Tennis reduces your risk of death by 50%

Original source: The Guardian

If you want to stave off death for as long as possible, you might want to reach for a tennis racket.

Scientists attempting to tease apart the benefits of different sports have found that regularly taking part in sports such as badminton or tennis reduces your risk of death at any given age by almost 50%, with swimming and aerobics also proving protective.

“It is the first big scale population study to say ‘is participation in sport protective in terms of your long-term mortality? ’The answer is yes, it does appear to be,” said Charlie Foster, co-author of the study from the University of Oxford. However, some sports seem to be more protective to health than others.

… is sport protective in terms of your long-term mortality? The answer is yes

Published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine by an international team of researchers, the study incorporated responses from 80,306 adults aged 30 and over in England and Scotland who were quizzed on their health and exercise through national surveys conducted at various points between 1994 and 2008.

The survival of the participants was surveyed, on average, nine years later, during which time 8,790 participants had died.

The results reveal that fewer than half of the participants, just over 44%, met the national guidelines for the recommended levels of exercise of 150 minutes of moderate physical activity a week.

Ulf Ekelund, professor in physical activity and health at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, said the key message from the research was not that one activity was more likely to stave off death than another, but that sport in general is beneficial.

“There is so much evidence that physical activity, including sports participation and all kinds of exercises, are associated with a reduced risk of both non-communicable diseases and the risk of death,” he said.