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Music & Health

Listening to music at work is good for your health.

Music is now recognized for its therapeutic virtues and several recent studies indicate that listening to it at work would be beneficial for morale and health, and would promote productivity.

A study by Entertainment Media Research even found that 1 in 3 employees would be less likely to take sick leave if they like the background music heard in their workplace, while another Mindlab International study found that 88% of employees work more diligently while listening to music.

A Real Therapy

According to Kim Innes, Professor of Epidemiology at West Virginia University, cited by Time, music activates the neurochemical systems and brain structures associated with good mood, emotional regulation, attention and memory: a powerful combo that promotes concentration and psychological well-being.

What atmosphere for what type of work?

Studies also reveal that ambient music, instrumental music, or classical music, thanks to a slow tempo and stretched notes, would have a soothing effect and would help concentration during intellectual activities or tasks requiring a lot of precision. This would also be the case for electronic music, which would help to increase speed and would be ideal for solving mathematical problems! For more repetitive tasks, we prefer rhythmic music.

Make the right choice

However, music does not have the same effects on everyone. According to a Finnish study, music is as much a source of well-being as it could induce stress and negative emotions such as aggressiveness or sadness. The rhythm, tone or lyrics of a song modulate the heart rate and activity of the brain’s neural networks, which is why it is important to choose according to your tastes and activity, in order to remain efficient and feel good.

Knowing how to measure out

Some people simply do not tolerate music when working and need complete silence to be able to concentrate. Forcing music on them could be stressful, impact their morale and therefore their effectiveness.

In addition, while it is true that putting on your headphones prevents you from hearing an overly noisy colleague or the noise of the coffee machine when working in an open-plan office, it is important not to wear them all the time so as not to isolate yourself from the rest of the team and worsen the working atmosphere.

You may miss important information from your boss… or lose track of the latest gossip!

After the “5 fruits and vegetables a day”, the “eat and move” (but not at the same time eh!). We can never say it enough: listening and/or practicing music every day is good for your health. It soothes our anxieties, promotes concentration, stimulates memory, facilitates language learning, reduces stress and pain…

Stimulates memory

Listening to music stimulates our memory. By “anticipating” the next note, our brain maintains our cerebral cortex and more particularly our memory. By combining musical notes with emotions, music becomes a real time machine that takes us back in time to our past. By associating an event with music, we remember it much more easily, and we can relive those moments. Whether sad or joyful, nostalgic or far-fetched, these moments are more easily accessible to us when we listen to the associated music.

Antidepressant Virtue

Listening to music that we like activates the famous “reward circuit” of our brain, particularly used in video games. This area will flood our brain and our entire body with chemicals essential to our existence and our joy of life: dopamine (the neurotransmitter of pleasure and desire), oxytocin (the hormone of love and attachment), serotonin (known for its antidepressant properties) and also endorphins (which will soothe our pain and give us a feeling of well-being).

Listening to soft music will soothe us, listening to rhythmic music will give us energy, regulating the secretion of adrenaline.

Music therapy in companies

Music softens morals… even at a very low level making or listening to music has only benefits on our body and mind.

According to a LinkedIn study in partnership with Spotify of 13,000 people shows that:

80% of respondents believe that music will boost their business,
65% feel motivated when listening to music,
33% concentrate better when listening to music,
42% feel rested thanks to music

It is a real productivity booster. A study by researchers at the University of Illinois found that the more employees had a so-called “office” task, the more productivity they increased.

By promoting concentration and reducing stress, music is a real ally for companies. Simply listening to music for 15 minutes will begin to reduce fatigue and fatigue, while helping to improve efficiency.

Just like the sports activities offered by companies that contribute to the well-being of employees, an active (making music) or passive (listening to music) musical activity will also contribute to this well-being. More and more companies are including musical activities in their Human Resources strategy.

The musical team building is a stimulating and beneficial activity that will promote cohesion and trust between employees. Over the water or in occasional activity throughout the year this will only have benefits.

Health Benefits of Music

Most of us love music. Whether it is a sweet symphony, or rhythmic music, everyone has their own preferences. Music can calm us down, it makes us happy, it also makes us more social. It does soften morals and it is scientifically proven. It accompanies and supports people who are ill or depressed.

Even babies love music. Just observe them in a musical environment and see how they start waddling and rhythm, please!

Personally, I didn’t have the chance to learn from an instrument. Good except for a few songs that I know how to do on the recorder, but not enough to make an album!

In this article, I share with you 11 beneficial effects of music on our health and well-being. Feel free to put soothing music in the background to accompany you as you read this article.

What is music?

To make it really very simple, music is a combination of sounds. Sound itself corresponds to a wave produced by a mechanical vibration of a body and propagating in the surrounding environment. It is characterized by a measurable frequency in Hertz (Hz) and by an amplitude that defines its intensity. This is measured in decibels (dB).

Our ear detects frequencies between 20 and 20,000 Hz. The lower the frequency, the lower the note and the lower the bass and vice versa, the higher the frequency, the higher the high the note. Zero decibel is the minimum sound we can hear.

The benefits of music are many. They are also observed in adults, elderly or younger, children and even infants.

Music training improves intellectual abilities

Musicians are able to distinguish even subtle frequency changes in their native language. They have a greater stimulation in their brains when faced with these slight variations, unlike a non-musician. It thus improves the sense of listening.

In 10-year-old children who have been playing a musical instrument for at least 3 years, there has been faster development of their reasoning skills and vocabulary and language acquisition.

According to some neuroscientists, our children should take music lessons before the age of 7.

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