They found, for instance, that every two hours spent sitting and watching television was linked to a 12 percent decrease in the odds of healthy aging…
— from “For healthy aging, light exercise or sleep beats being sedentary” by Caren Chesler in The Washington Post, July 2024.
The headline caught my attention:
For healthy aging, light exercise or sleep beats being sedentary
Not the “light exercise” part. The “sleep” part.
But the more I read, the better the whole thing sounded. I really appreciate news articles that make you feel better by the end. It’s not typical. Most news articles, I find myself depressed at the conclusion.
Reporter Caren Chesler’s story concerned a study published last month in JAMA Open Network — which I’d totally missed. For any readers who haven’t heard of JAMA, it used to be The Journal of the American Medical Association. But “JAMA” turned out to be easier to pronounce, plus it sounded like the name of a Rap artist. I stopped reading the JAMA press releases about halfway through the pandemic. Too depressing.
So I had totally missed this report, based on an observational study that began in 1992. The Nurses’ Health Study has been following the health of about 45,000 older women with various lifestyles. Some of them liked to watch TV, while some preferred to stand around in the kitchen, or sleep.
My mom would have fit right in with this group of ladies. If you turned on the TV, she almost immediately fell asleep. Unlike my dad.
We’ll get into the differences between men and women in a moment.
From Ms. Chesler’s article:
Researchers used responses from a Nurses’ Health Study of 45,176 women that began more than 20 years ago. Respondents were asked questions such as “On average, how many hours per week do you spend standing or walking around at home?” or “On average, how many hours per week did you spend standing or walking around at work or away from home?” Participants had an average age of 59 and were free of major chronic diseases when the study began in 1992. They were then tracked for 20 years.
They found that replacing a sedentary behavior such as watching TV with even low-intensity activity — such as standing or walking around while cooking or washing clothes — increased one’s odds of healthy aging.
I already knew that exercise was good for you. I guess everybody knows that. The main problem with exercise is, it requires physical effort. Unlike TV, and sleep.
So I appreciate researchers who focus on things that won’t make me sweat.
In this case, the researchers basically defined “healthy aging” as “surviving to at least 70 with no major chronic diseases, and no impairment in subjective memory…”
So, like, you had to stay pretty much on top of your game. The people in this 20-year study were all women who are now, on average, about 80 years old… if they made it that far.
Apparently, the ones who spend the most time watching TV — instead of “light exercise”, or sleeping — fared the worst. Statistically speaking.
I will turn 60 in September, so I don’t fit the demographic of this study. Plus, I’m not a woman. (Last I looked.). But I’ve made it to 60 without any major chronic diseases. As far as subjective memory, I think my memory is pretty good, unless you were expecting me to remember a wedding anniversary.
Then, I have to make it to at least 70. Fingers crossed.
From Ms. Chesler’s article:
The study incorporated isotemporal substitution modeling to evaluate the potential effect on healthy aging of replacing one hour of one behavior with the equivalent duration of another. They found, for instance, that every two hours spent sitting and watching television was linked to a 12 percent decrease in the odds of healthy aging. Conversely, every two hours per day of light physical activity at work was linked to a 6 percent rise in the odds of healthy aging.
Replacing TV time with light physical activity at home increased one’s odds of healthy aging as well. For those who slept seven hours a night or less, replacing television time with sleep was also beneficial for health.
The part that concerned me most was the “two hours spent sitting and watching television” and “replacing television time with sleep”. Because women are not men, and men are not women. (Last I looked.)
Presumably, the JAMA researchers are aware that a typical Super Bowl game runs longer than two hours? The Chiefs even had to go into overtime to beat San Francisco this year.
Are they expecting me to “replace” a Super Bowl game with “sleep”? That is not going to happen.
Probably, I need to purchase an exercise bike, and put it in front of my TV.