Music as Medicine

A soft and peaceful melody played slowly can create comfort and calm for a restless heart.
Music can cause tears to come and emotions to burst forth, therefore ‘pulling on our heartstrings’. Christine Stevens says the term heartstring actually comes from the term chordae tendineae, which are known as the tendons that open and close our heart valves. Emotional and physical heart centers are often in need of healing and music can help with that. The feeling of a closed heart can feel tight, restricted, and burdened. The medicine of melody allows a release of the burdens we hold in our hearts. A song can sometimes say exactly how we feel, providing an immediate sense relief.

Heart disease is on the rise at alarming rates. Seventy-six million people in the United States currently undergo stress related hypertension (high blood pressure). Seventy-one percent of those people are using antihypertensive medication. Music therapy can be used to prevent these types of overwhelming issues. If you are feeling stressed, try using music to heal yourself, rather than become one of those seventy-six million people. Use music as medicine rather than risky prescription drugs.
Music therapy can work for all ages, including newborn babies! Studies have shown that if pregnant mothers play or sing a song for their baby in the womb two to three months before birth, babies will recognize the tunes after birth. Just two to four days after the baby is born, it can recognize the song the mother has played for it. Playing these songs for the babies resulted in a decrease in heart rate and movement making the babies calmer. They also became more alert, compared to no response when other songs were played.
A decrease in lung capacity can lead to greater risk of heart disease. Adults often tend to hurry through the day, raising the risk of running out of breath, literally. When out of breath, our blood becomes less oxygenated, decreasing our lung capacity. Stress can also lead to shallow breathing, decreasing lung capacity. Christine Stevens has found that lung capacity has been found to be a largely significant predictor of heart problems, stroke, respiratory disease, cancer, and other causes of death. This study shows that even healthy people need to pay attention to breathing to stay healthy.