These Sports Extend Your Life Expectancy By 10 Years
The physical activities that we carry out accompanied by other people have a more positive effect on health and lengthen life.
As is well known, people who regularly engage in physical activity live longer and healthier. But what was perhaps not known was that certain sports disciplines have a particularly favorable effect on the years of life.
A study shows that what is important about sports practice is not so much the intensity with which it is practiced as the social component it involves.
Sports in company improve health and lengthen life
The Copenhagen City Heart Studie, whose results have been published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings , analyzed the half-life of 8,500 healthy adults and adults in relation to their sport.
Over a 25-year time frame, during which 4,500 participants died, the people who were part of the study had to fill out questionnaires about their sporting activities.
The result was surprising because it determined that some sports practices are truly wonderful elixirs to maintain a long and full life.
Tennis, badminton and soccer
Starting from the premise that exercise in general lengthens life, regardless of the activity that is practiced, the study found that sports that are practiced with other people have greater advantages in maintaining a long life than those that are carried out alone.
Tennis takes the cake, which can extend life by 9.7 years, followed by badminton with 6.2 and soccer with 4.7 years.
Solo sports fare worse, but they are still having a positive influence. Swimming makes you gain 3.4 years, jogging 3.2 and gymnastics 3.1.
Social and emotional support
The question that arises is why is doing sports with someone better for your health? As Dr. James O’Keefe, one of the study’s co-authors, explains: “To maintain mental and physical well-being, and a long and happy life, the social network is surely the most determining component . “
Through social interaction during sports activity, we not only keep moving, but we also take care of social contacts and get emotionally involved.
The effects can be felt immediately. After practicing sports in a group or as a couple, you feel more satisfied and relaxed than after a solo workout.
Wake up the child
The fact that sports such as tennis and badminton can have positive effects on the duration of life has yet another cause. During these activities your childhood instinct for play is awakened and that is a true well of youth.
Dr. O’Keefe explains that “you can’t play badminton without feeling like a child again, it’s pure fun.”
