If you don’t dance, clearly you should be. According to this article that I have found, dancing makes you smarter. The New England Journal of Medicine did a study on the effects of recreational activities on mental acuity in aging. They studied all kinds of cognitive activities, such as, reading, writing, doing crossword puzzles, playing cards, and playing musical instruments. They also studied physical activities, such as, playing tennis and golf, swimming, biking, dancing, walking for exercise, and housework. Dancing was the greatest risk reduction out of any of the activities and the only physical activity that made any difference. The question they had to ask next was why dancing? And what they discovered is that doing activities, which require split-second rapid-fire decision-making, is the best way to improve mental acuity. I think this is so fascinating to me because I was always taught that the best way to exercise your brain is to read. According to this, the key is in decision-making, which I think could be a lot of different activities, but I personally like the idea of dancing best!
I have put the link for the article below so you can read about the whole study and other interesting tidbits, like whether this is more beneficial for men or women.
http://socialdance.stanford.edu/syllabi/smarter.htm
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