Want better balance as you age? Dance.
Research shows that it becomes more difficult for elderly people to maintain good postural balance due to gradual declines in sensory, motor, and cognitive abilities that begin at about age sixty. The inability to maintain balance is one of the risk factors contributing to falls in the elderly that can lead to serious medical complications or even death. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one out of five falls causes a severe injury such as broken bones or head injury in older adults. In addition, the CDC reports that falls among adults 65 and over caused over 36,000 deaths in 2020, making it the leading cause of injury related mortality in seniors. The health care costs associated with falls are significant—CDC estimates that falls in older adults total $50 billion annually in medical expenses.
Female ballet dancers who are retired may have better balance in some instances compared with non-dancers of the same age
Faculty from George Mason University’s School of Kinesiology teamed up with investigators from the University of Wolverhampton and the National Institute of Dance Medicine in Science, located in the United Kingdom, to investigate whether retired dancers maintain their ability to balance after the age of 65 compared with individuals who had no experience dancing. Twenty female volunteers, ranging in age from 65 to 72, were recruited to undergo a battery of balance assessments that included the Romberg, Functional Reach, Timed Up and Go, Berg, and Tinetti tests. Ten of the study participants were former professional ballet dancers who had been retired for at least ten years. The other ten participants were non-dancers chosen as the comparison group, about the same age as the dancers.
The study results showed that the retired dancers performed significantly better on the Rumberg and Berg tests which measure “static” balance, described as a person’s ability to keep the body stable in a vertical line from the center of mass with minimal sway. In contrast, there was no appreciable difference between the retired dancers and the non-dancers in the scores for the Functional Reach, Timed Up and Go, and Tinetti tests which measure dynamic balance or the body’s ability to maintain balance while a person is moving.
Skills acquired during many years of a dancing career may help with stationary balance when a person is older
The study authors suggest that the years of training leading to the development of muscle tone, physical strength, and finely tuned balance skills retained from the time they were active in their careers, contributed to the higher static balance exhibited by the retired ballet dancers, even though they had not danced professionally for quite some time. The study authors point out that the unique characteristics of ballet could explain why the retired dancers performed better than the non-dancer cohort in the static balance tests. Ballet, the investigators explain, is an upright dance form that promotes stability often on a small contact area—specifically, the metatarsals of the foot. Researchers acknowledge that this may have been a limitation of the current study and recommend that future investigations should be expanded to include other groups dependent on having good balance, such as gymnasts or figure skaters, to identify changes as these individuals age compared with older adults who had never participated in such activities.
Retired dancers and older adults should continue to dance and exercise as they age to minimize the risk of falls
While the retired dancers had better static balance scores than their non-dancer counterparts, the same did not hold true for dynamic balance. This suggests that the balance skills acquired previously through dance may not be “transferable” to all physical activities later in life. Researchers emphasize that these study findings have important clinical implications and highlight the need for retired dancers and older adults to continue to engage in dance or other forms of exercise throughout their lives if they are to maintain good balance and minimize the risk of falls.
To learn more about how dancing can affect balance in seniors, read this article by Mason faculty and researchers. Mason’s School of Kinesiology offers degree programs that focus on the scientific study of human movement and its application in settings such as athletics, dance studios, and clinical practices. Please visit our website to learn more.