Ongoing History Daily: Feeling unwell? Listen to music. It’s like medicine

Music therapy is well-established as a treatment for a variety of physical and mental conditions. Doctors who study the effects of music on the body keep uncovering new medical uses for music.

For example, let’s say you feel a cold coming on. Research discovered that people who listened to music when they started to feel sick experienced a significant increase in immunoglobulin A levels. This is the antibody that helps block bacteria and viruses from entering the body through the nose, mouth, and digestive tract.

This suggests that the next time you feel unwell, you may be able to mitigate things if you listen to a playlist of your all-time favourite songs. More work needs to be done in this area, but hey, this is a drug-free way of a chance at feeling better.

Music really is medicine.