northwestern University reveals that music can reduce arthritis complications and pain, fibromyalgia, and other chronic pain equally to taking over-the-counter medications.

And we’re not just talking classical music (although that helps too). It’s a specific kind of music you’ll love without a doubt.

It was a very personal study for Sunitha Suresh, who was majoring in biomedical engineering with a minor in music cognition. and her father Santhanam Suresh, a professor at anesthesiology and pediatrics.

You see, Suresh’s grandmother was admitted to a hospital to undergo a painful surgery and had to spend a long time in intensive care. To lift her up, Suresh made a playlist with her grandmother’s favorite south Indian classical Carnatic music, for her to listen to in the hospital.

It was obvious that the music relaxed grandmother and lifted her spirits. But it was hard to guess if it actually eased her pain.

So Sunitha and her father decided to conduct a study on the pain relief effects of a subject’s favorite music, using the group of children he worked with as a doctor.

So 60 children from the ages of nine to fourteen, who were undertaking a surgery, were divided into three groups.

The day after surgery, for 30 minutes, 1/3 listened to music they had previously chosen, 1/3 listen to a story they had picked, and 1/3 listened to silence in noise cancellation headphones. The children had complete freedom to pick their favorite music and stories. So needless to say, no classical music was used; but rather, pop music like Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, and Miley Cyrus.

To measure their pain levels, researchers read their facial expressions as well as asking the children to choose a picture (from frowning to smiling) that best descripted their pain level. This was done both before and after the 30-minute audio session.

The pain burden of the children who listened to music or stories was reduced 10% compared to those listening to silence. This may not sound like much but it is the same pain reduction effectiveness of over-the-counter medications.

The bottom line is that listening to your favorite music or entertaining story will reduce physical pain after surgery. The same should be true about any kind of pain, including arthritis and fibromyalgia pain.

This is, of course not enough to cure arthritis. To completely reverse arthritis in 28 days, follow this step-by-step strategy…

Or if you suffer fibromyalgia, loading up on this one ingredient has been proven to significantly improve, most often cure fibromyalgia…