5 Ways Music Affects You In A Healthy Way

The thing is, these days you listen to some amount of music every day whether you want it or not. For music has gained a certain level of omniscience-present in the mall, sometimes at the work place, definitely at the gym, and when you’re home it’s almost always blaring from the television. What this means is that you are getting affected by the tunes in myriad ways- ways which you aren’t even aware of. And here are 5 unbelievable ways in which music affects you, according to science.

# Read People's Expression

It’s kinda obvious that the type of music that you listen to-happy or sad, will have a direct effect on your resultant mood. But research shows that that’s not the only way in which the music affects you. If you listen to a sad tune even for a little while and see a neutral expression on someone’s face, chances are you’ll read that expression as sad. This works in a similar manner with happy music too! The biased reading is applicable with not just neutral expressions but also with other types of expressions, though it’s the strongest when you are presented with a neutral face.

# Improves Creativity

There are writers who practise their art while listening to rock n’ roll, including famous writers- Stephen King being a case in point. So, maybe this isn’t applicable to everyone, but as per science, listening to music with average noise levels increases your creativity. The reason is that this sort of music forces your brain to process more strongly which leads to abstract processing-something that supports higher creativity. However, with music with higher noise levels, your information-processing becomes clunky, meaning lesser creativity.

# Reduces Stress

This facet of music owes its property of affecting your body on multiple levels. To begin with, music reduces the cortisol levels in your brain-cortisol is the chemical which makes you feel stressful. Genres like jazz, bluegrass and soft rock are found to be effective in brining down the cortisol level. Another effect of music is that it helps your body create more number of antibodies that will help fight a disease.

# Improves Reasoning Skills

It’s been found that children with three years or more worth of musical instrument training have much better auditory discrimination abilities and motor skills compared to others.

# Get Rid of Drug Addiction

Drugs generally affect the neurotransmitters- the information carrying chemicals in your brain. Music also affects these same chemicals but in a different way. Whereas drugs make your brain lazy in producing the chemicals- since you are injecting them into the system, music can actually increase the levels of some of the chemicals like norepinephrine and dopamine. Also, certain types of music can help lower blood pressure and muscle tension-things if they are high would make you restless and could make you resort to chemicals.