Listen to joyful music to stay healthy

For the first time, researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore have shown that the emotions aroused by joyful music have a healthy effect on blood vessel function.

Music, selected by study participants because it made them feel good and brought them a sense of joy, caused tissue in the inner lining of blood vessels to dilate (or expand) in order to increase blood flow, the study found.

On the other hand, when study volunteers listened to music they perceived as stressful, their blood vessels narrowed, producing a potentially unhealthy response that reduces blood flow. The results of the study, conducted at the University of Maryland Medical Center, have been presented at the Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association in New Orleans.

"We had previously demonstrated that positive emotions, such as laughter, were good for vascular health. So, a logical question was whether other emotions, such as those evoked by music, have a similar effect," says principal investigator Michael Miller, M.D., director of preventive cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center and associate professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

"We knew that individual people would react differently to different types of music, so in this study, we enabled participants to select music based upon their likes and dislikes," the expert added. Ten healthy, non-smoking volunteers (70 percent male, average age 36 years) participated in all phases of the randomized study. There were four phases. In one, volunteers listened to music they selected that evoked joy.

The volunteers brought recordings of their favorite music to the laboratory, or, if they did not own the music, the investigators acquired the recordings. Another phase included listening to a type of music that the volunteers said made them feel anxious. In a third session, audiotapes to promote relaxation were played and in a fourth, participants were shown videotapes designed to induce laughter.