The Impact of Music on Our Health

Human beings coexist with music at all times. This is an art that makes us enjoy pleasant times, encourages us to remember facts from the past and makes us share emotions. Music is considered among the elements that cause more pleasure in life because it releases dopamine in the brain. Music has an effect on emotions, movements, and memory that will lead to physical consequences. It can improve respiration, reduce pain, relax muscle tension, relieve stress, stimulate movement, influence mood and increase or decrease blood pressure and heart rate. Loud music makes the blood pressure go up and the heart beats go faster.While soft music can lower blood pressure and by consequence heart beat. This is related to the cardiovascular system and nervous system.

The cardiovascular system by pumping blood delivers oxygen, nutrients, hormones and white blood cells around the body. The heart is the principal organ in the circulatory system. Its main function as a muscular pump is to provide blood throughout the body. The usual beats of a hearts are from 60 to 100 times per minute, and about 100,000 times a day. The heart gets messages from the brain that tell if it needs to pump more or less blood depending on a person's needs and situation. The heart is between the lungs and just to the left of the middle of the chest cavity. The heart has four chambers that have muscular walls. The upper part is divided by right and left atrium. The bottom part is divided in right and left ventricle. The right atrium receive the blood entering the heart from the inferior and superior vena cava , then pass through the right ventricle to the pulmonary artery and then to lungs , go back to the heart in pulmonary vein then to the left atrium , left ventricle and finally to the aorta where the blood goes to the body.The brain regulates heart rate and blood pressure.

The brain is part of the Nervous system , this one divides in three main parts : forebrain, midbrain and hindbrain, each with multiple parts. The part that regulates the blood pressure and the heart rate is the “ Medulla Oblongata”. This one is part of the brainstem and is located below the pons and the midbrain. The Medulla Oblongata regulates blood pressure through the use of “baroreceptors”. These ones detect changes in pressure throughout the circulatory system and then translates those changes into electrochemical signals sent to the medulla. If the organs of the body require an increasing or decreasing blood flow the medulla receives these signals,and regulates the heartbeat. The relationship between music , nervous system and cardiovascular system , involved various structures in the comprehension , understanding and response to music.

When you play music the sound waves are picked up by the middle ear, causing the eardrums to vibrate. This goes to the limbic brain regions that has connections with the brain's emotional center called amygdala. Limbic brain regions specially the amygdala are a major part of the emotional stimulus from music. Next it goes to the nucleus accumbens (NA) is activated as soon as music is experienced as pleasurable and have an impact on emotions. The nucleus accumbens is part of the mesolimbic pathway creating dopamine that influence and creates emotional stimulus. Finally the music goes to the hippocampus that is connected to our emotional reactions and chemical brain respond .The amygdala , the nucleus Accumbens (NA) and hippocampus are key components of the limbic system and are associated with emotion and memory formation, respectively. That will create dopamine that stimulates the medulla oblongata and increase the blood pleasure and by consequence the heart rate.