The Powerful Influence of Music on Our Lives
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T: How much can music help you in life?
D: Let’s look at the impact of music on our daily lives; what genre of music can help you in times of stress and before you go to sleep?
Many believe music can heal the body, mind, and soul. You may or may not agree with this opinion, but there is one undeniable fact: music has power over the things around us.
In 2011, the Manchester-based band Marconi Union and the British Academy of Sound Therapy recorded a song called Weightless (ambient style). This recording soon became known as the most soothing and relaxing song in the history of humanity. Scientific research into this phenomenon has shown that the slow and unsafe “flow” of sound, achieved through a combination of several musical principles, does have a calming effect. It should be noted that even games like teen patti online cash game, have their music, which should soothe the player in stressful situations.
Of course, it isn’t easy to prove that this song is the best, but its soothing and relaxing properties are undeniable. Modern science has confirmed what humanity has known for thousands of years: music profoundly affects our mood and well-being.
You may not even realize it, but music can influence such areas of life:
- Relationships with loved ones;
- Mood;
- Weight control.
The Nature of Music
Oliver Sachs, the author of many books on the unique phenomenon of the human mind, claims in his book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain that music is as natural to humans as language. He also claims that people’s hearing and nervous system organs are perfect for listening to music and that their emotional responses can be incredibly complex, mysterious, and profound.
Sachs and other experts cite examples of music’s many amazing effects on the human brain. MRI technology and similar ways of studying the brain have allowed scientists to find the area responsible for music perception. More precisely, they have seen quite a few. Music does not affect a single central location but activates several brain areas simultaneously.
The best-selling book This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of Human Compulsion (This is Your Brain on Music) explores this phenomenon in more detail by neuroscientist Daniel Levitin. He was once head of the Laboratory for Music Perception and Analysis at McGill University and now serves as Dean of the Minerva School Social Sciences Department at KGI.
As Levitin writes in his book, listening to music seems to start a whole orchestra playing in the brain, involving both the most ancient and the most evolutionarily new parts of the brain, as well as its occipital and frontal lobes.
Thus, the mesolimbic system areas responsible for arousal, pleasure, opioid transmission, and dopamine production respond to music sounds. The cerebellum and basal nuclei are also activated when listening to music. In fact, for many years, scientists thought these areas of the brain were only related to the processing of musical rhythm and size. Recent research has found that the cerebellum is also involved in emotion management through connections to the frontal lobes and the brain’s limbic system.
A meta-analysis of 400 studies published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences posted not long ago found that music can significantly reduce cortisol (the stress hormone) levels and significantly dampen patients’ anxiety. Surprisingly, music can even lower heart rate.
An average heart rate for a person at rest is between 60 and 100 beats per minute. The Weightless composition starts at 60 beats per minute and slows to 50. Over the five minutes that the song is played, the listener’s nervous system begins to adapt to its pace, much like that of small children, whose pulse rate often matches that of their mother.
Music reduces stress
Everyone knows that good music helps you relax. The meditative music industry is built on this. And for a good reason. Scientists believe that listening to pleasant compositions helps to cope with stressful situations.
In 2013, scientists from the U.S., Germany, and Switzerland conducted a study among 60 women. First, they were divided into three groups. The first group listened to relaxing music (in particular, Allegri – Miserere), and the second – was water noise. The third group listened to nothing. Then a stress test was conducted for the volunteers. By measuring their blood cortisol levels after the trial, scientists concluded that relaxing music helped them cope better with stress.
It improves sleep
Insomnia is a severe problem that affects people of all age groups. However, there are many solutions, and music is one of them.
A study by Hungarian scientists involved 94 students who complained of poor sleep. For three weeks, one group of students listened to an audiobook for 45 minutes before going to bed, a second group listened to classical music, and a third group listened to nothing.
Researchers evaluated the students’ sleep quality both before and after the study. As a result, they found that classical music improved sleep quality compared to an audiobook. In fact, it can be used as a safe cure for mild insomnia.
Music reduces pain
Music therapy is one way to reduce pain and speed recovery. And scientists have confirmed this theory.
The Spanish study involved patients with fibromyalgia (a chronic disease in which people complain of pain throughout the body). One group of patients for four weeks was given to listen to music once a day. The second group received no music therapy. In the end, people who listened to the songs felt significantly less pain after four weeks, and their moods improved.
Such results show that music therapy can be essential in treating chronic pain and relieving temporary pain or anxiety.
Music helps you lose weight.
One of music’s most surprising psychological features is that it helps with weight loss.
According to a study, people who ate in restaurants with dim lighting and quiet music ate 18% less food than those who dined in well-lit establishments with fast music. Researchers suggest that music and lighting create a more relaxed environment. As a result, it helps people eat slower and realize when they are already full.
Increases stamina
Another significant psychological benefit of music is its ability to increase stamina and performance. For example, everyone has a preferred stride rate when walking and running. Putting on rhythmic music, however, can help improve the pace. For example, for runners, such songs allow them to run not only faster but also longer.
Music helps increase endurance by reducing a person’s perception of strain. Although we feel like we’re working harder, we don’t notice the effects of it, thanks to music.
Strengthens the effects of certain medications
Researchers in Brazil found that if people with high blood pressure (hypertension) listen to music after taking medication, it will increase the drug’s effect. In addition, music normalizes heart rhythm, which also helps with heart problems.
Study participants listened to classical music. One hypothesis the researchers put forward is that the compositions stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, increase gastrointestinal activity, and speed up the process of absorption of the drugs, increasing their effect on the heart rhythm.
Helps build relationships with children
If you have young children and you sing songs to them or with them, it will help you to be closer now and will only improve the relationship in the future. If you are raising a teenager, listening to music together, and trying to share impressions of it greatly influences how your relationship will develop in the future.
Researchers from the United States found this in a study involving a group of people under 21.
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