Singing, listening, and immune system

Subject: Singing, listening, and immune system
From: Wolfgang
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 04:34 AM

From a prepublication of the institute for Music education at Frankfurt University:

A pilot study (that means: either not very well controlled against alternative interpretations or not enough participants or both) has found that one hour of singing (Mozart requiem) has increased immunglobuline Type A (measured before and after singing) in the singers. No similar incrase has been found in listeners to the same type of music.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Singing, listening, and immune system
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 05:35 AM

Maybe singing causes people to breathe more deeply, and the oxygen's good for the globs? Maybe the increased circulation stimulates 'em?

Subject: RE: Singing, listening, and immune system
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 05:49 AM

Somewhere I have a copy of a similar such study done in the US a few years ago. I'll see if I can find it.

JTT, you're probably right, but I'd like to think it was the music-making!

Allison

Subject: RE: Singing, listening, and immune system
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 05:50 AM

I don't think that my health was any better when I was regularly singing with a choral society. Perhaps it only works for the Mozart Requiem - but since Mozart pinched part of it from Handel's Messiah (And with his Stripes) I rather doubt that.

Subject: RE: Singing, listening, and immune system
From: Wolfgang
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 05:56 AM

JTT, exactly, from the scarce information I have it seems that a control condition for this idea has not been run, like, for instance, people doing some other physical exercise.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Singing, listening, and immune system
From: Hawker
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 06:46 AM

Who needs excuses? singing is good for you - that's good enough for me..... but I suppose if you have Lupus or some other illness involving an over active immune system, that could be a problem!! Hmmmm
Cheers, Lucy

Subject: RE: Singing, listening, and immune system
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 07:47 AM

So would that mean if you'd had a transplant you should give up the singing for a while?

Subject: RE: Singing, listening, and immune system
From: Jim McLean
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 12:36 PM

In October 2002 I suffered from Guillain Barre Syndrom and the treatment was a drip of immunoglobuline for 24 hours daily over a period of a week. I am 99% 'cured'. I sang like a duck and still sing like a duck but play and listen to music constantly so maybe I should learn to sing ... or is there a message there somewhere?
Jim

Subject: RE: Singing, listening, and immune system
From: fat B****rd
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 01:42 PM

i read some years ago that wartime factory workers in England were encouraged to sing along with whatever was on the radio. This was, apparently, an early form of aerobic ecercise and, of course, inproved production.

Subject: RE: Singing, listening, and immune system
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 20 Jan 04 - 02:28 PM

They did indeed - here's a page about Music While You Work, with a sound file of the theme music, for the last show, in 1967:

"From June 1940 this long-running series broadcast two live bands a day to British factory workers to increase wartime productivity and morale. By the end of the war 5 million workers in over 9000 factories were tuning in.

The programme continued after the war but by 1967 it seemed outdated and ceased when the Light Programme became Radios 1 and 2."