Singing keeps heart healthy.

Do you know that singing keep your heart healthy and provide many other benefits to you?

Singing is now believed to exercises your heart, lungs and releases endorphins, making you feel good.

Singing could have more benefits to singers than mere passion and joy believe to derive from it.This is more evident in choir settings which is composed of many choristers.

 In 2012, Norwegian researchers found that singing in a choir may help form social bonds; while a 2007 U.K. study found that choristers were better able to cope with stress.

A new exploratory study out of Sweden reveals that singing in a choir may not only promote mental and emotional well-being, social connection and collaboration, but also good heart health.

To study the benefits of choral singing on the body, researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy at Sweden's Gothenburg University studied the heart rates of high school choir members as they sang in unison.

What they found according to their paper published in Frontiers in Neuroscience in 2013, was astonishing.

Musicologist Björn Vickhoff, who led the study, explained that not only did the choir members' heart rates slow down as they began to sing, but their heartbeats gradually synchronized, eventually beating as one, with the song's tempo as a guide.

"When you exhale [as you sing] you activate the vagus nerve, we think, that goes from the brain stem to the heart. And when that is activated the heart beats slower," Vickhoff told the BBC , referring to the complex nerve that is believed to be linked to emotional health.

Comparing choral singing to doing yoga, Vickhoff said that the controlled breathing used in both activities may have positive long-term effects on heart health and blood pressure. Vickhoff has also said that choral singing, like yoga, may be beneficial to one's mental and emotional health.

Also, many other benefits such as clearing of throat, fresh and   odourless  breath are aided by singing.

Why don't you start singing now to enjoy its benefits?