Health Benefits Of Music (Scientific Studies)
we've been playing music since back
during the Paleolithic era 40,000 years
ago with music as therapy documented at
least since biblical times the first
such experiment was published in the
Journal of the American Medical
Association in 1914 phonograph in
operating room as a means of calming and
distracting patients from the horror of
the situation as they lie awake during
surgery now that we have anesthesia
music is used to calm nerves before
surgery normally we use valium type
drugs like midazolam sold as versed but
it can have a variety of side effects
including sometimes making people even
more agitated so this study was
performed to see if relaxing music has a
greater anxiety reducing effect than a
standard dose of the drug so they
whipped out some Kenny G and the music
worked significantly better than the
drug lower anxiety scores lower heart
rate lower blood pressure perhaps the
first report of any anti-anxiety therapy
working not just as good as but better
then benzodiazepine drugs and the
difference in the side effects of
relaxing music compared to the drug is
obviously there were none soft jazz
causes no post-operative hangover so the
researchers suggest we should start
using music instead of midazolam music
may be effective in reducing anxiety and
pain in children as well undergoing
minor medical and dental procedures
helping with blood draws getting their
shots even reducing the pain of spinal
taps though evidently Mozart is
powerless against the pain of
circumcision but doesn't take a
randomized control trial to demonstrate
that listening to music can be relaxing
tell me something I don't know ok this I
did not know
if you take someone with a latex allergy
and inject their skin with latex to get
a big red angry bump right but if you
repeat the test after they've been
listening to Mozart for 30 minutes they
develop a much smaller bump they had
less of allergic reaction and if you
think that's wild Beethoven didn't work
same Rhea same reaction kind of before
and after right so it wasn't just the
music Schubert didn't work either nor
did hiden or Brahms both failed to
reduce the allergic skin response thus
the reducing effect on the allergic
responses may be specific to Mozart so
Mozart's looking pretty good but wait a
second maybe Mozart suppresses the
immune system in general that wouldn't
be good so they also injected a chemical
that causes reaction in everyone not
just allergic people and Mozart had no
effect so it seems to just suppress the
pathological allergic reaction and if
that isn't crazy enough for you they
drew people's blood after the music and
stuck their white blood cells in a petri
dish with little latex and measured the
allergic antibody response the white
blood cells from the person exposed to
Mozart had less of an allergic response
even outside the body compared to cells
taken from Beethoven blood that is cool
music may even impact our metabolism it
all started with this study they found
that the resting energy expenditure the
resting metabolic rate the amount of
calories burned just lying around was
lower in preemies when they piped in
Mozart which may explain why infants
exposed to music put on weight faster so
much so they were able to go home
earlier now gaining weight faster is
great for premature babies but not
necessarily for adults could listen to
music slower metabolism and contribute
to weight gain no this study found no
effect on adults but they used Bach not
Mozart and Bach doesn't work for babies
either a drop in energy expenditure on
Mozart but
not on Bach this would suggest that
maybe more of a mozart specific effect
than a Universal Music effect what if
you just listened to music of your
choice does it affect our metabolism or
not we didn't know until now and turns
out that listening to music appears to
actually increase our metabolic rate
such that we burn an average of twenty
seven point six more calories a day even
just lying in bed though that's only
about six semin Emsworth better to use
music to get up and start dancing or
exercising music can not only improve
exercise enjoyment but performance as
well a way to improve athletic
performance that's legal male
bodybuilders may be a less enthused by
this effect though after listening to
music for just 30 minutes testosterone
levels drop fourteen percent in young
men and go up 21 percent in young women
all kinds of music or just some types of
music 30 minutes of silence had no
effect same testosterone levels before
and after but half an hour of Mozart
suppressed testosterone as did jazz as
did pop music as did Gregorian chants no
relation what about a half hour of
people's like personal favorites
testosterone levels cut in half
testosterone decreased in males under
all music conditions whereas
testosterone increased in the females
what is going on well in men
testosterone is related to libido
dominance aggressiveness whereas women
get a bigger boost in testosterone from
cuddling than from sex and so maybe we
evolved using music as a way to ensure
we all got along like a melodious cold
shower to keep everyone chilled