Dr. Daisy Fancourt

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445 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 3 Aug

Dr. Daisy Fancourt’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz · Why Creativity Belongs in Your Health Routine with Dr. Daisy Fancourt · 3 Aug 2026 podcast

So if we listen to music, let's say at that 60 beats a minute, you'll actually find over a couple of minutes your own heart rate slowing down to match that rate.

So that process of entrainment is a physiological thing we can do through music to calm our anxiety.

And one of the things I love, actually, is that if you do it.

Oh.

Yeah, keep going.

Well, I was going to say, if you do it regularly, if you do it regularly, it actually accumulates as well.

So if people can put aside 20 minutes once or twice a day, then every day, just to listen to music, we actually see not only reductions in overall anxiety levels, so not just in the moment, but overall in how anxious people say they feel they are, but we can also see improvements in things like sleep, which of course is so linked in with our stress and anxiety, and even things like pain.

People actually report improvements in pain

just from listening to music for 20 minutes a day because of that relaxation response.

You can see it if you're listening to a piece of music and you can look at a clock and see it ticking or something, you can get that sense.

But actually there's a lovely principle called the ISO principle, which I think is really helpful here.

Because sometimes if you're feeling really stressed, then just playing something calm can be a bit too much of a stretch.

You can be like, right now I'm feeling anxious.

So playing me something calm might even make me feel more frustrated with the situation.

So the ISO principle says start off with a piece of music that's matching your current state.

So if you're feeling stressed, pick a music that's got fast beats that you're really like, this is how I'm feeling.

And then each track that you listen to, you can move down into slightly calmer beats.

beats per minute until you get something that's a much more calm piece of music I'd say don't worry about exactly is this 60 or is this 65 beats a minute it's more about just moving from that high high number of beats that fast music down to something that's calming and relaxing where you feel that you've matched that new mood

Right.

Yeah.

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