Personally, I listen to music everyday for most of the day. Any chance I get I put my AirPods in and play my favourite songs, whether it be to help me concentrate and feel inspired or to take my mind off of things, I jump at. In fact, I am listening to music as I write this. Music is incredible, and looking at my Spotify Wrapped is definitely one of the highlights of my year. From Beethoven to Bruno Mars to Charli XCX, music has several benefits for us.
Music elevates your mood
Music can increase the brain’s production of dopamine, which helps relieve feelings of anxiety and depression. Music is processed by a part of our brain called the amygdala, which is also involved in controlling emotions. Similarly, it can also reduce stress, by triggering biochemical stress reducers.
Music improves your heart health
The tempo of the music you listen to can automatically slow down or speed up your heart rate, blood pressure and breathing. Research has shown that blood flows more easily when music is played, and it helps decrease levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, and increase serotonin and dopamine levels in the blood.
Music helps manage and reduce pain
By reducing stress levels and providing a strong competing stimulus to the pain signals reaching the brain, music helps people manage pain, and can reduce the perceived intensity of the pain. It is used in palliative medicine, geriatric care and intensive care to help patients’ pain tolerance increase.
Music stimulates memories
Although there is no cure to Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, music has been found to slow cognitive decline, helping people struggling with these diseases to remember episodes from their lives. Music therapy can also help relax an agitated patient and improve communication in patients. On a smaller scale, listening to a song can trigger memories associated with that specific song to come back; for example, whenever I listen to ‘End of Beginning’ by Djo, I always go back to when I was in Boston this past summer.
Music boosts exercise performance
Research has proven that working out with music improves your mood, helps your body exercise more efficiently and cuts down on your awareness of exertion, so will probably result in longer workouts. In clinical settings, athletes who listened to high-intensity, fast music during warmups were motivated to perform better. Additionally, syncing your music to your workout can help you reach peak performance using less oxygen (which means that you breathe more easily when being active) than you would use if you did the same workout without the beat.
Music helps you sleep better
A study showed that students who listened to relaxing classical music for 45 minutes before they went to bed slept significantly better than those who slept with an audiobook or listened to nothing at all. Obviously, if you listen to intense techno music before sleeping, it will probably have the opposite effect.
To sum up, music helps us in many ways, both physically and mentally. So, like Abba said, thank you for the music.
*This is not sponsored by Spotify.
By: Sofia B, Year 12
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