How Dance Improves Balance and Slows Down Aging

As you age, you feel like your body wages war against itself. Sitting at a desk for hours on ends makes you slump and leads to bad posture and poor balance. Your mood drops, affecting your self-esteem and immune system. Brain fog plagues you and you become forgetful (but you always remember where the coffee is, obviously).

Physical exercise affects the hippocampus area of the brain, dedicated to balance, learning and memory, but joining the gym went the way of the dodo several months ago. A 2017 study compared dancing with endurance training, in which elders participated for 18 months, and both provided an anti-aging effect. However, only dance improved balance in participants.

The study was published in Frontiers in Human NeuroScience, an open-access journal. Exercise itself can counteract decline in physical and mental capability, as can dance, but only dancing leads to behavior changes related to bettering balance, the study found. The elderly volunteers, close to the age of 68, each were assigned to either weekly courses of endurance training or learning various dance routines over 18 months.

Why Balance and the Brain Improves

Both groups experienced a boost in the hippocampus area, but balance improved only in dance participants. Why?

The fitness program included repetitive exercises that varied, such as Nordic walking and cycling. However, the dance group received new challenges every week as dance routines continued to build and shift to new music genres. These shifts required more activity from the brain as the students needed to practice continuous learning. Steps, formations, speed, rhythm and arm-patterns shifted, and students had to recall routines without cues and under the pressure of time.

The benefits of dance can improve mood and general physical health, but it also can reduce aging effects in the brain by keeping your brain constantly "on its feet" as it learns. Dr. Kathrin Rehfeld, lead author of the study, stated, "I believe that everybody would like to live an independent and healthy life, for as long as possible. Physical activity is one of the lifestyle factors that can contribute to this, counteracting several risk factors and slowing down age-related decline. I think dancing is a powerful tool to set new challenges for body and mind, especially in older age."