“At least on a small scale, this study provides some evidence that music may help serve
as an extra tool to help motivate someone to exercise more, which is critical to heart health,” said Waseem Shami, MD, a cardiology fellow at Texas Tech University Health Sciences in El Paso, Texas, and the study’s lead author. “I think it’s something we intuitively knew, but we found [to be true]. I suspect if it had been a larger study, we’d see a bigger difference.”
A stress test is performed either on a treadmill or a stationary bicycle and the person
being tested is connected to heart monitoring equipment. Certain parameters are predetermined by the doctor performing the test so that the heart is not over taxed. Once these parameters are set, the person being tested is gradually increased in the level of muscular effort to bring the heart rate up and assess for any muscular pain that may begin signaling poor circulation as a result of insufficient cardiac function. The ability to stay exercising for a longer period of time
can be interpreted as an improvement in cardiac function or exercise function.
A total of 127 patients (53 years of age on average) were randomly assigned to either
listen to up-tempo music (mostly Latin-inspired music) or have no music playing during their stress tests. To “blind” the staff and clinicians, all participants wore headphones during their test.
Individuals had similar medical histories, including diabetes and hypertension. The majority of participants were Hispanic, reflecting their patient population. There were more females than males in both groups (61.2 and 66.7 percent in the music and control groups, respectively).
Dr.Shami explained that stress tests can be challenging—even painful—for some people because the treadmill speed and incline is increased every three minute. “After six minutes, you feel like you are running up a mountain, so even being able to go 50 seconds longer means a lot,” he said.
Exercise time was significantly longer in the music group compared with the control
group, 505.8 versus 455.2 seconds, respectively—an absolute difference of about 50.6 seconds.
In addition, there was a (non-significant) trend toward longer metabolic equivalent of task
(METs) when compared with the non-music group. A MET is a ratio of the rate of energy
expended during an activity to the rate of energy used at rest. Generally, the higher the number, the more energy used and the harder someone worked. Dr. Shami believes that music can be an important factor in helping to get people motivated to exercise as well as be able to exercise better and longer and more efficiently. Lack of exercise is one of the major risk factors in heart disease and even mild walking can improve a person’s risk
for cardiovascular disease significantly.
Once again, Music is showing itself to be a great benefit to our daily lives, both physically and psychologically and even spiritually.
What would we do without music in our lives?!