William Chong

Looking at two recent studies, the defining dilemma for the old pacemaker-wearing folk that love their iPods would probably be this: “which is more dangerous to me, death metal or draping my headphones across my chest?”

“Headphones interfere with heart devices” was one of the major headlines-grabbing presentations at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2008. In the news release, researchers shared their findings from investigating the effects of mp3 player headphones – most of them contain the magnetic substance neodymium – on the operation of implanted cardiac devices (e.g. pacemakers) and defibrillators.

The researchers found a detectable interference with the device by the headphones in 14 patients, (23 percent). Specifically, they observed that 15 percent of the pacemaker patients and 30 percent of the defibrillator patients had a magnet response, Maisel said.

For patients with pacemakers, exposure to the headphones can force the device to deliver signals to the heart, causing it to beat without regard to the patients’ underlying heart rhythm, he said. Exposure of a defibrillator to the headphones can temporarily deactivate the defibrillator. In most cases, removal of the headphones restores normal device function.

Patients should not focus on the brands we tested but instead should simply be instructed to keep their headphones at least 3 cm from their implantable devices.

Another study presented at the same conference (reported in stuff.co.nz) gave some interesting findings related to cardiovascular function. The authors found that listening to music you like may improve blood flow. 10 healthy non-smoking men and women had ultrasound tests to examine blood vessel function while listening either to music that made them feel happy, or music that made them anxious.

Compared to normal baseline measurements, blood vessel diameter increased 26 percent on average when the volunteers heard their joyful music. Interestingly (though hardly statistically significant), most of the volunteers chose country music as joyful(!). Listening to music they disliked narrowed blood vessels by 6 percent (most of them chose heavy metal).

I guess now we can add good music (together with statins, ACE inhibitors, dark chocolate, laughter and other undiscovered finer-things) to the list of effective vasodilators. And smooth blood flow leads to less of the blood clots that cause heart attacks and strokes. Who knew listening to the Dixie Chicks could be�good for your heart?