Study: Stress While Driving May Trigger Heart Attack But Music Can Help You

Heavy traffic can be very irritating. It challenges your patience especially when you are in a hurry for a meeting or special event.



To stay calm on the road, people tend to listen to music. Singing along diverts your attention and helps you enjoy the moment.

But music has a surprising benefit. Researchers found that it could also help save lives but not by encouraging you to stay in your car to avoid starting a fight with another hot-headed driver.

A new study, published in the journal Complementary Therapies in Medicine, shows that listening to music could help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. It works by lowering stress triggered while driving.

High levels of stress on the road has been linked to sudden cardiac complications, such as heart attack. The study involved five women, aged 18 to 23 years, who were considered non-habitual drivers.

"We opted to assess women who were not habitual drivers because people who drive frequently and have had a license for a long time are better adapted to stressful situations in traffic," Vitor Engrácia Valenti, lead researcher and a professor at São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Brazil, said in a statement.

The researchers analyzed the effects of music on traffic-related cardiac stress by putting participants in different driving situations. The women first drove for 20 minutes at rush hour in a busy city without listening to music.

A day after the first test the participants returned to the roads and drove the same route at the same time of day but listened to instrumental music. The researchers tried to increase the drivers’ stress levels by providing them a car they did not own.

All participants placed a heart rate monitor on their chest to monitor their heart rate while driving. The researchers found that music helped reduce stress levels by increasing levels of parasympathetic nervous system activity and lowering activity in the sympathetic nervous system.

"We found that cardiac stress in the participants in our experiment was reduced by listening to music while they were driving," Valenti added. "Listening to music could be such a preventive measure in favor of cardiovascular health in situations of intense stress such as driving during rush hour."

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