If you love listening to music, you’re in good company. Charles Darwin once remarked, “If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.” Albert Einstein declared, “If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician.” Jimi Hendrix called music his “religion.” Recent research shows that listening to music improves our mental well-being and boosts our physical health in surprising and astonishing ways. If we take a music lesson or two, that musical training can help raise our IQs and even keep us sharp in old age. Here are 7 amazing scientifically-proven benefits of listening to music.
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7 amazing benefits of listening to music
1. Music Makes You Happier
“I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.” – William James
Research proves that when you listen to music you like, your brain releases dopamine, a “feel-good” neurotransmitter. Valorie Salimpoor, a neuroscientist at McGill University, injected eight music-lovers with a radioactive substance that binds to dopamine receptors after they listened to their favorite music. A PET scan showed that large amounts of dopamine were released, which biologically caused the participants to feel emotions like happiness, excitement, and joy.
So the next time you need an emotional boost, listen to your favorite tunes for 15 minutes. That’s all it takes to get a natural high!
2. Music Enhances Running Performance
“If people take anything from my music, it should be motivation to know that anything is possible as long as you keep working at it and don’t back down.” – Eminem
Marcelo Bigliassi and his colleagues found that runners who listened to fast or slow motivational music completed the first 800 meters of their run faster than runners who listened to calm music or ran without music. If you want to take your running up a notch, listen to songs that inspire you.
3. Music Lowers Stress and Improves Health
“I think music in itself is healing. It’s an explosive expression of humanity. It’s something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we’re from.” – Billy Joel
Listening to music you enjoy decreases levels of the stress hormone cortisolin your body, which counteracts the effects of chronic stress. This is an important finding since stress causes 60% of all our illnesses and disease. One study showed that if people actively participated in making music by playing various percussion instruments and singing, their immune system was boosted even more than if they passively listened.
To stay calm and healthy during a stressful day, turn on the radio. Be sure to sing along and tap your feet to the beat to get the maximum healing benefit.
4. Music elevates your mood while driving
I’m sure you will all agree with this one that music helps our moods and also helps us concentrate better when driving. According to a study in the Netherlands, it found music can positively impact your mood while driving and consequently lead to safer driving than if you weren’t listening to anything at all.
5. Music strengthens learning and memory
Researchers have found that music can help you learn and recall information better. Participants who were musicians learned better with neutral music and tested better with positive music whereas non-musicians learned better with positive music and tested better with neutral music.
Either way, music helped to strengthen participant’s learning and memory.
6. Music Strengthens Learning
Listening to music can also help you learn and recall information more efficiently, researchers say. Though it depends on the degree to which you like the music and whether or not you play an instrument. A study showed that musicians actually learned better with neutral music, but tested better with music that they liked; whereas non-musicians learned better with positive music but tested better with neutral music. Therefore, the degree of performance differentiates between learning and memory for musicians and non-musicians.
7. Improves memory
Research has shown that one of the benefits of listening to music is to enhance memory because of the repetitive elements of rhythm and melody. In a study of stroke survivors, listening to music helped them experience more verbal memory, less confusion, and better focused attention.
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