Music and Health

Music

It's part of our everyday lives. We listen to it in the car and while exercising. We played music in school and its even in most film. Most of us have some great memories made to songs. But where does your health come into play?

So, music and health. Do they have any correlation?

Well, it appears that they do. Music has shown to improve multiple facets of health.

Music and memory.

Music has been shown to help slow cognitive decline. It has been used a lot with dementia patients. In certain cases, it helps them remember parts from their lives or to help connect with people in the present. 

BBC Culture did an article where they discussed the connections between music and memory. It brings up the fact that music may enter-twine with our memory. Whenever we hear music from our pasts, we get a flow of memories associated with it. Ancient stories and texts were passed down in forms of rhyme or music due to how it enabled an ability to recollect things. 

An article published by John Hopkins Medicine goes over some of this information and touches on the topic of keeping your brain engaged as you age. John Hopkins recommends listening to or playing music. Playing music has shown to increase brain function, and to help creativity. 

Music and mood.

Music has been shown to affect brain health. It can cause dopamine and serotonin to release, changing mood. It has shown to de-stress people, and I have experience with it myself. In some cases it has also been shown to help with depression.

An article on PubMed Central discusses a study they did on music and stress. They intended to measure stress response and recovery, dividing their test subjects into three groups. One group listened to relaxing music after the stressor, one listened to calm water, and one listened to nothing. The baseline levels of each stress response were reached fastest by the music listeners.

Music and your body.

It can energize you. Working out and listening to music have long been a combo as music can elevate your workout. It can also help boost your pain tolerance, helping you push past levels of soreness and fatigue while working out.

A study in Complementary Therapies in Medicine took a group of subjects to see how music affected heart stress.They measured heart rate variability among the subjects as they drove a set route with the same circumstances, listening to different music or none at all. The researchers found that the groups listening to music had higher heart rate variability, which increases when you feel relaxed and decreases when you feel stressed.

So, to conclude,

Music and health go hand in hand. It can be a beneficial aspect of day to day life. Music has always been a building block of many cultures or aspects of day to day life. It benefits you in many ways, just listen to what works for you.