New knowledge: Music can heal and protect you from disease.
Mozart, Maroon 5 or Metallica: Music penetrates deep into your body beyond just the ear canals and protects you from a variety of ailments.
This means, that there actually are both a physical as well as a psychological effect of music on the brain.
Did you think that only your ears and your brain enjoyed music? No!
Every time you press “play” on your favorite music, the notes propagate to all parts of your body and build you up from within: You become better at physical performance, fighting illness and stress, and at recovering when you have been tough on yourself.
Researchers around the world are currently studying how music can have such an impact on us and how we can exploit the phenomenon as a kind of legal doping, acoustic vitamin pill and alternative to medicine.
– For example, it is new knowledge that music not only affects our emotions, but can also treat physical disorders, says psychology professor Daniel J. Levitin from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He is one of the world’s leading researchers in music and health and also both an active musician and consultant for many world stars.
– Music strengthens the body’s immune system and fights stress. When we listen to music, we form several IgA-type antibodies via plasma cells in the intestinal wall, which protect against infections.
It causes the immune system to speed up the production of natural killer cells that fight bacteria and perhaps even cancer cells. At the same time, the blood’s content of the stress hormone cortisol decreases, which is also extremely positive, Daniel J. Levitin says.
Studies have even shown that music reduces anxiety and stress better than medication in patients undergoing surgery. In particular, music can be used to advantage as a supplement to the rest of the treatment.
YOUR favorite music works best
What kind of music should you listen to in order to achieve the many positive qualities, you might be thinking. Daniel J. Levitin has a surprising answer to that:
– It is completely subjective and individual what to listen to. There is not one piece of music or one particular genre of music that certainly evokes a desired effect in the body. What one person finds stimulating and invigorating may seem more relaxing or directly irritating to another.
Initially, it is about choosing some music that you like. If you often listen to music, you often develop a good, individual sense of what kind of music cheers you up, calms you down, helps you focus on a task or something completely different, says Daniel J. Levitin.
Levitin emphasizes that research into the healthy effects of music is difficult because it is difficult to separate the effects of music from the social context in which we hear it. For example, even sad music can create positive emotions if you like it and hear it in a nice context.
While the researchers investigate further, we must each do our best at making personal playlists with various healthy effects.
8 healthy bonus effects of music
Music can positively affect you in a myriad of situations. Here are eight examples of how the tones can do you good.
1. When you want to be in a better mood
If you need to be cheered up a bit with a good song, it’s actually not that important what type of song you choose to listen to, research from Kent’s School of Psychology in England shows. You can get in a better mood by listening to sad as well as cheerful music.
What matters is what your purpose of listening is. If you are set on wanting to listen to music to lift your spirits, it will happen – regardless of the nature of the music. Conversely, if you choose a particular number because it reminds you of a sad event, you will become more sad.
Music selection: Not significant. The crucial thing is what you have decided in advance to achieve with the music.
2. When you are in pain
Subjects who are exposed to short-term and harmless pain feel it less when they listen to Mozart, rather than when they did not listen to music. This is shown by studies conducted at the Center for Functional Integrative Neuroscience in Aarhus, Denmark.
Also, natural sounds, typically associated with something positive, alleviate the pain. Against chronic muscle pain in the disease fibromyalgia, music has also been shown to have a beneficial effect. The pain is less unpleasant and intense when patients listen to music.
The use of painkillers such as morphine can be reduced by up to 50 percent when patients listen to music. Should one undergo surgery without full anesthesia, music can divert attention away from the pain and sounds of the instruments that can make many people nervous.
Music selection: The most important thing is that you perceive the music as nice and relaxing. Mozart is a good bet.
3. When you want to lose weight
Throbbing rhythms subconsciously make you eat more, while quiet music along with dim lighting conversely makes you relaxed, so you eat slower. This gives the satiety time to set in, so you do not overeat. And overall you will consume fewer calories.
Music selection: Quiet music.
4. When you want to alleviate anxiety
In this case, soft music in a quiet environment can help calm you down. Music at a low tempo and pitch reduces stress and anxiety, both in everyday situations and if you are nervous about a dental visit or a speech you have to give.
Pace-filled music with thunder and bang, on the other hand, will increase your heart rate and potentially make you more stressed. A comparative study actually shows that music soothes you on the same level as massage or a hot bath.
Music selection: Quiet music at a leisurely pace.
5. When you cannot sleep
Calm music is an all-time sleeping pill that improves sleep quality and reduces the depressive symptoms associated with poor sleep. This is shown in tests of classical music that were compared to the use of audio books.
Music selection: Calm and harmonious, preferably classical music.
6. When you are at the hospital
Many have probably felt a bit anxious and nervous about being in the hospital. Here, too, music can have a beneficial effect; 3 to 11-year-olds feel less pain and are less restless in the emergency room if they hear music at the same time, University of Alberta researchers report.
In addition, studies show that music can relieve anxiety, pain, sadness and reduced quality of life in cancer patients who are in hospital.
Music selection: Calm music.
7. When you want to work-out really hard
You actually unconsciously follow the tempo of the music as you train. For example, if you run in time to music with a slightly faster rhythm than you normally run in, you typically increase the speed.
In one study, the training intensity decreased when the pace of a particular number was slowed down without the participants knowing it. Conversely, they unknowingly trained harder when the same track was played faster.
Another study showed that cyclists drove 11% longer with music in their ears, compared to when they did not listen to music.
Music selection: The tempo is crucial. Faster pace gives harder training intensity.
8. When you want to restitute faster
After training, you restitute faster if you listen to music. This is shown in studies of people who trained on treadmills. There where observations of how blood pressure, pulse and the feeling of being ready again adjusted more quickly when the participants heard quiet and calm music.
Music selection: Calm music at a slow pace. Actually works whether you like the music or not.
