Listening to holiday music can help runners improve their mood and speed; even non-runners benefit from music

Maybe Santa is a runner.
(Photo by Artem Maltsev, Unsplash)

Running with holiday tunes crooning in your ears can improve your mood and your stride. "It's the most wonderful time of the year for 'music doping,'" reports Mallory Arnold of Outsider. "One study had 20 male participants perform two six-minute running tests, one with and one without music. Researchers measured mean running speed, blood lactate, total distance covered, heart rate, and rate of perceived exertion. The results concluded that runners who listened to their music of choice were significantly faster and had lower blood-lactate concentrations."

No wonder Santa can get so much done in one night -- he's obviously knee-deep in snow and Dean Martin. Erin Hannon, director of the University of Nevada Las Vegas Music Lab, told Arnold, "You may not realize this, but when you listen to music, the part of your brain you're using doesn't just process sound. It's also the part that controls movement, so you're actually engaging the motor system of the body when you listen to music."

It makes sense that Santa would need to be fit.
(Photo by RawKim, Unsplash)

It's true that an individual has to enjoy holiday music for their run to improve while listening. "Those who have positive feelings around the holiday season will benefit from listening to carols while running, as the brain becomes stimulated (or aroused), hyper-focused, and releases endorphins that can not only create that 'runner's high,' but can promote short-term psychoactive effects like feelings of calm and elevated mood," Arnold explains. "Excess endorphin release has also been studied for its pain-relieving properties, which can be extremely beneficial during a run, like a natural ibuprofen."

Of course, listening to carols after the holiday may not have the same impact. Then, what's a person to do after Dec. 25? Keep listening to music -- even if you're not running or listening to holiday tunes. As Henkjan Honing points out in her report for The MIT Press Reader, a study showed "newborns possess the ability to discern a regular pulse – the beat – in music. It's a skill that might seem trivial to most of us, but that's fundamental to the creation and appreciation of music," Honing writes. "The discovery sparked a profound curiosity in me, leading to an exploration of the biological underpinnings of our innate capacity for music, commonly referred to as 'musicality.'"

Newborn babies participating in a listening experiment.
(Courtesy Eszter Rozgonyiné Lányi, MIT Reader)

"Alongside psychology and neuroscience, the realms of biology and genomics now offer effective toolkits for empirically testing theories on the origins of music in the present day," Honing reports. "Consequently, musicality research is gaining scientific respectability, coherence, and maturity. The once-speculative nature of the origins of musicality research is giving way to a more concrete and scientifically rigorous approach, making it an exciting and promising avenue" for discovery.