Anyone for tennis?

[Gordo]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/well/move/the-best-sport-for-a-longer-life-try-tennis.html
It would be interesting to see where ping pong falls in this analysis, I’ve read that it is supposedly good for brain health (something to do with the 3D spatial hand eye activity). Knowing that might help tease out some of the factors involved here...

 

[Thomas G]

Quote

"These associations remained unchanged even when the researchers controlled for people’s education, socioeconomic status and age."

Interesting. It seems like the social element is the key ingredient here. I'd believe that.

[TomBAvoider]

I didn't read the article, but did they control for obvious confounders such as socioeconomic class? I mean, it's plausible that those who play tennis are more likely to be a select group to begin with - how likely is it that an inner city person regularly plays tennis? Odds are that you have to have (1) financial resources to buy equipment, court time etc. (2) have to have been raised to play tennis and so perhaps were of a different social class. The same for soccer - this is played mostly by immigrants in the U.S. - there was a recent article about how the large minority component in the CA population results in statistics for mortality being lower in CA compared to states with small minority populations - immigrants, including (perhaps surprising) latino immigrants as a group have lower mortality rates compared to native whites and blacks. In other words yes, the social aspect of group activities might be a factor, but it may also be the fact that the groups engaging in the various activities are different from each other to begin with. YMMV.

[Gordo]

Yes (so they claimed anyway)