If you’ve spent any time researching healthy diets, chances are you’ve run into the term ‘superfoods’. Superfoods are foods that contain numerous vitamins and minerals to help fuel your body in several different ways. 

When it comes to nourishing your brain, there are few superfoods better than music (bonus: it doesn’t taste like kale). And while being able to play your favourite songs on guitar may be your primary goal, learning music feeds your brain in so many more ways. 

Playing music is a full-brain workout

I’ve heard tales of gym-goers preaching to never skip leg day (I’ve happily skipped thousands). For our brains, playing music is akin to a full-body workout. It lights up nearly every area of the brain through the use of mathematical, linguistic, problem solving, and fine motor skills.

And on the plus side, it doesn’t render you unable to climb stairs for days afterward.

Check out the TED-Ed video below to learn more.

Learning an instrument can be a stress-buster

Try telling that to someone the day before an audition!

In all seriousness, there is a ton of research about the ways music can reduce stress and improve mental health. Learning to play music has been linked to lower blood pressure, lower stress levels, decreased heart rate, and a reduction in anxiety and depression.

One study even concluded that active music making has some training effects that resemble those of physical exercise training, namely heart rate and blood pressure lowering.

Music education boosts emotional intelligence
Beyond the rewarding, sometimes cathartic, opportunity to express yourself through music, research shows that music education increases emotional intelligence. Students who receive musical training are better able to comprehend and control their emotions.

Music training improves executive function

If you’re like me, and many others with ADHD, you may struggle with executive function, which is essentially the management system of the brain. It includes working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control. And while there’s no magic fix for these issues, there is evidence that learning to play music can help.

A study from Frontiers in Neuroscience showed that musically trained children had an overall better performance on memory retrieval tasks than the non-musically trained children. It also included brain imaging results that showed musically trained children had higher activation in attentional control related brain areas.

It’s good for you and fun? Why am I not doing it?!

Great question!

There are probably only a handful of things in this world that are both extremely good for you and extremely fun.

Eating cruciferous vegetables = good, but not fun.

Staying up until 3 a.m. playing video games = fun, but not good.

But to be able to train your brain while doing something you love? That’s music to my ears.