Researchers believe that listening to music helped people with severe respiratory disease increase their fitness levels, based on the results of a new study. Subjects with serious lung disease who listened to music while walking covered an average of 19 total miles over the course of an eight-week exercise intervention study. In comparison, the group that didn’t listen to music only walked an average of 15 total miles ? 21 percent less – by the end of the study. That four-mile difference is significant, said Gerene Bauldoff, a study co-author and an assistant professor of nursing at Ohio State University. It suggests that participants in the music group may have felt less hindered by shortness of breath, the primary physical symptom of serious lung disease.