The Forgotten Habit That Lowers Dementia, Depression & Aging | Daisy Fancourt

Key Takeaway

Engaging with the arts—whether dancing, listening to music, or reading—isn't just a nice-to-have; it's a powerful health intervention. Research shows that regular arts engagement can lower blood pressure by 9-10 points, slow biological aging at the cellular level (similar to exercise), and reduce mortality risk by 31%. Start today: dedicate 30-60 minutes weekly to an art form you enjoy, giving it your full attention rather than treating it as background noise.

Episode Overview

Dr. Daisy Fancourt, an epidemiologist specializing in arts and health, discusses groundbreaking research showing that regular arts engagement should be considered the fifth pillar of health alongside nutrition, exercise, sleep, and social connection. She reveals how activities like dancing, music, reading, and crafts influence biological aging, brain health, blood pressure, and longevity, often with effect sizes comparable to traditional health behaviors.

Full Transcript

Transcript of The Forgotten Habit That Lowers Dementia, Depression & Aging | Daisy Fancourt from Feel Better, Live More. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Why is it that you think the arts and our engagement with the arts should be considered the fifth pillar of health? Over the last few decades, we've had this absolute explosion of scientific studies looking at how the arts influence our mind, brain, body, and behavior. And now we're seeing from that research that arts can have really tangible, meaningful effects on us, often with similar effect sizes that we see from other behaviors like physical activity or sleep. So, I think it's really important that we're actually acknowledging that and talking about it because it's another thing that we can all be doing in our lives that could be having real impact.

Yes, it's interesting. When I was reading your book, The Art Cure, the amount of studies in there for different diseases, different aspects of our health, our well-being, our psychology, it is absolutely incredible how much research there actually is that I would argue most people simply don't know about. It's been this bizarrely well-kept secret. And I think part of it is that, you know, it's a natural process that you have to get evidence that builds up gradually over time that then gradually starts to reach public awareness.

A lot of it gets published in quite obscure medical journals initially. But, I also think that there is a sort of challenge in the way that we view arts in society. We often think of them as this sort of fluffy, luxury thing that shouldn't really be a priority. It's the nice-to-have rather than the essential. And I think that has obscured some of our thinking actually about how we engage in the arts. There are so many studies I could choose to to jump off onto. One that comes to mind is towards the end of the book in the chapter on longevity, you talk about hypertension, high blood pressure.

And in that chapter, you talk about research where listening to music Yeah. can lower our blood pressure to an amount comparable or even superior to certain drugs that we have. That's incredible, right? incredible, right? incredible, right? It is. It's really exciting. There have now been direct trials that have said, "What if we tell people the advice we normally tell them, so lifestyle changes and medication, or what if we do that and we tell them to listen to music every day?" And actually, we find that the music group have improvements above and beyond the other group.

In other words, adding music into our lifestyle or our medication for hypertension leads to extra reductions about 9 to 10 kind of points in systolic blood pressure, which is an amazing change. And partly, this is really down to the relaxing effects that music has on us. It's such a potent way of calming ourselves down, and that's something that is so important in hypertension. Have any studies looked at music in isolation, so without the lifestyle advice, without the pharmaceutical intervention? pharmaceutical intervention? pharmaceutical intervention? If you have high blood pressure, what does listening to music alone do?

Have we seen any evidence about that? Yes, we have did done that. And actually, when we look at the general population, people who are more regularly engaged in the arts have lower levels of blood pressure, they have lower heart rates. They also have better cholesterol, lower glucose levels. And this is even when we've taken account of things like whether they're doing exercise or what their diet is alongside this. This is what we're seeing additively from them being involved in the arts, too. Yeah, if I think about high blood pressure and I think about how I was taught about it, it, it, one of the things I don't feel was emphasized enough to me as a medical student was the idea that high blood pressure is a natural consequence of chronic stress.

Mhm. So, it's part of the stress response. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. And so, in a society where we are chronically stressed, and a few years ago the World Health Organization, as you know, called stress the health epidemic of the 21st century, it stands to reason that any activity that can help us lower stress could potentially also lower our blood pressure. pressure. pressure. Is it just music when we talk about the arts that can do that, or are there other types of engaging with the arts that can also do that?

It's not just music, it's other art forms as well. So, we see this when people are involved with dance, with crafts, with regularly reading, with going to cultural venues. What we particularly see is if you've got these regular that regular time you're putting aside and doing this, this is when we start to see these reductions in people's blood pressure and heart rate. And what we typically see is if you do it for sort of half an hour or an hour, you can already see short-term changes in that time span.

But then if you're then doing that regularly like every week for example, that's when you start to see these additive benefits like the benefits accumulating from it. And that's because you get relaxation responses from all different kinds of art experiences. Yeah. Your research has also shown a connection between the arts and mortality. Mhm. You write about it as this uh I think it was a balmy summer's evening that you were crunching some numbers and something quite surprising came out, didn't it? Yes, I'm an epidemiologist by training so I look a lot at very large cohort studies that track thousands, tens of thousands of people over years and decades of their lives.

And it's a perfect opportunity to see how our day-to-day behaviors link in with these long-term outcomes including the length of our lives. And it's not just my study now, there have been over a dozen that have shown that people who are regularly engaged in arts and culture have longer lifespans. And I think initially we thought, well, is this actually anything to do with arts and culture or is it just that people are wealthier or they're they've got other lifestyle behaviors that that are healthier. But actually now we've used so many different methods testing all of these other explanations.

And yes, they explain a bit of the association, but we still see this very strong and clear link that the more regularly people are engaged in the arts independent of those factors, the longer their lifespan. Yeah, I think you quote in the book that there is a 31% lower risk of dying for people who engage in the arts compared to those who are not? Yeah, it's a complex statistic this because obviously it's a bit it's to do with what your own risk of dying is year on year.

So, we've particularly looked at people who are older where you know you you're that's a more likely outcome compared to younger people. And we've been able to sort of quantify well, what happens in terms of each year your risk of dying and and is that lower if you're more regularly engaged? And we do see this marked reduction in people who are engaged in the arts. And I think it can sound a little bit science fictiony, but actually we're starting to understand a lot more about the biological processes that explain this.

And one of the things that I think is most exciting, which is the really cutting-edge research literally coming out right now, is seeing that arts engagement relates to biological processes of aging. So, it's actually helping to slow some of these processes. And we're seeing this across our brains and also our bodies. So, for example, some of my colleagues recently published a paper looking at people's brains. And they've got a way of quantifying your brain age. So, in other words, they can tell if your brain is older or younger than your chronological age.

And they found that people who are regularly engaged in the arts as amateurs or professionals actually have younger brain ages, decelerated brain aging. And we've done a similar thing as well looking at physiological biological aging clocks that tell us a lot more about how the way our bodies are aging. And we're seeing a similar pattern that people are aging biologically slower when they're very regularly engaged in the arts. the arts. the arts. It's interesting. Longevity is one of the the the hottest or certainly one of the most popular topics in health Mhm.

over the past few years. And there are many prominent longevity influencers, let's call them, who are talking about all kinds of things that we can do to slow the aging process down and make sure that we're increasing not necessarily our lifespan, but certainly our healthspan. But again, the conversation typically revolves around food, exercise, sleep. exercise, sleep. exercise, sleep. And again, there is a huge evidence base behind those three, you know, pillars of health, as it were. But going back to the start of this conversation conversation conversation about arts being the fifth pillar, or as you say in the book, the forgotten pillar, pillar, pillar, I cannot remember the last time I heard a prominent longevity conversation where they actually spoke about the benefits of engaging with the arts.

No, it's It's interesting though, because if you look back even sort of 40, 50 years ago, there are discussions in the 1980s in papers where people were really debating how good physical activity really was for your health. And that feels such a funny thing to say now, cuz we're now so used to it hearing it, we know the evidence base is so strong. But my point here is that it takes time for a behavior to be fully recognized and appreciated. And we've had these sort of tipping points for other health behaviors, like physical activity, where the evidence base grows to this point that suddenly there's a big shift in public awareness and recognition of it.

We've seen a similar thing in the last couple of decades with sleep. We've seen gradual shift in our understanding of diet. And I think it's the same now for arts. It's not had that real shift, but I really think that that moment, that tipping point, is definitely coming now. And I think in a few years, you will be hearing people talking about this a lot more. One of the things I have been talking about for a few years is the importance of doing something that you love.

Mhm. And I saw some research a few years ago years ago years ago showing that people who regularly do things that they love are more resilient to stress. And at the same time, people who are chronically stressed and overworked overworked overworked can sometimes find it harder to experience pleasure in those day-to-day things that they used to enjoy. And so one of my inner voice commands prescriptions has been, you know, can you do something you love each day for 5 to 10 minutes? And when I was reading some of the case studies, and there's many stories in The Art Cure, Art Cure, Art Cure, I started to wonder how much of this, or is a component of this, to do with the fact that generally we tend to enjoy engaging with the arts.

That is a really important part of it. We know that when we engage in arts, whether that's reading, listening to music, making art, going to cultural events, it activates pleasure and reward centers in the brain. And it particularly activates a reward system called the dopaminergic mesolimbic system, which leads to the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine. And with dopamine, one of the things we know is that we don't just get dopamine kind of hits in at the moments of pleasure and things, but also in anticipation of that pleasure.

And one of the things about the arts is that it's it's a temporal It's often a temporal experience that's all about building tension and resolution. Like think about a book that you're reading. As you're reading that story, you're going through tension, wondering what characters are going to do, anticipating big moments. The same with songs. And it's that continued anticipation and then resolution that gives us these dopamine hits sort of double dopamine hits for both of those different points. And that's why the arts are particularly powerful at increasing our levels of happiness.

What's one of the most surprising bits of research you've come across in your many years of studying this area? One of the most surprising is the stuff we're literally working on right now, which which comes back to something we mentioned a few minutes ago to do with longevity. In that we have been looking at what are called epigenetic clocks, and these are a way of measuring um another way of measuring our biological age. And essentially, our DNA is fixed from the point of conception, but we choose which parts of our DNA we read out.

Uh it's a little bit like a recipe book. If you've got a recipe book, it's the same recipes once it goes to print, but you decide which ones you're going to cook. And sometimes you might pick the healthier ones or the less healthy ones. And there's a particular process that happens as we get older, which is a called DNA methylation, which is when a chemical tag can get attached to our DNA, meaning that we don't read that bit out. So, a bit like pages in that recipe book getting stuck together.

So, so it's almost hidden. Yeah, exactly. Um so, it's sort of not accessible for us to then to then use that bit of DNA. And that's a bad thing? Not necessarily. It can be a good and a bad thing. It depends which parts of the DNA are getting that tag on them, which pages are being stuck together. But, there are particular patterns of these pages um that are sort of indicative of us aging. So, we can look at people's patterns of these this DNA methylation and therefore tell what their DNA age is, their epigenetic age is.

And we already know that those other lifestyle behaviors that we've been mentioning, like physical activity, are associated with decelerated epigenetic aging, like younger epigenetic age. We've recently found that it's the same for arts engagement. People who've got the most frequent and diverse patterns of arts engagement have younger epigenetic age, decelerated epigenetic aging, actually with a really similar effect size to what we see from physical activity. And this is hugely exciting because it's showing that arts engagement isn't just a surface thing that affects our feelings on the outside, but it's affecting the fundamental building blocks of our health.

I think that is so profound. It reminds me of a study you quoted. I think people had to listen to either classical music or what you call relaxing non-creative activities. And that included chatting, reading magazines, taking a walk. Now, the relaxing non-creative activities do sound really enjoyable and pleasurable and as though they would reduce stress, reduce stress, reduce stress, but but but I think the study you quoted showed that the group who listened to classical music music music basically repressed genes involved with the destruction of neurons and increase the expression of genes involved with creating new neurons and enhancing the function of synapses.

That's incredible, right? right? right? It is. It's really exciting. But yes, you're right that we're actually seeing these fundamental processes that actually then have cascading effects across other neurological and biological um systems in the body. And it's actually really interesting as well because we've had so many studies actually for quite a long time showing the benefits of music for cognition. For example, that as people get older, if they're regularly engaged, like playing instruments for example, that they have better what we call cognitive reserve, better resilience of the brain against cognitive decline.

They have better cognition lasting for longer. They even have a reduced risk of dementia. And so it's really interesting seeing these biological findings that are helping to explain and give that biological plausibility to these to these results that we've actually had coming out of randomized trials and from epidemiological like big cohort evidence for the last decades. Can I ask you, Daisy? Again, just on that point I just raised. raised. raised. Cuz for me this is really key point. People often tune into this podcast because they because they because they they want vitality and energy and they want to slow their rate of aging.

They want to be as well as they can for as long as they can. And so they're always looking for what is it I could bring into my life? And those relaxing non-creative activities, like chatting with a friend, uh going for a walk, these are things that we'll often talk about on this show and suggest that people think about introducing. And of course, I know you're not saying don't do them, right? But it is interesting to me that listening to classical music, at least in that study, seems to have an enhanced benefit, certainly certainly certainly on the things that were measured.

Yes. And so, how can we apply the findings of that study in our lives? So, what we're saying is think about the arts as a vehicle that actually often gives you a lot of the things we know are good for you, like social interaction, getting out and about, cognitive stimulation, but it's also giving you these extra ingredients like multi-sensory stimulation, imagination, stimulation, imagination, stimulation, imagination, and also you know, making you think about new ideas or challenging you with new viewpoints. So, actually if we're meeting up with friends for example, instead of just meeting up and going for a drink or chatting, meet up and go to a a live music event or go and look at an exhibition that's on or go to a show, cuz that gives you those social benefits, but adding in that kind of creative engagement as well, which we know has these additive benefits.

Same with exercise. A lot of studies now have compared aerobic exercise with dance-based aerobic exercise, and actually found that the dance-based has again, a benefits above and beyond just the aerobic exercise itself, because it's giving you the exercise, but also with the mental health benefits you get from the music, and also the sort of creativity and imagination, cognitive challenge that you get from following following the moves that you might be learning as well. Yeah. It's incredible. It brings up something else to me. It reminds me of some of the conversations I've had with Dr.

Tommy Wood. He's super well qualified. He's one of the doctors I respect the most. And routinely Tommy will talk about the benefits of dancing. Mhm. Right. So, he's talking a lot about this idea that as you get older, one of the things the brain needs brain needs brain needs more than anything is stimulus. Yes. Yes. Yes. Right. The stimulus for something new. And he has shared research with me on multiple occasions multiple occasions multiple occasions of why dancing is so good, right? And yes, there is a there's a there's a physical component, okay, depending on what dance you're doing.

I've got I think any dance has got a physical components. components. components. There is often a social component if you're doing it with someone else or in a group. a group. a group. But then there's also a coordination component. component. component. Yes. Along some music, right? So, he sort of makes a case that it's this triple input triple input triple input that is potentially creating so many of those brain and cognitive benefits that help reduce the risk of dementia and all those kind of things. And when I read you writing about the benefits of dance and just then talking about the benefits of dance, it feels like there's quite a big crossover there, right?

there, right? there, right? sort of way of supercharging some of the behaviors we already know about. And actually, there was this big craze a few years ago for brain training apps that were all about, you know, playing a particular game. But actually, when the big studies came out on them, they didn't really have the big impact that people had been hoping because they realized that these apps are often sort of focusing on one particular cognitive process, and training one process doesn't mean you're training all of the brain.

But actually, things like arts, dance, music, they involve so many different brain regions. Effectively becomes a kind of whole brain workout. So, it's a really good way of challenging yourself cognitively in a really sophisticated way. Are you a dancer yourself? I I am not a I'm not not a competent dancer, but someone who very much enjoys it when it's at weddings, for example. Yeah, well, well, well, literally this morning, I was reading that section on dance, and I said to my wife, I said to her, you know what?

Cuz I also, probably like you, I might dance at a wedding, I might dance when no one's in the kitchen, if I've got the music blaring, and there's no there's no one at home. But But But reading that section you put really made me think, wow, there really are additional benefits to dancing. And and I guess a lot of people feel time poor, and I said to her, I said, you know what? I'm really starting to to get the impression that we should take up and learn some form of dancing together because I kind of feel it'd be good for our relationship.

We spend time together. We'd be learning a new skill together and we'd get all of these cognitive and you know, coordination type benefits that you also get. Now, whether we do it or not, time will tell, but you certainly make a very compelling case for it. And actually studies show that if people do dance regularly, they actually have improved balance as they get older. It affects things like your bone mineral density. You know, it is a strength-based activity as well. It's also linked in with decreased falls, um particularly because it's about that coordination, that balance, that sense of your body in space.

So, you're really having to focus on that, which is something that's so important neurologically for your brain and maintaining its functioning. One thing I really appreciate about your work, Daisy, is that you you're very careful in the book not to oversell things. You you explain why things you feel have been oversold. You say, "Well, this is what we know so far. This is what we don't know." don't know." don't know." Do you know from any research, are there specific types of dancing that are better than others when it comes to, you know, health and well-being benefits?

To be honest, I've not yet seen anything that's saying that one particular dance form is better than another. And actually, if you think about dance forms, they've probably got like a kind of 95% shared DNA across all of them in terms of what they're doing. So, I doubt that any difference would be that meaningful. But, I'd say it's probably more important to pick something that you comfortably feel that you could get into. Like personally, I really like ceilidh dancing because they're telling you what to do and it's sort of partly about the skipping fun as well.

You haven't got to worry that you don't exactly know how you're supposed to be moving. There's beautiful shapes that get created by the groups. So, things like that that might have a caller or something where it's a class where they're really going to help you to learn those steps can can be a great way of sort of entry into dance. Yeah. You mentioned ceilidh dancing then. I've not really thought about ceilidh dancing since since since my time at Edinburgh. I went to uni at Edinburgh. I worked there for 2 years.

So, I lived in Edinburgh for 8 years and there was a lot of ceilidh dancing. Through a historical lens, it's quite interesting that interesting that interesting that you know, different communities of people, whether it be in Scotland or Africa or South America or India, dance has been a part of cultures for a long time, hasn't it? So, they must have known something. Maybe they didn't have modern science to say, "Well, it's doing this." They must have sort of intuitively felt that there were some incredible benefits from from doing it or or maybe they just enjoyed it.

Well, something that's quite interesting is if we look back across history, a lot of the times a lot of the early evidence we have of the arts emerging has actually been in the context of health or healing practices. I mean, some of some and this is still slightly contentious, but some of the early anthropological and evolutionary um psychology theories about the origins of singing suggested it evolved as a way of groups bonding together before language developed. Um actually, when we find things like cave paintings or the early carving stone figurines, they often uh from things that we we believe were used in like fertility rituals, for example.

So, I think it is actually quite likely that there is this role that the arts were developing to support processes that are good for our health. And there's something called the icebreaker effect, which is a phenomenon that shows that if we sing or dance with people, we actually bond with them faster than if we chat to them or exercise with them. So, there does certainly seem to be something around that bonding process, that bringing together of people. And you mentioned earlier that we all used to sing, dance, tell stories just as part of everyday life.

It's something that arose in every society around the world. But we really have lapsed now into this funny sort of state of artistic passivity, where we don't actually tend to engage in the arts regularly. In fact, we did a study last year. We looked at representative sample of adults in the US and said, "How many minutes yesterday did you spend actively doing the arts?" Only 5% of people said they did any arts yesterday. And that was compared to 57% of people in high-income countries who say they will have eaten vegetables yesterday, and 40% who say they've exercised.

So, arts engagement is way, way down our list of priorities in our lifestyle. But really, I think we're making a mistake with that. that. that. It makes you think about how we used to as humans eat mostly mostly mostly whole food, minimally processed food until relatively recently where ultra-processed foods have come into the food supply. And if I think about that through the lens of arts, of arts, of arts, I wonder if we've got to a situation where there's almost like there is junk food, junk arts.

So, maybe we would engage at the end of our days with song and dance and bonding. Whereas maybe now we've got our smartphones. So, we're watching someone sing online. You know, we're we're commenting on a post of some of an artist we like with a live performance. So, we think we're engaging. Do you know what I mean? It almost feels like there's a there's a there's like junk food and and perhaps junk arts maybe. maybe. maybe. There definitely is is a state now where even if we do arts, we tend to be doing it in the background.

So, lots of us listen to music, but we'll often put music on like plug in and then zone out and do something else. It's like we won't actually just sit and listen to and enjoy the music as a primary focus. And you're right that actually a screen-based arts engagement is growing. And actually in our cure, I'm probably quite rude, but I call screen-based arts engagement the ultra-processed food of the art world. Because although we do see benefits from like watching dramas on TV or going to the cinema, like there are still definitely benefits from those activities.

But they tend to be a bit more muted when we look at studies that directly compare screen-based arts to actually engaging in real life ourselves. So, there's something around perhaps the slightly more passive engagement or the screen itself or the lack of other people in that engagement that means it doesn't have as great a benefit for our health. So, I think there is a real need for us to sort of question question question like what behaviors that it what behaviors are displacing the time that we we used to spend on arts effectively.

Yeah, I I definitely want to talk about more benefits like on lung health and wound healing and the immune system and reduction in pain and all kinds of things, right? But I think it'll be worth just pausing for a moment to define define define what you mean when you say engaging with the arts. the arts. the arts. You just mentioned there an example, you know, music is arts, right? Most I think if you ask most people, you know, does music qualify as engaging with the arts?

I think I think many people will probably say yes. Yeah. But you're saying that that background music listening whilst you're doing something else perhaps doesn't have have have the same benefits. So, help us understand what are the kinds of arts that we should be thinking about engaging with in order to get all of these incredible benefits. So, arts engagement is typically defined as sort of a creative practice that's engaged in primarily for the emotional involvement or for the beauty or ideas that are impart of it.

Now, that normally means activities that involve that multi-sensory stimulation, creativity, imagination, aesthetics. So, we often think of things like performing arts, visual arts, literary arts like reading books, crafts, or going to exhibitions, galleries, gigs, concerts, the cinema. the cinema. the cinema. Um but I also argue in the book that I think we need to consider some other activities that actually share those common ingredients, but we don't always think of intuitively. So, things like culinary arts like baking and decorating a cake, that's got all of those same creative processes, imagining the recipe, how you want it to look, the tactile involvement.

Horticultural arts so like growing and arranging flowers, has got that same focus on sensory stimulation and and beauty and form. And things like circus arts as well. I talk in the book about things like magic tricks that again share all those ingredients, but we sometimes forget that they're activities that we could be doing as well. It feels like there's an active component in terms of our relationship with with those activities compared to a passive one. one. one. Like we can passively consume arts, can't we? We can as you say, listen to music.

We can We can We can sit on the sofa and watch a drama. Mhm. I guess you're watching a drama in some way you're actively engaging cuz you you're having to follow the story and imagine that you are the character or what might you do in that situation. But But is part of the distinction passive versus active? Yeah, I tend to prefer the term receptive because you're not completely passive, are you? If you uh if you are responding to characters, you're thinking things through. But again, if we think about this in terms of sort of ingredients, then if you are receptively engaging, yeah, you're kind of receiving things, but you're not having to do as much.

You're not having to use your hands or or to use your body. You're not having to come up with the ideas yourself, like have that process of imagination and invention yourself. So, we we see that for some outcomes, like for example, for mental health actually, both receptively and actively engaging, both actually have very, very similar benefits for things like reductions in symptoms of depression. But there are other outcomes where we find that participating is particularly key, particularly for a lot of cognitive outcomes, and particularly for more kind of physiological outcomes when we're thinking about some of the longevity-based things as well.

But I think the most important thing is giving it attention if you're actually doing it. There are still benefits to having music on in the background as a kind of background stress relief whilst you're doing other tasks, but it's just important that we make sure we do give arts active attention within each day, as well. as well. as well. If we're going to get the benefits of the arts, the arts, the arts, do they need to be something that we enjoy? enjoy? enjoy? I think that's always better.

It doesn't mean though that it has to be something that has got positive emotions attached to it. And there's a clear distinction here, cuz studies have shown that if you force people to listen to music that they hate, they actually don't get the benefits, for example, for mood, for dopamine. So, there's no point forcing yourself to do something that you're not actually finding pleasurable. But, it doesn't mean you always have to, for example, listen to happy music or read happy books in order for it to benefit your mood.

One of the really fascinating things that's come out of research is that even like reading sad stories or watching horror films or listening to angry music, all of those things actually also have benefits for mental health. And part This is really because in real life, if we had events that gave us those negative emotions, it would negatively affect us. But, when it's art, we know it's art, which means that our brain processes it a bit differently. We have a bit of more of an aesthetic distance between us and what we're consuming or watching.

So, it means that we often experience positive emotions alongside the negative ones. So, it can be beneficial to sort of cathartically experience those negative emotions and to feel that sense of like resonance listening to a sad song and you feel like the songwriter really got how you were feeling in the moment. But, because your brain knows it's not real, it sort of contemplates that emotion, but without having to panic or actually think about how it would respond in the real world. Hey guys, just taking a quick break to ask you a small favor.

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It reminds me of the conversation I had with Daniel Levitin a few months ago. Daniel's a neuroscientist, musician, record producer, record producer, record producer, and I'm pretty sure in that conversation we spoke about you know, when when people are feeling sad, sad, sad, they perhaps don't want to listen to a happy song. You want to, you know, if you're going through a breakup, listening to a breakup song is one of the most beautiful things that an individual can do because it's you know, I guess it's connecting you to wider humanity.

It connects you to, "Oh, I'm not alone feeling this way. Somebody else has literally articulated how I'm feeling in their lyrics." Right? So, there's something about that, isn't there? And also, I know, you know, some of the things you write about in the book are how engaging with the arts build our sense of identity. of identity. of identity. I wonder how much of that is also coming from, as you just said, you know, there you know, we're in make-believe world in the arts, right? So, it's not real.

So, we can imagine what it might be like to feel angry, to feel upset. Um, you know, you know, you know, maybe it's a way that we can experience the full range of human emotions in our minds without actually having to do it in real life. Without having to face the consequences. And that's actually really good for our brains because our brains are prediction machines. They're constantly having to navigate an unpredictable world around us. And actually, what's been coming out of neuroscientific research recently on the arts is showing that when we engage with the arts, we're essentially feeding our brain with lots of different emotions and scenarios, which help it to hone its abilities to regulate our emotions or to plan how we might respond if it were the real world.

And that's is what's called our predictive coding abilities of our brain. And it actually helps us then to be more resilient and better able to adapt and tackle those challenges when they really do come along for us in real life. There's research, isn't there, about dementia and music, which I want to talk about. about. about. Before we do that, one thing that's just come to mind is, for whatever reason, at the moment, I'm loving listening to Oasis' music. And in my head, it's because it takes me back back back to a really influential time in my life, when I saw possibility and the future, and, you know, I was imagining what I could become, or whatever it might be.

As someone who studied the arts and music for many years, is there anything to that at all? There is. I mean, it suggests that that's music where you've got particularly strong dopamine tags. And actually, we often find that that is people for the music for people in their adolescence, because that's when all of our emotions are pretty highly charged. Um but I think it's also a really good reminder about why we often get strong emotions from music or from arts, because it does give us those memories that are associated, which often can be really lovely.

But I guess it also kind of gives me a caveat to some of the things we've just been talking about. Because actually, if an arts experience triggers memories or thoughts about a really negative experience in your life, then actually, that's one of the times when it doesn't come with positive emotional benefits. And equally, we were talking about like horror horror films, for example. Some people, including me, really hate horror films. I actually genuinely find them scary, and I find that I'm not getting positive emotions. And that's because we're forgetting that it's art.

So, this is a really important caveat that if you are engaging in art forms that might be giving you more negative or challenging emotions or scenarios, you have to be able to remember it is art. And you also have to make sure that you're kind of competent enough in your own emotions to be able to manage those when they come along. So, sometimes if people are feeling vulnerable, then actually listening to really sad songs is something that can actually be a little bit triggering. So, there's there's a balance to be struck here.

here. here. It's such a subjective experience, isn't it? Engaging with the arts, because arts, because arts, because you were just sharing about if it take you back to a negative time, and I totally get that. And it made me think of think of think of a playlist that I recently put together for Apple, and one of the tracks I put on it was from an album that I listened to pretty much on repeat in my car on CD after my dad died in 2013. Mhm. And it was sung by Matchbox Twenty called The Way.

The Way. The Way. And whenever I hear it now, I actually don't feel sad. It It really connects me to a really important part of my life. And it's kind of interesting, isn't it? You know, that it that it is such a subjective thing cuz it to to someone else they may not want to hear a track that that that they listened to in the aftermath of a parent's death. But for me, it actually connects me connects me connects me to that moment in time. And I think this is actually what's so wonderful about the arts and my thinking about lifestyle advice, cuz you know, often if people are being told to like take pills and things, it's quite an a sort of in inhumane a thing to do.

But actually with the arts, part of the way they affect us is the kind of raw ingredients that they give us. And we know there are certain things like the tempo of a song that affects our arousal levels in a pretty universal way. But the other part of it is about the perception of that art form, which is about our own personality, memories, experiences. So, that does mean that two people can have quite different experiences even to the same art form. I'm sure we've all been in the cinema with a friend, one of us loved the film, one of us hated it.

But it also means that this is some of the most joyous lifestyle advice that you can have because it allows you to have that personal connection and that sense of personality in how you're going to engage in the arts. It feels that this is such an important message for the current age in which we live. There's so much much much instability, unhappiness, instability, unhappiness, instability, unhappiness, stress, stress, stress, burnout, frustration about the future or or or uncertainty about the future. I guess out of all the things we could think about introducing into our lives, it feels that at the very least engaging with the arts is going to give us a shot of joy and and and vitality.

And you know, what are you asking us to do? You're saying, you know, know, know, obviously you don't have to enjoy it, but you're you're basically saying go and do enjoyable things that get you to imagine the possibility and feel different emotions. That's quite a nice thing to hear from a scientist, isn't it? It's a nice feel-good message. But actually we tend to be much better about thinking about what our physical needs are compared to our psychological needs. And within psychology, we understand that we as humans have got a whole set of core psychological needs in our lives if we're really going to feel happy and flourishing.

And some of this is about us having a sense of control in our lives, something that's increasingly hard in the world around us. But a lot of studies show that engaging in arts gives you that sense of control. Sometimes it's just in the activity in the craft that you're doing, but actually that gradually starts to sort of seep out into affecting your how in control you are feeling more generally. Arts also help to give us a sense of meaning, of purpose in our lives, which are very difficult things to achieve, but things that are fundamental if we really want to have high levels of well-being.

well-being. well-being. I remember a story from your book, Daisy. Daisy. Daisy. I think it was a palace of care ward in Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Yes. And Yes. And Yes. And from recollection, please correct me if I haven't quite got this right, but from recollection there was a gentleman on that ward and people came in or or someone came in and it was playing acoustic guitar and singing. And I think he said that it helped give him a sense of meaning. Yes, this is something I worked in the NHS for a number of years and I kept seeing this time and time again that you know, there were people who were in hospital for conditions where you know, medicine was helping parts of the condition, but there were there were broader aspects of the psychological and social experience they were having where there wasn't a medical treatment that was supporting those and actually bringing the arts into that hospital was a really pertinent powerful way of supporting people holistically.

And I think there's no better example of this when we're thinking about end-of-life care, palliative care, and we're also thinking about bereavement and grieving. If we look all around the world, arts are something that we instinctively turn to in those phenomenally difficult moments. People use songs and poems and photographs and and and crafts and memory books as a way of remembering people. They're things we instinctively turn to, but actually we don't really acknowledge this enough. We don't consider how we should be valuing the arts more within end-of-life care.

And I remember times in the hospital when it was you know, people's final hours and they were asking to have music there with them and they were having their relatives singing along. And times like that were incredibly incredibly powerful examples of of how much the arts can do for us. Yeah. I went to see my mom last night and I told her that I was talking to you today about this topic. topic. topic. And she said, "Oh, you know, what what are you going to talk about?" And I said, "Well, mom, you know, Daisy's written this cool book and she's talking about the benefits of the arts on our health and well-being." And you know, mom's 85, not in fantastic health anymore, unfortunately.

And you know, I I think I said something to her about the benefits of music. And she said, "Yeah, of course." She said, "Whenever I felt down in my life or low or stressed, I'll just sing and play songs and sing or or listen to music." And you know, Mom hasn't done any of the scientific research on this, but it was quite interesting to me that she just knew straight away. She wasn't even surprised when I told her. She goes, "Yeah, of course." It is an age-old wisdom.

I don't think people are surprised by the idea of this. I think people are often surprised by the depth and rigor of the science. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. But even though it is wisdom, like I was saying earlier, we all engage so little on average. We know the wisdom, but for some reason we're not putting it into practice. We're not prioritizing it in our lives. Yeah. One of the things that I reflected on as I was reading your book was children and bringing up children and how important the arts is.

I'm super lucky because the school my children are at have at have at have just the most incredible and inspiring head of music who, you know, I was at their spring concert recently where both my kids were performing and there was other kids from the school performing and orchestras and choirs and street drumming and all sorts of things. But the the head of music had such passion for each and every track and all the children who were engaging. And it's such an inclusive school about trying to get people to engage in the arts in whatever way they want to.

want to. want to. I don't think I really realized how fantastic that is for my kids and and and other kids at that school until I read your book. I was like, was like, was like, "Oh, this isn't just an enjoyable thing to do. It It is that and there are all of these other benefits." Clearly, not every school has that kind of relationship with the arts and music? Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. And you are a mother, I think, of two children. children. children. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

What do you think your research is going to do, or how do you think that's going to influence the way you parent as your children get older? older? older? Well, I think there are two things here. One is about what we do as parents, but also one is about what we need schools to do. Because actually we've got ourselves in a bit of a mess at the moment. We've really deprioritized arts within schools, taken them off curricula. We've had massive decreases in the number of students that now get to engage in the arts at school and take art subjects.

We've now got whole schools have absolutely no arts in them. And this is really problematic because arts are so beneficial for children's development in terms of cognitive development, particularly in terms of mental health, identity formation, self-esteem, and also nurturing these core skills like creativity, curiosity, compassion, like some of the skills that we want young people to have the most as they're heading out into the world. But we're not making it equally available. And the challenge then is it means that it really rests on them where the children have got opportunities to do the arts outside school, and there's a huge social gradient in that.

So some families are lucky enough that they might have the time or the resources to be able to do arts outside schools, others don't. So I do think we have an issue here cuz if children don't engage in the arts as children, they're also way less likely to engage as adults. And therefore that's huge groups of people who'll be missing out on the health and well-being benefits across their whole lives. lives. lives. One thing you challenge right at the start of the book is the idea that some people will say, "The arts are not for me, Daisy.

I'm not creative. I'm not artistic." What do you say to those people? We are literally born artistic. Babies are responding in utero to music when they hear it. If you sing to a newborn baby a song and then a song with an altered, like a wrong note in it, they can even spot the difference within a few weeks of being born. So everybody has the innate creative potential here, but it comes down to opportunities and access. So, yeah, if you're someone that has had no exposure to the arts across your early years, your education, then it's not surprising that you might not feel creative or artistic.

But, I talk in the book about actually lots of people who've entered the arts as an adult, often through things like being referred to it by a doctor. So, they they're not choosing, they've kind of been recommended it. And in the process, gone from thinking that they weren't artistic, it wasn't for them, to realizing how much they love it. And this, I think, is so powerful in showing that if people can give things a go and sort of have that try, people are often surprised at actually that the response they have when when they actually enjoy it much more than they thought.

thought. thought. That's what happened to Russell, isn't it? it? it? is very Can you tell us a little bit about Russell? Yeah, Russell is someone I met nearly 10 years ago when we both went on to a BBC Breakfast to talk about this scheme that was rolling arts on prescription out within the UK. And Russell was a construction worker from Gloucester, um and one day on the way to work, he had a stroke. And it caused severe neurological damage, and he had to relearn how to walk again, how to talk again.

Um in the process, like he lost his job, his relationship fell apart, and he said that he was just in bed all the time with chronic pain. It caused so many issues for him. So, he said he got on more and more and more medication trying to deal with things, couldn't sleep. And eventually, his doctor said like enough, we need to try something new. So, he prescribed an arts class for Russell. And Russell said he was just so not artistic, it really wasn't him. But, he he said he's not even sure why he agreed to go along.

But, in that first class, he said there was just something about it that kind of piqued his curiosity. And as he started going back, he started actually drawing and painting and realizing how much he loved it. And it's sort of fast forward, he actually found that he was feeling happier, his pain was lower, his sleep was better. He and his doctor actually started to reverse the pills that he was on. It gave him this whole new lease of life. And actually now, 10 years later, Russell In fact, longer than that now, but Russell is now actually an artist, and he does his own painting.

He's had exhibitions from Gloucester Cathedral to the Tower of London. He also leads his own art workshops in the community for other people like him. Sort of saying to them, "You haven't got to be an artist. You can do this." And he says he's not even on any medication anymore. I think he also says that art saved his life. life. life. Yes. I said to him I was trying to ask him to sort of quantify how big this effect was. And yeah, he said it saved his life.

And I I've met so many people over the years who used those same words. Like whether it's been art that's actually brought them back from the brink of taking their own life, or art that's given them a whole new lease of life in the way that they're they're able to engage with and enjoy things day-to-day. day-to-day. day-to-day. Before we get on to practical tips in terms of how people can think about introducing the arts into their lives, Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. I just want to close the loop on dementia.

We we mentioned that a couple of times, and I know I know I know just from talking to a lot of my audience, audience, audience, a lot of people do fear getting dementia. They they they've seen it in family members. family members. family members. And one of the most striking things I heard you say was that if patients with dementia are played songs from their youth at bathing times and at mealtimes, it can reduce emotional agitation. Now, that I think has so many practical applications. I've spoken to a lot of carers.

carers. carers. And a lot of them will say that those are the times where there's a lot of tension. There's you know, you you know, someone doesn't want to be bathed. But for hygiene, they need to be bathed. Mhm. And it seems as though the arts may have a particular role here, right? They do. This is actually a really important area to think about cuz again, it's one where it can be quite hard. We haven't really got medical solutions for for some of the the challenges psychologically and socially that people with dementia experience.

And one of the things is that when people have dementia, it can be much harder to rationalize things that are going on like the noise of a bin lid clanging, for example, is something that causes a lot of distress on hospital wards for people who have dementia. Things like bathing and meal times, if you've forgotten what that is, it's quite an overwhelming thing to be plunged into water or handed a plate of colorful food and and implements and you don't remember how to use them. Mhm.

So, playing calming music is a really effective way of just relaxing people, activating that relaxation response, so that they're calmer in those moments. And also, um playing something that's familiar can help to buffer out those background noises that might be upsetting people. When I worked at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, we also did a lot about wayfinding. Like if someone with dementia needs to go to the loo, they might have forgotten the way there. And actually, if everything is white, if it's white corridors, white walls, white doors, white loos, it can be almost impossible to distinguish where they're going.

That's one of the things that's affected in dementia. So, things like colored pathways on the floor, being able to use artwork, so patients remember which bed is theirs, changing the color of surfaces, these kinds of interior art-based things are really powerful. really powerful. really powerful. But there's also a reason why music is particularly helpful in dementia. And this is because the region of the brain that's involved in long-term musical memory is one of the last to be affected by Alzheimer's disease. Wow. So, many people will say that you know, that their relative might have forgotten who they are, but then they'll remember a song and they'll sing along.

Um and this is because of this particular region in the brain being preserved very late in Alzheimer's. So, play music to people, particularly music that's got a lot of dopamine attached, that pleasure hormone we've been speaking about, is really is really effective. And particularly dopamine is good because dopamine is not only involved in pleasure, it's also involved in long-term memory consolidation, which is why it's often the music from people's adolescence where they've got those very strong dopamine tags, music from people's childhood often really positive emotions in their experiences in their lives that they're most likely to remember even in the late stages of dementia.

So someone who's listening to this who may have a family member who is perhaps struggling with dementia, Yeah. one immediate take home might be they could start playing for that individual music from their youth. Yeah, find a playlist of the music you know this person used to love listening to you. I'm watching them closely and make sure it's not causing distress, but it can be a really lovely thing to do. Also think about calm background music at the times they normally get agitated. Think about the environments they're in and how you're using color in them so that you're trying to make sure they can have easy navigation and it's calming environments around them as well.

Wow. And I think you did touch on it earlier in the conversation, but just to cover it again here whilst we're talking about dementia and brain health, you have found research, haven't you, showing that regularly engaging with the arts preserves our cognition for longer and delays the onset of dementia, is that right? that right? that right? That's what we're seeing. We're seeing that people who are regularly engaged in the arts have better preservation of cognition for longer and a reduced risk of developing dementia. And this is through what's called cognitive reserve, so building the resilience of the brain against cognitive decline.

So it basically means that even if your brain is starting to accumulate the kind of physical signs of dementia, then you're able to compensate for longer. You're basically able to cover it and and manage cognitively for longer before it actually starts to affect your life. And we're seeing this with delayed brain aging through arts experiences too, like I mentioned earlier. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For people who've heard enough of the benefits to go yeah, she's convinced me. I would like to engage with the arts more. more.

more. There's a really nice section at the end of the book where you I think it's called how to fix things, right? So, can you walk us through some of the practical things that we can think about if we want to introduce the arts into our life? So, I think a great way of thinking about it is a bit like how we think about our diets. So, we all know the concept of like have your five a day, if your fruit and veg, whatever. Well, think about what your equivalent can be for the arts to make sure you get some kind of artistic engagement every day.

Even if it's just 10, 15, 20 minutes, that's a really great way to start. start. start. Also, think about variety. Just like we used to say an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but now we focus on like variety of plants in our diet. It's similar with arts experiences. So, if you're someone that loves reading, well, that's great, but also think about how could I bring in another art form that might bring some different kind of ingredients. So, like it might be dance that are bringing in the physical, or that might be like making music sort of so really focusing on that cognitive challenge of it as well.

I also say like don't think that you have to be a great chef like in this like to cook good food. You've not got to be really brilliant at art. You've not even got to think that you're an artistic or creative person cuz for our health it genuinely is the taking part which brings so many of those benefits. You mentioned reading a book there. Does reading a book count as engaging with the arts? That very much is an art form. Yes, that is one of the arts activities you can be doing.

But it's that's why I say it brings certain benefits. It brings like narrative storylines that will be challenging your brain to think differently about the world. It brings emotional experiences that can be helping to give you that sense of emotion regulation. It's a relaxing activity, but obviously you're not generating. You're not physically doing things as well. So, it's just good to have balance with other arts activities, too. activities, too. activities, too. Is going to the theater similar to going to the cinema? This comes back to that ultra-processed food metaphor that I used for thinking about screen-based arts activities.

So, yeah, going to the theater and going to the cinema both have benefits for our mental health, for example, when we look at them in studies. But, actually, for like cognitive outcomes, we see much stronger effects for going to watch live arts events like concerts or gigs or going to the theater or going to exhibitions than we do from the more screen-based engagement like watching dramas on television or going to the cinema. So, it's important to sort of think, yeah, engage in the cinema and things if you're enjoying that emotionally, but try and mix it up by also bringing in arts experiences that that might be more cognitively or physically beneficial.

physically beneficial. physically beneficial. Have we seen a decline in our engagement with the arts since COVID? And the reason I ask for that is I think what one thing I've seen a lot is that COVID broke COVID broke COVID broke certain patterns, social patterns, hobby patterns that we all had. People who, for example, used to go to a once-a-week yoga class in their local town center town center town center realized in COVID that they could do it on YouTube or online. And, of course, there could be loads of benefits of doing that for people, especially if they live remotely and they don't have time, whatever.

So, I'm not criticizing that, but it's not the same thing as doing a yoga class, as an example, with other people in your community. Have we seen a similar thing with arts where people used to go out to the theater and to concerts and, you know, museums, whatever it might be, COVID put a stop to that, and has there, in your view, been almost a collective inertia that has set in which we really need to urgently start to rebalance? There are definitely things where we've seen a change that hasn't fully rebounded.

Like, if you look at footfall going through museums, for example, then actually that is still down in many places compared to before COVID. COVID. COVID. But I think it's not always just our fault. There are also really challenging societal circumstances, like lots of arts venues have closed, lots of libraries have closed, cost of living crisis, you know, there can be much higher now costs to actually go to some of these things. So that is sort of makes it partly about us thinking, how can I get more active?

But also partly about us thinking, how can we talk about this more and how can we maybe change awareness politically about the funding that goes into enable us to engage? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One of the bits I enjoyed the most, because I'm very passionate about this, towards the end of the book is how difficult it is now for artists to make a living. Mhm. And you wrote a little section on Spotify and you know, how little artists make when their tracks are streamed and how the whole commercial model of music has changed.

That that that is going to have an impact, isn't it? Because it? Because it? Because yeah, we can engage ourselves, read a book or you know, whatever it is we enjoy doing, but also if as a culture we're going to get the best out of art we need artists. We need musicians, we need answers, we need people to be able to devote themselves to these things and perform for us and create music for us, but if people are literally getting pennies pennies pennies for doing that actually yeah, we can want to engage, but society we're going to have less things to engage with, right?

Yeah, if we want to have arts in society, we need artists to be leading those groups, to be to be putting art out there for us. And I've got so many friends who are artists who are just experiencing such challenging working conditions. It's sort of like if you want to be an artist now, you've got to do it for the passion rather than being able to make full livings out of it for many people. And this is really problematic. It's about how little we value the arts within society.

And I don't think it's any coincidence that we see that professional artists in general have higher levels of well-being than the general population, but also higher levels of stress and anxiety and depression because the circumstances they're put in to try and craft careers out of this is just so difficult now. As I was reading your book, I was thinking about Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones. And And And the reason I was thinking about him was there are lots of musicians that I see, especially in the sort of music I'm interested in, who seem to still be performing in their 70s, touring, playing long show Bruce Springsteen sort of does three-hour three-hour sets, right?

And he's, you know, he's not a spring chicken anymore. It's interesting to me, yes, they're engaging with something, but these guys are constantly writing new music, they're trying to still stay relevant, you know, tell stories in their music that speak to the culture today just as it did when they were in their 20s. What's your take on that, you know? Am I barking up the wrong tree or could there be something to it? I mean, there are always random lucky combinations of genes. So, I think that's something that's important to caveat up front.

But there there is something to the saying of use it or lose it. And actually, one of the things that we see from the arts is that they're so powerful at it giving us a sense of purpose. And a sense of purpose is one of the big drivers of a health a longer health span, so like staying healthier for longer, as well as a longer lifespan. So, I think it's probably not a coincidence that we see that people who've got that real passion for the art that they're doing, that that really does drive them and help them to have that continued purpose, that continued activity that supports their health.

their health. their health. Yeah, going back to the similarities I see between reading this and some of what Tommy Wood writes about. You know, Tommy talks a lot about how damaging retirement can be for our brains. brains. brains. Yes. And Yes. And Yes. And if we think about it through the lens of what I just said about musicians, of course, course, course, if you just forget the arts and forget all those benefits and put them to the side for a for a minute, even the fact that people are not retiring, they're still engaging in their passion, they're writing, they're performing, they they've got a reason to get up and get out there and do something and engage in communities and you know, it's not just done in isolation, it's done with other people in a live venue, that in and of itself is going to be beneficial, isn't it?

it? it? It is. And a lot of the work that I've done has been looking at older adults. And we found that as people retire, as they sort of head into later 50s and into 60s, we see that people who are more regularly engaged in the arts have a reduced risk of developing depression over the following decade or so, a reduced risk of becoming frail, of developing age-related disability, of developing problems like chronic pain. We really do see this link with a longer health span as they get older.

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See all details at drinkAG1.com /livemore. In your practical section at the end of the book, there's two things that I wanted to ask you about. One was "Identify your chicken soup." And one was "Plan your meals out." What do those two things mean? The chicken soup is about the fact that when we're ill, we often know there are things that make us feel better. For some people, that's like a homemade chicken soup or but I think it's often when we're ill that we don't think as creatively about what's going to help us.

We often go in a kind of protective survival mode. So, it's sort of easy to sort of lie on the sofa and just binge watch Netflix. So, my point is think in advance. What are the books that you really love reading? Like the comfort reads that you could return to when you feel ill. What's the music that really relaxes that you could put on and listen to? Are there crafts or things that, you know, you could even just spend a few minutes doing that actually could support your mood as well as your relaxation?

And this is really important because it sort of brings us onto the issue of inflammation, which is one of the areas that we've got really exciting evidence coming up on about the impact that arts have. Not only do the arts relax us in terms of stress response, but they also affect levels of inflammation in our immune system, which means that if we engage, we actually have reductions in inflammatory markers, things like cytokines, which are these chemical messengers in our immune system. Um and this and over time we see that people who are more regularly engaged in the arts have lower inflammatory profiles.

And inflammation is not only linked in with our physical health, but also with our mental health. So, it's really important when we're ill, like when we're in that kind of inflammatory that actually doing things that will improve our mood can actually help with that recovery as well. One of my favorite studies that you wrote about was the drumming study, right? When you studied people who were drumming for 6 weeks weeks weeks and you showed that four inflammatory cytokines went down. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. I mean, basically this is kind of the point we're trying to sort of highlight in this conversation.

There is a We might think drumming's good. You know, it's a fun activity. You enjoy drums, you play. But you But it But it's it's so much more than that. It's changing the changing the changing the inflammatory milieu inside your body. That's where the exciting Can we say that that's exclusive to drumming or do we think other forms of arts or even musical instrument playing would do similar things? We've seen this from a range of art forms now, from dancing, from singing, from making visual art as well.

So, it's certainly not just a drumming effect. But it's really relevant cuz a lot of people live with chronic inflammation, which puts you at a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, of cardiovascular events, as well as depression. And we've actually looked um really broadly now, if people are regularly engaged in the arts, do they have different inflammatory profiles? We've just completed a study where we looked at over 200 different proteins in people's bloods. And we found that people who've got more regular arts engagements actually have patterns of protein abundance that show they've actually got lower levels of inflammation.

They've actually got a dialing down of inflammatory pathways in their bodies. And so we see this both we sort of see short-term effects like lower little dips in inflammation from just half an hour and hour of engaging, but we see this adding up more and more over the weeks and months so that overall people who've got those higher patterns of engagement lower levels of inflammation. inflammation. inflammation. There was a study on wound healing. And in particular expressive writing. Mhm. Which I found really interesting because because initially when I when I thought about what what what does it mean to engage with the arts?

arts? arts? I didn't necessarily think of expressive writing. Mhm. writing. Mhm. writing. Mhm. And then I thought, "Well, why not?" You know, journaling and um writing out your emotions and trying to process them. process them. process them. Well, we know that's really beneficial. Does that count as engaging with the arts? Mhm. And then also could you talk about that study if you can recall it? I know there's like hundreds of studies in the book so you may not have them all to hand, but there was it was pretty powerful to see that expressive writing could speed up wound healing.

This was a really cool study where they were looking at if people could do writing where they yeah, they're getting their emotions and things out there. Would it actually affect inflam- inflammation levels and would it help with things like wound healing? For this particular study they gave people a punch biopsy so they deliberately gave them a small wound and then they measured it every day. And they found that the group that did expressive writing had significantly faster healing of that wound and changes in their inflammatory levels.

And actually this feeds into a sort of much bigger literature that shows that if we if we're doing this regular arts engagement, we can actually see it affecting these quite physical aspects of our of our illness of our recovery. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So would you say expressive writing could count as arts? Definitely. It's creative writing. That's one of one of the core art forms out there. Is that different from journaling about your own life? Uh well, interestingly in this study, they actually had a control group, which was having to write about how they were planning their time, I believe it was.

So, quite boring writing. Um and they didn't see the faster um wound healing in that group. So, this was very much something that was happening from that creative, that expressive process. Listening and or making music can enhance our immune system, can't it? It can. We found studies where we've looked at these cytokines, these chemical messengers, and shown that if people are making music for sort of an hour or so, they actually have a short-term boost in their immune activity, kind of activation of the cytokine network.

And then over time, we do tend to see that this rebalancing towards lower inflammatory profiles that we've just been talking about. So, it's really nice to see that's another whole biological system that's influenced by arts engagements. Yeah. engagements. Yeah. engagements. Yeah. When we think about music, and we can engage in music actively or passively, I guess active might be us playing something, or we're listening intensively, and intensively, and intensively, and you know, my wife and I, for example, we engage with music in very different ways.

Like, if we're listening to music, she's more drawn to lyrics than I am. Like, I'll hear the different layers. I'll I'll hear what the bass is doing, what the guitars I'm like, "Oh my god, did you did you hear what the bass player just did?" And of course, as we're saying, it is a subjective experience. experience. experience. But you also you you write about Brian Eno, and what I think is called ambient music. Can you explain what ambient music is? And then And then And then how that fits with this whole idea that to get the benefits or to get most of the benefits from art, perhaps we want to be more active when we engage with it than passive.

than passive. than passive. So Does that make sense? Yeah, it does make sense. I'm sure everyone's had that situation where you're like you're in an elevator or in a lift, and there's that really annoying kind of tinny background music that's supposed to make you feel calmer, but basically you end up feeling more and more wound up by it until you can't stand it anymore. So, that lift music was music that was created particularly trying to combine the elements that we know are most relaxing for us.

But, in the process, it's so bland and it's so predictable that actually we don't have that tension resolution thing that I was speaking about in terms of dopamine response earlier. So, actually we don't find it something that triggers dopamine. We don't find it something that's particularly enjoyable. So, what Brian Eno came up with was a different concept. Well, he said, "We don't want things to be too predictable." But, what if we take those relaxing elements, so like the slow beat, like the the the the nice tones that are consonant tones, um relaxing instruments, but we actually put them on tape loops, so they'll play in random combinations.

So, you can't predict what's coming, but it's inherently got the relaxing ingredients. And that was the genre of ambient music. And personally, I find it so much more enjoyable listening to that than listening to elevator lift music. But, Brian Eno um I met when I worked at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital because we had this big problem around anxiety in surgical settings. Like, quite understandably, people were coming in for surgeries, they were put in kind of toilet-size cubicle booths, and told to wait for hours until their operation.

They got more and more anxious. And that then meant they were often having to have anti-anxiety medication to calm them. It was taking more sedatives, it was taking more pain relief after, and creating a kind of spiral of medication that wasn't necessary. So, what we did with Brian is we said, "Well, could we use his ambient music in the hospital setting?" And we combined it with these incredible digital artworks that he created that again had this randomness. They kind of gradually changed over time, but in a way you couldn't predict.

And we found that the patients who went into these booths, um with this artwork and music, actually had this incredible relaxation response. And so many studies now have shown that if people are more relaxed through music, then they actually need fewer sedatives, they need fewer opioids afterwards. And in fact studies that have directly compared giving people anti-anxiety medication or music before surgery show that you get a greater relaxation response from music compared to the drugs. I mean there's implications individually for that patient but also the potential for massive cost saving in the health service is absolutely there, isn't it?

Absolutely. Same for vets as well. Dogs respond the same way. Really? Yeah. Wow. Um but this this is really important cuz I think we're actually being less safe, less ethical by not offering arts in these settings compared to offering them. It's kind of interesting, isn't it, that there is all this research there. We've already spoken about the the high blood pressure studies. But I think you you sort of wrote about this, you know, in your book this this idea that when was the last time your doctor your doctor your doctor prescribed listening to music?

It's very clear from your research and the data that actually it should be one of the many tools we have in our toolbox, you know? Well already this concept of being able to prescribe arts is out there. I mean depression is a really good example of this because with depression many people with mild and moderate depression antidepressants don't really help them. And there can be side effects as well. There have now been so many studies that have said, "Well, what if people did six or 10 weeks of weekly arts classes?" And they've actually found that the reduction in symptoms is actually very similar to what you get from either psychological therapies or from medication without the side effects and without the waiting lists.

And actually if it's offered alongside we've actually found that it can augment the benefits. So studies that have shown people who've been offered medication or psychological therapies or that plus arts therapies have actually found that even greater benefits. In fact, nearly twice the improvement in symptoms within 3 months if people have both together. And I just got back from Greece last week where we've been running this incredible 4-year program saying, "Well, what if we actually fully integrated arts on prescription as part of psychiatric care?" So, we were working with in the end 1,000 adults in Greece who had diagnosed severe mental illnesses, and they were referred to 12 weeks of arts on prescription.

They could choose whether they went to book clubs, theaters, galleries, like they made arts in classes. And we found there were 30% reductions in anxiety and depression within those 12 weeks to the point that Greece has actually now announced a new law last week making arts on prescription formally part of all psychiatric care in the country. And we've already got similar things in the UK. We've got arts on prescription as part of social prescribing within GP practices. So, your GP can make a referral to these activities, but I just don't think we're giving it enough recognition or prominence or letting people know they could be talking to their doctor about this.

Yeah. It's also very important in terms of the outcome. You know, if we whole bodily, whole bodily, whole bodily, you know, believe in something and talk about it and say, "Look, this is going to be really, really helpful." That's very different from saying, "There's a 9-month waiting list for talk therapy. So, in the meantime, we'll get you some art therapy." Do you know what I mean? It's It's the same thing, but but the message we give to the patient is very different. You're waiting for the big for the for the main thing.

This is the consultation. consultation. consultation. this part on the side. You know, even that needs to potentially change. I think people need to know these effect sizes that are coming through from trials. They need to have the choice. So, they can be told these are all the options available, and you get to have a say in which one you think is going to suit you. And if that one doesn't work, you can be trying the other options. One of the things I think listeners to this podcast will be particularly interested in, Daisy, is is is your work stating that people who engage with the arts are more likely to engage with other health promoting behaviors.

Tell us a little bit about super interesting. So this is something that we're consistently seeing now in studies is that engaging in arts means you're then more likely to do more exercise or to eat more healthily or to stop smoking. And partly this is something which has spillover effect. You know, if you do one health promoting behavior, you are more likely to sort of catalyze a virtuous cycle of other health promoting behaviors. But it's also because when we engage in the arts, it helps with a lot of psychological processes.

It builds our sense of self-control. So a lot of randomized trials say you have higher levels of self-control if you've taken part in several weeks of arts activities. And that can help with inhibiting behaviors you might not want to do. And it also helps things like self-esteem. Self-esteem is a major driver of our behaviors and one of the big things that's supported through engaging in the arts. So essentially we're sort of giving ourselves some psychological toolboxes that support positive behavior change through arts engagements. I wonder how much of that could be increasingly relevant or even more relevant in what we would call socially deprived communities?

deprived communities? deprived communities? Because of course cost and access to things can be a huge issue in those communities. But But But lots of art forms are not that expensive, right? So yes, going to the theater for example, that there is a cost associated with that. with that. with that. Um Um Um reading a book, singing, listening to music, these things are perhaps a little bit more accessible. And I guess if we're saying that engage with the arts changes how we feel about ourselves, um um um increases our empathy, increases our self-control, self-control, self-control, in some ways it could be quite a low-cost low-cost low-cost intervention that could have some quite profound effects even in deprived populations.

Actually, even more so. Some of the studies that we've done have shown that people who come from more deprived areas geographically actually benefit from arts engagement even more, like disproportionately more than people who are engaging who already live in more affluent areas. Similarly, people who are already experiencing mental health challenges, they often have even greater improvements in mental health through arts engagement compared to someone who doesn't really feel like they're struggling particularly. So, actually, I think it's a point we need to try and improve the equity of access even more because actually those people who aren't engaging are probably the ones who could stand to benefit the most.

most. most. You also write about some of the benefits that people in prison have had from engaging with the arts. I think there was one uh what something called the the Shakespeare Behind Bars that I heard you you you talk about. Can you Can you explain what sort of things the arts have been shown to do for people who are in prison? These are incredible programs that are trying to integrate arts within criminal justice systems. Recognizing that actually engaging in arts, doing things like drama, gives people a chance to build their sense of confidence, their new identity.

Actually, when we're doing things that are particularly acting-based or or or involving stories, we're also helping to build our imagination. Actually, higher levels of creativity and imagination help people to navigate complex life choices. It helps them to have more creative solutions to problems. There's actually amazing research showing that these sort of narrative art forms that particularly will challenge us and give us new perspectives, we're more likely to take that information in if we're experiencing it through a story compared to if someone's having a conversation with us or giving us a leaflet to read.

On the subject of stories, your book is full of real-life stories of people who've improved their lives through engaging with the arts. As well as those stories though, you shared a very personal story of your own about what happened when your daughter Daphne was born and how the arts had a pretty big effect. effect. effect. Mhm. Um I wonder if you'd be open to sharing that. Yes. I want to say that all the stories in this book are real people with their real names, which actually is quite unusual to have people who are happy to be identified in that way.

But there are such incredible stories, I really wanted it to be authentic things that people are reading. But obviously there is a vulnerability in sharing stories, so I only felt fair to to offer up one of my own. And yeah, my younger daughter Daphne unfortunately was premature and when she was 5 days old, she contracted meningitis. And we had an absolutely horrific time in intensive care with her. And I remember feeling so powerless. There was nothing I could do. I wasn't even allowed to touch her.

Um but I remember these studies that I'd read about 10 years previously that had been about the impact that singing to premature babies has on them in intensive care. Um it there was stories that showed that babies had reductions in their stress response, they had reductions in their heart rate, their blood pressure, even improvements in their oxygen saturation. And so I sang. It was Christmas time, so I sang Christmas carols to Daphne for hour after hour. And I could see on the monitors those improvements. I could see that there were these slight increases in her oxygen levels, that there were these reductions in her stress stress response.

And for me it was the most profound arts experience I had because there was nothing else that I could have done that I had at my disposal in that time, but it was something that I could see was benefiting her and also undoubtedly had huge benefits for me in terms of coping in that time, too. Wow, thank you for sharing that. I think there's been quite a lot of research now, hasn't there, in terms of the benefit of music in neonatal intensive care units? Absolutely. And some of this is a little bit like the dementia things we were talking about where there are lots of really weird, high-pitched, scary noises in intensive care.

And if you're thinking about premature babies, they should still be in the womb. They should still have those low, deep, sonorous noises instead. So, buffering those out with calming music is something that we can do, which is very simple. But, also there's something about that human interaction. Babies can tell if it's their own mother singing to them. They can even tell if it's their mother singing live compared to in a recording. Wow. So, having that voice, which is the most dominant sound they'd have had in the womb, but having that intense it in intensive care is something that seems really important, not only to babies in the moment in terms of their physiological response, but actually we're starting to learn that it could be having cognitive benefits for them in the months and years that follow.

Wow. It's absolutely incredible. Honestly, Daisy, I had no idea there was that much research on the benefits of the arts until I read your book. I think you've done a fantastic job. We've not even scratched the surface today in terms of things that you have written about. I mean, in the book there's all kinds of things. The benefits of engaging with the arts include increasing happiness and its associated neurotransmitters, associated neurotransmitters, associated neurotransmitters, fulfilling our fundamental human needs, giving us peak moments of joy and euphoria, euphoria, euphoria, building our well-being and resilience, preventing and managing symptoms of depression and anxiety, helping us regulate our emotions, broadening the ways we think and act, supporting our cognitive development, enhancing learning, enhancing neuroplasticity, and the list goes on.

It's utterly incredible. If there was anything else doing this, if there was a pill that could do all those things, we would be hearing about it, but thanks to your book now we're learning about the benefits of the arts and what the arts can do for all these areas. So, first of all, thank you for writing it. Thank you for giving the arts the PR job that you are giving them. giving them. giving them. Um to to finish off, Daisy, if there's someone listening who has realized throughout this conversation that the arts just doesn't feature in their life.

Maybe they weren't exposed to it. Maybe they feel that they're too busy for it or it's something they associate with being a kid and not an adult. What would you say to them? Give it a go and start small and manageable. I made a swap last year which has been one of the biggest like like biggest beneficial behaviors I could have done, which is that we hear a lot about active commutes to work. I can't active commute. I live too far away. So I've gone for creative commute.

So now instead of scrolling the news on my phone and stressing myself on on the way to and from work, I read a book every day on the way to work on the train and on the way home I listen to music to calm myself down. And it has made such a difference book ending my work day in that way. And I think that small shifts, swaps in our lives like that are very simple to do, but you could be surprised at how quickly you feel the benefits and how quickly you want to try even more things.

Yeah, I love that. A creative commute. What a lovely thought to finish this conversation on. The book is called Arts Cure, The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you. If you enjoyed that conversation, then I think you are really going to enjoy this one that I picked out especially. If you actually went to the happiness gym several times a week, you will actually have a happier life, right? And the happiness gym is very straightforward.

It's a set of skills, hm, that you need to practice.