If you love music or art — or simply enjoy going to the theatre or to concerts — it is probable that you feel more healthy and are less depressed than people who do not a survey of just about fifty thousand people from all socio-economic backgrounds from a county in mid-Norway shows.
The findings 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 urine and blood samples to assemble detailed health profiles of 48,289 partakers.
“There is a positive relationship between cultural participation and self-perceived health for both ladies and men, “says Professor Jostein Holmen, a HUNT researcher who presented the discoveries, which havenot yet been published, at a Norwegian health meeting in Stjrdal in late November. “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 stunned the medical researcher was that these discoveries remained true whatever the subject’s socio-economic standing — whether wagon driver or bank president, participating in some shape in the arts, theatre or music, as player or participant, had a constructive effect on that individual’s sense of fitness and health.
The new findings were controlled for socioeconomic standing, protracted sickness, social capital, smoking and alcohol. However , Holmen also said that the same sense of contentment in people who take part in cultural activities that appeared to protect them from depression didnot seem to have the same beneficial effect on stress.
Holmen cautioned the organisation between health and cultural activities isn’t powerful enough to enable him to say that culture really makes folks healthy. Nonetheless, the researcher claims the findings should challenge glad-handers to think differently about health. Steinar Krokstad, HUNT’s director and an associate professor at NTNU, concluded.
“We in the health services don’t always have command over the most effective preventive tools given the range of today’s diseases. We want to increasingly concentrate on opportunities rather than on risk,” Krokstad recounted.
Bottom line is if you would like to feel better perhaps consider something similar to beginner acoustic guitar lessons.. Or piano lessons or damn even the violin.
( Source : Music and the Arts Fight Depression, Promote Health )
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