Salsa Dancing Offers Physical and Mental Benefits to Partners
By Richard Methia
Salsa dancing can be a hot, sweaty way to spend a fun evening. It might even get a person a spot on television’s popular “So You Think You Can Dance?” competition. Apart from its sheer enjoyment salsa dance moves can relieve stress, sharpen mental acuity, and, thanks to new findings, perhaps even delay dementia and stave off breast cancer among older women.
Study Shows Promise for Salsa Dancing in Delaying Onset of Dementia
In a March 24, 2008, article, “Over-50s Are Shown How to Stay Limber;" (Northumberland, England Evening Chronicle) Jane Picken, the newspaper’s health reporter, interviewed over fifty people who took dancing lessons. One of Picken’s interviewees, a retired telecom manager, offered this testimonial about his salsa class, "Salsa dancing certainly helps with co-ordination, balance and even concentration so it's good for the mind."
The Northumberland telecom manager’s personal testimonial is buttressed by some promising research. OnlineSalsa.com reports that a New England Journal of Medicine study “found dancing potentially reduces the risk of elderly persons getting dementia such as Alzheimer’s disease.” The study’s lead researcher, Dr. Joseph Verghese, Albert Einstein College of Medecine, explains in the article that learning complex moves, which is required to learn to salsa dance, increases mental activity both because of the additional blood flow from the physical exertion and the need to recall complicated dance steps. Verghese also noted the beneficial social and stress relieving attributes of dances that are enjoyable and require physical closeness to partners, such as salsa.
U.S. Study Suggests Salsa Dancing May Prevent Breast Cancer in Older Women
An October 31, 2008, article in Britain’s The Daily Mail, reported that to dance salsa may also reduce the incidences of breast cancer. In “Vigorous Exercise Cuts Breast Cancer Risk in Over-60s'; Take a Twirl: Fast Dancing Counts as Vigorous,” Fiona MacRae wrote, “Getting stuck into the housework or doing salsa dancing late in life could significantly cut a woman's risk of breast cancer, research shows.” MacRae explained that for eleven years U.S. government researchers tracked over 32,000 women, whose average age was 61, and found that “Women who regularly carry out strenuous exercise in their 60s are 30 per cent less likely to develop the disease.”
Salsa Lessons Prod Creativity in Scientific Research
Salsa dancing is now thought to ease blood pressure, increase stamina, potentially stave off dementia and hopefully reduce breast cancer in older women. But salsa steps as a way to improve scientific research? Social scientist Kristin Luker would say, “Absolutely!” In her provocative book, Salsa Dancing into the Social Sciences: Research in an Age of Info-Glut,” (Harvard University Press; Cambridge, 2008) Luker makes a case for learning how to salsa as a powerful, if decidedly un-traditional, method for social scientists who need to restart their stalled intellectual engines.
“I’ve come to believe,” says Luker in the book’s introduction, “that salsa dancing (or any other enterprise that makes you hot and sweaty and takes your mind off your work) is absolutely essential to successful research.” She explains that the “seductive rhythms” of salsa subvert the logical brain and allow the researcher’s intuitive sense to well up.
In Salsa Dancing into the Social Sciences Luker re-packages what is known about the benefit of interaction between right and left brains. In doctoral-level language Luker explains that salsa dancing “aims to hit that sweet spot between the rigor and theory-building capacities of canonical quantitative social science research, and the emergent, open-ended, and pragmatic capabilities of traditional field research.” The rest of the book, burdened with similar jargon, is a slog for the lay reader, but it is refreshing to know that on occasion even Ph.D. researchers have salsa in their soul.
Kristin Luker’s professional insights into the intellectual benefits of salsa dancing are just the latest of many surprising suggestions that salsa is good for much more than simply having a good time on the dance floor.
Disclaimer: The information contained in this article is for educational purposes only and should not be used for diagnosis or to guide treatment without the opinion of a health professional. Any reader who is concerned about his or her health should contact a doctor for advice.
Copyright Richard Methia
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