A GP has called for fellow doctors to prescribe singing as an alternative to medicine.
Dr Simon Opher said he sees patients less often if they join a singing group or a choir because singing has a wide range of health and social benefits.
Music therapy has already been used successfully in care homes for sufferers of dementia and singing can also help people with Parkinson's disease.
The Gloucestershire-based GP said: "People see me less if they start singing...They tend to use less health resources generally.
"In terms of funding this is something the NHS is really backing now."
Dr Opher continued: "If doctors are listening, it's really important you start thinking about these types of remedies because it makes a patient better in lots of generalised ways as well, as well as in these specific ways of breathing and dementia.
"It's not a panacea but it can really help your work as a doctor.”
Dr Opher was speaking during an event at the Cheltenham Science Festival, discussing whether singing can improve health.
"In dementia there is some evidence that when we sing there is an area of our brain that gets more blood flow and they are the ones that are usually preserved in dementia," he said.
He also said that research has shown that singing can help people with Parkinson's because it improves the loudness of their voice, which can be weakened by the disease.
Dr Daisy Fancourt, a senior research fellow at UCL, said a link between arts and health can be traced back over millennia and singing has been shown to help improve heart rate, blood pressure, mood and depression.
"Singing involves emotional expression and regulation, which we know is good for mental health.
"Singing can also help us get out of the house, so reducing those sedentary behaviours that can be bad for physical health.
"It can also provide social interaction to reduce feelings of isolation.”
Dr Fancourt added that attending musical concerts also has a positive effect on health.
"There was almost the same biological reduction in stress from classical music concerts as from rock concerts, which might sound strange but underlines the contextual factor that going to concerts is often a relaxing activity regardless of the genre," she said.
