Bochum: Listening to records of music legend Mozart can not only appease your mind but also helps in tackling high blood pressure as well as steadying the heart rate, new research has found.
The Ruhr University, Bochum, performed a study on the effect of different musical genres on the cardiovascular system. The findings showed that listening to classical music maestros like Mozart and Strauss the younger for 25 minutes every day could lower blood lipid concentrations and heart rate.
The study analysed 120 participants out of which, 60 (further subdivided into three groups) were exposed to 25 minutes of recorded music by Wolfgang Mozart, Johann Strauss II or a Swedish pop band- ABBA. The remaining 60 subjects were assigned a control group that spent their time in silence. Before and after exposure to music and quiet time, respectively, all participants had their blood pressure, heart rate, and cortisol concentration measured.
Mozart lowered the systolic BP -- the pressure in blood vessels when the heart beats -- by 4.7 mm Hg, Strauss by 3.7 mm Hg, whereas no significant effect was seen for the songs of ABBA.
Diastolic blood pressure -- when the heart rests between beats -- also fell by 2.1 mm Hg for Mozart and 2.9 mm Hg for Strauss.
"It has been known for centuries that music has an effect on human beings. In our study, listening to classical music resulted in lowered blood pressure and heart rate. These drops in blood pressure were clearly expressed for the music of Mozart and Strauss," said Hans-Joachim Trappe und Gabriele Volt of Ruhr University Bochum in Germany.
"But Mozart's music had the strongest effect," he added.
Further, resting in a supine position also resulted in blood pressure lowering, but the effect was far less noticeable than for exposure to the music of Mozart or Strauss.
As far as cortisol concentrations were concerned, the drop in cortisol levels was more pronounced in men than in women after being exposed to the music of Mozart and Strauss.
Quiet music of a slow tempo, long legato phrases and unchanging dynamics are regarded as beneficial for the cardio circulatory system, said the paper published in the journal Deutsches Arzteblatt International.
