New research shows that slow music produces a relaxing effect, while musical pauses further modulate heart rhythms and circulation patterns in a beneficial way. The effects were most striking for those people who have musical training.
"Calm music with a slow tempo can entrain respiration to produce slower breathing," said study senior author Dr. Peter Sleight, of the department of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Oxford in England. "This is the first study to show that breathing can be easily entrained (and subconsciously) using music."
Slower breathing has been linked to lower blood pressure and may help the lungs work more efficiently.
For their new research, Sleight and his colleagues investigated physiologic responses to six different types of music in 12 musicians and 12 non-musicians.
The music selections consisted of raga (Indian classical music), Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (slow classical), rap (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Vivaldi (fast classical), techno, and Anton Webern (slow, dodecaphonic music).
Each participant listened to different sequences of music for two minutes at a stretch, followed by the same selection for four minutes. The sequences included a two-minute pause.
Music with faster tempos and simpler rhythmic structures resulted in increased ventilation, blood pressure and heart rate, the researchers found. When the music was paused, heart rate, blood pressure and ventilation decreased, sometimes even below the starting rate.
Slower music caused declines in heart rate, with the largest decline seen with raga music.
The pause effect occurred regardless of the type of music but was stronger among musicians, who are already trained to measure their breathing with the music.
Overall, a person's musical preference was less important than the music's pace, the researchers said.
The findings, which are published in Heart, a British Medical Journal publication, do not surprise experts in the field.
"Stress has its impact on cardiovascular disease. Music can not only reduce stress, but it can enhance the therapy that one gets," said Dr. Vincent Marchello, vice president of medical affairs for Metropolitan Jewish Health System and assistant professor of clinical medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, both in New York City.
Earlier research has shown that reading rhythmic poetry like Homer's The Odyssey aloud can synchronize the body's heart and respiration rates. Similar positive effects have been linked to the Catholic rosary prayer and the yoga mantra. Indeed, Sleight's team has published similar effects from yoga and repetitive prayer.
Music, also, has been shown to have beneficial properties including reducing stress, improving athletic performance and enhancing motor function in people with neurological impairments.
Up until now, however, there had been no comprehensive comparisons of how different types of music and the way in which they are presented might affect autonomic, cardiovascular and respiratory functioning.
The authors also speculated that different types of music could play a role in modulating breathing in a medical setting.
In some settings, music already plays such a role: Marchello's staff uses music to successfully calm the behavior of agitated Alzheimer's patients.
And in the post-surgery cardiac rehab ward, Marchello said, "music can improve rehab therapy sessions and can make the therapy sessions more efficient and shorten the time needed to get better."
In such cases, however, age and preference may make a difference. Elderly cardiac patients typically respond to light "muzak" and classical music, while those 55 to 60 years old seem to benefit from slightly faster music, Marchello said.
"What you're trying to do is make therapy time more efficient and maybe have longer sessions," Marchello said. "Music is one thing we do to motivate patients. It has to be what they prefer."
More information
Learn more about music's effect on health at the Texas Center for Music & Medicine.
Single men, on the other hand, are more likely to report bedroom problems than either married men or cohabitating guys.
If that math doesn't quite add up, well, sexology experts have noticed that, too -- and have an explanation for it all.
"We found that communication was a key issue," lead researcher Catherine Mercer, of University College London's Centre for Sexual Health and HIV, said. "That is, within a relationship, people who were less able to talk freely with their partner about sex appeared to have more problems with their sex life. This also suggests that sexual function is not always an individual's problems; it may be partnership-specific."
In the study, conducted between 1999 to 2001, Mercer and her colleagues surveyed more than 11,000 British men and women, ages 16 to 44, asking them about the quality of their sex lives.
Among the problems survey respondents were asked about: lack of interest in having sex, feeling anxious about their performance, inability to climax, coming to a climax too quickly, experiencing physical pain during sex, men having trouble achieving an erection and women having trouble becoming lubricated. Respondents were asked if they had experienced any of these problems for at least one month during the previous year.
In total, 54 percent of the women and 35 percent of the men reported some kind of sexual trouble lasting at least one month in duration, while almost 16 percent of the women and more than 6 percent of the men said they had experienced a problem (or problems) lasting more than six months.
However, fewer than 21 percent of the women and fewer than 11 percent of the men said they had sought professional help, the researchers report.
On average, respondents said they had sex about four times a month. Those who had sex less than that had more sexual problems, regardless of gender.
While older age was associated with more problems for both genders, married women were more likely to report a sexual problem than were single women. Married women with young children at home were also at higher risk for sexual complaints -- a finding Mercer believes may be linked, in great part, to fatigue.
Married men or those living with a partner were less likely to report sex life problems than single men. The reverse was true for women.
Certain factors upped the odds of trouble in the bedroom. Those who rated their first sexual experience as not very good had more problems, as did men who drank more alcohol than is deemed healthy, and men who had contracted a sexually transmitted infection within the past five years.
Mercer believes men with a history of sexual infection may be "more open to recognizing and reporting sexual function problems" in general.
But whatever a person's gender or marital status, the key to getting help is to talk about the problem before it gets unwieldy, according to Mercer, whose study appears in the October issue of Sexually Transmitted Infections.
In general, Mercer added, the U.K. findings should probably apply in the United States as well.
The findings don't surprise Patti Britton, president-elect of the American Association of Sex Educators Counselors and Therapists, who directs The Center for Passionate Wellness near Lake Arrowhead, Calif.
She believes gender differences help explain some of the statistics. "Women tend to be more vocal in expressing their sexual concerns," said Britton, in explaining perhaps why more married women than men reported problems. "Men tend to carry a lot more shame about their sexual prowess."
"The complexity of the relationship plays in," as well, she added. Married relationships may be more complex than single partnerships, she said, especially when children are thrown into the mix. In contrast, single folk may simply move on when sexual problems surface.
"Married men may not want to acknowledge the problem," she added. If they speak up, "they fear the sex may disappear or the frequency decline. It would be perceived as complaining."
The U.K. survey respondents were younger (some as young as 16) compared with individuals typically surveyed by American researchers, Britton noted. U.S. researchers would typically not question people about sexual problems until they are 19 or older, she said. That means the relative inexperience of many of those surveyed may be skewing the results, as well.
Still, Britton agreed that "we need better education for sex so that, particularly, young people feel more competent as lovers when they have their first coital experience."
"We [also] need to advocate for better communication skills for couples," she added, as well as making sure people to seek and receive proper care for any sexually transmitted infections.
More information
To learn more about sexual functioning, visit the American Association of Sex Educators Counselors and Therapists.
