How well do you love music? I’m an addict. I could listen to music all day. It’s that pleasant to my soul. I feel good. I don’t remember my worries. I pay attention to the lyrics and even browse the most favorite ones on the internet. Most radio listeners are music lovers. It’s a good source to know the latest songs. Nowadays, with the internet, it is easier to download your favourite songs. Just note the song title as well as the artiste, and then you are good to go.
Music has helped a lot of people with depression as it lifts the spirit, encourages you and improves your health because of the joy and happiness it brings. A happy music connects the physical with the emotional. As a result of the heightened emotions, the responses are manifested physically as head nodding, tapping, dancing and even jumping. When you dance, you do a form of body exercise. By exercising, an internal heat is generated and you sweat some more which is good for the body.
Scientists say that music can give intense pleasure by delivering chemical rewards in the brain that are equal to the joy of good food and a part of the brain, the nucleus accumbens has actually been thought to be the structure that elicited the strongest response. They say it’s important because it’s involved in forming expectations and these are expectations that could be rewarding.
Music can alter the heart rate and blood pressure under some specific conditions. If you listen to rap or rock genres of music, the heart rate and mean arterial pressure are likely to go up while the converse is true if you listen to country and classical music. ( A research by Sakomoto for the Journal of sound and vibration). It’s been demonstrated that just like laughter does, joyful music causes the blood vessels to dilate improving vascular health.
In another research by Professor Luciano Bernardi, M.D, a Professor of internal medicine at Pavia University, Italy, he found out that music induces a continuous dynamic and to some extent predictable changes in the cardiovascular system. Some Italian researchers work was also published in the Journal of America Heart Association where they said that music could in the future be used as a therapeutic tool for blood pressure control and rehabilitation.
Music forms an important part of a gathering whether religious, political or cultural. It is hard to find anyone who does not listen to music. That is why I say that music is a mystery with still a lot to unravel.
DAPO EGUNJOBI (DR)
Graduate of Medicine and Surgery, University of Ibadan.
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