Lucky for us there is many different Genres
Listening to your favorite music may be good for your cardiovascular system. Researchers have shown for the first time 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. This healthy response matches what the same researchers found in a 2005 study of laughter. 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, will be presented at the Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association, on November 11, 2008, 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.”
Study design
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, audio tapes to promote relaxation were played and in a fourth, participants were shown videotapes designed to induce laughter.
Each volunteer participated in each of the four phases, but the order in which each phase occurred was determined at random.
To minimize emotional desensitization, the volunteers were told to avoid listening to their favorite music for a minimum of two weeks. “The idea here was that when they listened to this music that they really enjoyed, they would get an extra boost of whatever emotion was being generated,” says Dr. Miller.
Prior to each phase of the study, the volunteers fasted overnight and were given a baseline test to measure what is known as flow-mediated dilation.
more via sciencedaily
