How Music Helps Reducing Stress and Anxiety. Essay (Essay Sample)

How Music Helps Reducing Stress and Anxiety
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How Music Helps Reducing Stress and Anxiety
Many people know that listening to or playing music can be relaxing. Music can focus the mind just as meditation, hypnosis, and prayer do. Therefore, listening to or playing music can reduce stress. In medical settings, music can help patients lessen anxiety and stress. Edlin & Golanty (2018) found that patients undergoing surgery were just as likely to be calmed by music as by sedative drugs. Music can help reduce the chronic pain that accompanies rheumatoid arthritis, herniated discs, or fibromyalgia. Further music can help those who have experienced a stroke, Alzheimer’s, and other neurological diseases. The kind of music that people find helpful varies according to individuals’ preferences. In general, soft music is preferred to loud; gentle rhythms and moderate beats that approximate the heart rate (65-75 beats per minute) are preferred to vigorous or complex rhythms and fast beats. The background music found in doctors’ and dentists’ offices is known to reduce heart and breathing rates and reduce anxiety.