Measuring Wellbeing Essay

The term physical health refers to the functioning and the conditions of the physical body ("Measuring Wellbeing: Frameworks for Australian Social Statistics", 2006). A myriad number of aspects such as poor diet and low exercise can cause potential harms to our physical wellbeing ("Health and physical wellbeing | Western Sydney University", 2016).The term mental health refers to people’s feeling, thoughts and behaviors ("Measuring Wellbeing: Frameworks for Australian Social Statistics", 2006). As it was mentioned before, music has always played a role in improving the humans’ physical and mental health. Music contributes to enhances performance by increasing exercise tolerance (Werle, Wansink, & Payne, 2014), motivation and the psychological

To prove the study suggestions, the authors measured the mood responses, feelings states, the blood concentration, exhaustion and the oxygen consumptions of 11 elite triathletes while running on a treadmill with two different situations, with and without music. As it was mentioned before, both of these studies suggested that music improved the exercise performance. One of the many reasons behind this theory is that music increases the levels of psychological arousal. An increase in the level of psychological arousal and muscular endurance will decrease the fatigue and boredom of people while exercising. According to the Terry (2012, p. 52-57), mood responses and feelings state tended to be much positive with music compared to no music. Figure 1, illustrates the mood changes of the triathletes from pre to post examination with and without music. As it can be seen in figure 1, anger, depression, fatigue and the fatigue of the participant was much lower while listening to music versus the no music condition. According to the American College of Sports Medicine (2013), promoting enjoyment, decreasing fatigue and any negative

In the previous studies mentioned before, mostly all participants were aged between 18 to 30 years old. An interesting and different study conducted by Satoh, M., Ogawa, J., Tokita, T., Nakaguchi, N., Nakao, K., Kida, H., & Tomimoto, H (2014), focuses on the effects of music on physical exercise in normal elderly people. This study involved 119 subjects that age between 65-84 years old. 39 subjects were the control group and 40 subjects performed physical exercises for once in a week with professional trainers (each exercise lasted for one hour) with music. It is worthy to mention that their practice continued for one year. Furthermore, the rest of participants performed the same exercise without music. MRIs were performed prior and after each exercise; medial temporal lobe atrophy was also assessed by using Voxel-based Specific Regional analysis system for Alzheimer 's Disease (VSRAD). This study suggests that physical exercise of elderly people combined with music was improved. Furthermore, they also suggest that music improved the overall cognitive function (cerebral activities such as reasoning and memory) of the participant. This is due to the stimulation of the parietal lobes by music and by the somatosensory inputs from physical exercise (Satoh et al., 2014). A damage or injury to the parietal lobes can result to low or impaired movement coordination (Bailey, 2016). The above findings