Music and Health

Music is everywhere in our lives, and many people listen to it. Many people love to listen to music and even play music sometimes if they are musicians. People use music all the time when doing everyday things like studying, working, relaxing, dancing, and many other things. It is something that is used all the time, and often times, it is viewed as a great thing. Many people see it as a great thing because they say that it can reduce a lot of anxiety and depression. They also say that music can also improve your overall mood. However, there are people out there that stand by the fact that music actually does the exact opposite. Music can actually decrease and ruin people’s overall health, especially in the physical, mental, and emotional areas of your health.

Sometimes they argue that the digression of people’s health when listening to music is very apparent when we look in the mental health area, specifically, when we look at people with depression. Most people will say that music is a perfect coping mechanism and treatment for people with anxiety and depression. They say that music tends to calm down stress hormones, which in cause helps people relax a lot. When people relax, anxiety is reduced down by a whole lot, and since anxiety is down, depression, as a result, will also be reduced. However, as counterintuitive as this will sound, music is actually a terrible coping mechanism and treatment for people with anxiety and depression because by having them listen to music, this will do the exact opposite for them. Depression will actually increase and anxiety will also increase for them, and by both of those things increasing, their overall mood will also deteriorate as a result. This sounds very counterintuitive, but you have to think about it. When people have depression and/or anxiety, they feel really sad and really stressed out. When those people are feeling those kinds of feelings and emotions, they don’t want anything else and it is difficult for them to feel anything else. When we have them listen to music, they will most likely pick music that sounds sad or depressing, and if the songs are not instrumentals, they will most likely have sad lyrics in the songs. In turn, their depression and/or anxiety is not really going away. Instead, the music is actually acting as an additional stressor and as a result, their overall health is not getting better, but it is actually getting worse. By giving these people the ability to listen to music as a treatment or a coping mechanism, they are not getting the proper help that they need. They need to find something else as a good treatment or coping mechanism for their depression and/or anxiety such as being active or socializing with other people for example.

They also argue that music can also affect you physically as well, especially to the ears. There are two ways that people love to listen to music. It is by either going to loud concerts or by listening to music using earbuds or headphones. Our ears can only but handle so much music at a loud volume, and sometimes, if we listen to music in these kind of ways for a long time, we can sometimes experience hearing loss. This is especially true today towards the younger generations as many young children these days require headphones for school work, and often times, they listen to lots of music while working. Young teenagers also go to lots of concerts put on by many famous musicians and singers, and with amplification and technology these days, concerts keep getting louder and louder, and that can be damaging to the ear sometimes. The problem is that younger children’s ears are still developing when they are young, even until their teenage years. They can’t handle so much loud music or music with headphones for a long period of time, and yet, due to certain circumstances, they go through with that.

Also, they say that sometimes, music can be harmful and affect those in their emotional health, especially those who went through traumatic experiences. Music is a really powerful tool that can sometimes unlock memories or even remind you of memories in the past. It can sometimes be reflective and either bring back good memories or bad memories. According to an article from “Psychology Today”, there was a man who really loves music, and he listens to music all the time. However, he had recently lost his wife, and he said that he can no longer listen to and enjoy music anymore because all the music that he loves to listen to remind him of his wife. The memories reminded through the music really affect the man negatively and he can no longer enjoy music. Unfortunately, he is not the only one, and there are many people that have been emotionally haunted by music because of past experiences or former memories. Music can emotionally haunt people simply by being sad or slow and having a message or having some certain lyrics that remind people of past memories like a loved one or a traumatic experience like an illness or an accident. Sometimes, this can even increase stress, and as a result, increase anxiety as well.

When you consider the evidence and the facts, it is easy to see that even though many people see music as a wonderful tool to help improve people’s overall health, people stand by with that fact that instead of improving people’s overall health, music actually declines people’s overall health. Music declines people’s physical health, mental health, and emotional health. It can cause anxiety to skyrocket really high as well as hearing loss for younger folks. Depression can also be increased really high because of music’s overall ability to add stressors to people’s lives and cause them to feel really sad. Music can also bring unwanted memories to those who are feeling really sad or traumatized, especially to those who have went through major experiences or have lost loved ones. People still will stand by the fact that music is a terrible way to improve your overall health, however, they are wrong.

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. On the contrary, there are some people who don’t really care to listen to that much music. They just don’t enjoy music as much as other people might enjoy. For those who don’t listen to music that much, it may sound kind of counterintuitive, but in a way, it is actually harmful not to listen to that much music.

Here is the thing. A lot of times when we listen to music such as classical, jazz, or even country to an extent, us as humans tend to get that feeling of feeling calm or relaxed, and that is totally normal. That is what must happen! As humans, we have a lot of stress hormones, and as college students, we have a lot of stresses happening such as classes, tests, food, finances, and other things. As a result, these stress hormones are constantly active. By listening to calming music, these stress hormones can actually be calmed simply by listening to calming music. Don’t use music like heavy metal because that can raise up stress hormones by a lot due to its aggressive and hyper nature. By calming the stress hormones, you actually lower blood pressure at the same time because blood correlates with stress. For those with high blood pressure, this is a really good tool to use to lower blood pressure. This is also a good way to avoid heart problems.

Music can also reduce and treat anxiety and depression. When people have anxiety and depression, there is usually a lot of stress built up in their lives that they have to get over. Again, we learned that music can help calm and reduce stress hormones. As a result, music can help people be calm and stop thinking lots of negative thoughts. Most of the music has to be calming or slower music. This is because you don’t want the music to be too uplifting or too aggressive or too fast. You also want that is easier to relate to. Music such as classical and country should be just fine for that.

In addition, music is known for helping people sleep. According to some studies, there were some students who listened to classical music for 45 minutes before they slept, and they reported sleeping really well and waking up way fewer times throughout the night than before. This is also correlated with reducing stress and anxiety. By using music to help sleep better, it can help our bodies rest better and actually regain healthiness overnight. Rest is very important for the body because it can actually help the body recharge itself and the mind so that way, we can be more productive throughout the day as well as actually being safer.  

As I said before, music can also help us be very productive. Many people like to listen to different music while doing their day to day things. Some either like classical, jazz, pop, heavy metal, and others. Coming from a musician myself, I personally like classical and jazz music. The reason why is that I find them really relatable for me because I really like the complex chord progressions and the harmony of the music, but at the same time, the instrumentation is really nice and the dynamics and the music overall sound really pleasant to the ear. Not everyone may like that. Some people might prefer the aggressive sound of heavy metal or simpler stuff like pop or country. 

Music can also help us with our mood and emotions. When we do every day things, we can feel certain kind of ways, mostly happy. This is because when we do the things we love, there is a chemical called dopamine that is released to the brian, and it brings pleasure. When we listen to music, it provides different kinds of levels of dopamine into the brain because of the different genres and moods or feel of the music. The faster and more aggressive the song, the more dopamine there will be, and if there are songs that are a little bit more on the slower side, then there will be less dopamine released. Either way, people will feel tons of different emotions from music. 

Now, there are a couple of big reasons why there are some people who don’t really listen to music all that much, and they do exist in the world. One is that one person might have something called “music anheodina.” It basically means that people don’t really get any drive or pleasure from music. That is a neurological disorder. The other thing is that when we are young, sometimes we are exposed to a certain kind of music often, or even multiple kinds of music, and sometimes, that will dictate what kind of music we are interested in. Sometimes, people might not even be exposed to a lot or even any music, and as a result, they just don’t feel like listening to music all that much like other people do.

Overall, people should definitely listen to more music. Not just because music is really cool and that it is fun and that you all will enjoy it, but also because music is actually really good for you. It can help lower blood pressure and decrease your anxiety and depression levels, and it can even help you sleep. Your moods and emotions will definitely be affected in a positive way by music, and you can even be productive with music. Music is a universal language, and it needs to be used often from every single person.

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.

Your References absolutely DO NOT COMPLY
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Sources:

https://www.bettersleep.com/blog/how-classical-and-instrumental-music-affect-mental-health/

The Science Behind Why Classical Music Is Good for Mental Health

https://www.wqxr.org/story/15998-how-music-therapy-helps-ease-clinical-depression/

https://www.flexispot.com/spine-care-center/8-health-benefits-that-will-make-you-listen-to-classical-music-more

Can You Hear the Music?

https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/music-and-health-what-you-need-to-know#:~:text=Yes%2C%20according%20to%20a%20growing,sensation%2C%20movement%2C%20and%20emotion.

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