You may remember the good old days – that’s pre-COVID – when people used the expression of shop until you drop. This expression was aimed at the people who were heavy shoppers.
Since COVID, we now do our ordering on Amazon and other websites and have home delivery of food from restaurants and grocery stores.
Could there actually have been a health benefit to going shopping? It turns out that the answer was yes! A study published pre-COVID in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health looked at the shopping habits of 1,841 seniors who were 65 and older.
The researchers discovered that participants who reported shopping every day were 27% less likely to die during the study period than those who shopped less frequently. The researchers thought the increase in physical activity and increased social interaction were what was having the positive impact on these shopper’s longevity.
BTW, the shoppers in the study didn’t have to buy anything when they went shopping as just going window shopping resulted in the same positive outcome.
After COVID is finally over, people may not go back to shopping the way they did for quite a while, if at all, plus many Malls may be gone. If this is the case, then people over 65 will have to find a conscious way to get some exercise every day and also interact with others. The rediscovery that people have made about getting out into nature more often may be part of the answer.
So…get ready to lace those sneakers up since we’re starting to edge towards a new normal.
(Reported Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 2012)
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