Listening to music while driving may help calm the heart | Anxiety / Stress - Medical News Today

Recent experiments involving driving in stressful traffic conditions suggest that listening to music at this time may help protect heart health. 

If we listen to relaxing music while driving, this may help relieve stress and protect the heart, a new study suggests.

Driving can be very stressful, particularly if you are stuck in heavy traffic or are an inexperienced driver, and this stress will eventually take its toll on the heart. However, researchers now confirm that there is a simple fix for this problem: listening to the right music while driving. 

Past research has shown that experiencing frequent psychological stress can be a significant risk factorTrusted Source for cardiovascular disease, a condition that affects almost half of those aged 20 years and older in the United States.

One source of frequent stress is driving, either due to the stressors associated with heavy traffic or the anxiety that often accompanies inexperienced drivers.

Does this mean, though, that people who drive on a daily basis are set to develop heart problems, or is there a simple way of easing the stress of driving?

According to a new study by researchers from São Paulo State University in Marília, Brazil, Oxford Brookes University in the United Kingdom, and the University of Parma in Italy, there is...

"Listening to music attenuated the moderate stress overload the volunteers experienced as they drove," says Prof. Valenti...

The results of the small-scale experiments, the researchers argue, suggest that listening to relaxing music could, indeed, be an easy way of preventing stress levels from escalating and affecting the heart when someone finds themselves stuck in traffic.
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Additional resources 
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ctim.2019.08.006 

Source: Medical News Today