In the last article, I touched on music and how it affects your emotions – quite literally in your brain. But what about the other parts of the body? How can music help to regulate stress and your Nervous System?
In a systematic search done by various scientists(link here), there were many studies uncovered relating to the effect of music on the cardiovascular system. Through conducting this search, they ultimately discovered that listening to music does have a positive effect on the Autonomic Nervous System(ANS). The studies that they had mainly looked at measured Heart Rate Variability(HRV), which shows the connections between your sympathetic(fight-or-flight) and parasympathetic(rest-and-digest) nervous systems. High HRV signals a balanced ANS, adaptivity to stress, and is a good indicator of cardiovascular fitness. These studies ultimately concluded that music listening is a stimulus for the Cardiac ANS and increases ANS activity and HRV.
Diving into a more specialized study, this one focused specifically on the effects of listening to classical music(link here) on mood, heart rate, and blood pressure. The scientists used two different types of classical music, one fast-paced song(Beethovens Symphony of Fate) and one slower song(Beethonvens Moonlight Sonata). They analyzed blood pressure using a blood pressure cuff, analyzed heart rate using an EKG, and mood using a survey. The study’s results were both fascinating and expected. Fast classical music increased heart rate(HR), systolic, and diastolic blood pressure(BP). Slow classical music decreased heart rate, systolic, and diastolic blood pressure. Both fast and slow music were favorable, where fast music was uplifting, and the slow music was calming. Slow classical music could be useful in a therapeutic sense due to its clear lowering of BP and HR. Two categories of people stood out to the scientists, one being an age group of people under 25, and the other being the category of musicians. Those under the age of 25 had statistically lower BP after listening to the music, although all participants’ blood pressure was lowered. The same went for those who were musicians; despite age, they had a statistically lower BP, which could be related to positive memories stemming from the music. There was no difference between the genders in all aspects of the study, proving that music can be used for everyone. All these changes, of course, stem from your brain taking in this music and making those changes in your ANS.
Another study focused more specifically on stress recovery using music, taking information like the ones from the two studies above, and seeing what real effect it has on stress specifically. This was a study used in one of my previous articles relating to stress, but I thought it would be interesting to do a deeper dive on this one!
There are many ways in which stress affects our daily lives, from small stressors to those that could cause life-changing diseases. Music listening has long been thought to have some effect on lessening the effects that stress has on the human body. This analysis focused mostly on the effects that music listening has on stress recovery, and it showed that music can have a therapeutic effect on stress, in both a mental and physical sense, on the human body, but at this time, it remains unclear as to whether there is a clear correlation between music listening and the recovery of stress. Within the two previous studies, we can see that there is definitely a correlation between anxiety/stress reduction in a physical sense within the human body while listening to music, and hopefully, soon we’ll know more about how music can be used in a medicinal sense to help everyone with the effects of stress reduction!
Fascinating, isn’t it? How something so small can have such a great positive effect on you all because of the way your brain works! So the next time you’re feeling a little stressed out, just turn on some of your favorite music, and watch and see!
