A Cardiologist, Dr Kayode Atoyebi, has said that listening to music at bedtime is important and beneficial to the heart.
Atoyebi, in an interview with PUNCH, said that music had long been found to be a remedy for heartbreak.
He said, “Research has shown that music can reduce anxiety in patients with heart diseases. It reduces anxiety and heals heartbreaks. It could lower blood pressure, but that doesn’t mean the person suffering from hypertension should neglect his medication and start listening to music alone.”
The cardiologist also described music as an additional therapy, which could lower the blood pressure. Listening to cool music, he added, releases a hormone called endormorphine, which improves the quality of the vascular health.
Statistics released by the World Health Organisation recently revealed that about 150,000 Nigerians died annually as a result of heart-related diseases. It was predicted that the number of deaths due to the ailment would rise to 23 million by the year 2030, if adequate measures were not taken to curtail it.
Meanwhile, a research presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress 2018 noted that listening to yoga music at bedtime is good for the heart.
The study author, Dr Naresh Sen, who is a Consultant Cardiologist at the HG SMS Hospital, Jaipur, India, said, “We use music therapy in our hospital and in this study, we showed that yoga music has a beneficial impact on heart rate variability before sleeping.”
According to sciencedaily.com, the study investigated the impact of listening to yoga music, which is a type of soothing or meditative music, before bedtime on heart rate variability.
The study included 149 healthy people who participated in three sessions on separate nights: yoga music before sleep at night, pop music with steady beats before sleep at night and no music or silence before sleep at night.
At each session, heart rate variability was measured for five minutes before the music or silence started, for ten minutes during the music/silence, and five minutes after it had stopped.
In addition, anxiety levels were assessed before and after each session using the Goldberg Anxiety Scale. The level of positive feeling was subjectively measured after each session using a visual analogue scale.
The researchers found that heart rate variability increased during the yoga music, decreased during the pop music, and did not significantly change during the silence.
“This is a small study, and more research is needed on the cardiovascular effects of music interventions offered by a trained music therapist. But listening to soothing music before bedtime is a cheap and easy to implement therapy that cannot cause harm,” Sen said.
