Good news about music

And so music invites us to be joyful and to heal our hearts. It's always gratifying to learn about research that proves what we already know. I wonder why, in this study, it is recommended that you only listen to the most joy producing music for yourself every two weeks. Too much of a good thing? I remember years ago Baba Ram Dass saying something about how we human beings can only stand a limited amount of ecstasy at a time.

Here is a synopsis of the study. More information is available at www.PhysOrg.com

Joyful music may promote heart health
Listening to your favorite music may be good for your cardiovascular system. Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore have shown for the first time that the emotions aroused by joyful music have a healthy effect on blood vessel function.
Music, selected by study participants because it made them feel good and brought them a sense of joy, caused tissue in the inner lining of blood vessels to dilate (or expand) in order to increase blood flow. This healthy response matches what the same researchers found in a 2005 study of laughter. On the other hand, when study volunteers listened to music they perceived as stressful, their blood vessels narrowed, producing a potentially unhealthy response that reduces blood flow.
The results of the study, conducted at the University of Maryland Medical Center, will be presented at the Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association, on November 11, 2008, in New Orleans.
"We had previously demonstrated that positive emotions, such as laughter, were good for vascular health. So, a logical question was whether other emotions, such as those evoked by music, have a similar effect," says principal investigator Michael Miller, M.D., director of preventive cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center and associate professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. "We knew that individual people would react differently to different types of music, so in this study, we enabled participants to select music based upon their likes and dislikes."