Music and The Immunity

We know that one of the main conditions to maintain and strengthen immunity is healthy diet. But do we know that a healthy diet is not just food that we eat?

In this era when the whole world experienced a science fiction movie scene with a scripted reality, all priorities had to change suddenly. It will be much more useful to explain the effects of music on our immune system in this period when everyone stays at home and isolates himself, extraordinary days are experienced, and health are thought more than ever before.

Because of the Covid-19 outbreak, many people are trying to survive in fear and anxiety, thinking that the disease can be transmitted at any time. As the epidemic has become the only issue on the agenda, we follow the news of how many people are defeated by the disease in each country every day, we watch the discussion programs about how to eat with which vitamin, and we try to learn how to protect our immunity.

All kinds of data we obtain with sense organs are nutriment and affect our body and therefore our immunity. In this period where the order in the world will not be the same again, we should pay much more attention to what we listen to, what we look at, how we feel. Because our perspective determines what and how we will experience.

Art, which presents the aesthetics and beauty that human beings have been pursuing since the existence, especially music, is one of the most necessary elements that we need most at this point. Because it is possible to be purified with art and to be filled with a much higher energy. With the purification of the mind, art can personally give us the life energy. Feelings which shrinks the heart vessels and causes the palpitations to be filled with the motive of creating and producing. Art is not only present in painting, music, dance, literature. Every action that we add aesthetics and beauty can turn into an art. There is beauty in everything we do sincerely. Actually, the main secret of the creations that we describe as works of art and that affect us is the sincerity of the creator. For those who have not yet experienced this, these lines have little meaning, but there is scientifically proven data for them.

When the mind is constantly filled with negative, worrying feelings and thoughts, fear and anxiety arise. Fear and anxiety creates stress that upset the balance of all hormone releases in the body. Stress directly affects immunity. As a result of scientific research, listening to music has been proven to reduce cortisol release, which is defined as stress hormone.

In a report in the British magazine The Telegraph, the findings of the studies conducted by researchers from Sussex University in England and the Leipzeig Max Planck Institute in Germany on how the music was effective in the treatment of hospitalized patients were published and how music can be used to help patients recover. According to the results of the research, it is stated that music strengthens the immune system and helps fight diseases. In a separate and unpublished study, it was informed that the music played during the operation of a patient under anesthesia helped reduce the harmful stress hormones.

The neuroscience specialist who led the research to the question of how music can affect this way. The response of Ronny Enk was that “positive effect with music eventually leads to special physiological changes that reduce stress or directly affect immunity, but the effect of stress reduction differs for various music genres.”

In another study conducted by the researchers, 300 people were tested and a happy and cheerful dance music or randomly selected tones were played for 50 minutes. According to the data revealed at the end of the study, it was revealed that the levels of antibody immunoglobin A increased, which is the first line of defense of the immune system, in the subjects listening to dance music and the stress hormone cortisol decreased significantly compared to the control group. In this study, it was not investigated which music genre and how it affected, but Dr. Enk stated that music genres show different physiological and immunological effects in different studies, and the personal evaluation of the listener may play an important role in determining the effect of the music.

Science, which works music with experiment and observation in all these studies, reveals the effects of music on our brain and health. However, while the music is concrete in terms of the physics and scope of the sound, it is also abstract with its spirit that is intuitive and impossible to test yet. Sources that deal with music in its abstract aspect say much more about its effects.