Not only do the arts relax us in terms of stress response, but they also affect levels of inflammation in our immune system.
And over time we see that people who are more regularly engaged in the arts have lower inflammatory profiles.
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.
Hey guys, how you doing.
Hope you're having a good week so far.
My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More.
Imagine if one of the most powerful things you could do for your health was also one of the most enjoyable.
Well, here's the good news.
It's absolutely the case.
My guest today is Professor Daisy Fancourt, a world-leading expert on the relationship between the arts and health and author of the brand new book Arts Cure.
Over years of research, she's found the evidence to convince her that engaging with the arts deserves to be the fifth pillar of health, alongside nutrition movement, sleep and relaxation.
And it won't be long, she predicts, before science and society alike agree.
We'll accept.
She says that music dancing painting, visiting the theatre and all the wonderful ways there are to be creative benefits our mental and physical wellbeing in comparable ways to good nutrition and movement.
Now on some levels, I think we already appreciate this.
We instinctively know the pleasure we get from autistic pursuits is good for us.
In fact, when I mentioned this conversation to my 85-year-old mother, who loves to sing, she just smiled and said well, of course.
But what Daisy brings to the conversation is the depth of scientific research explaining our instincts.
And in this episode we cover longevity aging dementia hypertension moods inflammation, immunity and so much more.
Daisy is a fantastic communicator and her passion for this subject is contagious.
The things that move us, excite us and inspire us are also really good for us as well.
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 behaviour.
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 behaviours 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, 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 wellbeing, 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 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 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 can lower our blood pressure to an amount comparable or even superior to to certain drugs that we have.
That's 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 of about nine to 10 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?
If you have high blood pressure, what does listening to music alone do?
Have we seen any evidence about that?
Yes, we have 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.
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.
So it's part of the stress response.
And so, in a society where we are chronically stressed and a few years ago the World Health Organization, as you know, called stress of 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.
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 the 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.
You write about it as this I think it was a balmy summer's evening that you were crunching some numbers and something quite surprising came up, 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 behaviours 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've got other lifestyle behaviours 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 are engaged in the arts compared to those who are not.
Yeah, it's a complex statistic.
This because obviously 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 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 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 fiction-y, 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 the 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 say 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 ageing clocks that tell us a lot more about the way our bodies are ageing.
And we're seeing a similar pattern that people are ageing biologically slower when they're very regularly engaged in the arts.
It's interesting, longevity is one of the hottest, or certainly one of the most popular topics in health 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 health span.
But again, the conversation typically revolves around food, exercise. sleep.
And again, there is a huge evidence base behind those three pillars of health, as it were.
But going back to the start of this conversation about art being the fifth pillar or, as you say in the book, the forgotten 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 interesting though, because if you look back, even sort of 40, 50 years ago, there were 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 because we're now so used to hearing it.
We know the evidence base is so strong.
But my point here is that it takes time for a behaviour to be fully recognised and appreciated.
And we've had these sort of tipping points for other health behaviours 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 shifts 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.
And I saw some research a few 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 can sometimes find it harder to experience pleasure in those day-to-day things that they used to enjoy.
And so one of my prescriptions has been can you do something you love each day for five to 10 minutes?
And when I was reading some of the case studies and there's many stories in The 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 centres 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 at the moment of pleasure and things, but also in anticipation of that pleasure.
And one of the things about the arts is that 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 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, 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 first
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 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 it's almost hidden.
Yeah, exactly.
So it's sort of not accessible for us 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 that are sort of indicative of us ageing.
So we can look at people's patterns of this DNA methylation and therefore tell what their DNA age is.
The epigenetic age is.
And we already know that those other lifestyle behaviors that we'd be mentioning, like physical activity, are associated with decelerated epigenetic aging, like younger epigenetic age.
But 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 ageing, 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.
But I think the study you quoted showed that the group who listened to classical 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?
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 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 results that we've actually had coming out of randomised trials and from epidemiological big cohort evidence for the last couple of decades.
Can I ask you Daisy, again just on that point I just raised, because for me this is really key points.
People often tune into this podcast 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, going for a walk.
These are things that will 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 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 multisensory stimulation imagination, and also 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 live music event or go and look at an exhibition that's on or go to a show, because 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 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 benefits, an imagination, cognitive challenge that you get from following the moves that you might be learning as well.
Yeah, it's incredible.
It brings up something else for 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, right?
So he's talking a lot about this idea that, as you get older, one of the things the brain needs more than anything is stimulus right?
The stimulus for something new.
And he has shared research with me on multiple occasions of why dancing is so good, right?
And yes, there's a physical component, okay, depending on what dance you're doing.
I think any dancer's got a physical component.
There is often a social component if you're doing it with someone else or in a group.
But then there's also a coordination component alongside music, right?
So he's sort of making sure that it's this 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?
It's a sort of way of supercharging some of the behaviours we already know about.
And actually there was this big craze a few years ago for brain training apps that were all about 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 realised 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.
It 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 am not a not a competent dancer, but someone who very much enjoys it when it's at weddings, for example.
Yeah well, literally this morning I was reading that section on dance and I said to my wife, I said to her you know what?
Because I also, probably like you, 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 one at home.
But reading that section of your book really made me think wow, there really are additional benefits to dancing.
And I guess a lot of people feel time poor.
And I said to Vid I said you know what, I'm really starting 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, 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 explain where things you feel have been oversold.
And you say, well, this is what we know so far.
This is what we 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 wellbeing 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 Kaley 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 be a great way of sort of entry into dance.
Yeah.
You mentioned Kayleigh dancing then.
I've not really thought about Kayleigh dancing since my time at Edinburgh.
I went to uni at Edinburgh.
I worked there for two years.
I lived in Edinburgh for eight years and there was a lot of Kayleigh dancing.
Through a historical lens.
It's quite 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 doing it.
Or maybe they just enjoyed it.
Well, something that's quite interesting is if we look back across history...
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 psychology theories about the origins of singing suggest that it evolved as a way of groups bonding together before language developed.
And actually, when we find things like cave paintings or the early carving stone figurines, they often are from things that 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.
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'll 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.
It makes me think about how we used to, as humans, eat 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 art, I wonder if we've got to a situation where there's almost like there is junk food, junk art.
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 commenting on a post 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 like junk food and perhaps junk arts maybe.
Yeah.
There definitely 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 the primary, And you're right that actually a screen-based arts engagement is growing.
And actually in ArtCure.
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 watching dramas on TV or going to the cinema, 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 that.
What behaviours are displacing the time that we used to spend on arts effectively?
Yeah, 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 that what you mean when you say engaging with the arts.
You just mentioned there an example, you know, music is art, right?
I think if you ask most people, you know, does music qualify as engaging with the arts?
I think many people would probably say yes.
Yeah.
But you're saying that that background music, listening whilst you're doing something else perhaps doesn't 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.
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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 in part of it.
Now that normally means activities that involve that multisensory 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.
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 involvements.
Horticultural arts, so like growing and arranging flowers, has got that same focus on sensory stimulation 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 there are activities that we could be doing as well.
It feels like there's an active component of, in terms of our relationship with those activists, compared to a passive one.
Like we can passively consume arts, can't we?
We can, as you say, listen to music.
We can sit on the sofa and watch a drama.
I guess you're watching a drama.
In some way you're actively engaging because you're having to follow the story and imagine that you're the character, or what might you do in that situation?
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 are, 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 to use your body.
You're not having to come up with the ideas yourself.
Have that process of imagination and invention yourself.
So 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.
If we're going to get the benefits off the arts, do they need to be something that we 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, because 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 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 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 moments.
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.
Yeah, it reminds me of.
The conversation I had with Daniel Levitin a few months ago.
Daniel's a neuroscientist musician, record producer.
And I'm pretty sure in that conversation we spoke about.
You know, when people are feeling 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 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.
So there's something about that, isn't there?
And also I know some of the things you write about in the book are how it gains you with the arts.
Build our sense of identity.
I wonder how much of that is also coming from.
As you just said, 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.
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 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.
Before we do that, one thing that's just come to mind is for whatever reason, at the moment I'm loving listening to Nighty's music.
And in my head it's because it takes me back to a really influential time in my life when I saw possibility and the future.
And 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 music for people in their adolescence, because that's when all of our emotions are pretty highly charged.
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 films, for example.
Some people, including me, really hate horror films, 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 confident 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 a balance to be struck here.
It's such a subjective experience, isn't it?
Engaging with the 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 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.
And it was sung by Matt Short20 called The Way.
And whenever I hear it now, I actually don't feel sad.
It really connects me to a really important part of my life.
And it's kind of interesting, isn't it?
That it is such a subjective thing.
To someone else.
They may not want to hear a track that they listen to in the aftermath of a parent's death.
But for me, it actually connects me to that moment in time.
And I think this is actually what's so wonderful about the arts when we're thinking about lifestyle advice.
Because you know, often if people are being told to like take pills and things, it's quite an inhumane 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, 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 instability unhappiness stress burnout, frustration about the future 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 vitality.
And, you know, what are you asking us to do?
You're saying, you know.
Obviously, you don't have to enjoy it, but 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 just in the activity and 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.
I remember a story from your book, Daisy.
I think it was a palliative care ward in Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.
Yes, 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 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 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 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 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 example of how much the arts can do for us.
Yeah.
I went to see my mum last night and I told her that I was talking to you today about this topic.
And she said, oh, you know, what are you going to talk about?
I said well mum, 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, mum's 85, not in fantastic health anymore, unfortunately.
And I think I said something to her about the benefits of music.
And she said, yeah, of course.
So whenever I felt down in my life or low or stressed, I'll just sing and play songs and sing or listen to music.
And you know mum 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 rigour of the science.
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 prioritising 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 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 in orchestras and choirs and street drumming and all sorts of things.
But 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.
I don't think I really realized how fantastic that is for my kids and other kids at that school until I read your book.
I was like, oh, this isn't just an enjoyable thing to do.
It is that.
And there are all of these other benefits that Clearly not every school has that kind of relationship with the arts and music.
And you are a mother, I think, of two children.
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?
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 deprioritised 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 that 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, because 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 will be missing out on the health and well-being benefits across their whole 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 yeah, 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're not choosing, they're kind of being recommended it.
And, in the process, gone from thinking that they weren't artistic, it wasn't for them, to realising 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 the response they have when they actually enjoy it much more than they thought.
That's what happened to Russell, isn't it?
It is very much.
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 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.
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.
In the process that 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 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 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 said he's not even on any medication anymore.
I think he also says that art Saved his life.
Yeah.
I said 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've met so many people over the years who use 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 able to engage with and enjoy things day to day.
Before we get on to practical tips in terms of how people can think about introducing the arts into their lives, I just want to close the loop on dementia.
We mentioned that a couple of times and I know just from talking to a lot of my audience A lot of people do fear getting dementia.
They've seen it in 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 meal times, it can reduce emotional agitation.
Now that I think has so many practical applications.
I've spoken to a lot of carers and a lot of them will say that those are the times where there's a lot of tension.
There's, you know, someone doesn't want to be bathed, but for hygiene they need to be bathed.
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 because again, it's one where it can be quite hard.
We haven't really got medical solutions for some of 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 rationalise 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 mealtimes.
If you've forgotten what that is.
It's quite an overwhelming thing to be plunged into water or handed a plate of colourful food and implements and you don't remember how to use them.
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 playing something that's familiar can help to buffer out those background noises that might be upsetting people.
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 Lucy, 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 coloured pathways on the floor, being able to use artwork so patients remember which bed is theirs, changing the colour of surfaces these kinds of interior art-based things are 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.
So many people will say that their relative might have forgotten who they are.
But then they'll remember a song and they'll sing along.
And this is because of this particular region of the brain being preserved very late in Alzheimer's.
So playing music to people, particularly music that's got a lot of dopamine attached, that pleasure hormone we've been speaking about 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 or from really positive emotions and 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, 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 and watch them closely like 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'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 sort of able to cover it 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. 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.
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?
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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 for your fruit and veg or 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.
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 might be dance that are bringing the physical, or music 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 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, because 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 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.
Is going to the theatre 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 theatre 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 theatre 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 might be more cognitively or 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.
One thing I've seen a lot is that 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 centre and realizing COVID that they could do it on YouTube or online.
And of course there can 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 theatre and to concerts and 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's.
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.
There can be much higher now costs to actually go to some of these things.
So it 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 in to enable us to engage?
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.
And you wrote a little section on Spotify and how little artists make when their tracks are streamed and how the whole commercial model of music has changed.
That is going to have an impact, isn't it?
Because yeah, we can engage ourselves, read a book or 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 actors, 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 for doing that Actually yeah, we can want to engage, but societally 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 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 the reason I was thinking about him was there are lots of musicians that I see, certainly in the sort of music I'm interested in, who seem to still be performing in their 70s, touring everywhere, playing long show, Bruce Springsteen, sort of 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, 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?
Am I barking up the wrong tree or could there be something to it?
I mean, there are always random lucky combinations of genes.
Of course.
So I think that's something that's important to caveat upfront.
But 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 giving us a sense of purpose.
And a sense of purpose is one of the big drivers of 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.
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.
And if we think about it through the lens of what I just said about musicians, of course, if you just forget the arts and forget all those benefits and put them to the side for a minute, even the fact that people are not retiring, they're still engaging in their passion, their writing, their performing.
They've got a reason to get up and get out there and do something and engage in communities.
And 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 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, 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.
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.
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 could even just spend a few minutes doing that actually relaxes, could both 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.
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, when we're in that kind of inflammatory state, that actually doing things that will improve our mood can actually help with that recovery as well.
One of my favourite studies that you wrote about was the drumming study.
When you studied people who were drumming for six weeks and you showed that four inflammatory cytokines went down.
I mean basically, this is kind of the point we're trying to sort of highlight in this conversation, Daisy.
We might think drumming's good.
You know, it's a fun activity.
You enjoy drums, you play.
But it's so much more than that.
It's changing the inflammatory milieu inside your body.
That's really 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 because 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 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 that in people's blood.
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.
We sort of see short term effects like lower little dips in inflammation from just half an hour or an 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.
There was a study on wound healing and, in particular, expressive writing, which I found really interesting.
Because initially, when I thought about what does it mean to engage with the arts, I didn't necessarily think of expressive writing.
And then I thought, well, why not?
Journaling and writing out your emotions and trying to process them.
Well, we know that's really beneficial.
Does that count as engaging with the arts?
And then also, could you talk about that study?
If you can recall.
I know there's like hundreds of studies in the book, so you may not have them all to hand, but 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're getting their emotions and things out there.
Would it actually affect 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're doing this regular arts engagement, we can actually see it affecting these quite physical aspects of our illness, of our recovery.
Yeah.
So would you say expressive writing... could count as arts?
Definitely.
It's creative writing.
That's one of the core art forms out there.
Is that different from journaling about your own life?
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.
And they didn't see the faster 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've run 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.
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, you know, my wife and I, for example, we engage in 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 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.
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 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.
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 and a lift and it'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 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 like the slow beat, like the nice tones, sort of consonant tones, relaxing instruments, but we actually put them on tape loops so they'll play in random combinations?
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, you know I met when I worked at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital because we had this big problem around anxiety in surgical settings.
Quite understandably, people were coming in for surgeries.
They were put in kind of toilet-sized 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 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 this has 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.
But this is really important because I think we're actually being less safe, less ethical by not offering arts in these settings compared to opportunities.
It's kind of interesting, isn't it, that there is all this research there.
We've already spoken about the high blood pressure studies.
But I think you sort of wrote about this.
You know in your book this idea that when was the last time 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.
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 art therapies, have actually found that there's even greater benefits.
In fact, nearly twice the improvement in symptoms within three months if people have both together.
And I just got back from Greece last week where we've been running this incredible four-year programme saying well, what if we actually fully integrated arts on prescription as part of psychiatric care?
So we were working with, in the end, a thousand 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 theatres 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 and prescription formally part of all psychiatric care in the country.
And we've already got similar things in the UK.
We've got arts and 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, 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 nine month waiting list for taught therapy, so in the meantime we'll get you some art therapy.
Do you know what I mean?
It's the same thing, but the message we give to the page is very different.
You're waiting for the big, for the main thing.
Whilst you're waiting, do a bit of art 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 your work stating that people who engage with the arts are are more likely to engage with other health promoting behaviours.
Tell us a little bit about that.
This is 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 is spillover effect.
If you do one health promoting behaviour, you are more likely to sort of catalyse a virtuous cycle of other health promoting behaviours.
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 randomised trials.
So you have higher levels of self-control if you've taken part in several weeks of arts activities.
And that can help with inhibiting behaviours you might not want to do.
And it also helps things like self-esteem.
Self-esteem is a major driver of our behaviours 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 behaviour 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.
Because of course, cost and access to things can be a huge issue in those communities.
But lots of art forms are not that expensive, right?
So yes, going to the theatre, for example, there is a cost associated with that.
Reading a book singing, listening to music these things are perhaps a little bit more accessible than I guess.
If we're saying that engaging with the arts changes how we feel about ourselves, increases our empathy, increases our self-control, in some ways it could be quite a low-cost thing, 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.
You also write about some of the benefits that people in prison have had from engaging with the arts.
I think there was one, something called the Shakespeare behind bars that I heard you talk about.
Can you explain what sort of things the arts have been shown to do for people who are in prison?
These are incredible programmes that are trying to integrate arts within criminal justice systems, recognising 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 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.
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 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 it only felt fair to offer up one of my own.
And yeah, my younger daughter, Daphne, unfortunately was premature.
And when she was five 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.
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.
There were stories that showed that babies had reductions in their stress response.
They have 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 improvements, slight increases in her oxygen levels, that there were these reductions in her 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.
So having that voice, which is the most dominant sound they'd have had in the womb, but having that 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, fulfilling our fundamental human needs, giving us peak moments of joy and euphoria, building our wellbeing and resilience, preventing and managing senses 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.
To finish off Daisy, if there's someone listening who has realised 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 beneficial behaviours 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 out 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 bookending 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 Really hope you enjoyed that conversation.
Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life.
And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else.
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