'Want to live longer? Try racquet sports', recommends study

Conclusion The overall conclusion we can take from this study is that taking part in sport or fitness activities is linked to a lower chance of death in a given period. It's encouraging to see that a wide range of popular activities, including swimming, aerobics and cycling, are likely to be beneficial. But we should be wary about comparing the types of different sports against each other. They weren't directly compared in the study and there may be reasons why results for some activities, such as football and running, were found to be statistically non-significant (potentially down to chance). Statistician Professor David Spiegelhalter said that making a distinction between the sports was "simply not valid" and the differing results only reflected the small number of deaths among football players and runners. The statistical uncertainty may have come about because of the way in which the results were adjusted to take account of confounding factors. For example, runners are likely to be non-smokers, younger, do more exercise overall and be leaner, compared to people who don't run – all of which will reduce their chances of death. Once you've taken these factors into account, the additional impact of running may be hard to measure. Professor Spiegelhalter points out that because this is an observational study, we can't really tell whether taking part in those sports where researchers did find a statistically significant result actually caused the lower death rate ...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Lifestyle/exercise Older people Heart/lungs Source Type: news