Say you spent several month in a plush, über comfortable private spa. With the water at extra-nice body temperature with an ultra-quiet ambiance, where even the hosts’ female voice and external noises are filtered of all their potentially aggressive content so you can concentrate on building strength and thoroughly relaxing for a while. Then all of a sudden one fine day, you are flushed out of your Jacuzzi – Matrix style – and led up into a white crowded room with bright, blinding neon lights and machines beeping at full blast all over the place.

Fiction? No. Just a hospital; the neo-natal ward, where every modern baby comes to “life”. Would you enjoy it? I guess ‘no’. Would the Zermatterhof Palace & Spa, or the Four Season Hotel des Bergues Geneva, ever do that to you upon you waking up after a pretty intense night? I bet suing, or a refund, or at least a good yell would be in the air – and rightly so. Incidentally, the good yell bit is usually attempted by the guest customers of the neo-natal ward too, followed by not so much effect though…

Jump forward a few years, you have had a few internal ‘things’ worked in your insides, by a very precise and dedicated professional, along with very interesting products in your blood stream so that you can relax, sleep and dream a little. Then again, just like that, you are asked to open you eyes in a bright white room with blinding neon lights and machines beeping all around. Do you want to wake up? Probably not. Now, if you just had, say, a broken wrist, you would probably be in agreement with yourself that you can put up with the annoyance and just breathe.

But should you just have had something a bit more intense like a global rework of the good bits inside, say, after a car crash, I bet the discussion at management levels between you and yourself would be a tad more intense, about whether to go back and wake up and stay in that noisy mess for an unforeseeable time, or lie back, relax and enjoy the beautiful white light for good. At this very moment it would require a fair bit of insight to see beyond that hostile place, and make a choice.

Interestingly, this is precisely what we submit our newborns and our fellow humans to, on a daily basis, in just about ever single hospital in our developed world.

So whilst all the technical medical procedures have widely improved since the hammer and vise days, we (usually) still don’t give a damn about the room ambiance. That is understandable for top levels of emergencies, when making sure the person is waterproof again, or making sure the things that should be beating or computing or breathing do so in an orderly manner. But, once that first state of needs has been addressed, optimising the hosting is a pretty good insurance that your guest can and will, want to go home in due time. Beyond the room colour, smell, lighting, sea view and food quality, the sound quality of the place can tremendously influence how well people feel. Then, how well people feel tremendously influences how well and how fast people recover.

I think this last idea has gained a serious momentum in the last few years and is commonly agreed upon these days.

But why is sound involved in the process, and why is it that these bloody newborns or sick people cannot just plainly shut the fuck up and recover quickly so they can go at last, regardless?

The answer is cortisol, again. Cortisol is the stress hormone pumped into your body in case of danger by your ancient, instinctive reptilian brain to make sure you were ready and fit for running away, instead of say, quietly chewing an eucalyptus leaf in the shade of a nice high tree while a pack approaches. That was the whole point when we were hunters/gatherers or even ape like creatures in a forest and were living in a distant & wild past.

Now, while it is cool, or even fun, to have cortisol flooding your system once in a while, for say, matching a deadline, avoiding a falling petunia pot or enjoying a football game, it is an altogether different story to have the stuff in you full time. At the very least, it is the opposite of what you need when recovering or just being born. What you really want in these special moments are Oxytocin and the like, stuff that make you feel good and happy and in charge. This is how you gain strength and faith and the will to enjoy life as such. Feel good / feel bad chemical levels are controlled by your reptilian brains feelings and these feelings are also controlled by sound, unconsciously.

Nice soothing sounds = oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine=relax.
Sudden, short, violent or burst noises=cortisol=run.

For more on the idea check the Sight and Sound paragraph.

But there you are. Better room ambiance – faster better, happier recovery,
So why not invest in that area and save! Save money, save lives.

This post is also available in: French