Life Advice: Want to Stay Young? Listen to Music

I saw this article and wanted to share it because I think it is totally true: 

Keep Your Brain Young with Music

It was written by John Hopkins University Medicine and concludes:

If you want to firm up your body, head to the gym. If you want to exercise your brain, listen to music.

The Article Explains: 

“There are few things that stimulate the brain the way music does,” says one Johns Hopkins otolaryngologist. “If you want to keep your brain engaged throughout the aging process, listening to or playing music is a great tool. It provides a total brain workout.”

Research has shown that listening to music can reduce anxiety, blood pressure, and pain as well as improve sleep quality, mood, mental alertness, and memory.

The Brain-Music Connection

Experts are trying to understand how our brains can hear and play music. A stereo system puts out vibrations that travel through the air and somehow get inside the ear canal. These vibrations tickle the eardrum and are transmitted into an electrical signal that travels through the auditory nerve to the brain stem, where it is reassembled into something we perceive as music.

Johns Hopkins researchers have had dozens of jazz performers and rappers improvise music while lying down inside an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) machine to watch and see which areas of their brains light up.

“Music is structural, mathematical and architectural. It’s based on relationships between one note and the next. You may not be aware of it, but your brain has to do a lot of computing to make sense of it,” notes one otolaryngologist.

- - - I think that is 100% true because I listen to music A LOT - sometimes all day long - and especially when I'm working online.

Why?

Because it makes me more productive - and happier - when working.

I like the streaming music provider Spotify (www.spotify.com) which offers free online listening - with some advertisements - or no ads for about $10 per month.

It's well worth it.

Here is what the Spotify user screen looks like:

Two features I really like include: 

1. A HUGE database of music. All types of music.

2. The ability to select a listening "Mood" (just a few options shown above) which will provide that type of music automatically to you.

Some of My Favorite Moods Are: 

- Rock

- Electronic / Dance (try out TECHNO BUNKER)

- Focus

(Okay I'll admit it - I even listen to Metal and Funk once in a while)! 

Do you want to keep your brain young, your spirits high, and improve your productivity at the same time?

Then try listening to music.  

And write your life story while you do that. Click here to try The Life Writer App for free: https://www.thelifewriter.com/user/register

Here is a link to the original John Hopkins article: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/keep-you….

- - - PS: FELICITY BELL of WWW.EVERGREENVIOLIN.COM sent me a note about this post and asked if we would add a really cool related guide that they have created: THE BENEFITS OF LEARNING AN INSTRUMENT. Their company and that guide is awesome, and we are happy to (click the words below to see it). My wife's father played the violin. It is truly an extraordinary instrument!