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​This New Study Says Synchronized Dancing Relieves Pain

Experiments conducted at the University of Oxford show the scientific basis behind why we like to dance.

I'll skip the science jargon and give it to you in plain English. A new study published in Biology Letters shows that synchronized movement not only causes bonding between dancers, but actually contributes to an increased pain threshold. Yes, you heard it right—dancing makes you an invincible super hero.

Measuring a patient's pain threshold is a common way of gauging endorphin levels, says Bronwyn Tarr, one of the researchers who conducted the study, in an article for The Conversation. Endorphins, if you don't know, are the chemicals that your brain releases that make you feel good, and in turn, less susceptible to pain. They're part of the chemical of cocktails released into the brain during synchronized physical activities like dancing, a cocktail that encourages bonding between participants—like a natural social lubricant.

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Researchers learning new moves for the experiment. By José Roberto Corrêa for The Conversation

The study was conducted with 264 young people in Brazil, and it measured their pain thresholds using a blood pressure cuff before and after dancing around. The dancers were given "either high or low-exertion dancing that was either synchronized or unsynchronized," Tarr explains. Not surprisingly, the participants who exerted themselves physically with high-energy dancing showed increased pain thresholds, AKA higher endorphin levels. That's how exercise works.

But here's the interesting part: those who only did easygoing, low-energy synchronized dances together—"small hand movements"—also displayed heightened pain thresholds. That means the simple fact of moving at the same rate as the other people around you has a physiological effect on dancers, even if you don't break a sweat.

It could account for why dancing is associated with courting rituals, since those brain chemicals not only increase your pain threshold, but make you a friendlier and less anxious person in general. To read more from the study itself, head over to Biology Letters for the nitty-gritty.

Max has the highest pain threshold of all of you. Follow him on Twitter: @maxpearl