Can Listening To Music Reduce Stress? Research, Benefits, And Genres
Therapy –Playing music can help withstress, insomnia, and depressionbecause it acts as an outlet for difficult emotions. It can be a form of self-soothing in tough situations, and a healthy distraction from a stressful day. Listening Skills –Learning music doesn’t just improve your ability to hear details; it also makes you better at listening. Whether you’re practicing on your own or playing with other people, you have to listen for timing, expression, and whether you’re in tune. This can make you a better listener even in everyday conversations as well. Reading Skills –Reading music helps strengthen yourability to process informationby creating new connections between the synapses in your brain.
And, people said music improved their productivity by 50 percent or more. You'll start receiving the latest news, benefits, events, and programs related to AARP's mission to empower people to choose how they live as they age. You are leaving AARP.org and going to the website of our trusted provider.
You don’t have to become a pro, just take a few lessons. Specially trained music therapists use music to help alleviate pain in inpatient and outpatient settings. A 2016 meta-analysis of over 90 studies reported that music helps people manage both acute and chronic pain better than medication alone. Researchers now know that just the promise of listening to music can make you want to learn more. In nature calming sounds one 2019 study, people were more motivated to learn when they expected to listen to a song as their reward. Although music therapy is not a cure for depression, it can offer short-term benefits by improving mood and encouraging connection and self-expression.
Playing music sets off an opposite chain reaction that switches these genes off again. Isn’t it interesting how hearing a particular song can bring back a special memory or make you feel happy or calm or pumped up? People are born with the ability to tell the difference between music and noise. Our brains actually have different pathways for processing different parts of music including pitch, melody, rhythm, and tempo. And, fast music can actually increase your heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure, while slower music tends to have the opposite effect. The big test is tomorrow, but you’ve barely had any time to study.
Listening to your favorite music may have more health benefits than you realize. Here’s how songs can reduce stress and help you heal. Researchers now know that playing a musical instrument can switch off the stress response, improving physical and emotional health. When our senses detect a possible threat in the environment, the body undergoes a chain reaction in which genes within each cell switch on, directing the cells to produce chemicals associated with the stress response.
Research suggests that music can benefit our physical and mental health in numerous ways. Music can be used as a therapeutic tool to not only reduce stress, but to also promote healing and improve one’s overall emotional well-being. Different uses may include listening to music, playing a musical instrument, singing along to music and using guided imagery with music. Innes coauthored a 2016 study that found music-listening could boost mood and well-being and improve stress-related measures in older adults suffering from cognitive decline. Her study compared the benefits of music to those of meditation—a practice in vogue for its mental-health perks. She found that both practices were linked to significant improvements in mood and sleep quality.