Cardio dance: Healthy heart, healthy mind!

February is Heart Month, and I’ll take any excuse to promote heart-healthy exercise. And now there’s proof that this activity also works out your brain.

I became interested in cardio dance and memory several years ago when my older students began to tell me that their memories seemed to improve after they took my class.

I was teaching mostly cardio dance in those days. I started with simple steps and built up to a pretty complex routine.

There has to be a connection, I thought, between the physical movement, making your brain learn this routine, and improved memory.

I’m no scientist but I was curious. So, I started to break it down.

What I was having people do is learn short phrases of movement and then link them together. The cardio dance routine required them to move forward and back, side to side, remember specific steps, sometimes while using fitness equipment, and stay in rhythm.

This was a real challenge for many of my students who had never done anything like this before. As they got more proficient, the class became a social gathering because of this shared experience.

My students felt energized afterward, not exhausted. They told me that besides getting a good body workout they were getting a memory workout as well. They said they could actually remember things better.

I wondered if there was science to support our anecdotal experience.

I contacted a couple of local Alzheimer’s specialists and they told me – you’re probably right, but there weren’t any specific studies on this yet.

Fast forward to today and there is now a large body of research that supports a link between heart health and brain health as well as between learning a dance routine and cognitive health.

And, studies reveal that people with heart disease have a greater chance of developing cognitive issues. 

Vascular memory loss has been linked to heart disease and cardio fitness is a major factor in preventing and managing that issue.

Aerobic exercise increases the amount of oxygen supplied to the brain, improving mental function. Cardio fitness has been shown to reduce loss of brain cells in older adults.

But cardio fitness is just part of the equation.

Research also shows that learning and performing those dance steps further maintains cognitive sharpness

A Harvard study finds that certain types of dance, particularly with routines to learn and remember, helps prevent age-onset memory loss and diseases like Alzheimer’s.

So, ACTIVITY is the active word, not just dance, everything. The data is in. People living a healthy lifestyle are less likely to develop heart disease or dementia. It says: be physically active, mentally active and socially active, preferably all at once. Taking a Cardio Dance class or getting together with friends to do a Cardio Dance video or go out line dancing is a good place to start. I’m not shy about letting my students know how important activity can be. To this day, when I start my cardio dance class I say,

“It’s time to work out our hearts and minds!”