Benefits from dancing as exercise
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Our mission is to provide companionship, exercise, and enjoyment through the medium of Social Dancing
According to a 21-year study led by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, regular dancing has enormous potential benefits.
This study showed that stimulating one’s mind by dancing can ward off Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.
Although other activities had some benefits, dancing was overwhelmingly the most effective physical activity to offer protection against dementia.
Apparently, dancing also makes us smarter, provides a sense of well-being, and can help with stress reduction.
The extract below is from a Research Scientist at the Pittsburgh University School of Medicine; he discussed exercise, especially physical exercise using the brain, as a tool to ward off dementia in later life.
“Take dance lessons. In a study of nearly 500 people, dancing was the only regular physical activity associated with a significant decrease in the incidence of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease. The people who danced three or four times a week showed 76 percent less incidence of dementia than those who danced only once a week or not at all.”
Dancing has fantastic health benefits
Dance classes can prevent fatal conditions including cancer, heart disease, and dementia, experts claim. Just two and a half hours of dancing a week would also save the NHS almost £11 billion over the next 10 years. It would prevent more than 850,000 cases of disease and injury for over-60s in the decade, says fitness expert UKactive. Dancing has “fantastic health benefits” and “reduces the loneliness and isolation much older folk experience”, doctors said. UKactive’s Steven Ward said: Inactive people are robbed of retirements because weak bones and joints lead to falls which render them immobile. It’s vital we shift from a cure to prevention and build exercise into our lives as early as possible.” Dancing would prevent 410,000 people from breaking hips if all those over 61 did 150 minutes each week, saving £3.3 billion, according to the online analysis. The number diagnosed with coronary heart disease may also fall by 104,000 and 40,000 fewer would have strokes.