Can Music slow down our aging process?

Research tells us that listening to music can improve the mood and help in relaxation to some extent, but other more interesting effects have also been observed.

With brain imaging fMRI scans, scientists now can even show where this happens in our brains. Petr Janata, a cognitive neuroscientist at University of California, Davis, USA recently concluded a study that illustrates how the “medial pre-frontal cortex” links familiar music, memories and emotion. He also noted that music triggers powerful personal memories in Alzheimer patients.

It can also help children to feel soothed, to feel more relaxed and secure.

I can remember from my own childhood that when my mother played the “Blue Danube Waltz” on the “gramophone,” I remained calm for longer periods. This may have been due to the repetitive pattern of the music or perhaps, because music helped me to promote my body rhythms to synchronise with the rhythms of music heard. This I now feel, is nothing new as mothers lull their babies to sleep with lullabies.

                                                  

Listening to music may even help in reducing pain. Recently research published in the Lancet by Dr. Catherine Meads of Brunel University found how music can affect people who were undergoing surgery, their need for pain medication and their length of their hospital stay. It was found that patients who listened to music reported experiencing less anxiety and pain than those who did not. Those who were played music were also less likely to need pain medication.

How can listening to music create a long life?

Music is very significant part of our daily lives. Listening to music helps stress, relieves pain, improves health makes us relax, helps us to concentrate on study, increases productivity and performance, but does it help to create a long life?

Music is an art and a business. It affects us all. Music therapy is particularly noticeable in old age. It can profoundly improve the quality of life in old age, when no other treatment is able to help.

Take Japan for example, people are living longer lives thanks to, as many have commented, listening to music. There are other factors too, green tea daily served everywhere, smaller portions of food, more sea food, bath culture, showers at night improving body circulation, access to portable healthcare. One or all of these secrets may provide the answer, but it is often more than that.

Music gives the old aged brain what it needs to think and feel at the same time. Of primary importance in old age, as well are material and physical health,is financial security, together with family relationships and close social ties.

Aging is about serenity, not senility?

There is the question of altering mood states induced by music. These are seen in many parts of the world associated with reduced blood pressure, changes in neurochemicals, such as dopamine and endorphins, adjusted or altered stress levels, modulation of life and the immune system. Music is increasingly being used to assist in the aging process.

What can we do in Sri Lanka to reduce the aging process?

Learning a musical instrument as well as listening to music as a daily routine helps to stay cognitively sharp in old age. As we all know music is a powerful antidote to cognitive degeneration as we age. Listening to music can improve our creativity.

We need to unite as a nation, the young and the old, the educated and the less educated.

Instead of quibbling on trivial pursuits, we need to unite in singing the National Anthem with one voice, to bring in our united thoughts in everyone who sings it and hears it.

Singing the National Anthem together,  is a unifying experience for not only all people of Sri Lanka, but also for young and the old. Music gives us all one way in uplifting our injured feeling.

Victor Cherubim