Dance for your brain

 Dance for your brain

 

Image de nootropicsplanet.com

Frank Bruni has just written a New York Times article “The brain is the new belly” about America’s obsession with cognitive brain failure. I know a lot about this subject, because my wife has lost her memory and I have been her carer for the past ten years. I have alternative ideas to Bruni’s suggestion that reduced alcohol and more word puzzles may help. 

 

Americans seek remedies through pills. If they can turn to the medical profession, they can avoid taking responsibility for their own actions. Years ago, in Virginia, a new doctor suggested: “The best way for me to get to know you, is for you to tell me what medicines you are taking.”  That was a short conversation: neither my wife nor I were taking any medicines. We are not Americans. Later, she needed (and still needs) eye drops to protect against glaucoma; I now take calcium tablets to fight osteoporosis. Nothing else.

The best medicines are laughter, and dancing!  Dancing is good for osteoporosis because the up-and-down movements help consolidate the bones.  I have cousins who achieve the same result with a trampoline. I put more calcium into the system (I also love cheese, and yoghourt), so there is more for the bones to consolidate. It also means that I have to trim my finger nails more often, but that is a very minor inconvenience.

 

Frank Anthony Bruni has been writing for The New York Times since 1995, and I have been reading him with pleasure since we moved to Virginia in 1999.  Now living in France, we buy the NYT International Edition every day. My wife says it is the world’s greatest newspaper. I vote for The Guardian, and so we subscribe to the Guardian Weekly (for which I used to write a column about Africa: under the name Robert Lacville. This distanced my journalistic writing from my professional work as a rural economist with development NGOs, and as a United Nations peace builder negotiating with government officials and armed rebel groups seeking a ceasefire). 

 

“I trip across more and more articles about brain optimization,” writes Bruni. “I encounter more and more ads for elixirs that promise to perpetuate my acuity and protect my precious thoughts. I’ve never been so conscious of my consciousness. I’ve never been so mindful of my mind.”

 

Bruni writes beautifully, equating the search for perfect brain with physical obsessions like a flat stomach, an unattractively muscled torso, a wrinkle-free face, a sag-free neck. The research shows that dancing can treat all of these. As the music fills your brain and flows through your being, your whole body fuses in coordinated physical movement and relaxed spiritual pleasure.  Concentrating on dance formations brings the brain’s memory functions into harmony with arms, legs and feet, with the posture of the shoulders and the muscles of the back and the stomach. We do not dance in a slouch with rounded shoulders and soggy sinews.  Good posture builds strength throughout the body, dance builds memory in the brain. Scottish dancing in particular demands that the memory partners body movements : and that can only be beneficial. And you can keep dancing through your eighties.

 

If you google Dance and Brain, first up is an advertisement for a brain supplement. Seek further and you can find more useful advice such as: “Dancing engages the mind and activates several different areas of the brain (sensory, motor, cognitive, social, and emotional) and helps them talk to one another. Research has shown the positive impact of dance on both physical and mental health.” (Foster, 2023 cited by Psychology Today). 

 

And there are lots more results about dance as therapy, helping students with their exams and their grandparents with their balance.  Here: “dance training appears to be associated with changes in brain structure, especially in regions of the brain associated with motor and auditory functions.”  Or:  “dancing effectively alleviates symptoms of depression and anxiety.”  Or again : “Dance is beneficial for increasing self-trust, self-esteem, and self-expression in children and adolescents.” 

 

My wife used to say that she preferred crossword puzzles to dancing. The research suggests that dancing produces better results. Brain or no brain, we would have shared a lot of happy moments if she had danced with me.  I am not saying that my wife could have danced the protein deposits away from her hippocampus: I have no idea how dancing affects brain proteins. But I do know that dancing brings joy, with huge mental, physical and spiritual benefits to  …..  dancers. 

 

 “Cognitive health is the next frontier in health care,” writes Bruni. Yes indeed. Where there are millions of dollars to be made, American entrepreneurs will be quick to suck up the profits.  There is far more money to be made selling brain supplements and cell-restructuring snake oil, than by encouraging people to dance.