Did you know there are many benefits to listening to music? Crank
up the tunes and blast those beats, because the results are in — music is good
for you.
We
know the healing power of music. Bad breakup? Cue “We Are Never Getting Back
Together” by Taylor Swift. Powering through a long run? Jam out to Eminem’s
“Lose Yourself”.
Music
can soothe the brokenhearted, motivate runners and kickoff the most epic dance
parties, but it also has some serious scientific benefits for our health and
overall wellbeing.
Listening
to music has been shown to improve memory functioning, increase rate of
healing, improve your workouts and more.
Music Improves Memory
Patients
with memory loss can often remember songs and specific song lyrics. Doctors
will often use music and lyric recall to help individuals retrieve lost
memories. Certain music can trigger particularly unique memories- music from a
specific time period will trigger memories from that time period. Want to
remember something from the past? Listen to songs you listened to during that
time!
Music and
its effect on memory has been a heated debate in the scientific world, but
researchers now have evidence that the processing of music and language,
specifically memorizing information, rely on some of the same brain systems.
Researchers have also uncovered evidence that suggests the music we heard as
teenagers has a greater emotional bind to our brain than anything we’ll listen
to as adults. This idea of musical nostalgia is a fun exercise for anyone,
but is most impactful for people suffering from memory loss, including those
with dementia or Alzheimer’s.
Music and
musical training have also been shown to protect the aging brain and keep it
healthy.
University
of Kansas Medical Center researchers conducted an experiment where
they divided 70 healthy adults, ages 60 to 83, into three groups based on
their amount of musical experience: no musical training, one to nine years of
music lessons and at least 10 years of musical study.
The
participants, who had similar fitness and education levels and were free of
Alzheimer’s disease, were given several cognitive tests:
·
Those with the greatest amount of musical experience did best on
these tests of mental acuity, followed by those with less musical study
followed by those who never took music lessons.
·
Compared to non-musicians, the individuals with a high
degree of musical experience had much higher scores on the cognitive tests,
including those related to visual and spacial memory, naming objects and
the brain’s ability to adapt to new information
The
really cool part? The benefits of musical study and training were still
apparent even in participants who no longer played an instrument.
Bottom
Line: You can now tell your mom that those hours of trombone practice
for high school band were totally worth it.
Music
Improves Workouts
StairMaster
got you down? Feeling sluggish on the treadmill?
Grab
your earbuds and get jammin’!
Not
only can music distract you from “bodily awareness” aka the aches and pains of
working out, it has a health effect too.
Listening
to music releases endorphins in
the brain. Endorphins give us a heightened feeling of excitement. In addition
to feeling euphoric, endorphins quell anxiety, ease pain and stabilize
the immune system. With high endorphin levels, we have fewer negative
effects of stress.
Turning
up your tunes can also up the effort you exert during exercise. In one study, researchers found that cyclists
worked harder and biked a further distance when listening to faster music as
compared to music with a slower tempo. When the tempo slowed, so did their
pedaling and their entire effect. Their heart rates fell and their mileage
dropped. They reported that
they didn’t like the music much. On the other hand, when the tempo of the songs
was upped 10 percent, the men covered more miles in the same period of time,
produced more power with each pedal stroke and increased their pedal cadences.
For
pace-based exercises like running or weight-lifting, music can help regulate rhythm and
signal to the the brain when the body should move. This signal
helps us to use our energy more efficiently, so we’re not exhausting ourselves
too soon.
Got
the groove? In scientific
terms, groove is often described as a musical quality that can
induce movement in a listener. Basically, you can’t stop yourself from moving!
The next time you hit the gym, channel your inner diva and get groovin’!
Bottom Line: Make a
playlist just for the gym or for working out. Need some ideas? Check out this
list of the 100 best
workout songs from FITNESS.
