3 reasons to never stop dancing

Hours on your feet build bone

A night on a dancefloor is a few hours of jumping and landing. Bone health guidance names dancing as one of the high-impact exercises that help build bone and keep it strong, which matters after menopause, when a woman can lose up to 20% of her bone density in five to seven years.

Dance beat the gym on anxiety

Dancing does something the gym does not do as fast. Seventy post-menopausal women were put into dance classes, gym training or nothing for 16 weeks. Anxiety and depression scores improved in the dancers first, after a month, and were still better six months later.

Dancing counters loneliness

Loneliness is not just a mood. The World Health Organization links strong social connection to better health and a longer life, and one in six people worldwide is affected by it. Dance is one of the few kinds of exercise studied for exactly this: across 22 studies of people over 60, dance programmes strengthened their sense of connection and countered loneliness.

Hours on your feet build bone. Dance beat the gym on anxiety. Dancing counters loneliness. None of it is a treatment and none of it replaces anything a doctor gives you.