“Our study suggests that active music making has some training effects that resemble those of physical exercise training,” researchers from the Leiden University Medical Center’s Department of Cardiology reports in the Netherlands Heart Journal.
The researchers found blood pressure was significantly lower among the musicians, and their heart rate “tended to be lower” than those in the non-musical group. They attribute this to the musicians’ higher levels of “somatosensory nerve activity,” which “beneficially modulate the autonomic nervous system.”
“It is likely that similar effects will be found in older persons, and possibly even diseased persons, because of the parallels with physical exercise,” they add.
Meanwhile, a recent study from Britain found senior citizens who are “actively engaged with making music exhibited higher levels of subjective well-being, as compared to those engaged in other group activities.” If these results from the Netherlands can be replicated with a larger sample, it will indicate that the benefits of playing music are physical as well as psychological.