Stress and Anxiety are two very unavoidable things in our world today; there is always something that will cause those two things. Some amount of stress and anxiety can be healthy to have, but how can music help us manage an excess of those emotions?

Listening to music can already have a very clear effect on our mood. Have you ever noticed that when you listen to music that relates to your emotions, you sometimes feel better? Or happy music might cheer you up? Well, scientists in this meta-analysis on neuroplasticity have confirmed that music actually shifts your hormonal levels while you listen. This is mainly because it takes all the auditory information coming from the music, and your brain actually deciphers the emotions trying to be conveyed from the performer, and makes you feel those emotions. Feeling those emotions can help calm you down by reducing anxiety. Scientists found that when participants listen to slow classical music, there was a clear decrease in cortisol levels, the hormones that can make you feel stressed and anxious. Your brain also finds comfort in familiar types of music because, after the auditory stimuli go through the auditory cortex, the signals of the sound are also sent to your hippocampus, the memory center of your brain. There, it will likely associate the music with some sort of memory, and with that memory will come an emotion attached.

In this meta-analysis, scientists touch on the idea of musical therapy. They specifically go through how music could be beneficial for major mental conditions, many of which stress can exacerbate or be the basis of. Scientists discovered that music clearly allows for autonomic balance, neuroendocrine secretion, and immune function. These things were discovered through participants listening to music, and when they specifically listened to calming, familiar music, the participants had lower heart rate and blood pressure, and lower levels of cortisol. Those participants who were musicians, while in a group music-making setting, exhibited elevated oxytocin levels (you might know oxytocin as the happiness/love hormone). Elevated oxytocin can also assist in lowering stress and anxiety levels, so being in a group setting and making music can greatly benefit those emotions. Scientists also discovered that short music interventions can clearly reduce state anxiety and physiological arousal for small periods of anxiety, which means they can help with the everyday stressors that cause us anxiety. There needs to be more testing on how it can help chronic anxiety conditions, though, but there is evidence that music therapy can help with those. The way most scientists had conducted these studies was either through slow classical music or familiar slow music, because slow tempo and familiar rhythms were shown to help clearly lower stress and anxiety levels through looking at certain hormone levels. 

So the next time something is causing you stress and anxiety, as many things can in our world, just turn on some relaxing, familiar music, and hopefully it can help alleviate some of those feelings. Music truly can be medicine!