Music has no age, language and limits and it is probably as old as the mankind itself. Listening to music has to be the favorite pastime of most people, regardless of the genre and type of music.
It is widely believed (and some proven by research) that music provides a lot of health benefits. Music therapy has been the buzzword of this century where the fast paced and economy driven life started putting people into stress and thereby caused health issues. In this context, let us examine some of the advantages of music.
Benefits of listening to music
Music reduces stress and stress is one of the reasons behind aging faster, various mental illnesses, heart related issues such as high blood pressure and increased cholesterol levels. A few minutes of relaxing music every day can do wonders to your mental and physical health. Bringing down the heart rate and blood pressure to normalcy is probably the first step towards getting fitter and hence music’s cardiovascular advantage is what we can tap into.
Music stimulates your brain cells. Just like it works well with the heart, it can offer benefits to your brain cells as well. Listening to soothing type of music improves your ability to focus and thinking capability whereas heavy beat music makes your brain work more energetically and hence your throughput increases. No wonder why some people can work only when they have their headphones on.
Music is an amazing pain killer. Studies have shown that listening to music can reduce chronic pain and people with handicaps often feel more able and encouraged. Listening to music can help your pituitary glands to release endorphins that reduce body pains.
Music listeners usually get good sleep. No wonder why there’s a category of music called lullabies that put babies to sleep. Well, even grownups can take benefit from the same. Sound sleep results in improved health again.
Music has been a social and lifestyle binder for years now. Music parties has been a socializing mechanism for ages now. When people network over music and food, they tend to be more open-minded and get closer. As for the lifestyle benefits, those who exercise with music on tend to do more work out and hence benefit from the improved health.
A word of caution: Music have numerous benefits but overdose of anything can be harmful. Continuous high decibel music can cause temporary or permanent hearing loss and increased activity levels for longer durations. Also, one needs to be very careful on the context. It may not be a good idea to listen to loud music while driving or crossing the road.
