The Healing Powers of Music

Picture this: You have just walked into your home after a rough week filled with all the harsh realities that the world offers. You kick off your shoes, sit down and decompress as you listen to your favorite tune. In doing so, you can feel the trials and tribulations of the week simply melt away as the warmth and calm of the enchanting melodies take over. If you can relate to this feeling, you have experienced music’s healing powers. No, you weren’t just imagining things. In fact, a fair amount of evidence suggests that music has various benefits for mental and physical health. So, sit back, relax, and let’s take a deep dive into discovering the healing powers of music. 

Firstly, physical health. 

You might be surprised to learn that music has many benefits to your physical health, not just your mental health. Studies have shown that when music is played, blood flows throughout the body more easily. This has multiple positive effects on the body, especially regarding the heart. This ease of blood flow reduces the heart rate, lowers blood pressure, increases the levels of endorphins and serotonin in the blood, and can even decrease cortisol in the body. 

Music has also been shown effective in treating physical pain in the body. As mentioned above, playing music causes blood to flow easier throughout the body, decreasing cortisol, thus, the stress in the body. This reduced stress to the body provides a solid competing stimulus to the pain signals that are sent to the brain. Music is also effective in reducing the perceived intensity of the pain. 

Another interesting and unexpected potential benefit of music has to do with your appetite. It has been proven that when background music is played softly during meal times, it can help people to eat slower and, in doing so, ultimately ingest less food. This could be beneficial as many people are guilty of over-eating without even realizing it. Eating slowly has various benefits for your health. Some of these include improved digestion, hydration, ease in weight loss or maintenance, and also meals becoming more satisfying. 

Music even has benefits for those of us who are fitness lovers. As mentioned above, music can help with pain; this is also true for pain that can be experienced during workouts. Music can decrease pain levels allowing you to push harder and further. This benefit of music is also true with fatigue experienced after workouts. Music has been proven to delay feelings of fatigue. Additionally, listening to music while partaking in workouts can also increase your athletic performance. Studies show that athletes who listen to music while working out could run further, complete more reps, and even lift heavier weights. 

“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, everyone loves music.”- Billy Joel. 

With this sentiment from the epic Billy Joel, let’s move on to the various benefits to your mental health if you are also a music lover. 

One of the first ways in which music has a positive effect on a person’s mental health is by bettering their mood. This occurs due to increased levels of brain chemicals such as dopamine and oxytocin when listening to music. These brain chemicals allow people to feel pleasure and love. These feelings will have obvious effects on bettering your mood. 

As mentioned above, music helps relieve pain or distract you from it. This is also true for emotional distress and hardship. Music acts as a distractor, in a way tricking your brain into focusing on it and the feelings it conjures instead of pain or other bad emotions that you may be faced with. So, if you’re dealing with some hardship, listening to music could help you deal with these emotions. 

It is common for physical and mental health to be linked. One of these instances is stress. We mentioned that listening to music helps blood flow in the body which could cause a decrease in cortisol in the body. Cortisol is essentially the “stress hormone of the body.” So this benefit actually gives you two for the price of one. It has the physical health benefit of improved blood flow, leading to decreased cortisol, and at the same time, decreasing stress, which is beneficial for your mental health. Music is thus like a medicine that works for both physical and mental health. 

Depression and anxiety are mental illnesses that are becoming more widespread each year. However, music is increasingly being used as a tool in the treatment of many people suffering from these and other types of mental illnesses. Music therapy is a tool used to promote emotional health, decrease levels of stress, and overall boosting psychological well-being. A lot of mental illnesses are exacerbated by a bad sleeping schedule. Music has also been presented in some cases as an alternative remedy to insomnia. Developing sleeping is an essential factor in any person’s mental well-being, highlighting once again the healing powers of music. 

The final exciting benefit that music has is the ability to form memories. People are sensual beings, meaning they experience life and memories with their various senses; one of them is listening. Thus when music is played while something memorable happens, the brain’s way of remembering could be to connect the memory to the song. So, if you hear that song again, your brain can recall that specific memory. This could be true for good or bad memories; thus, music could be a double-edged sword in this case. But, the fact of the matter is music has the ability to create and keep happy memories that you have made, adding once more to your mental well-being. 

We at Acoustibox are no strangers to these benefits that music offers; in fact, it is one of our driving forces and sources of inspiration. We have a passion for music and creating the best possible way to experience sweet melodies with healing powers. Suppose you would like to seize these and many more benefits of listening to music in the most stylish way possible. In that case, it’s time to add an Acoustibox to your life!