Music is entertaining to listen to, and it may even come with some health benefits according to research. People can derive both contentment and pleasure from music, but some other psychological benefits can also be derived from music. Music can be relaxing to the muscle; it can energize the body, and can help people manage their pain better.

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On the other side of the coin, music can enhance activities and it’s been proven that our brain can easily correlate where we were or what we were doing by hearing a familiar song. When playing at a new online casino, listening to music is known to help some players concentrate and get into their ‘zone’, potentially giving them a slight edge, instead of being a distraction.

It is actually not surprising that your behaviors, feelings, and thought could be influenced by music. If you’ve ever felt some adrenaline rush while enjoying a rock anthem that comes at a fast pace, or moved to tears when you are enjoying a live performance, then the power of music is not alien to you, and you understand how easily it can inspire action and affect moods.

Music can have a very powerful psychological and wide ranging effect. The music therapy is a sort of intervention, and it could be beneficial in the promotion of emotional health or in assisting patients to cope with stress and advance their psychological well being. According to research, your personality could be understood from your taste in music.

Cognitive Performance Could Be Improved By Music

According to research, background music or music that plays when the listener is focused on something else can help in improving the listener’s cognitive tasks, especially when it is used by older adults. According to one study, when upbeat music is involved in such a situation, processing speed is improved, while the memory also gains from both downbeat and upbeat music.

So, when next you have a task to work on, consider playing a mild music in the background if you intend to boost your mental performance. It is better to select instrumental tasks, instead of lyrics that are complex, because the latter may distract you.

Music Can Reduce Stress

The suggestion has been made long ago that stress can be reduced or managed with music. When in this situation, consider the meditative music, which is actually designed to induce relaxation and soothe the mind. This is a trend that has some research backing it, so stress could be better coped with music.

In a study in 2013, participants were exposed to three different conditions before they faced stressors and a psychological test was done after that. Some of them listened to relaxing music, while others were exposed to rippling water sounds, and the others placed on some auditory simulation.

According to the results, those that listened to music had it impacting on the human stress response, especially the autonomic nervous system. After a stressor, those that listened to music made quicker recovery.

Music Can Help You Reduce the Amount of Food You Eat

One surprising psychological benefit of music will be difficult for people to believe, and it is the fact that it might be beneficial to weight loss. If you are working on losing weight, you can easily achieve your goals when you listen to mellow music in an environment with dim lights.

The study says that people that eat in low lit restaurants with soft music consumed 18% lesser food than those that eat in brightly lit restaurants without such music. According to the researchers, the cause is that a more relaxed setting is created by music and low light. With the relaxing mood, the participants eat their food more slowly, and this helps them to easily understand when they start feeling full.

To be sure of this, try eating with dim lights and soft music at home. You may find out that the relaxed environment makes you eat more slowly and to realize once you start feeling full.

Music Can Improve Your Memory

Many students like studying with music, but is that idea a great one? The feeling by some is that their memory is improved when they study while their favorite music is on, while others see it as a very pleasant distraction.

According to research, this may be of help. But this is based on a number of factors, and that includes how the listener enjoys the music, the type of music involved, and how musically aware or trained the listener may be.

In one of the studies, students that are musically naive performed better when they listened to positive music, and that could be because of the positive emotions the songs elicited, without hindering the memory formation.

Meanwhile, students that were musically trained did better on learning tests when they were exposed to neutral music, and that could be because the music could be easily ignored and it offers lesser distraction. If music tends to distract you, it’s better for you to learn in silence or better still, play neutral songs in the background.

A third study discovered that people trying to master a new language do better when they sing  the new phrases and words, than when they learn by just speaking or by rhythmic speaking.

With Music, You Can Manage Pain Better

Research has shown that music is very good in pain management. A study that was conducted on fibromyalgia patients revealed that reduction in the feeling of depression and pain was witnessed with music. According to the results, music therapy could be very important in treating chronic pain.

A review research of 2015 on the effects of music on pain management revealed that patients that were placed on music, before, during and after surgery, witnessed less anxiety and pain than those who did not listen to music.

While it was effective to listen to music at any point in time, it was noted by the researchers that listening to music before surgery elicited better outcomes. This was arrived at by consulting a data of 7,000 patients, where it was discovered that music listeners needed lesser medication for pain management. Also, a slightly greater and somehow insignificant improvement was made in pain management results when these patients were given the chance to pick their own music.

Music May Help You Sleep Better

Insomnia is a very serious problem, and people of all ages are affected by it. While this problem could be treated with many approaches, it has been established by research that listening to good and relaxing classical music can be an effective, safe, and affordable treatment.

A study that considered college students had the participants listening to an audiobook, classical music, and nothing when they go to bed for three weeks. Sleep quality before and after the intervention was assessed by researchers, and the result was that participants that listened to music enjoyed better sleep by far than those who got nothing and those that listened to an audiobook.