14 DAY TRIAL // Coronary heart diseases are very nasty medical conditions, and very hard to treat at that. Patients who have them are going through enormous amounts of stress and anxiety because of their conditions, which can be detrimental to their health. Stress is known to make certain diseases worse, and this is no exception. Only recently, a Cochrane Systematic Review investigation has uncovered the fact that people who find themselves in such a situation could experience a significant improvement in their symptoms by simply listening to music. According to the scientific study, music decreases blood pressure, the heart rate, as well as the levels of anxiety associated with heart diseases.
For a very long time, music has been used as a therapy for various medical conditions, mostly because it has the ability to “sooth” the mind and that can be very important for the body as well. In the specific case of heart diseases, there is a significant amount of stress and anxiety related to the numerous questions that patients ask themselves, including whether they will survive or not, or how much time they have left. The recent research seems to show that these questions may be bypassed at least for a while, placing people in a calmer state, in which they are not as stressed as they would normally be.
“Our findings suggest music listening may be beneficial for heart disease patients. But the trials we looked at were generally small and varied in terms of styles of music used and length of music sessions. More research on the specifics of music listening is certainly warranted,” Joke Bradt, a researcher working for the Arts and Quality of Life Research Center, at the Temple University in Philadelphia, the United States, said of the study. The expert added that more than 23 studies had been reviewed, covering a number of 1,461 patients. However, since the previous researchers were not part of a larger survey, the methods used differed among them. Still, their conclusions were all very clear.
“We all know that music can impact on our emotions, our physiological responses, as well as our outlook on life, and this early research shows that it is well worth finding out more about how it could help heart disease patients. In particular, it would be interesting to learn more about the potential benefits of music offered by trained music therapists, which may differ substantially from those associated with pre-recorded music,” the expert explained. Still, he mentioned, in patients suffering from depression following their heart conditions, no improvements were seen, regardless of the type of music they heard, or of the length of the sessions.