Health
Dance eases depression symptoms in Parkinson's patients, new study suggests
Putting a swing in their step could be just the thing to help ease the symptoms of depression in some Parkinson’s patients, a new study suggests.
Patients who took months of dance classes found their depression eased, a small study published recently in the Journal of Medical Internet Research says.
Not only did depression symptoms ease for the Parkinson’s patients, their brain scans displayed changes in their brain areas related to mood, researchers said.
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“It was very cool to see that dance had a positive effect on the mood circuits in the brain, which we could see in the imaging,” senior researcher Joseph DeSouza, an associate professor of neuroscience at York University in Toronto, Canada, said in a university news release.
“These improvements that we could see on MRI brain scans were also reported by the participants via survey,” DeSouza said.
A new study followed participants in a dance program who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease — as well as healthy people (not pictured). Depression symptoms eased for the participants. (iStock)
“Our study is the first to demonstrate these benefits across these two detection methods,” he also said, as news agency SWNS reported.
The study followed 23 participants in the Sharing Dance Parkinson’s program at Canada’s National Ballet School who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease — as well as 11 healthy people, some of whom were relatives of the patients.
The team measured mood and depression scores in all participants.
Participants took weekly dance classes for eight months, which progressed from simple leg and foot work and pliés to interpretive movements, waltzes and more complicated, choreographed dances, the outlet reported.
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Researchers honed in on a node in the brain, the subcallosal cingulate gyrus (SCG), that has been shown in previous research to be implicated in depression.
The team measured mood and depression scores in all participants using a recognized scale before and after every class, plus they conducted regular MRI scans at York.
Brain scans taken during the study displayed changes in the patients’ brain areas related to mood, according to researchers (not pictured). (iStock)
After each dance class, they found that reported depression rates dropped — and the effect was cumulative from class to class, with “significant” improvements seen after eight months.
The team also found that the MRI scans showed reduced signals in a frontal-cortex brain region associated with emotional regulation and that in a smaller subset of the participants, a significant decrease in depression scores correlated with changes in the SCG node.
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Co-author Dr. Karolina Bearss, a professor at Algoma University, Canada, said, “We essentially showed that [the] SCG blood oxygen level–dependent signal decreases while dancing over time.”
Parkinson’s is a progressive neurodegenerative disease, the team noted.
“People with Parkinson’s disease tend to have multiple symptoms that are not just motor-related.” (iStock)
Before diagnosis, there is a “prodromal” phase that can last for two to 10 years. It’s characterized by low mood, even before other symptoms appear, such as tremors.
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“People with Parkinson’s disease tend to have multiple symptoms that are not just motor-related,” said Bearss. “There are a lot of symptoms that include mental and social well-being impairments — one of those being depression.”
“What we’re trying to do is to have people live a better quality of life.”
The new research builds on the team’s previous three-year study that found that dance training helps Parkinson’s patients with motor control, mood and other functions of daily living.
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Dance is thought to have a double benefit, as music activates the brain’s reward centers and the movement acts on sensory and motor circuits.
Professor DeSouza, who has been dancing with participants in the program for 14 years, said that while dancing is not a treatment for Parkinson’s per se, the benefits are clear, according to the report.
He added, “We’re not trying to cure Parkinson’s with dance. What we’re trying to do is to have people live a better quality of life. This goes for both those with the disease, and their families that take care of them – they also get benefits of feeling better.”
Up to half of all Parkinson’s patients suffer from depression or anxiety at some point, the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research notes.
A previous study done at Sydney University found that structured dance (of any genre) is generally as effective as — or even more effective than — other types of physical activity for improving psychological and cognitive outcomes among people with chronic illness as well as healthy people.
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Eating too much salt has long been linked to high blood pressure, but new research suggests it could trick the immune system into prematurely aging the blood vessels.
A preclinical study recently published in the Journal of the American Heart Association has identified a biological chain reaction that links a salty diet to cardiovascular decay.
Scientists at the University of South Alabama observed that mice on a high-salt diet experienced rapid deterioration in their blood vessel function.
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After just four weeks of high sodium intake, the small arteries responsible for regulating blood flow lost their ability to relax, according to a press release.
The team found that the cells lining these vessels had entered a state of cellular senescence, a form of premature cellular aging in which cells stop dividing and release a mix of inflammatory signals that can damage surrounding tissue.
Excess salt has long been linked to high blood pressure, but a new study goes deeper into its effects on the cardiovascular system. (iStock)
The researchers tried to replicate this damage by exposing blood vessel cells directly to salt in a laboratory dish, but the cells showed no harmful effects.
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This suggests that salt isn’t directly causing damage to the vascular lining but that the real culprit may be the body’s own defense mechanism, the researchers noted.
Excess salt may trigger the immune system to release a molecule called interleukin-16 (IL-16), which acts as a messenger that instructs blood vessel cells to grow old before their time, according to the study.
Excess salt may trigger the immune system to release a molecule called interleukin-16, which acts as a messenger that instructs blood vessel cells to grow old before their time, according to the study. (iStock)
Once these cells age, they fail to produce nitric oxide, the essential gas that tells arteries to dilate and stay flexible.
To test whether this process could be reversed, the team turned to a class of experimental drugs known as senolytics.
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Using a cancer medication called navitoclax, which selectively clears out aged and dysfunctional cells, the researchers were able to restore nearly normal blood vessel function in the salt-fed mice, the release stated.
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By removing the decaying cells created by the high-salt diet, the drug allowed the remaining healthy tissue to maintain its elasticity and respond correctly to blood flow demands.
Excess salt may trigger the immune system into stopping the cells from dividing, the study suggests. (iStock)
The study did have some limitations. The transition from mouse models to human treatment remains a significant hurdle, the team cautioned.
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Senolytic drugs like navitoclax are still being studied for safety, and the team emphasized that previous trials have shown mixed results regarding their impact on artery plaque.
Additionally, the researchers have not yet confirmed whether the same IL-16 pathway is the primary driver of vascular aging in humans.
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Eating a diet high in fruits and vegetables was found to have a surprising link to lung cancer among younger non-smokers, early research suggests.
The observational study, led by Jorge Nieva, M.D., of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center at Keck Medicine, was presented this month at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting in San Diego. It has not yet been peer-reviewed.
Researchers looked at dietary, smoking and demographic data for 187 patients who were diagnosed with lung cancer at age 50 or younger.
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They found that among non-smokers, there was a link between healthier-than-average diets – rich in fruits, vegetables and whole grains – and the chance of lung cancer development.
Young lung cancer patients ate more servings of dark green vegetables, legumes and whole grains compared to the average U.S. adult, the researchers found.
Eating a diet high in fruits and vegetables was found to have a surprising link to lung cancer among younger non-smokers, early research suggests. (iStock)
The researchers hypothesized that pesticides applied to conventionally grown produce could be a possible factor in the disease association.
“Commercially produced (non-organic) fruits, vegetables and whole grains are more likely to be associated with a higher residue of pesticides than dairy, meat and many processed foods,” according to Nieva. He also noted that agricultural workers exposed to pesticides tend to have higher rates of lung cancer.
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“There is a large subset of lung cancer patients whose disease is not caused by smoking,” Nieva told Fox News Digital.
The disease is becoming more common in non-smokers 50 and younger, especially women – despite the fact that smoking rates have been falling for decades, the researcher noted.
The researchers hypothesized that pesticides applied to conventionally grown produce could be a possible factor in the disease association. (iStock)
“These patients tend to have eaten much healthier diets before their diagnosis than the average American,” he went on. “We need to support research into understanding why Americans – and women in particular – who no longer smoke very much are still having lung cancer,” he said.
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The study did have some limitations, Nieva acknowledged, primarily that it relied on survey data and was limited by the participants’ memories of their food intake.
“Also, the survey participants were self-selected, and this could have biased the findings,” he told Fox News Digital.
“There is a large subset of lung cancer patients whose disease is not caused by smoking.”
The researchers did not test specific foods for pesticides, relying instead on average pesticide levels for certain types of food. Looking ahead, they plan to test patients’ blood and urine samples to directly measure pesticide levels, Nieva said.
Although the study shows only an association and does not prove that pesticides caused lung cancer, Nieva recommends that people wash their produce before eating and choose organic foods whenever possible.
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“This work represents a critical step toward identifying modifiable environmental factors that may contribute to lung cancer in young adults,” said Nieva. “Our hope is that these insights can guide both public health recommendations and future investigation into lung cancer prevention.”
“It is possible that the increased lung cancer risk could be due to pesticide exposure in whole farmed foods, but is by no means certain,” a doctor said. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Dr. Marc Siegel, Fox News senior medical analyst, said the study is “interesting,” but that it “raises far more questions than it answers.”
“It is a small study (around 150) and observational, so no proof,” the doctor, who was not involved in the research, told Fox News Digital.
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“It is possible that the increased lung cancer risk could be due to pesticide exposure in whole farmed foods, but it is by no means certain,” Siegel went on. “How much exposure is needed? How much of it gets into food and in which areas? This requires much further study.”
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Kayla Nichols, communications director for Pesticide Action & Agroecology Network, a distributed global network, said the organization agrees with the study’s conclusion that more research should be done on the rise in lung cancer, particularly in individuals eating diets higher in produce and fiber.
“There is a large subset of lung cancer patients whose disease is not caused by smoking,” the researcher told Fox News Digital. (iStock)
“There is a bounty of existing research that already links pesticide exposure to increased risk of multiple types of cancers,” Nichols, who was also not involved in the study, told Fox News Digital. She called for more research on chronic, low-level exposures to pesticides, as well as more effective policies to protect the public from pesticide residues on food.
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The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, as well as industry partners including AstraZeneca and Genentech, among others.
Fox News Digital reached out to several pesticide companies and trade groups for comment.
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