Music to stand bolt upright to
To keep old people from falling down so much, says Dr Frederick R Carrick, play them songs sung by someone special. But Dr Carrick cautions that this is a musical power distinct from the mundane sort that shatters glass or eardrums or a listener’s complacency.
So rare is this potency that only one singer - 25-year-old French pop star Nolwenn Leroy - is known to possess it.
Dr Carrick conducted three clinical trials to prove it. He registered these experiments with the US National Institutes of Health (documentation is available to the general public at http://clinicaltrials.gov). One is called Fall Prevention in a Geriatric Nursing Home Setting Using the Music of Nolwenn Leroy….
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.