The last couple of weeks we’ve been taking a look at some of the benefits we can gain from playing music. I’m going to continue that theme this week, with a little bit of a twist. This week, instead of looking at developmental or academic benefits that students can gain from learning to make music themselves, we’re going to look at some of the health benefits we can all reap, by doing nothing more than just listening to music.
Music has held a place in human healing and cultural rituals since before the written word. It has become so ingrained in every human culture on the planet that researchers decided to look into the myriad of ways music impacts our physical and mental health. Over the years there have been countless studies in this area, and their findings suggest music can have a positive impact on our physical and mental well-being in nearly countless ways, in fact, when viewed in a CT scan, almost no part of the brain is left inactive when music is heard. Listening is a full brain experience, and the benefits are just as global.
With such wide ranging benefits, this article could go on forever, so I’ve decided to focus on a select few that I think are most pertinent to everyday life.
Anxiety and stress
Most people know that music has the ability to change and alter mood, but what many probably don’t know is that the science backs it up! Research has shown time and time again that music, especially with a slow beat and no vocals, can calm you, even during periods of high stress or pain. Some studies have even shown that the right music can prevent anxiety-caused increases in heart rate and blood pressure, and decrease cortisol levels, all symptoms of stress. This effect is so powerful in fact, that another study showed that patients listening to music during their hernia repair surgery needed significantly less morphine to manage their pain than those without music. Yet another study even went so far as to show that the stress relief from music was more powerful, and certainly less dangerous to the body, than anxiolytic drugs.
In some cases this stress relieving quality of music can be a two way street. In one study, 272 premature newborns were exposed to a number of different kinds of music, three times a week, while recovering in the neonatal ICU. Each child either got their own parents singing them lullabies, or a music therapist performing instruments. In each and every case of the 272 infants the music was found to help improve their functioning, but the babies who heard their own parents singing to them showed the most improvement, and the act also helped to ease the parents stress as well.
Pain Management
Another of music’s magical powers is its ability to help with pain management. In a study in 2013, 60 people suffering from the intense musculoskeletal pain associated with fibromyalgia were randomly assigned to two groups. One group listened to music once a day for four weeks, the other, the control group, did not. At the conclusion of the study it was found that those who listened to music not only experienced fewer symptoms of depression, but had significant pain reduction. These results were duplicated by another recent study in which spine surgery patients listened to music of their own choosing on the evening before their surgery and until two days after. Just like the fibromyalgia patients, those who listened to music reported significantly less post surgery pain than those who did not.
How and why this works is still something of a mystery, despite frequent and robust experimentation. One clue may be music’s impact on how dopamine, a natural pain killer, is released into the brain. Another clue is how closely pain and stress are related in the brain; it makes some sense that if music can reduce one, it should be able to reduce the other. It was even once thought that music had a kind of placebo effect on the brain. A study just last year showed that not to be true, with the researchers concluding that music is simply a potent analgesic.
Immune function
It sounds a little outlandish, but some researchers think listening to music can even help prevent disease. To test this theory, researchers from Wilkes University in Pennsylvania looked at how music affects a specific antibody, called IgA, which is an important part of the human body’s immune system’s first line of defense. Subjects were split into several groups, only one of which listened to soothing music. The members of the music group showed an impressive increase in the production of IgA that the other group members did not.
Another interesting study, preformed at Massachusetts General Hospital, involved playing Mozart’s piano sonatas for critically ill patients. Their findings showed that the music helped relax patients by lowering their stress hormone levels, but the most interesting finding was that the music helped to lower the interleukin-6 levels in their blood. Interleukin-6 is a protein that has been connected to higher mortality rates, diabetes, and heart problems.
Research into music’s effects on pain is still in its infancy, but the findings are promising so far. Harnessing the power of music for medicine would be a huge improvement over the unending list of unwanted side effects that come with pharmaceuticals.
Exercise
Who doesn’t listen to music when they exercise? If you’re one of those rare breed that prefer silence, you may be missing out. Probably the study with the most telling results was performed in the United Kingdom. 30 participants were split into three groups of 10, one listening to motivational music, one listening to non-motivational music, one with no music. Each group were asked to walk on a treadmill until they were exhausted. They found that both groups listening to music worked out longer than the control group, and the group listening to motivational music said they felt better during their workout than either of the other two groups. Maybe the music works as a distraction, maybe as a motivation, whatever the case music helps you get more from your workout.
The benefits go even further when you combine the UK study’s results with another study that looked at athletes’ oxygen consumption levels. Measuring these levels as people exercised on stationary bikes while listening to music showed that when the music had a beat that was faster and in time with their motions, they used oxygen much more efficiently than those listening to music with a slower and un-synchronized beat or no music at all.
Music’s effects on human physical and mental health are powerful and undeniable. Use them to your advantage for a healthy body and mind!