Music: A Stress Reliever That Works For All Ages
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Emotional chaos can cause a lot of stress. This type of chaos is often caused from reactive responses. Something happens, a stressor, and you react. The reaction can be physical – such as your heart beating faster, your stomach beginning to hurt, you feel nauseated, overwhelmed and more.
Or, the reaction can be emotional. You feel out of control, angry, depressed, anxious and so on. Over time, the stress builds and the body then begins to undergo stress-related reactions in the form of physical or emotional health issues.
Most of these issues speed up the aging process. These issues can be blood sugar spikes, weight problems, mood disorders and more. But when you use music as a stress reliever, you can stop the physical and emotional reaction to stress that’s shortening your life.
Music relaxes both the body and the mind. It has the ability to calm the stress and stop the release of cortisol. To help alleviate stress, you can meditate with music. This can be something like classical music or jazz but it can also be your favorite type of music, too.
Music is a known mood booster. This is why it’s often used as part of therapy treatment. It’s known to calm anxiety and depression because it causes the release of endorphins. It can stir positive emotions, too – and help listeners feel good about themselves and their lives.
Listening to your favorite music can also boost focus. Stress is known to cause problems with concentration as well as memory recall issues. Music is known to cause mental alertness and boost memory function.
Stress wreaks havoc on the body and can cause immune system deterioration, but listening to music can improve the immune system function. The way that it does this is by stimulating the release of antibodies while at the same time limiting the release of the stress hormone.
One thing that often goes hand in hand with stress are aches and pains in the body. That’s because stress causes tension in the body. When you tense up, under normal circumstances, your muscles will relax, but stress keeps your muscles tight and that tension leads to muscle pain in a specific area or all over.
Music can help your body get relief from pain, which in turn lowers the stress hormone.
Not only can listening to music do that, but it can also help relieve the issues that cause health problems that lead to a shortened life.
For example, if stress has raised your blood pressure, then listening to music can bring those levels back down. It can do this because music relaxes the blood vessels and relaxed blood vessels means they’ve widened, which means the heart doesn’t have to work as hard.
