Last month I wrote about the magic of music and its ability to increase exercise capacity. If that’s all music did from a health perspective, it would be pretty impressive resume. Think about it: the notion that something you listen to – not something you take orally or inject – can increase one’s ability to run harder on the treadmill, lift more on the bench, and decrease the uncomfortability of its rigorous nature. That’s really something! But the fact of the matter is that music does so much more for one’s health, both mentally and physically, than act as an exercise rejuvenator. It’s more than a mechanism to help pass the time in the drive to work. A recent article in LiveScience magazine elaborates on the multitudinous nature of music.

One fairly obvious way music improves health is by its ability to reduce stress. This isn’t much of a surprise, though. Would Enya be a multiplatinum artist were it not for her stress-reducing ballads? Certainly not.

What may be a surprise, though, is the fact that music can reduce blood pressure, respiration rates and heart rates. In other words, music is more than a mental stress-reducer; it’s also a physical stress reducer. Researchers found this to be the case in the early 1990s when doctors from Bryan Memorial Hospital and St. Mary’s Hospital used music in the pre-treatment of their patients scheduled for surgery; music had a “significant” effect on patients from both the Nebraska and Wisconsin-based hospitals.

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• A German study conducted in 2007 found that people recovering from strokes improved their motor skills through exercises that included music.
  
  
• Add music to the list of natural antidepressants. A Chinese-based study found that listening to just 30 minutes of soothing music per day helps temper feelings of anxiety and depression.
  
  
• A study similar to the Chinese based study found that music can help reduce labor pains, to the point where sedatives are often unnecessary!
  
  
• And yes, music really does make you smarter. Northwestern University researchers confirmed this after conducting a study involving the playing of a movie with the sound up, but in the background there could be heard a tape of someone speaking in Mandarin. Mandarin is a difficult language to decipher; the tone of a single word can change its meaning entirely. Though none of the participants knew the Mandarin language, they found that the musically-educated participants were better at deciphering the tone of a word compared to those who had limited musical experience.

The list goes on, but these are just some of the ways music can improve one’s health. As I wrote in a recent article, there’s a certain magic to music that few other things in life compare to: it can stir emotions, heighten the senses, evoke memories and improve athletic performance. And as these and other studies demonstrate, music can make life better and more healthful, particularly in the stressful scenarios that the vicissitudes of life invariably bring.