Music may be good for your heart

Heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rates fluctuate in respond to music, with an arousal effect seen with increasing tempo, while slow, meditative music induces a relaxing effect. Therefore, music may give pleasure, and perhaps a health benefit as well, as a result of this controlled alteration between arousal and relaxation. Researchers from the re Luciano Bernardi of the Universita di Pavia, Italy, studied the potential effects of music on health, particularly stress. For this they had 24 men listen to a random series of six two-minute musical tracks while the researchers measured their heart rate, breathing, blood pressure and other indicators of arousal or relaxation. Before the music started, the participants, half of whom had advanced musical training, relaxed for five minutes. The tracks were then repeated in a different order, each lasting four minutes. A two-minute period of silence was randomly inserted into one of the sequences. The tracks included raga, a type of Indian music; slow and fast classical music; techno; rap; and dodecaphonic, or twelve-tone music, which lacks a traditional rhythmic, harmonic and melodic structure. It was found that most of the music increased blood pressure and heart rate, with a stronger effect seen with faster music. This effect appeared to depend on tempo, not style; fast classical and techno had the same effect. Shifts in heart rate and breathing were more pronounced in the trained musicians, who also had a slower average breathing rate than the non-musicians. The enhanced response in the musicians is probably associated with their ability to synchronise their breathing with the music phrase. Listening to music may have effects similar to that of relaxation techniques, which generally require that a person focus his or her attention on something and then release it. Appropriate selection of music, by alternating fast and slower rhythms and pauses, can be used to induce relaxation and consequently reduce sympathetic activity and thus may be potentially useful in the management of heart disease.