Combining the soothing power of music with the beneficial effects of antihypertensive drugs seems to create a beautiful synergy that lowers the heart rate and blood pressure of people with hypertension.

This is the main result of a new study carried out by an international team of researchers. Their results are now published in the journal Scientific Reports.

“The inexpressible depth of music,” as Sacks called it in his book Musicophilia, has been shown before to have healing effects on the heart. Studies have suggested that music can lower the blood pressure, reduce the heart rate, and ease the distress of people living with heart conditions.

The comforting effects of music do not stop here. Music therapy was shown to help the heart to contract and push blood throughout the body, classical and rock music makes your arteries more supple, and listening to music during surgery helps to lower the heart rate to a more calming pace.

Given all of these intriguingly positive effects of music on the heart, could it be that music can also boost the positive effects of blood pressure medication?

This question puzzled the researchers — who were led by Vitor Engrácia Valenti, a professor in the Speech Language Pathology Department at the São Paulo State University in Brazil. So, they set out to investigate.

Source: Medical News Today