How Listening to Music Can Improve Your Health

1. 8 Ways Listening to Music Can Improve Your Health

   Next time you’re outside, among a group of strangers, take a look and note how many people have music players in their hands and ear buds in their ears. Thanks to 21st century technology, people are able to enjoy just about any example of recorded music that exists on demand, and they’re doing so in growing numbers. But why? What are the benefits of listening to music? Sure it’s fun to do, but what if listening to music was actually good for you? Many medical professionals believe what music fans have always intuitively known: listening to music is good for the body as well as the soul. With that in mind, here are eight ways listening to music can improve your health.

   Increases endurance:

   
   There’s a reason why your jazzercise instructor plays Lady Gaga songs while putting you through your paces. While exercising, matching your physical movement to the tempo of up-beat music builds up your endurance by reducing the feeling of physical effort. Music with asteady, up-tempo groove tricks you into forgetting how you’re working up a sweat. Your body also uses its energy more efficiently when its moving in time to the beat.

2. Lowers blood pressure:

   
   Just as music can help to get your heart pumping, it can also slow it down, lowering your blood pressure and relieving anxiety and even physical discomfort and pain. Music that is slow in tempo, including some examples of classical or new age music, can have the same metronomic effect on the body as up-tempo music, promoting relaxation and lowering the level of cortisol, a stress hormone that can contribute to high blood pressure.

3. Calms Alzheimer’s patients:

   
   Neurologist and author Oliver Sacks writes about the profound effect of music on patients suffering from Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases. Alzheimer’s patients often become more relaxed and less anxious while listening to music, but more dramatically, some are able to regain, organize, and clearly articulate their memories. Although music therapy can’t reverse or heal the dementia associated with Alzheimer’s, it can improve the mood of a person with the disease and in some cases, temporarily reduce their wandering and restlessness,

4. Changes moods:

   
   Music has a direct and profound effect on a listener’s emotions. Time set aside for listening to music is sometimes prescribed by doctors to help treat people with depression, as doing so can relax and inspire a patient to speak more freely about their symptoms and possible causes. Listening to specific styles, bands, or not necessarily relaxing songs help a patient face, process, and accept difficult or unpleasant memories and emotions. Singing and performing music has also shown to have a healing effect on people suffering from depression.

5. Improves stroke recovery:

   
   Music can play an important role in the recovery process of victims of stroke and brain injuries. Listening to music can improve a patient’s ability to focus during physical therapy. Singing music can aid in the recovery of verbal memory and speech. Arizona congresswomanGabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head, was able to sing before being able to speak. Giffords is just one case study among many where singing helped to create new speech pathways to a patient’s injured and damaged brain.

6. Reduces pain:

   
   Several studies show that listening to music can lessen the experience of physical pain. Some hospitals employ a licensed music therapist to play or sing for patients before, during, or after chemotherapy or other similarly uncomfortable procedures, to help alleviate their anxiety and pain. Music therapy can shift the patient’s focus away from their discomfort and stimulate the body to combat the amount of stress hormones it is producing.

7. Eases Parkinson’s disease symptoms:

   
   Neurologist and author Oliver Sacks has described music as “very, very crucial” for patients with Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative disorder of the body’s central nervous system. While listening to music, some Parkinson’s patients, even those with more advanced symptoms, experience improvement in their motor skills as well as voice and speech functions. Sacks specifically points to tempo in music as being especially powerful in treatment, as it can provide Parkinson’s patients with a steady, normal rhythm their body has lost.

8. Encourages healthy sleep:

   
   It seems that in our culture, the popular solution to curing sleep disorders like insomnia is a drug, especially a drug with lots of side effects. It’s interesting that at least two popular prescription drugs for treating insomnia, Ambien and Sonata, are both named after a styleand form of music respectively. Playing music an hour before bedtime, particularly softer types of music with slower tempos, has proven to be effective in conditioning those who suffer from insomnia to gradually relax and fall asleep. But what specifically should you listen to? You might try Insomnia, an album of peaceful music by Erik Satie, Richard Strauss, John Cage and others, beautifully performed by violinist Gordon Kremer and harpist Yaoko Noshino. But every insomniac experiences their symptoms differently, and music should be selected and introduced as treatment accordingly.
   Source:  http://www.insurancequotes.org/2012/06/17/8-ways-listening-to-music-can-improve-your-health/