Recent study shows music is good for your heart. See article below. Now, if only we could get docs to write scripts for concerts & insurance to pay

Music good for heart health

[Posted: Wed 12/11/2008 by Deborah Condon]

Listening to your favourite music may be good for your cardiovascular system, the results of a new study indicate.

US researchers found that the emotions aroused by joyful music can have a healthy effect on the functioning of blood vessels. They followed the progress of a group of healthy, non-smoking volunteers.

The volunteers underwent four phases:
-Listening to music of their choice which evoked joy.
-Listening to music which made them anxious.
-Listening to audio tapes designed to promote relaxation.
-Watching videotapes designed to induce laughter.

Each volunteer participated in all four phases, but the order of the phases was determined at random.

To minimise emotional desensitisation, the volunteers were told to avoid listening to their favourite music for a minimum of two weeks.

"The idea here was that when they listened to this music that they really enjoyed, they would get an extra boost of whatever emotion was being generated," explained lead researcher, Dr Michael Miller of the University of Maryland.

The study found that those listening to joyful music that they had chosen had better blood vessel functioning. In fact, their average upper arm blood vessel diameter increased by 26% after the joyful music phase, while listening to music that caused anxiety narrowed blood vessels by 6%.

"I was impressed with the highly significant differences both before and after listening to joyful music as well as between joyful and anxious music. We knew that individual people would react differently to different types of music, so in this study, we enabled participants to select music based upon their likes and dislikes," explained Dr Miller.

The findings were presented at the scientific sessions of the American Heart Association this week in New Orleans.

For more information on heat health, see...http://www.heart.ie