5 Reasons You Need To Add Music To Your Daily Activities

Mood

Over 20 million Americans over the age of 18 struggle with mood disorders while 3.4 million Americans under the age of 18 are also impacted.  These numbers are expected to grow in the near future.  The most common mood disorders are depression and anxiety.  Playing a musical instrument or even listening to music helps to raise blood circulation in areas of the brain that control emotions.  By adding music, we can support this area of the brain to reduce feelings of depression and anxiety. In many studies, music was a beneficial non-pharmaceutical  method in helping to reduce symptoms of depression.

Memory

Ever feel forgetful? The common things we forget like our phone, wallet, or keys might seem silly and we brush it off. But, we would  take it seriously, if we forgot important people or important events in our lives. Music has a way of helping us to recapture memories of not only people or events, but also when we misplace our personal items. Based on studies from the United States and Japan, music helps us to restore memories as well as build new memories. 

Performance/Energy

Do you struggle with lack of energy or just feel tired all the time? This makes it really hard to be productive at work, school, or outside activities. But, listening to music while working or studying, has shown to boost productivity and increase our endurance of long activities. This means you can get a lot more done without needing extra time. Take for example, exercising takes a bit of energy to perform. And adding music to that equation can help motivate the start of exercise and keep you exercising longer.

Pain

Now we all deal with pain in our lives. Whether it is mental or physical, music is an easy way to cope with both types of pain. Listening to music and playing a musical instrument has been shown in studies to reduce the level of physical pain we feel, as well as manage the stress that can join mental trauma. In studies that focused on people with long term pain, adding music as a form of treatment was helpful in not only blocking pain signals from reaching the brain, but also helped people to improve their ability to move around and participate in physical activities again.

Metabolism

Metabolism is how we process the food we eat for energy. We can have a fast or slow metabolism and music is one of the lesser known ways to influence our metabolism. Certain music can influence how much we eat and the type of food we choose to eat.  Even more importantly, music can impact how our body breaks down and uses the nutrients in the food we eat.  This affects how our body develops metabolic diseases. Take for example, when we listen to music that encourages us to choose more sugary foods, we can increase our risk for diabetes. However, there are studies that show we can reduce blood sugar levels and risk of diabetes with certain choices of music.