Did You Know? Music Is Good For Your Pumping Blood Organ!

any one who had a heart

You already know music is good for you, good for your mood, your social life, your brain,… now researchers came up with another benefit of music: it is also good for your heart, and they aren’t talking metaphor, they are talking about the pumping organ in your chest. A study reported by the UK telegraph is saying that music strengthens the heart and even improves the recovery of people who have heart disease.

How is this possible? To demonstrate it, researchers studied 3 groups of patients with cardiac disease: one group had to take exercise classes for 3 weeks, a second group had to do the same exercise and to listen to their favorite music at any point for 30 minutes a day, and a third group just had to listen to music without any exercise. It’s a no brainer, the group who did the best was the second one, people who exercised and listened to music ‘had boosted crucial measures of heart functions significantly, and improved their exercise capacity by 39%’.

But the results for the other groups are quite surprising , those who only took exercise improved their capacity by 29 % (significantly lower than the 2nd group) and those  who only listened to music improved their capacity by 19 %,.. not too shabby for couch potatoes! And a proof that music does affect your heart. These results were presented at the European Society of Cardiology’s annual congress in Amsterdam, and researchers suggested that key hormones were involved when listening to music.

One of the authors of the study, Professor Delijanin Ilic from the Institute of Cardiology, University of Nis, Serbia, explained: ‘When we listen to music we like then endorphins are released from the brain and this improves our vascular health. There is no ‘best music’ for everyone – what matters is what the person likes and makes them happy.’

Interesting, but she also said that not all music are equal, as heavy metal is more likely to raise stress levels, whereas joyful music such as opera and classical were more likely to stimulate endorphins. First of all not all classical music is joyful, by far, secondly, all these people hanging around with ‘Listen to Black Sabbath’ t-shirts can’t be wrong!

She also declared: ‘It is also possible that it is better to have music without words, because it is possible that the words themselves can upset the emotions.’ I don’t believe this, it is just plain supposition, plus she contradicts herself since opera has lyrics, right? And emotions are good, right?

In any case, I am going to keep on running, listening to the music I love,… music which has words,… but you know what, the angrier the song is, the faster I run.