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Jewish World Review Feb. 12, 2001 / 19 Shevat, 5761

Christopher Snowbeck

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Consumer Reports


Banging on drums may be good for you

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- PITTSBURGH | In a former restaurant, an unlikely group of patients is engaged in something of a jam session.

Andrea Manuel, a breast cancer survivor, is sounding out her name by giving three quick taps on the edge of a drum followed by two thumps at the center. Jean McGinnis, a hardware store clerk who has asthma, repeatedly offers two beats on the edge of her drum followed by a pat in the center. The sounds represent her happiness, she says.

Drumming is a small part of what goes on at the Mind-Body Wellness Center in Pennsylvania's Crawford County.

But the group drumming is the focus of a new study that suggests banging on drums can change body chemistry in ways that might help the immune system cope with disease.

The study by Dr. Barry Bittman, a neurologist and the center's CEO and medical director, was published last month in the journal Alternative Therapies. It described how 60 adults participating in a group drumming session experienced increases in Natural Killer cell counts and Lymphokine-Activated Killer cell activity. Killer cells might not sound nice, but they direct their deadly powers on cancer cells and other illnesses.

The findings should prompt more research, Bittman says. But the link between the changes in body chemicals and an individual's health is so speculative that few doctors expect to be telling patients to beat two drums and call them in the morning.

"The data are tantalizing, but they're not there yet," said Dr. Andrew Baum, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. "For a lot of these non-conventional approaches, we require more data before we're willing to try them out clinically."

Ranging in age from 51 to 79, the nine patients who gathered for the group drumming last month were demonstrating a small part of the rehabilitation they went through at the center.

Patients sign up for four- to 12-week classes that focus on health problems such as asthma, diabetes and heart disease. The classes feature physical therapy, exercise and nutrition lessons, as well as meditation practices.

That's where the drumming comes in.

"As soon as you're faced with an illness, it seems like the music disappears," Bittman says. "But maybe the music and the laughter is what keeps us well."

Baum has been involved with many studies of Natural Killer cells as well as Lymphokine-Activated Killer cells. He says simple exercise can bring about similar changes in body chemistry as those reported by Bittman, so it could be the simple exertion - not necessarily the drumming - that bolstered the immune system. Another problem in evaluating Bittman's study is that participants were healthy, not sick, Baum said.

Even so, Baum shares Bittman's enthusiasm in looking at the immune system response because the cells in question are so effective at hunting down and killing foreign organisms, such as cancer cells.

Christopher Snowbeck is a writer with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Comment by clicking here.

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