The Cause of Better Health from Music

Music is a very wonderful thing. It is a universal language that is part of everybody’s lives. People listen to music every single day, and they use it for various things such as performing with instruments or singing or even just listening to it while doing activities such as reading or studying. Places such as stores, sports stadiums, and restaurants also use music for the customers. Music is everywhere. A lot of people love to listen to music. That is a really good thing because by listening to music, music can bring a lot of good benefits to people’s lives. They can cause a lot of great improvements in your overall health, especially your physical health and your mental health.

The brain and music are basically connected to each other. According to Harvard, the brain is the one that collects soundwaves, and the waves go right to the eardrum. When the waves strike the eardrum, the eardrum vibrates, and that leads to tons of other chain reactions in our brain that cause us to perceive musical ideas like pitch, melody, harmony, chord progressions, chords, and other musical ideas. With these chain reactions, we are able to combine all of these ideas into what we call “music.” This is important to know here because it shows just how interconnected the brain and music really are. Because they are interconnected, it gives music the opportunity to really improve your health, especially in the mind. For example, the fact that music and the brain are interconnected allows music to calm down stress hormones. This is really helpful especially for those that have anxiety and/or depression. It is especially prevalent when we use certain kinds of musical styles such as classical music and jazz. Not all musical styles would be able to do that for obvious reasons. Some styles such as rap, heavy metal, rock, and some forms of pop would definitely not be able to calm down the stress hormones in your body because those kinds of music are so lively and so chaotic sometimes, that instead of being able to calm down the stress hormones, not only would they not calm them down, they would instead aggravate them and/or even create new ones. Classical and jazz music are definitely genres that can reduce stress hormones significantly because of their more relaxing and instrumental nature.

Listening to causes a lot of benefits to the body as far as physical health goes. In Shanghai University, the scientists were able to prove that music does indeed cause fatigue to be significantly reduced. They also proved, according to healthlin.com, that when the people were engaged into doing a repetitive task over and over again, the music helped them maintain good muscle endurance. There has even been proof of music actually boosting your overall performance on working out. It has been shown to help work out much more efficiently as well as much longer than usual. This is because of the fact that music can really help you relax and get rid of those stress hormones in your body. It kind of makes sense. We see tons of athletes listen to music all the time when they work out. They especially love to listen to high intensity music because it is very fast and intense as far as the tempo, rhythm, and the chord structure goes. If they listened to something like classical music, the vibe would not fit in. It would not help them workout more efficiently, but rather, it would help them work inefficiently. However, with fast songs that are very intense such as some pop songs, rock, and others, they will help a lot more due to the nature and feel of those songs.

Music also causes our emotions to be heavily affected. Certain songs and genres have certain styles and feels to them that do different effects to other people. This is important to note especially for those that have depression. Some songs will not work well for those with depression because they will be too sad, and those kinds of songs will just lead them to more sadness, which is obviously what we do not want. Rite of Spring is an excellent composition to use as an example of what not to show to a person with depression. The song is very chaotic and confusing. There are so many things that happen in that song as far as the harmony and rhythm goes, that it would simply confuse them, and drive them into insanity. Sad songs with sad lyrics would definitely not be good. The songs should have a positive theme in them or sound very happy and positive. Pharrell William’s “Happy” is an obvious example of a very happy song. The lyrics show a very positive message, and the song is in a major key, which helps it sound happy. 

Overall, it is very clear that listening to music causes many great effects to occur to a lot of people. Sometimes, certain genres are very good for improving overall health while others do not. Sometimes, songs might sound too sad or sometimes too crazy or insane, whereas some songs sound a lot happier and might take a more relaxed approach in order to get its message across. Music and the brain are very well connected, and as a result, when music is heard by the human ear, it can cause that person to experience tons of great side effects. Music can help you in your overall physical health, especially when you are working out and especially when you are listening to fast music because fast music is really fitting for the type of environment and feel that working out is. It is also known for helping those with depression and anxiety because the stress hormones are able to be calmed down. Music is a wonderful tool to have in your everyday life and it is not only something used to enjoy yourself, but it is also used to actually improve the health of oneself.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-musical-self/201408/5-problems-music-can-create

https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/music-and-health

https://www.healthline.com/health/benefits-of-music#mood-boost

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/11/music