According to research presented at the 2018 European Society of Cardiology Congress, listening to yoga music before bedtime may lower heart disease risk.
Prior research documented that music reduces anxiety in patients with heart disease, but the studies were inconsistent and did not specify what style of music was used. The body’s heart rate changes as a normal response to being in “fight or flight” mode. This is called heart rate variability. A higher heart rate variability shows that the heart is able to adapt to these changes and is correlated with better heart health whereas a lower heart rate variability is associated with an increased risk of cardiac disease.
This study investigated the impact of listening to yoga music, a soothing or meditative music, before bedtime on heart rate variability. There were 149 healthy people participating in the study over three nights. They tested exposure to; (1) yoga music before sleep, (2) pop music with steady beats, and (3) no music or silence before sleep. Cardiologist Dr. Naresh Sen, lead researcher from Jaipur, India, says, “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.”
The research finding was that heart rate variability increased after exposure to yoga music, decreased with exposure to pop music, and did not significantly change as a control group who did not listen to music. Anxiety levels fell after the yoga music, increased after pop music, and also increased with no exposure to music. Study subjects felt positive after yoga music compared to after the pop music.
Dr. Sen does caution that therapies such as music can’t replace appropriate medications or other cardiac medical interventions, and should be used as an add-on not a replacement for those recognized interventions. He said: “Science may have not always agreed, but Indians have long believed in the power of various therapies other than medicines as a mode of treatment for ailments. 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.”