BENEFITS OF HAVING A BOP

Parkinson’s Disease is not the only condition showing positive responses to dance therapy. A 2017 mini-review published in Current Alzheimer Research looked at dancing as an intervention tool for people with dementia. The authors said their findings confirmed the positive effect of dancing therapy on cognitive, physical, emotional and social performance of people with dementia. They also noted that further research is needed to support their findings.

Another study, published this year in the Journal of Huntington’s Disease, explored the effect of contemporary dance in people with Huntington’s Disease – an inherited disease that causes the progressive breakdown of nerve cells in the brain, usually leading to movement, cognitive and psychiatric disorders.

Participants practised dance for at least two hours per week over five months, while the control group had the usual care. They found that movement impairment decreased slightly in the dance group, while it increased in controls. Brain volume was found to have increased in areas supporting spatial and somatosensory processing. Patients also reported that dance altered the way they “felt and lived in their bodies”.