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Research Assessment #9

Reagan Rasmussen

ISM: Music Education

10 January 2019

“Music and Health.” Harvard Health Blog, Harvard Health Publishing, July 2011,

www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/music-and-health.

Assessment:

This is the second half of the extremely long article I used for the last Research

Assessment, and this half covers topics that are more on the medical side, such as music and

heart and muscle related issues, the benefits of going to concerts, as well as possible injuries of

musicians. The first section is about music’s effect on stroke recovery. The article cited a study

that showed the improvement of the “focused attention” skill in stroke victims and how that

improvement was affected by the stimulation by music versus audiobooks versus no audio

stimulation. By comparison, those listening to music improved more than 30 percent more in the

time period than the other two groups. The next section was called “Heart Beats” and covered

the impact that music can have on everyday stress all the way to recovery from major cardiac

events. Studies conducted involving heart attack victims suggested that not only could music

reduce heart rate and blood pressure, which was a welcome short-term relief for patients, there

was evidence that music could help blood flow. It increased blood flow in patients by 26%, close

to that of a good aerobic exercise. And, another thing of note, was that stress-inducing (more

hard-core) music, did decrease blood flow and raised levels of anxiety. “Maladies of Musicians”

was the next section, discussing the slightly off-topic subject of how those who play instruments

may suffer from injuries obtained while playing. Mainly in the fingers, hands, and arms,
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musicians often need healing for overuse injuries and issues similar to those of assembly line

workers. The next topic is how specifically going to concerts to listen to music is more beneficial

compared to listening to recordings of music. A finding of one of the cited studies was that going

to social and cultural events greatly impacted the life span and/or healthiness of many people.

Concerts were the most common event that the people in the study attended. Back to a more

medical subtopic, “Music and Muscles” focused on how athletes often listen to music and claim

that it helps them to perform better. The article concluded that music increased the endurance

levels of athletes by a small amount, but also found that energetic music has a energy-boosting

effect and relaxing music slightly hindered performance. The last section was a summary of the

whole article, tying in the connection between music and medicine, by including quotes from

Shakespeare and Plato on music. And, it tied in how Apollo, the ancient Greek god, was the god

of both music and medicine, so they have been associated together throughout history.

Despite the article shifting less-than coherently from topic to topic, I took in so much

information from all of the studies that it included and the conclusions drawn from those studies.

Although it seems repetitive, I further learned about the implications and possible improvement

that music can have on the lives of people, reinforcing how important it is to educate young

students in music so that they can have that appreciation for the rest of their lives. If a middle

school age student can learn how to appreciate classical, or even regular band, music, then they

have that way of expressing themselves forever. And, as busy as the life of a student can be,

music is something that can take off a little bit of that stress, and give those growing up in a

digital age something powerful to help them to connect to others.