Listening to just 30 minutes of music per day can make your heart healthier

You probably have your own playlist that you love listening to. Whether it reminds you of certain memories or makes you feel calm, music is a go-to for a lot of people for a lot of things. A new study has now found yet another benefit of listening to music. Listening to just 30 minutes of music has been linked to improved heart health.

The study found that it helped heart patients cope with anxiety and stress in ways unimaginable. Experts now believe that music, when teamed with standard medication and exercise, could potentially help patients recover on their own at home and in better conditions. “Based on our findings, we believe music therapy can help all patients after a heart attack, not only patients with early post-infarction angina. It’s also very easy and inexpensive to implement,” said study lead author Predrag Mitrovic.

For the study, the researchers recruited nearly 350 patients who had undergone a heart attack and were recovering. These people were randomly divided into two groups. While one group received standard treatment the other group was also given music to listen to along with the standard treatment.

The group that had to listen to music was tested with what kind of music they liked and found soothing and based on that they were asked to listen to music along with their standard treatment. Both the groups were then documented for seven years post which it was found that the group that also listened to music reported feeling less anxiety, stress and pain distress.

In fact, these patients also had lower risks of developing further heart diseases as compared to those who only received standard treatment. The researchers believed that since music was able to relieve their anxiety, their heart conditions also improved. “Unrelieved anxiety can produce an increase in sympathetic nervous system activity, leading to an increase in cardiac workload,” Mitrovic said.