“Based on our findings, we believe music therapy can help all patients after a heart attack, not only patients with early post-infarction angina,” says Predrag Mitrovic, MD, PhD, a professor of cardiology at the University of Belgrade School of Medicine in Serbia and the study’s lead author, in a press release. “It’s also very easy and inexpensive to implement.” Researchers at the University of Belgrade studied 350 participants diagnosed with heart attack and post–heart attack chest pain. Participants were divided into two groups: half received standard medication — nitrates, aspirin, clot-preventing drugs, beta-blockers, statins, calcium channel blockers, blood pressure lowering medications, and the angina-reducing drug ranolazine — and the other half received standard medication and music therapy. Individuals in the music therapy group then underwent a test to determine which musical genre elicited a positive response. Researchers assessed each participant’s body for automatic, involuntary responses to music samples, according to dilation or narrowing of the pupils. Participants were asked to listen to their musical selection for 30 minutes each day, ideally while resting with their eyes closed. For seven years, participants listened to soothing music, documenting each session in a log. At the end of seven years, participants on music therapy, on average, had anxiety scores one-third lower than those taking medication and reported lower chest pain symptoms by about one-quarter. There were also slightly lower rates of certain heart conditions, including heart failure, subsequent heart attack, subsequent surgery, and cardiac death.
Preventing Another Heart Attack
About one in five people who have had a heart attack will likely have a second one within five years, according to the American Heart Association (AHA). Each year, there are about 335,000 recurrent heart attacks in the United States. The AHA recommends the following measures to reduce the risk of a second heart attack:
Quit smoking. You can cut your risk of having another heart attack in half by not smoking.Eat a heart-healthy diet. Studies show that if you cut back on fatty foods, you lower your LDL, or “bad” cholesterol, which is a culprit behind heart attacks.Take your medication as prescribed. Certain medicines can lower your risk of another cardiac event.Exercise, exercise, exercise. Exercise strengthens the heart muscle, boosts energy, and helps you shed extra pounds.
Although we know that music can’t actually clean up clogged arteries or cure heart disease, Dr. Mitrovic says the study shows that music has an indirect effect on the central nervous system, helping to counteract the activity of the sympathetic nervous system, the part of the nervous system that drives the fight-or-flight response in a stressful situation. Because stress increases heart rate and blood pressure, a sympathetic response can put added strain on the heart. Listening to music may interrupt unrelieved anxiety associated with chest pain after a heart attack. Nieca Goldberg, MD, the medical director for the Joan H. Tisch Center for Women’s Health at New York University’s Langone Medical Center in New York City, who was not involved in the study, thinks the research shows an interesting approach, but she cautions that individuals still need to take their medication as prescribed. “Listening to music you like can’t hurt, but it may not do all the things the study reports,” she says. “We need to reproduce the study in a more diverse population and include measurable responses, like heart rate and blood pressure, to see if the data holds up.”
