When the beat dropped, I’ll never forget seeing the 2,000 women who attended the San Francisco Women's Health Summit stand up and dance together.
The moment was overpowering, evolutionary, and it might be one of the greatest gifts you can give to your psyche, cognition, and life.
Dopamine-driven tunes
When you hear music you love, your brain releases dopamine — the same chemical involved in pleasure, motivation, and reward.
Researchers at McGill University used PET scans to prove that the goosebumps you feel after hearing a great song are the effect of dopamine flooding your striatum.
Your brain treats music like a primal reward, the same way it treats food and sex.
Do you miss being able to dance with your friends and stay awake without wanting to go back to bed, even though you just looked at your Apple SmartWatch and it’s only 9:15 pm?
The Livelong Women’s Health SummitTM is your ticket to having more fun in your life and learning science that helps you feel better when you move.
…one more thing. If you really think about it, life is too short not to be dancing, socializing, and experiencing more joy.
With that logic, I can’t wait to see you in New York on September 25. Better yet, become an ambassador, because you’ll get more perks that will make you dance your pants off.
Like movement, the story is deeper than mood.
Music reduces cortisol, the stress hormone most directly linked to accelerated aging and cardiovascular disease.
Slow, rhythmic sound activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for rest and cellular repair. It’s the same way meditation works—heart rate slows, blood pressure drops, and the body shifts from threat mode to recovery.
This is physiological restoration.
Similarly, it can eradicate physiological signs of stress. A 2019 study in Scientific Reports found that music measurably lowered interleukin-6, a key inflammatory marker linked to many diseases, in stressed adults (aren’t we all?)
Music is one of the most reliable ways humans have ever found to build relationships, which Harvard’s longest-running study famously demonstrates is the strongest predictor of healthy aging. Concerts, shared playlists, singing together, and dancing together can literally be life-affirming.
Then there’s the effects on the aging brain.
In some studies, older musicians show less cognitive decline than non-musicians, including signs of denser auditory cortices and faster processing speed.
But you don’t need a musical instrument. Active listening (rather than using music as background noise) engages the prefrontal cortex, temporal lobe, cerebellum, and limbic system at the same time. One neuroscientist called it “a full-brain workout.”
For people with Alzheimer’s, the effects appear more striking. Patients who can no longer recognize family members and have lost their own names can still respond to familiar music with recognition, emotion, and sometimes language that seems otherwise gone.
I recall a family acquaintance who was afflicted with Alzheimer’s. He visibly changed whenever he heard the Grateful Dead. He died listening to the song “Truckin”.
Musical memory is among the last types of memory to be destroyed.
Rébecca Shankland, a French psychologist, calls music listening a technique of the self that can be used as a deliberate tool to shift your mindset. In other words, the hour you spend with music that moves you isn’t indulgent, but a health asset that lives in your memory more deeply than you ever knew.
Time to put your headphones on.
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The information provided about wellness and health is for general informational and educational purposes only. We are not licensed medical professionals, and the content here should not be considered medical advice. Talk to a doctor before trying any of these suggestions.
