Essay Example on Musical Therapy: Relieving Stress and its Impact on Health

Introduction

Stress is one of the negative factors that affect human health. There is a high correlation between high-stress levels and the most physical and emotional problems in people. Some of these problems that are associated with stress are anxiety disorder, chronic pain, depression, burnout, addiction, and cardiovascular diseases (Cooper & Marshall, 1978). Music plays an integral role in relieving stress in human beings. These stress-related problems lead to other complex social issues such as work absenteeism, failure to complete tasks in time, and low productivity. People use different mechanisms to cope with stress. One of the mechanisms employed by most individuals is tranquilizing medication, which has numerous adverse side effects and contraindications. Given that stress has proven to be difficult to reduce without using professional support and the high demand for non-pharmacological stress reduction techniques, there is a need to develop cost-effective interventions for reducing it. One of the methods that have been adopted by some people who are under stress is the use of music whose therapy has a positive effect on stress levels in individuals of different diagnoses and stages of life.

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The creation of music and its beats and rhythm is associated with a wide range of positive outcomes in the health domain and the general well-being of human beings (Cooper & Marshall, 1978). Music has traditionally been used for reducing stress. Musical activities such as its creation, singing, listening, or live music therapy provided by a music therapist are often used to reduce stress. Such actions create a peaceful mind. Listening to music has a relaxing effect on one's mind and body, particularly the slow and quiet classical music. Relaxing is an integral way of settling down the emotion, and when a feeling is calm and relax, the body is relieved of stress. Besides the ability of music to absorb one's attention, it also distracts them as it explores their emotions.

The Effects of Stress on the Body

Stress is one of the biggest and most important problems in society since it has gross adverse effects on human lives. However, it is imperative to note that stress is beneficial to the human body for immediate short-term situations. It helps one to cope with dangerous situations. One's body responds to stress by releasing hormones that facilitate the heart and breathing rates and readies one's muscles for a response. The failure of the stress response to stop firing with the stress levels already elevated for a more extended period results in its adverse effects on the body. Stress becomes more profound in human beings the moment anxiety inhibits one from operating normally. During that period, one feels tired, and they cannot concentrate and are highly irritable. However, the primary concern of stress is that it causes one to become ill and damages the body. Different symptoms of chronic stress affect one's well-being. These symptoms entail irritability, anxiety, depression, headaches, and insomnia (Bryant, 2012).

The first that stress affects the human body is through the musculoskeletal system. A stressed body has tensed muscles, which is a reflex reaction to stress since it is the body's means of protecting one from injury and pain. Prolonged tensed muscles can cause stress-related disorders. For instance, both migraine and tension-type headaches are caused by muscle tension in the head, neck, and shoulder. Stress can also result in a painful condition known as tendinitis, which could ultimately result in muscle atrophy, a musculoskeletal condition that is stress-related.

Stress affects the respiratory and cardiovascular system of the body. The impact of pressure on the respiratory system is very alarming for people suffering from asthma or emphysema. Stress may also cause one to develop asthma over time. Faster breathing, which associated with asthma, may propel one to hyperventilate or rather have a panic attack. Acute stress also causes stress hormones such as adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol, to increase (Davis & Damron, 2018). This raises one's heartbeat, which leads to over dilation of blood vessels, which ultimately lead to high blood pressure. Chronic stress can lead to damage to one's cardiovascular system and long-term heart and blood vessel problems. Stress eventually leads to hypertension, heart palpitations, heart attack, and stroke.

Stress causes acne and hair loss. These challenges might seem small to some people, but it is a devastating experience for some people who have faced the problem. A stressed body experiences fluctuations in hormones, which increases the amount of oil that the skin produces, which causes the formation of or worsening of acne. The inflammation response of the body breaks the pores' walls, which are then filled with pus. Roughly half of the scalp hair shed as a result of stress, and this condition is referred to as Telogen effluvium. The hair begins coming out in clumps when combed or when a shampoo is applied.

Stress has damaging effects on the brain. It creates long-term changes in brain structure and function. For instance, the hippocampus of the brain, which controls one's memories and emotions, is known to shrink when one is stressed continuously, and it heavily contributes to different emotional disorders. Some of the diseases associated with the impact of stress on the brain are schizophrenia, autism, suicide, depression, ADHD, and PTSD (Diwadkar, 2016). Stress also results in long-term damage to one's memory. Psychological and neuroscientific research on human stress and their responses to it is vast, but the study of the chemical formation of tension in the brain started in the recent past years. It is an exciting field of scientific research since it covers distress in ordinary human life and extreme manifestation of stress in mental disorders such as schizophrenia and depression. Stress affects adults and children majorly, and it majorly occurs in occasions and contexts of abuse assault, rape, war, accident, or childhood loss (Cranwell-Ward & Abbey, 2005). These events often lead to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is a pervasive form of chronic illness. Even though these events happen with shocking frequency, individuals who do not experience trauma are still affected just by the thought of them. This often heightens their sense of danger and increases their feelings of worry or insecurity.

Stress was first viewed as a pure biological reflex on how environmental stimuli are understood cognitively and emotionally react to. However, this perception changed as more studies were carried on the topic. Stress is viewed as a static chemical of the brain or an active and alterable part of the interaction between one's mental operation, past social experiences, and the environmental situations of the challenging stimulus. The physical impact of stress on the brain is very evident. The stress response of the brain comes from the hypothalamus, which is located at the top of the brain stem, and its primary regulatory functions are dispersal of hormones into the bloodstream and regulation of the body temperature (Poquérusse et al., 2017). There is a dynamic connection between the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland, which controls the endocrine system of human beings and the adrenal gland that secrets adrenaline. The two hormones play an integral role in controlling the body's hormonal balance and protecting it from deterioration or diseases. They are critical in the fight-or-flight mechanism of the body for self-preservation. Stress reactions originate from the hypothalamus as physiological responses to stressful situations. The physical stressors that cause a fight-or-flight mechanism do not last for long, and they entail a sudden increase in glucose and adrenaline for energy (Diwadkar, 2016).

Psychological stress subjects one to long-lasting physical effects because of the excessive exposure of one to stress hormones. The release of excess hormones like cortisol, norepinephrine, and adrenaline harms the body's organs. Chronic stress sometimes converts stomach's proneness to ulcers, elevates the risk of heart disease, asthma, diabetes, and impairments the immune system, increasing atherosclerosis, to name but a few (McEwen, 2017). Other studies have also indicated that stress affects one's physical health and increases their susceptibility to adverse symptoms. Traumatic psychological stress may cause physiological body changes as mechanisms of adaptations. For instance, Diwadka (2016) observed that childhood abuse permanently changes one physiological response to subsequent stress. This means that individuals who are traumatized have heightened stress reactions. Such changes could lead to an elevated response to other stressors, which would ultimately lower the immune system and lead to higher proneness towards anxiety and mood disorders. In short, stress can create long-lasting physiological modification and brain and body impairment. The findings of Diwadka in 2016 also indicated that patients suffering from anxiety could also suffer from a neurological disorder rather than just a character flaw or mental weakness.

One's perception and thinking are also grossly affected by chronic stress. Individuals with chronic stress develop thought patterns or schemas that shape their knowledge of the world and negatively control their emotions. It is imperative to note that these schemas are inaccurate destructive beliefs and thoughts. They inflame distress rather than controlling it. For instance, a stressful mind tends to catastrophize, overgeneralizing the negative by prematurely concluding and thinking in terms of the extremes and absolutes. Such individuals also overestimate the possibility of occurrence of bad things, attach truth to their feelings, wrongfully blame themselves when they are not responsible for an incident and are grossly detrimental. These individuals are in the grip of false perception and have an impaired ability to handle life experiences in a stress-free manner.

There are different disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder, somatic disorder, substance abuse, anxiety disorder, and depression that have been liked to stress. These disorders are related to stress-induced neurological deficits. This means that stress alters the operation of the brain, and this has been validated by studies that have established a connection between anxiety and mental disorder such as schizophrenia. Most researchers understand that there are genetic predispositions and environmental factors that generate schizophrenia. This simply means that stress facilitates the formation and development of schizophrenia. It impairs one's cognitive appraisal of their environment, which produces mental severe distress and distortion when combined with biological predispositions.

Stress affects memory too. The areas of the brain connected with memory are integral in stress response and overly sensitive to pressure. Stress causes severe memory fragmentation and dissociation since it affects the hippocampus, where the mind is controlled. The cortisol that is released during stress is also believed to be affecting one's memory, generating the spaced out feeling that one feels when experiencing chronic stress while adrenaline immensely increases memory. This claim was validated by Tseng et al. (2011), who administered a stressful math test to subjects with different cortisol levels and measured their performance. In each case, the cortisol had an impact on hippocampus memory and affected the performance of students who had higher levels of cortisol. A mind that is affected by stress lowers the general cognitive state of an individual.