University of New South Wales (UNSW) researchers have found that music could prevent an estimated 800,000 avoidable deaths annually, after unearthing clear evidence that musical engagement improves overall wellbeing and health, decreasing anxiety and improving mood.
Matt McCrary, Adjunct Lecturer at UNSW’s Prince of Wales Clinical School and co-author of the study publishing music’s effect said in a UNSW news release that his study found that engaging with music induces an emotional response that has a physiological component. Any engagement, be it singing, listening or playing an instrument, can induce this response.
McCrary said that explanations of music’s capacity to evoke emotional responses are heavily debated. But, the capacity seems to be linked to the emotional connection that forms between the musicians, who design sound with emotional intention and the listeners who receive those emotions.
McCrary said that emotional responses to music activate various regions of the brain and the autonomic nervous system (ANS) —a biological system that regulates involuntary processes such as respiration and heart rate. He said that specifically most musical engagement triggers a ‘fight or flight’ response that is followed by a ‘rest and digest’ response as the music ends.
“My working hypothesis is that repeatedly engaging with music and eliciting these autonomic nervous system activation patterns increases our ability to respond effectively to stress, which in turn improves our overall health and wellbeing.”
Furthermore, the activation patterns of the ANS in response to music are similar to the patterns experienced when exercising, although McCrary said that the responses exercise elicits are of higher amplitude.
The most exciting thing about these results is the insights they provide into the potential impact of music on our overall health. For example, exercise is associated with the prevention of 1.6 million annual deaths,” McCrary said.
“If music can have half this impact, we’re looking at the prevention of 800,000 annual avoidable deaths. So, the potential here is exciting if we can figure out how to target and maximise music’s effects,” he explained.
McCrary said in an email to The Epoch Times that the study’s main finding was that music had a significant positive impact on people’s health-related quality of life (HRQOL)— a metric broadly representing general health and wellbeing. He said that the magnitude of music’s impact was around half the size of the impact that exercise has on HRQOL.
McCrary added that one main hypothesis his team is currently researching is that consistent engagement with music may have preventative effects for non-transmittable diseases such as cardiovascular disease and cancer.
“Accordingly, the magnitude of music’s impact on health-related quality of life gives us a rough estimate of its potential impact on non-communicable disease mortality,” said McCrary.
“In terms of pairing music and exercise (i.e. when dancing) or which type of music engagement is best for health, these are still very much open and unanswered questions that we’re currently researching,” McCrary said.
He also said that music could be used to treat anxiety and depression for people with substance abuse issues, adding that existing research shows that music can help improve health outcomes for these individuals.
However, the researchers of the study recognized that music’s impact, as observed in the results of the study, varied broadly across individuals.
“At present, this is a huge limitation, as ‘prescribing’ a certain type of music for any one individual is likely to produce a wide range of responses from ‘no effect’ to ‘large effects’,” McCrary said.
“We’re aiming to address this variability in upcoming research projects by targeting emotional responses to the music (e.g. enjoyment, relaxation) vs. specific types of music (e.g. classical, pop).”
However, the analysis of the study did not highlight methods of optimizing musical treatment such as how long or often a patient should engage with music.
McCrary said that given the current limitations of musical treatment a lot more work needs to be done for music to be reliably prescribed to an individual with its maximum health benefits. However, he said that the study does contribute to a better understanding of the average impact that music has on health.
He said that to realize music’s potential in health care, the next step is to develop a framework that allows for reliable prescriptions that will maximize music’s impact on the patient’s health.
“This framework has been developed theoretically, adapting key insights from the development of reliable exercise prescriptions,” McCrary said.
“The immediate next step is to empirically test this prescription framework and see if it can consistently produce positive health outcomes in various real-world settings, for example, clinical rehabilitation and public health programs.”
He said that the first numerical evidence of the clinically significant impact that music has on wellbeing and HRQOL was provided by this study.
“Previous systematic reviews used narrative methods to synthesize the broad range of, often conflicting, results regarding music’s health impact,” said McCrary.
“This is to say, this study aimed to be very direct and quantitative, taking a ‘cold’, impartial approach to music’s effects, and I wasn’t sure that the impact of music on health-related quality of life (HRQOL) would be quantifiably significant.”
He also said that this study allowed for music’s impact on health to be compared and contextualized against currently used methods for improving HRQOL such as weight loss and exercise for the first time. The researchers made this possible by focusing on studies that employed the most popular short-form (SF) health survey, the SF-36, which as the name suggests contains 36 items.
McCary has noted though, at the moment, he has not seen any evidence suggesting that certain genres of music are more impactful on your health.
“The most impactful music on health and wellbeing appears to be the music that you like the most, as playing and listening to it corresponds to the strongest emotional and physiologic response,” said McCrary. “For some, this may be classical music, and for others, it may be heavy metal.”
Matt McCrary and his colleagues published the results of their study on musical engagement’s effect on health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in JAMA Network Open. The research study included 26 eligible studies that involved 779 participants.