New Research Shows How Music Can Help Your Heart
By: Bean Jones
Healthy Music. Country music is good for the heart. Who knew?
The right music can give your health an instant boost.
I recently came across an article from Science Daily which talked about the groundbreaking research done at the University of Maryland's School of Medicine. They discovered that joyful tunes "have a healthy effect on blood vessel function."
I was delighted by the study but I was surprised by some of the findings. In fact, I would have never guessed what qualifies as joyful music. Then again, maybe it just isn't my kind of music.
Happy Picks
"We knew that individual people would react differently to different types of music, so in this study, we enabled participants to select music based upon their likes and dislikes," explains principal investigator Dr. Michael Miller, director of preventive cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center and associate professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Thus, the participants were asked to undergo extensive tests. For one, they were made to listen to their chosen tunes for 30 minutes while researchers measured their happiness by the number of dilations of the blood vessels around their hearts.
Top Tunes
As it turns out, most of the participants in the study tagged country music as their favorite mood booster. They likewise revealed that "heavy metal" music made them feel anxious.
"You can't read into this too much, although you could argue that country music is light, spirited, a lot of love songs," said Dr. Miller, who assures us that he "could have selected 10 other individuals and the favorite could have been a different type of music." He adds: "We're all wired differently, we all react differently. I enjoy country music, so I could appreciate why country music could cause that joyful response."
At the moment, researchers are still in the process of finding out if other types of music produce similar positive effects on blood vessels. So, if you're into making music, now would be a good time to put your music out there. You never know. Your tunes might literally save a lot of hearts.
Comments
Music makes the world go round, or so the song says from days gone by.
I'm no expert but find a culture or civilization of past or present, primitive or industrialized nation, who does not also have a history of music.
And there has always been music that soothed, music that clelebrated, and music that was used to arouse warriors to battle.
So to believe music, joyful music, could have a healthy effect on blood vessels, is very easy to believe.
By the same reasoning, that which is used to arouse warriors to battle has an effect on the blood vessels too, I imagine. One that is far less joyful and in fact, life threatening!
Aahhh, the sound of music. Is it any wonder that it has been used to usher in some of the most significant events in recorded history? The most important to me would be the very season we are about to celebrate, and that would be the birth of Jesus. Think about it.
Great scinence is catching up to what people have always known. chanting, singing and even yodeling is beneficial. Water molekyles change when exposed to certain music too.