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Ed Sheeran is literally saving lives with his music. A British teenager says the singer’s debut album helped him overcome a battle with anorexia that began when he was just 12 years old.
Ashton Wyss, now 17, says that professional treatment he received for his anorexia never stuck. But in 2011, he began repeatedly listening to Sheeran’s debut album, +, and felt the urge to eat again. “As soon as I played the album, I could feel my mood lifting,” shares Wyss, adding that Sheeran’s music “became my coping mechanism. It helped me to let my feelings out instead of trapping them inside which makes me feel worse.”
By early 2012, Wyss had returned to his normal weight. He’s even studying now at the Access to Music College in London and hopes to follow in Sheeran’s footsteps as a musician. “It’s my dream to meet him,” Wyss admits to the Mirror. “The closest I came was when I waited for hours after a gig for him to appear. I nearly got a selfie but at the last second a girl jumped in front, so you can just see me in the background.”
Wyss is not the only person to use pop music get through health woes. As Gossip Cop has reported, a fan named Ronnie Brower said in March that Taylor Swift’s music helped him lose more than 400 pounds, while in 2012 Justin Bieber vowed to meet 11-year-old Megan Ham, whose rare neurological disorder seemed to improve whenever she listened to his music.
