Why singing, dancing and engaging with art is good for your health

Getting involved in the arts isn’t just a pleasurable pastime; it also appears to keep us healthier – and now we may know why. In the largest study of its kind, scientists have shown that engaging in creative activities is linked to beneficial changes in proteins involved in reducing inflammation and keeping the brain healthy.

“We have discovered a whole host of new biological pathways that help to explain the relationship between the arts and health outcomes,” says Daisy Fancourt at University College London.

Over the past decade, evidence has been accumulating that taking part in musical, theatrical or other creative arts can have powerful health benefits. Dance programmes, for example, help people with Parkinson’s disease walk, while children who engage with the arts have a lower risk of depression.

Previous research also suggests that people who are more involved in the arts tend to have lower levels of inflammation, which is linked to better physical and mental health. But most of these studies examined only a handful of markers in the blood, limiting their use. Now, technological advances have made it possible to measure hundreds of proteins and integrate that data into large population studies. This approach, known as proteomics, builds a detailed picture of how our behaviours influence our biology.

Using this method, Fancourt and her colleagues analysed data from around 6000 UK adults, based on a one-off blood sample, examining how engagement in the arts is related to 184 proteins associated with multiple systems in the body and brain.

The team created a measure for how engaged in the arts each person was by combining the frequency of their engagement with the diversity of their activities, and found that the more a person engaged with the arts – such as dancing, singing, reading, practicing photography, crafting and attending the opera – the more likely they would have specific increases or decreases in 18 proteins.

Using follow-up data, the researchers also showed that those who were more engaged in the arts had a lower future risk of several conditions, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, depression and dementia. Crucially, they showed that the protein changes explained 16 to 38 per cent of the association between arts engagement and better health outcomes, even after accounting for confounding factors, such as income and education.

Some of the proteins affected are involved in metabolism, while others keep brain cells healthy. Several were also linked with pathways that increase anti-inflammation processes and reduce levels of inflammatory proteins. “So it might be that the arts are stimulating a rebalancing of the inflammatory system,” says Fancourt.

“While it has long been assumed that participation in arts activities benefits health and well-being, the underlying mechanisms have remained unclear,” says Daryl O’Connor at the University of Leeds, UK. Although the results will need replication in other populations, he says the study is exciting and highlights new opportunities for studying how our behaviours influence our health.

Carmine Pariante at Kings College London says the findings are consistent with the protective effects of arts and culture on mental and physical health. However, he points out that the study presents a biological snapshot at only one point in time, so it is unclear how much arts exposure we need to generate this protective effect.

One potential next step, says Fancourt, is to carry out causal studies, such as monitoring specific proteins before and after people partake in the arts.