A member of our Stress Management Institute( r) Advisory Board, Associate Professor Sinan Ali, moved me his comments below about our 28 February blog, Does Music Reduce Stress.

Professor Ali is a heading world-wide expert in the field of cortisol, and I felt his story below is a very powerful and practical precedent of how past-times that create joyfulnes for people can also be very life-enhancing and support our wellbeing physically, mentally and emotionally.

Cortisol is a very critical hormone for us as it can be life-enhancing if navigated to support us or it can be life depleting if over secreted.

In November 2019 the Mayo Clinic stated that the long-term activation of the fight or flight arrangement crusades cortisol to floodlight our bloodstream, obstructing important bodily functions. Over experience, sufferers may digest digestive questions, weight gain, and even heart disease.

“Great notes John. And I concur with your statement that music is a potent de-stressor. I’ll relate to you my results of how bad stress can be converted into good stress in a very simple way.

Many years ago, when I was a faculty member at Macquarie University in Sydney, I was commissioned by the show” What’s Good for You” feeing on Channel 9 to look at the health benefits of singing. I chose to do research studies with the Macquarie University Choir and looked at both cortisol as a marker of stress and secretory IgA as a marker of immunity before and after a 2-hour recital session.

The experiment was done at the end of the University day when cortisol grades are at their highest.

Although the study cannot be considered to be very technical in nature as there were lack of restrains and cross over etc, the results none the less were very encouraging. To my feeling, there was a greater than 40% decrease in salivary cortisol post-rehearsal( anything up to 25 -3 0% is considered a great result) and 15% increase in IgA( representations are from memory but accurate to the best of my knowledge ). The increase in IgA was just starting so I presume if “were having” sampled several hours later, we would have seen a greater increase.

What is amazing is that all but 1 individual from 20 presented improvement.

Channel 9 gave us our 20 seconds of prominence by wheel the story together with more theoretical/ sociological positions why music might be good for us from an interrogation with a Professor of Music from the University of Sydney.

We didn’t publish the data as such, but I still have the pre and post-test causes in my books.

Cheers and keep up the great work that you do for all of us.”

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