Might Dancing Delay
Dementia?
Yuki Noguchi
(c) 2003, The
Oct. 16, 2003 12:00 AM
Synopsis:
In a recent study of nearly 500 people by
the
Article:
There's this guy I dance with, Arnold
Taylor. He has firm hands and shoulders, and his favorite eight-step
swing move has this merry-go-round feel to it. Everything in the periphery is a
blur except his face, which usually bears a broad grin. He's strong - a
fact he underscores by introducing himself, with a wink, simply as
"Ahnoldt." This faux Schwarzenegger's dance card is usually pretty
full. And when he walks, it's more like he's swaggering to a syncopated
beat. It's easy to mistake this 78-year-old retired reverend for a lady's
man. But really, when he's on the dance floor, he's just reflecting the
spiritual joy he's gotten out of his favorite form of recreation.
"What do I like most about dance? Oh, well, the sort of happy human
relationship. Being with somebody and having fun," he says.
Long-time dancers like
"Dance is not purely physical in many ways, it also requires a lot of
mental effort," said Joseph Verghese, the lead researcher of the study,
published in June in the New England Journal of Medicine. Though many studies
have explored the relationship between activity and dementia, he said, "if
you review them, the (activities) that are purely physical do not seem to have
any effect reducing dementia." "Certainly among my patients
(who dance), their posture is different and the way they walk is
different," Verghese said. Changes in walking patterns, he said, are often
symptoms of mental decline.
Among the participants in the Verghese study, those who danced frequently -
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. The same study showed that
doing puzzles, mind games and other mentally stimulating activities also reduce
the incidence of dementia, but that purely physical activities - swimming, bicycling,
walking, climbing stairs - had no preventive value.
The results don't surprise Jamie Platt, 53, an analyst for the Social Security
Administration who gets his kicks folk dancing, Balkan, Turkish and Armenian
style. "I have a very sedentary kind of job. But when I go dancing,
I get my ya-yas out," said Platt, "It keeps me very vibrant. The
dances that we do have very complex footwork. You have to think about the
complex rhythms. So it keeps you on the ball," Platt said.
So what is it about dance that might make it life- and brain-enhancing?
The short answer, said Verghese: "I really don't know." True,
it involves movement, and there are dozens of studies that show - even if the
Einstein Center study didn't - a positive correlation between physical exercise
of all kinds and mental health. Essentially, exercise seems to jazz the
brain. Sustained aerobic activity involves not just those parts of the
brain that control motor and sensory functions, but also the hippocampus - the
section responsible for memory and many other cognitive functions, said Carl W.
Cotman, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine.
"It's surprising, because you'd think, 'What's that got to do with
movement?' but it does," said Cotman, who studies the influence of
exercise on the brains of rats and mice. In animals that exercise, the
connections between brain cells grow stronger, and a protein (brain-derived
neurotrophic factor, or BDNF) shown to improve neuron survival increases.
In addition, Cotman says - citing a finding that supports the theory that dance
is better for your brain than other fitness activities - physically active
animals that have an "emotional support system," like interacting
with other animals, see even more benefits in their brains. Or it's
possible that dance may not turn out to be a buffer at all. The Einstein Center
study has many critics.
"I think there is nothing unique about dance in particular that is
beneficial for Alzheimer's," said Bill Thies, vice president of medical
and scientific affairs for the Alzheimer's Association. "The numbers
involved in (the Einstein Center) research are too small, and a correlation, or
a causal relationship, is difficult to establish."
Verghese's study followed 469 people over the age of 75 - none of whom showed
signs of dementia at the start - from 1980 to 2001. The participants underwent
a series of clinical and neuropsychological tests at enrollment, and were
tested every 12 to 18 months after that. Within this group, 130 people danced
frequently (three or more times a week), 83 swam frequently, 26 bicycled
frequently and 19 played games frequently. For Thies, those numbers are
problematic. Definitive studies, he said, examine more than 10,000 people for a
decade or more. He's not the only critic.
"There are inherent limitations to
these kinds of studies because they are behavioral and self-selected,"
meaning, in this case, that the group included only those without a condition
that would keep them off the dance floor,"said David Bennett, a doctor of
neurology and director of the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Research Center in
Chicago. "You don't see the people who are not dancing."
"It's difficult to determine whether something is acting on the brain when
a person dances that actually reduces the risk of mental decline," said
Bennett. "There may be something about dance that attracts a certain type
of person who is less depressed, more social and less stressed," all
qualities that could also help stave off dementia, he said. More studies are
needed to test which qualities actually are affecting the brain, he said.
Research hasn't produced a consensus on what protects against dementia,
either. Some studies show that people with higher levels of education -
and therefore, presumably, more developed brains - tend to be less likely to
develop dementia. Other studies link brain health with a healthful diet and
good circulation. Still others suggest that people with depressive
personalities are more prone to dementia later in life. Dementia usually
leaves markers. Brain scans sometimes show deposits of the protein amyloid,
which essentially creates roadblocks for brain signals. Other people have
plaques and tangles, knots of intertwined, dysfunctional nerve cells. Sometimes
there are lesions on the brain tissue. Sometimes the brain shrinks.
A study published in July showed that elderly women who were overweight
developed Alzheimer's disease with greater frequency than those of lesser
weight. Among 260 Swedish women, those who were overweight or obese at age 70
were more likely than others of similar age to develop dementia or Alzheimer's
in their 80s.
"When you're considering a disease of late life, it's never one factor
working in isolation," said Deborah Gustafson, whose research on Swedish
women appeared in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Other common ailments such
as heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes have also been linked to
higher rates of dementia. "But we still found there's an independent
effect between high body fat and dementia," said Gustafson. Most dance
burns fat.
Research may still be far from being able to prove that dance is, in fact, good
for aging minds. But it's difficult to dispute that, on the whole, dancers have
a lot of positive energy.
Like my buddy Arnold Taylor. He danced
through what must have been two of the grimmest periods of his youth: the Great
Depression and World War II. But when he tells stories about his past in
his usual animated fashion, he's generally talking about how he and his sister
showed off their dance moves in the Grange halls of western
Who knows why some things - dance steps or brain power - come back, while
others never do? While science tries to identify whether it's the drugs
we take, the diet we eat or the dances we do, maybe the sensible thing to do to
stave off dementia is to hit the dance floor. It may not work, but it's lots of
fun.