Music Can Boost Your Immune System

Music can boost your immune system
Listening to music can give
your immune system a boost and may help fight off disease, researchers have
discovered.

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Last Updated:
6:25PM BST 16 Aug 2008

Scientists found that after listening to just 50 minutes of
uplifting dance music, the levels of antibodies in volunteers' bodies
increased.
They also found that stress hormone levels, which can weaken the
immune system, decreased after being exposed to the music.
Volunteers who
played a percussion instrument along with the music also benefited from the
immune boost.
The researchers, from Sussex University and the Max Planck
Institute in Leipzig, Germany, say their findings demonstrate how music could
be used to help aid patients' recovery while in hospital.
In a separate,
unpublished, study they also found that playing music while a patient was
under anaesthetic during an operation also helped to lower the levels of
harmful stress hormones.
Dr Ronny Enk, a neurocognition expert at the Max
Planck Institute, who led the research, said: "We think the pleasant state
that can be induced by music leads to special physiological changes which
eventually lead to stress reduction or direct immune enhancement.
"Stress
reduction probably plays an important role, but the stress reducing effect
seems to be different for various types of music."
The researchers tested
300 people, asking them to listen to 50 minutes of happy, joyful dance music
or to a random collection of tones.
They found that levels of cortisol, the
stress hormone, decreased significantly in those listening to the dance music
compared to the control group. After listening, the levels of the antibody
immunoglobin A, the immune system's first line of defence, were
heightened.
The researchers did not test whether different types of music
would have different affects, but other studies have shown that personal
preference for music can also influence the stress reducing impact it can
have.
Dr Enk added: "We'd expect that different kinds of music might show
different physiological and immunological effects. Not only the music itself
is important but probably the personal appraisal of the listener will also be
important. We did not use relaxing music, but rather exciting music that were
joyful dance tunes from different centuries.
"Listening to music in
hospitals might show benefits for patients and may for example lead to shorter
recovery times, but we are still to test this ourselves."

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