Study Suggests Tennis Can Reduce Risk Of Death

November 30, 2016 | By Long Island Tennis Magazine Staff
GettyImages-517194173_0

A recent study has suggested that playing racquet sports can help people live longer.

The study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine and conducted by the University of Oxford, found that regularly playing sports like tennis or badminton can reduce a person’s risk of death, at any age, by almost 50 percent.

“It is the first big scale population study to say ‘is participation in sport protective in terms of your long-term mortality?’” said Charlie Foster, a co-author of the study. “The answer is yes, it does appear to be.”

The study included 80, 306 participants aged 30 and over from across England and Scotland who were asked about their health and exercise through surveys between 1994 and 2008 including which sports they played and how often. The survival of the participants was also surveyed about nine years later, revealing that 8,790 of the participants had passed away

After gathering the results, the researchers compared the risk of death between participants who played in particular sports against those who did not participate in that sport. Those results revealed that racquet sports reduced the risk of death by 47 percent, compared to 28 percent for swimming and 27 percent for aerobic exercises.

Click Here for full results from the study. 


Long Island Tennis Magazine Staff
USTA NTC
Bethpage

March/April 2024 Digital Edition