The Fine Dining of Brain Food

We all know someone who’s been affected by dementia. It’s a burgeoning epidemic.

Many people throw their hands in the air and say, “Aging isn’t for the timid.” They view dementia as an inevitable consequence of getting older. Their way of dealing with their fear of a similar fate is pretending it won’t happen to them.

Let’s play a bigger game than that. Let’s live empowered lives. And let’s live on the leading edge. Let’s talk about preventing dementia.

If there was a pill that reduced your risk of dementia by 28 percent and Alzheimer’s disease (a form of dementia) by 45 percent, would you take it?

There is something that reduces your risk of dementia that much. But it’s not a pill.

Here’s how the researchers who wrote a review of scientific evidence about this thing and dementia put it:

“Epidemiological research shows a consistent relationship between higher physical activity levels and a reduced risk of developing dementia. In a meta-analysis of 16 prospective, epidemiological studies on the incidence of neurodegenerative disease, engaging in more baseline physical activity reduced the risk of developing all-cause dementia by 28% and of developing AD by 45%, even after controlling for confounding variables.” (1)

Exercise is brain food.

But wait, it gets better. Yes, there’s something even better at preventing dementia than exercise. How researchers figured this out is very interesting.

It’s been known for decades that cognitive challenge prevents dementia. This is why you hear people recommending doing crossword puzzles, learning a language, and that kind of thing. Use it or lose it, so to speak.

Knowing that both exercise and cognitive challenge prevent dementia, researchers began examining what happened when they exposed mice/rats to both exercise and cognitive challenges—at the same time. They hypothesized there’d be a synergistic effect—and they were right. Combining exercise and cognitive challenge is super effective at preventing dementia in mice/rats. (2,3)

Then, researchers made the observation that there’s a certain human activity that seems to combine exercise with various forms of cognitive challenge. Can you guess what it is?

It’s dancing.

Over time, dozens of scientific studies have explored the relationship between dancing and dementia, and the results are simply astounding. Dancing is the fine dining of brain food:

“In this study, we compared the effects of participation in either a dance program or a conventional physical fitness sport program on brain function and volume in healthy seniors. The dance program was a newly designed intervention that required constantly learning new dance choreographies. The conventional sport program focused mainly on repetitive motor exercises. As a main finding, we observed that after 6 months of training, the volumes in the left precentral gyrus of the dancers had increased more than those in the sport group. After another 12 months of training, an additional volume increase was observed in the right parahippocampal gyrus of the dancers. BDNF levels increased during the first 6 months of dance training and returned to the pre-treatment values after 18 months. In the conventional sport group, a similar increase in BDNF was not evident. Because the cardiovascular fitness levels over the course of the interventions remained constant in both groups, the observed effects could not be attributed to improvements in physical fitness but instead seemed to be related to the specific features of the dance program. These features included the requirement to constantly learn new choreographies (i.e., memory), to integrate multisensory information, to coordinate the whole body and to navigate in space.” (3)

It’s super interesting that exercise is a potent preventer of dementia. It’s even more interesting that dancing is an even more potent preventer of dementia. Nature is telling us something. Nature is telling us to dance. There’s a reason there isn’t a hit pop song Shut Up and Get on the Elliptical Machine to Burn 300 Kilocalories. It just doesn’t work like that. Nature doesn’t want us to merely burn energy. Nature wants us to move—and have a darn good time doing so. Most people dance with a spirt of play, not a spirit of toil, and it’s amazingly good for you. No pain, all gain.

The other notable thing about dancing is it’s very dynamic movement. There’s a lot going on. When you dance, yes, you’re using your muscles circulating your blood. In this sense, it’s like most types of exercise. But there’s much more going on. You’re listening to music. You’re coordinating your movements to the music. You’re often coordinating your movements with those of at least one other person. You’re continually aware of your position in the space around you. You’re maintaining your balance. You’re often learning new steps. You’re often interacting closely with at least one other person, with your interactions often including touch, eye contact, and enjoying life together. Dancing is usually social. It’s almost always enjoyable.

In science speak:

“Compared to activities such as exercising, walking or playing an instrument, dance has the advantage of combining several key features, each well-documented to have beneficial effects: dancing activities include physical exercise, but can be performed at different levels of expertise, resulting in a high compliance and motivation, with only a few dropouts. Furthermore, dancing activities include social and emotional interactions as well as cognitive requirements. Moreover, our present data show that even moderate doses of physical activity, which are not sufficient to affect cardio-respiratory performance, can in combination with these other features have beneficial effects on cognition, attention, posture and balance, and sensorimotor performance, as well as subjective well-being. Given these findings, dancing activities seem to be a highly appropriate choice of intervention to ameliorate age-related deterioration by enforcing and maintaining plasticity processes, thereby contributing to successful aging.” (4)

Dynamic movement stimulates you in a way mere energy burning doesn’t.

Contrast everything that’s going on during dancing with what’s going on for a person who’s sitting on a stationary bike and watching a soap opera on the gym television. Right? There’s not a lot going on there. Not much enjoyment. Not much life. Just passing time and burning energy.

We’re wired for movement with life in it. Fun. Pleasure. Connection. Learning.

Should we all be out dancing in the streets?

That sure wouldn’t be a bad thing, but there are other options too. Some other types of very dynamic movement include:

1. Hiking
2. Game sports (ultimate, racquetball, soccer, et cetera)
3. Mountain biking
4. Trail running
5. Cross-country skiing
6. Surfing
7. Paddleboarding
8. Rock climbing (Indoor rock climbing is a great option if you live in a place with a long winter as I do.)
9. Martial arts
10. High-quality strength training (Do total-body, free-standing, integrated, dynamic exercises; avoid single-muscle, supported, isolated, static exercises.)
    10. Yoga

You know what the specific best types of movement are for you. I simply invite you to explore movement with as much life in it as possible. It feels great at the moment, and it helps keep a little more life in you a little longer.

(1) Physical Activity, Brain Plasticity, and Alzheimer’s Disease. Archives of Medical Research, 2012, 10.1016/j.arcmed.2012.09.008.
(2) Dancing or Fitness Sport? The Effects of Two Training Programs on Hippocampal Plasticity and Balance in Healthy Seniors. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2017, 10.3389/fnhum.2017.00305.
(3) Evolution of Neuroplasticity in Response to Physical Activity in Old Age: The Case for Dancing. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 2017, 10.3389/fnagi.2017.00056.
(4) Six Months of Dance Intervention Enhances Postural, Sensorimotor, and Cognitive Performance in Elderly Without Affecting Cardio-Respiratory Functions. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 2013, 10.3389/fnagi.2013.00005.

About Jason Gootman
Jason Gootman is a Mayo Clinic Certified Wellness Coach and National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach as well as a certified nutritionist and certified exercise physiologist. Jason helps people reverse and prevent type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other ailments with evidence-based approaches to nutrition, exercise, stress reduction, holistic wellness, and, most importantly, lasting behavior improvement and positive habit formation. As part of this work, Jason often helps people lose weight and keep it off, in part by helping them overcome the common challenges of yo-yo dieting and emotional eating. Jason helps people go from knowing what to do and having good intentions to consistently taking great care of themselves in ways that help them add years to their lives and life to their years.