Music: fun vs treatment

It's Friday and many of us are planning week-ends. Check out some intersting facts about music!

Listening to the music is something we do all the time: in the transport, at the office, with friends, during workouts and at the parties.

What music to listen to benefit twice? 

Music can make you cry, laugh, feel excited or angry. It’s a powerful medium that can be used as a tool if we know how to use it. Experts say music can improve our mood and even change behavior.

It all starts when the music goes in our ears and right to our brain, lighting up all different parts.

“You’re seeing areas involved (in the brain) with movement, memory, emotion, planning, taking action,” says Bob Miller, a music therapist at Western Psychiatric Institute of UMPC.

He says music can affect us emotionally and physically, even reducing stress.

“It can affect our heart rate a little bit. It can affect our breathing rate,” Miller says. “It can help to even participate in singing, and music can help reduce stress hormones and to increase levels of hormones like dopamine or serotonin that can really help us feel better.”

Music can also change your mood.

If you want to relax, pick the right music — something that has a slower tempo, repetition — either in the melody or the background or beat. That helps us disengage so we don’t have to pay attention to it.

And if there are words, it helps to find something in another language so you are not thinking about what the words are saying. If you had a hard day, you can choose music to help you work through that on your drive home.

Miller says you could start with angry or intense music to get out any negative energy and then use other music to bring you to whatever state of mind you’re looking for — relaxed, upbeat.

Music can even be used as medicine. Trained occupational therapists use music to help kids with special needs, like autism and developmental delays. Jami Dantry and Amy Demi use “The Listening Program” with children at schools in Follansbee, West Virginia.

Let music be the only medecine you'll ever need! :-)

I <3 being a girl! What about you? ;-)