Why art is important for your health, just like exercise

When she has time, Daisy Fancourt likes to sit at the piano and play something by Bach, Francis Poulenc or, if her children are with her, a nursery rhyme.

There’s nothing frivolous about playing or listening to music. It can reduce stress and inflammation, improve heart health, lift moods and slow cognitive decline, according to Fancourt’s book, “Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Save Lives,” out in February. Other artistic pursuits, from painting landscapes to taking salsa lessons, have similar benefits.

Shelf Help is a wellness column where we interview researchers, thinkers and writers about their latest books — all with the aim of learning how to live a more complete life.

“I think somehow the arts are still seen as ‘fluffy,’ even though we have such strong evidence about everything they do,” says Fancourt, a professor of psychobiology and epidemiology at University College London, and director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Centre for Arts and Health. She calls art the forgotten fifth pillar of health, alongside diet, exercise, nature and sleep.

“With physical activity, we all take it seriously — even if people don’t do it, they know they ought to be doing it. And I think it would be wonderful to get to that same place with the arts.”

Portrait of author Daisy Fancourt.

(Tom Burton)

Despite Fancourt’s skill as a pianist (as a college student, she played for a classical radio station between taking classes at Oxford University and interning at a hospital arts program), she insists that people needn’t be master artists to improve their physical health and mental well-being. A simple visit to a museum or a live theater production can do wonders, as can a humble activity such as knitting.

Scientist that she is, Fancourt presents plenty of evidence for art as a cure to what ails us. But her main concern is helping people “see how they can apply the evidence in their daily lives and make changes that will improve their health.”

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

What are some of the most important ways that the arts can make us healthier?

When we engage in the arts, we activate reward and pleasure networks in the brains, we experience the release of dopamine as a happy hormone, and we also psychologically give our brains what they need to be happy. We give our brains a sense of autonomy, control, mastery and a way of regulating our emotions, all of which are fundamental to our mental health.

Arts engagement affects nearly every region of the brain. And if we engage regularly, it actually affects the size, structure and functioning of those brain regions, which can help with the development of brains in young children. It can help with the preservation of cognition as we get older. It can even help our brain to develop new neural pathways around brain injuries.

Every system in the body is affected by art. So when we breathe through singing, we support our respiratory muscles. When we dance, we reduce our blood pressure and glucose levels. When we look at relaxing paintings, we actually activate our pain analgesic response.

“Art Cure” by Daisy Fancourt book cover.

(Celadon Books)

In the book, you describe screen time as the “ultra-processed food” of the arts. Why isn’t watching content on screens as beneficial as experiencing the arts in person?

When we looked at people going to the cinema versus going to live theater or music gigs, we found there were no benefits to cognition from regularly going to the cinema as they got older, but they had better cognitive preservation if they were going to live performances instead. That’s not to say [engaging in the arts] online is necessarily bad for you — there are plenty of examples where it’s good. But it can dilute benefits you would get from real-life social interactions.

You point out that narratives on TV can have some benefits, but now people are migrating to even shorter videos on TikTok and Instagram. How do you think about the difference between consuming content on, say, Netflix versus scrolling on TikTok?

We know that shortened engagement just doesn’t provide the same kind of meaning that you can get from longer engagement. And it’s not just online. We’re guilty of that even when we go to museums. The average amount of time that people spend looking at artwork in museums is 28 seconds. If you really want to enjoy the arts, you have to give them your attention, whether that’s really looking at a picture properly in a gallery and thinking about your response to it, or whether it’s taking the time — not for a 30-second clip on TikTok — but a 30-minute drama that’s actually going to allow you to get into the details of storylines and characters.

So, I recently tried and failed to read “Ulysses.” People might have lofty ambitions to read a great novel or learn how to play an instrument, but at the end of the day they turn on the TV because they’re exhausted. What are some strategies to engage with the arts in a meaningful way when people have limited time and energy?

Pick the art you want to do, not the art you think you ought to do. So if “Ulysses” is what you want to be reading, then great, but don’t think that some kind of highbrow art is going to be the best for you. It’s not. You need to pick art that you think you’re going to enjoy, that speaks to you, that you have a frame of reference for. So that’s my first point. My second point is to make it equal to your energy level. If you don’t have the energy to read a book, why not turn on a concert on the radio? But don’t be on your phone. Don’t be doing anything else. Don’t multitask. Just sit and enjoy that concert and that experience.

Another thing to consider: How can you make [regularly engaging with the arts] doable? If you would normally go out and meet up with friends in the evening for a drink, well, how about going and meeting up and doing a craft activity instead? So it’s not requiring any more time. If you’d normally read the news on your way to work, swap that for a book. Those simple swaps can make it much more feasible.

I was fascinated by the “tragedy paradox” that you mentioned in your book. Can you talk about why art that deals with depressing and scary situations can actually make us feel happier at times?

It makes sense that happy art would make you happy. But actually, reading sad books or listening to sad songs, even watching scary films, people say that makes them feel happier. In our real lives, if we experience a sad or scary thing, then it’s sad or scary. But when we’re experiencing it through art, because it’s art, we know it’s not real, therefore there’s a detachment from it. Our brains get to use that experience almost as a learning process, to think about, “How can I regulate this emotion? How would I respond in the real world?” Also, we find that when we have negative and positive emotions together, we find events much more memorable, including arts events.

[Note: Fancourt writes in the book that sad or scary works of art that trigger negative memories from our past do not help us regulate our emotions.]

How often should we be engaging with the arts to get the full health benefit?

Think about it like you think about food. So we all need to be eating every day. We should all be doing some kinds of arts every day.

(Maggie Chiang / For The Times)