Listening to music 30 mins a day good for heart: Study

Listening to music for 30 minutes every day can be good for your heart as researchers have found that patients who suffered episodes of chest pain soon after a heart attack, known as early post-infarction angina, had significantly lower levels of anxiety and pain.

The new study suggests music, combined with standard therapies such as medications, could be a simple, accessible measure that patients can do at home to potentially reduce these symptoms and help prevent subsequent cardiac events.

"Based on our findings, we believe music therapy can help all patients after a heart attack, not only patients with early post-infarction angina. It's also very easy and inexpensive to implement," said study lead author Predrag Mitrovic, professor at the University of Belgrade in Serbia

For the findings, the researchers recruited 350 patients diagnosed with heart attack and early post-infarction angina at a medical centre in Serbia.

Half were randomly assigned to receive standard treatment while half were assigned to regular music sessions in addition to standard treatment.

According to the researchers, patients receiving music therapy first underwent a test to determine which musical genre their body was likely to respond to positively.

Participants listened to nine 30-second samples of music they found soothing, while researchers assessed each participant's body for automatic, involuntary responses to the music samples based on dilation or narrowing of the pupils.

Patients continued with these daily listening sessions for seven years, documenting their sessions in a log.