Another “No Sh&t” Moment
It took a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine to prove that active seniors outlive their sedentary peers. Really? Out of 893 people around 80 years old, researchers found that the most active seniors had a lower risk of dying over the four-year study compared to those who moved the least.
“Researchers led by Dr. Aron Buchman, a professor at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, measured the daily activity level of local seniors, most in their late 70s and 80s, over 10 days. The researchers then followed the group for about four years, during which a quarter of the seniors — 212 — died. The seniors who were most active had about a 25 percent lower chance of dying compared to those who were least active over the four years”
“This suggests if you’re increasing your activity — even in your home — it has some advantages,” said Buchman.
Well, no sh%t Sherlock. Can we put this to bed yet? We, as a society, at any age, should be more active. We are like sharks. If we stop moving, we die. So now let’s stop doing ridiculous studies like this over and over again so we don’t have to hear the same old stupid and obvious comments. Geez!
or conversely, which is causative and which is effect, ie. seniors with more health problems (recognized or not) might be more likely to not be active. ie. those individuals who are more likely to die in the next 4 years become less active. There may well be a relationship but would have to study a proactive approach to show that increasing the activity level of the inactive group would actually change outcome?
That was my immediate reaction as well. Correlation does NOT imply causation. Which adds force to the question, WHY DO ANOTHER INCONCLUSIVE STUDY?* It’s not hard to design a study which would determine whether health affected activity or activity affected health, and even provide some measure of the degree of causation. Perhaps we really don’t want to know.
*(The answer to this first question is actually pretty obvious — so that those who do such studies can be paid to do more studies.)