Fight Sadness and Encourage Health with Music and the Arts
If you paint, dance or play a musical instrument — or merely enjoy going to the theatre or to concerts — it’s possible that you are feeling more healthy and are less depressed than folk who do not a survey of almost fifty thousand individuals from all socio-economic backgrounds from a county in mid-Norway shows.
The observations are drawn from the latest round of studies conducted for the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s ( NTNU ) Nord-Trndelag Health Study, or HUNT, which used questionnaires, interviews, clinical examinations and the collection of blood and urine samples to assemble detailed health profiles of 48,289 players.
“There is a positive relationship between cultural collusion and self-perceived health for both girls and men, “says Professor Jostein Holmen, a HUNT analyst who presented the discoveries, which haven’t yet been published, at a Norwegian health conference in Stjrdal in late Nov. “For men, there is also a positive relationship between cultural participation and depression, in that there is less depression among men who take part in cultural activities, although this is not right for women.”
But what surprised the medical analyst was that these discoveries stayed true whatever the subject’s socio-economic standing — whether van driver or bank president, participating in some shape in the humanities, theatre or music, as player or player, had a positive effect on that individual’s sense of health and well-being.
The new observations were controlled for socioeconomic standing, protracted illness, social capital, smoking and alcohol. However , Holmen also said that the same sense of contentment in folks who take part in cultural activities that appeared to protect them from depression didn’t have the same beneficial effect on stress.
Holmen warned the organisation between health and cultural activities isn’t powerful enough to enable him to say that culture actually makes folks healthy. Nonetheless, the analyst asserts the findings ought to challenge glad-handers to think differently about health. Steinar Krokstad, HUNT’s director and an associate lecturer at NTNU, agreed.
“We in the health services don’t always have command over the handiest preventive tools given the range of today’s illnesses. We need to increasingly focus on opportunities instead of on risk,” Krokstad said.
Bottom line is if you want to feel better perhaps consider something like beginner acoustic guitar lessons.. Or drum lessons or heck even the violin.
( Source : Music and the Arts Fight Depression, Promote Health )
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