Makes Exercise Seem Less Stressful : Music Hath Charms for Joggers, Study Finds
Jogging to your favorite tunes may make exercise seem less stressful, says a researcher who found that nine runners released lower levels of a stress chemical when they listened to rock music.
“What we have shown in this simple study is already known to thousands of people who are jogging while listening to music: The music is helping them,” said Ohio State University pharmacologist Gopi A. Tejwani.
He and graduate physiology student and jogger Eric Miller, who performed the study with funds from Weight Watchers Foundation, had nine experienced runners jog on a treadmill for two 30-minute sessions. In the first session, five joggers wore portable stereo headphones and the others didn’t. Then they switched.
“It’s light rock music,” Tejwani said. “It’s a collection of a lot of songs. There were some songs by Diana Ross and Donna Summer.”
Analysis of blood samples showed that the runners who listened to music had significantly lower levels of beta-endorphin, a natural opiate released by the brain in response to stress or pain. Yet music didn’t cause any difference in the runners’ exercising heart rates or their levels of lactate, a byproduct of energy use during exercise.
The runners, questioned repeatedly as they jogged, also said they felt less while listening to the music.
“These results suggest stereo music decreases the psychological stress associated with the exercise, as evidenced by the lack of increase in the beta-endorphin level, but does not affect the physical stress,” Tejwani said in a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.
Tejwani said a person with a heart problem might want to avoid music while jogging “because he might overexert himself without knowing it,” but he said that’s “pure speculation.”
Dr. Bob Goldman, vice chairman of the Amateur Athletic Union’s sports medicine committee, said he wasn’t surprised by the findings. Previous studies have shown that music affects heart and breathing rates and blood pressure, and can lower beta-endorphin levels during other types of exercise, he said.
“Just look at the Sony Walkman (portable stereo) market,” Goldman said in a telephone interview from Chicago.
“But there’s also a danger because a lot of joggers and bicyclists run and ride with their headphones on very loud and they’re oblivious to traffic,” he said. “If you have Madonna or Prince or Michael Jackson on, you’re not going to hear the car coming.”
Goldman and Tejwani said the stress-reducing benefits of music probably occur only when the listener enjoys the music.
The therapeutic value of music has been known for a long time, Tejwani said, adding music has been used as an adjunct to anesthesia for surgery and to speed to the recovery of injured people.
“Why do they play music in a gym, and generally very upbeat music?” asked Goldman, who also is director of sports medicine research at Chicago Osteopathic Medical Center. “They play it because it aids the training enthusiasm.”
