"Is Listening To Music Good For Your Health?" - Markham Heid
If you’re looking for an easy way to transform your mood, cue the music. Studies have shown that music can buoy your mood and fend off depression. It can also improve blood flow in ways similar to statins, lower your levels of stress-related hormones like cortisol and ease pain. But music can also agitate and unsettle, experts have learned. “Silence can be better than random listening,” said Joanne Loewy, DA, director of the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine for the Mount Sinai Health System. “Some of our data show that putting on any old music can actually induce a stressful response.” Along with inducing stress, Loewy said, the wrong music can promote rumination or other unhelpful mental states.
- Joanne V. Loewy, DA, Associate Clinical Professor, Family Medicine & Community Health, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Director, The Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine, Mount Sinai Health System