20 Surprising, Science-Backed Health Benefits of Music
"One good thing about music, is when it hits you, you feel no pain." Judging from the quote above, Bob Marley was part poet, part scientist. That’s because there’s truth to his head-bobbing lyrics from the song Trenchtown Rock. Research suggests that music not only helps us cope with pain — it can also benefit our physical andmental health in numerous other ways. Read on to learn how listening to tunes can ramp up your health. Music can... 1. Ease pain. Music can meaningfully reduce the perceived intensity of pain, especially in geriatric care, intensive care, or palliative medicine (an area of healthcare that focuses on preventing and relieving the suffering of patients. 2. Motivate people to bike harder. A study of healthy male college students found that, while riding stationary bicycles, the participants worked harder while listening to fast music . Extra bonus: They also enjoyed the music more. 3 . Improve running motivation and performance. Here’s an easy way to beat your best time if you’re a runner: Listen to your favorite “pump-up” music. Listening to music may help people run faster, boost their workout motivation, and enhance their endurance . Read Entire Article: http://greatist.com/happiness/unexpected-health-benefits-music “Cardioprotective medications such as aspirin, statins, and beta-blockers are prescribed to patients who have high risk of a heart attack because they reduce the chance of a first or repeat event,” said first author Dr. Min Li, a researcher in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Peking University Health Science Centre, in Beijing, China.
However, she added: “Until now, it was not known whether these drugs provided any benefit to patients who develop a heart attack despite taking the medication.” To find out, the researchers assessed 14,790 patients hospitalized for acute coronary syndrome (ACS) in 75 hospitals in China. The researchers sought to determine whether any of 4 preventive medications—antiplatelet agents (aspirin or clopidogrel), statins, beta-blockers, and angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors/angiotensin receptor blockers (ACEI/ARB)—were associated with reduced severity of disease at presentation or fewer complications during hospitalization. Analyses showed that prior use of each medication was significantly associated with reduced disease severity, fewer arrhythmias, and less risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs) during hospitalization, even after adjusting for multiple confounding factors. Many of the associations became non-significant after adjusting for severity of disease at presentation (with the notable exception of prior ACEI/ARB use). “Each of the four preventive medications was associated with a reduction in poor clinical outcomes,” Dr. Li said. “The fact that many associations were not significant after we adjusted for disease severity suggests that these drugs may reduce the seriousness of ACS events, which lessens the clinical impact.” One downside: Prior use of antiplatelet agents was associated with increased risk of hemorrhagic stroke, and this association remained after adjusting for disease severity at presentation. The researchers also found that the greater the number of the 4 medications that a patient used, the lower the risk of clinical outcomes. For instance, taking 1 medication reduced the risk of MACEs by 23%, taking 2 medications reduced the risk by 33%, 3 medications by 52%, and 4 medications by 41%. The same trend was found for severity of disease and occurrence of arrhythmias. Patients with and without a history of CVD demonstrated similar results. “Our findings suggest that the benefits of these medications may extend beyond preventing ACS. They may also reduce the severity of disease and in-hospital adverse outcomes in those who develop an ACS despite taking the drugs,” Dr. Li noted. “The additional benefits of the four preventive medications were observed in patients with and without a CVD history, reducing the severity of repeat and first events.” “Patients who still develop ACS while using the drugs should not lose confidence but continue to use them because they do help,” she advised. Read Article: http://www.mdlinx.com/cardiology/article/622 "Composer Ludwig van Beethoven was baptized on December 17, 1770, in Bonn, Germany. He was an innovator, widening the scope of sonata, symphony, concerto and quartet, and combining vocals and instruments in a new way. His personal life was marked by a struggle against deafness, and some of his most important works were composed during the last 10 years of his life, when he was quite unable to hear."
Read Entire Article: http://www.biography.com/people/ludwig-van-beethoven-9204862#synopsis "Music is a universal language. Or so musicians like to claim. “With music,” they’ll say, “you can communicate across cultural and linguistic boundaries in ways that you can’t with ordinary languages like English or French.”
On one level, this statement is obviously true. You don’t have to speak French to enjoy a composition by Debussy. But is music really a universal language? That depends on what you mean by “universal” and what you mean by “language.” Every human culture has music, just as each has language. So it’s true that music is a universal feature of the human experience. At the same time, both music and linguistic systems vary widely from culture to culture. In fact, unfamiliar musical systems may not even sound like music. I’ve overheard Western-trained music scholars dismiss Javanese gamelan as “clanging pots” and traditional Chinese opera as “cackling hens.” Nevertheless, studies show that people are pretty good at detecting the emotions conveyed in unfamiliar music idioms—that is, at least the two basic emotions of happiness and sadness. Specific features of melody contribute to the expression of emotion in music. Higher pitch, more fluctuations in pitch and rhythm, and faster tempo convey happiness, while the opposite conveys sadness. Perhaps then we have an innate musical sense. But language also has melody—which linguists call prosody. Exactly these same features—pitch, rhythm, and tempo—are used to convey emotion in speech, in a way that appears to be universal across languages. Listen in on a conversation in French or Japanese or some other language you don’t speak. You won’t understand the content, but you will understand the shifting emotional states of the speakers. She’s upset, and he’s getting defensive. Now she’s really angry, and he’s backing off. He pleads with her, but she doesn’t buy it. He starts sweet-talking her, and she resists at first but slowly gives in. Now they’re apologizing and making up…. We understand this exchange in a foreign language because we know what it sounds like in our own language. Likewise, when we listen to a piece of music, either from our culture or from another, we infer emotion on the basis of melodic cues that mimic universal prosodic cues. In this sense, music truly is a universal system for communicating emotion. But is music a kind of language? Again, we have to define our terms. In everyday life, we often use “language” to mean “communication system.” Biologists talk about the “language of bees,” which is a way to tell hive mates about the location of a new source of nectar. Florists talk about the “language of flowers,” through which their customers can express their relationship intentions. “Red roses mean…. Pink carnations mean… Yellow daffodils mean…” (I’m not a florist, so I don’t speak flower.) And then there’s “body language.” By this we mean the postures, gestures, movements and facial expressions we use to convey emotions, social status, and so on. Although we often use body language when we speak, linguists don’t consider it a true form of language. Instead, it’s a communication system, just as are the so-called languages of bees and flowers. By definition, language is a communication system consisting of (1) a set of meaningful symbols (words) and (2) a set of rules for combining those symbols (syntax) into larger meaningful units (sentences). While many species have communication systems, none of these count as language because they lack one or the other component. The alarm and food calls of many species consist of a set of meaningful symbols, but they lack rules for combining those symbols. Likewise, bird song and whale song have rules for combining elements, but these elements aren’t meaningful symbols. Only the song as a whole has meaning—“Hey ladies, I’m hot,” and “Hey other guys, stay away!” Like language, music has syntax—rules for ordering elements—such as notes, chords, and intervals—into complex structures. Yet none of these elements has meaning on its own. Rather, it’s the larger structure—the melody—that conveys emotional meaning. And it does that by mimicking the prosody of speech. Since music and language share features in common, it’s not surprising that many of thebrain areas that process language also process music. But this doesn’t mean that music is language. Part of the misunderstanding comes from the way we tend to think about specific areas of the brain as having specific functions. Any complex behavior, whether language or music or driving a car, will recruit contributions from many different brain areas. Music certainly isn’t a universal language in the sense that you could use it to express any thought to any person on the planet. But music does have the power to evoke deep primal feelings at the core of the shared human experience. It not only crosses cultures, it also reaches deep into our evolutionary past. And it that sense, music truly is a universal language." Read Article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/talking-apes/201507/is-music-universal-language |
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November 2016
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