Zumba Dance Can Do This To Your Health, Check It Out!

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You may take up dance as a form of entertainment or few take it up as a hobby, but there are certain dance forms that have plenty of health benefits.

A new study has found that engaging in zumba dance for about five weeks can not just help one to stay physically fit but also improves mental health and quality of life.

So what exactly is zumba and how is it done?

Zumba is an exercise fitness programme which involves dance and aerobic movements performed to energetic music. The choreography incorporates hip-hop, soca, samba, salsa, merengue and mambo. Squats and lunges are also included.

For the study, researchers had taken into consideration people with sedentary lifestyle. They participated in the five-week exercise programme based on the Zumba Fitness discipline.

According to the participants, zumba helped them improve their quality of life, especially the emotional aspect, which was recorded as the least in these participants.

Quality of life is a broad concept comprising various aspects and is divided into eight dimensions: social, emotional, physical state, physical pain, physical functioning, vitality, mental health and general health.

It is interesting to note that the emotional dimension, which was the one with the lowest values at the beginning, was the one with the highest values at the end of the exercise programme, said lead researcher Yaira Barranco Ruiz, from the University of Granada (UGR) in Spain.

Moreover, even two months after the intervention ended, most of the dimensions continued to maintain levels above those recorded at the beginning of the programme, the researchers said.

The study was recently published in the Health Education Journal.

Meanwhile, we have listed a few other ways to boost your mental health. Take a look.

1. Meditation:

10 minutes of meditation in the morning, if not in the morning, then 10 minutes of meditation before going to bed helps in boosting your mental health and also improves your memory. Make it a point to take out at least 10 minutes everyday for meditation. This helps.

2. Exercise:

Slight exercise, even if it for 30 minutes on a daily basis help in improving your mental health and memory. Walking, jogging or even cycling can form a part of your daily exercise routine. This helps in keeping your mind fresh, drive out stress and improves your mental health and memory.

3. Dark Chocolates:

Dark chocolates contains flavanoids, caffeine, and theobromine which together helps improve alertness and mental health. But this does not mean that you can have dark chocolates continuously one after the other. A piece or two of dark chocolates everyday helps in improving your memory and mental health.

4. Sound Sleep:

As food is required for your survival, having a good and adequate sleep is equally essential for your mental health. If your sleep gets disturbed even for a day it affects your thinking power, memory and your overall mental health. An adult should have a minimum of seven hours of sleep everyday.

(With Agency Inputs)