My Black is NOT Cracking.

While our music preferences may vary by artist or genre, most people love music.  No matter what type of music you enjoy, there are numerous benefits.

While you may not have given much thought to the health benefits from singing along with, or listening to some of your favorite tunes, there are a few! Music can actually impact not only your brain, but your body, and in powerful ways. 

Music and sounds have a very unique effect on brain activity. If we’re talking sounds, there’s a reason that many find the sounds of waves crashing and rain to be relaxing.  For me, it doesn’t matter how stressed I am, the sounds of the ocean immediately put me in chill mode.  That is unless someone near me is yammering on or ruining my beach time blasting music.  That’s the one time, that no matter the music, it’s annoying as hell!  There’s also a reason you hear what you hear in the spa during a massage.  It’s not just the massage that offers therapeutic benefits.

Sounds and music alike are vibrations.  They travel through the airwaves and enter your ears.  From there, they are transmitted to your brain via the auditory nerve. The brain perceives it as music. While research continues in this area, brain scans have shown that music stimulates your brain. The type of music, the tempo, whether instrumental or not seem to determine how your brain is affected.

Studies using MRI technology have shown that not only listening to, but creating music, light up certain areas of the brain. And while the style or genre seemed to have an effect, it appears that your preferred or favorite music and songs will affect you the most. I recently saw video after video on youtube of men and women suffering from dementia or in a damn near vegetative state come alive after hearing their favorite songs from their past.  People who haven’t spoken, remembering, and singing the lyrics!

Both listening to, singing along to, or even performing music can reactivate the areas of our brains associated with memory, speech and emotion. Two separate and recent studies found that music can help us to retrieve stored memories as well as create new ones. Think about it!  When you hear a song from your past, doesn’t it take you back to that time?  Doesn’t it trigger memories from the past?

Look, the benefits of music to our health and wellbeing are numerous. Music can be especially beneficial to our aging brains and bodies.  Music engages our brains and learning to play an instrument really fires up that old noggin!  In addition, research has shown that listening to music can help to reduce blood pressure, (which affects many of us as we age!) anxiety, and pain, while improving mood and memory.  Can’t remember where you left those keys, but you know all the lyrics to “That’s the way of the world” by EWF circa 1975.

I read this story about researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center showing that singing lyrics was helpful to stroke or brain injury patients. According to article, the Former US Representative Gabby Giffords who was shot in the head, learned to speak by singing her thoughts first.  Singing also helps healthy people learn words and phrases faster.  I mean think about children and nursery rhymes. 

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I had never heard of music therapy until a friend stated that this was her profession many years ago.  I had no idea what it was until I started researching this piece.  I guess I could have asked!  

So, what exactly is music therapy?

Well, it’s basically the clinical use of music.  It typically includes listening to music, singing, composing, or playing an instrument.  This evidence-based treatment can help with a variety of disorders including depression, Alzheimers, substance abuse, as well as heart conditions. Music therapy has been shown to help lower blood pressure, reduce stress, and improve coping ability.

Formal music therapy was defined and first used by the United States War Department in 1945. It helped wounded and traumatized military service members recovering in military hospitals. After World War 1 & 2, community and professional musicians would perform in veterans’ hospitals for service members suffering from both emotional and physical trauma as a result of the war. Their notable positive responses to the music resulting in the hiring of musicians by the hospitals.

That said you don’t need a music therapist to enjoy the therapeutic potential of music. Just listening to music can improve your health in so many ways.

Let’s talk about the professional benefits. In one study, participants who listened to classical music while they worked outperformed those with no music or just white noise.

Other research has shown that if you are trying to memorize something, adding music to it can help improve recall accuracy.  Think about how you learned the ABC’s! Remember how easy it was to memorize lyrics?  Yet, you couldn’t memorize something you needed to in school without reading it repeatedly. And while it might not reverse memory loss, music has been shown to reduce cognitive decline. 

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This I found particularly interesting after many years of being the wife of a jazz musician and composer. Johns Hopkins researchers had jazz performers and rappers improvise music inside an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) so they could determine which areas of their brains lit up. (lol I’m guessing sweet potato pie would have a similar affect! I’m kidding. Sorta.)

“Music is structural, mathematical and architectural. It’s based on relationships between one note and the next. Your brain has to do some computing to make sense of it.”  Jazz could be considered the equivalent of the brain Olympics! (Okay, so he’ll always know where his keys are!) Come on. He has a composition called “Equalatogram and one called Fragmatic Decoding!” Need I say more?

Experts state, and I know it’s true for me, that we often continue to listen to the same songs and genre of music that we did during our youth, and we generally avoid hearing anything that’s not from “our” era. Well, there’s a reason for that. New music challenges our brains. The unfamiliarity forces the brain to struggle to understand this new sound. (Which typically after the 70’s or maybe 80’s sucks to high hell! I’m sorry. It’s not just our brains. That programmed music is just not good!!!!) New music not only challenges my brains; it challenges my patience!

A study done at the University of Kansas, found that folks that played musical instruments as kids, had improved brain function later in life.  Why? Because performing or playing music is a challenging mental activity. Those that played as children, and continued on as adults, were better able to resist the declining cognitive aptitude that often accompanies aging.

Researchers found in the study of brain function in people aged 60-83 that those with at least 10 years of musical experience did better on tests of things like planning, organizing, nonverbal memory, adapting to new information and managing time.

Okay, so while I played a toy organ and some sort of harp thing, (I can’t recall the name of but HAD to have.) it’s too late for me on the childhood thing.  That doesn’t mean I (and all of you) cannot take advantage of the many benefits of music now!

So, what are some other benefits? I mean, other than the physical ones, like if you are playing music, you can and should dance! (Great exercise!)

Anti-Aging

“There are few things that stimulate the brain the way music does,” says one Johns Hopkins otolaryngologist. “If you want to keep your brain engaged throughout the aging process, listening to or playing music is a great tool. It provides a total brain workout.”

Increase and Improve Physical Activity

You think those athletes walk around with earbuds in for no reason?  Nope! Music can enhance your motivation and stimulate you to perform at your peak.  There was a study that found listening to music during a 5K race improved runners’ performance.

Stress Reduction & Mood Improvement

Come on.  We all know what happens when “our song” comes on! One song can just change your mood.  How does this happen? Well, for one, the chemical dopamine (the feel good stuff) is released into your brain when you listen to music.  In addition, evidence has shown that the stress hormone cortisol is reduced when we listen to “our” music.  For me, that’s definitely not all music!  Not anymore.

Reduce Anxiety and Depression

Multiple studies have demonstrated that music can temporarily reduce anxiety.  

And again, the release of dopamine can positively affect symptoms of depression.

Heart Health

Music has been found to lower blood pressure (systolic and diastolic) and heart rate. Of course, it depends on what you are listening to!  While up-tempo music might increase your BP and heart rate while you’re listening to it, studies have shown that blood pressure and heart rate dropped after the music stopped.

Music may also have a role to play in healing the heart. One study found that music therapy reduced stress and lowered heart rate in patients recovering from heart attacks. Those patients in the music therapy group also had a lower incidence of complications as a result of a heart attack, than those in the control group!

Pain Relief

There is evidence that suggests that music can help decrease both acute and chronic pain lessening the need for pain medications. Patients have reported a reduction of pain with music therapy.

Better Sleep

We all know by now the importance of sleep.  If you don’t, read my post on sleep. Lack of sleep or poor sleep quality can lead to all kinds of serious health issues. 

Lullabies actually serve a purpose.  (Not than anyone is singing any lullabies to your old ass!) Studies have shown that certain types of music (not just lullabies!) can improve sleep quality at any age. One study found that 45 minutes of specific music at bedtime improved sleep quality in older adults from day one! Yet, another study found that playing music before bed helped us post-menopausal women who often suffer from insomnia to fall asleep in less than 15 minutes as compared to the usual hour plus! Music’s ability to lower our stress and calm our nervous systems down might have a little to do with that.

Reduce feelings of Isolation

Nothing connects us like music.  Music not only connects us spiritually, but physically.  It brings us together socially and intimately. Whether it be a party or a concert, it brings about shared experiences lessening feelings of isolation. 

Increased Joy!

Music can raise your mood. Increase your energy level. Excite us! Bring back fond memories. Make us laugh, sing, and dance. 

“If you sing a song a day, you will make a better way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah” written by Maurice White & Al McKay (And yes. I’m a huge fan!)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6447697/