Dancing at home for just 20 minutes a day boosts health - study

If finding the time to go to the gym every day is a challenge, there may be an easier way to reach your exercise goals as dancing in the kitchen for just 20 minutes every morning is enough to ensure health benefits, scientists say.

According to current guidelines, adults should do 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity exercise per week. The researchers recruited 48 people to find out how much time you need to devote to casual dancing at home to reach this figure, Express writes.

Volunteers aged 18 to 83 participated in five-minute dance sessions with and without music. The experience of learning to dance ranged from zero to 56 years.

Study leader Dr Aston McCullough of Northeastern University said at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, "The main idea was to understand whether the intensity that people would receive from dancing freely on their own would be enough to be a health-enhancing physical activity. And the answer was yes. All adults were able to reach a health-enhancing level of activity without being told what intensity to dance at."

They simply turned on their own music and danced around. The participants' oxygen consumption and heart rate were measured, and the analysis showed that everyone achieved at least a moderate level of physical activity. At the same time, dancing to music proved to be more effective.

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