Shopping for Life

“Frequent shopping by men and women increases survival in the older Taiwanese population”, according to a study conducted by Yu-hung Chang and his team from the National Health Research Institutes in Taiwan. 1800 Taiwanese people over the age of 65 were asked about their shopping behavior. The research team set the results from the questionnaires in relation to the register of deaths in the ensuing years and came to the result that frequent shoppers have a 27 percent lower mortality risk than non-shoppers.

Various reasons are given to explain this result. One, for example, states that people need to be healthy in order to go out and do some shopping. This would actually mean that shopping itself does not help people get healthier but that they need to be in a healthy condition to do the shopping. That does sound reasonable but not really interesting, does it?

What is much more interesting are other reasons Yu-hung Chang gives. Imagine you are walking towards the city center: you find a neat shop and try on some clothes, a pair of nice stone-washed jeans, an adorable dress and amazing-looking matching high-heels. The shop assistant helps you and brings you everything you need. She has the same style as you do and you get along really well. You even talk about personal stuff for a while since there is not much going on in the small store. On your way back home you get out your grocery list and buy the things you will need for the next couple of days. And then you carry all those groceries and your newly acquired clothing to your home, which, by the way, is still a mile away. So, during this shopping tour you have bought yourself some goodies – which always make you feel pretty good anyways – but you’ve also managed to get in some exercise! Not only did you walk all the way downtown, but you had to change several times and you carried those big, heavy bags full with groceries and hence burned even more calories. Furthermore, you made social contact with different people. Those are the things that make you healthy! A good social network is good for your health for various reasons and we all know that exercising helps you get older.

Think about this the next time you go shopping and it will make you feel even better. And for those, who can't afford to buy something twice a week: this theory still works even if you don’t actually purchase anything.

So people, go out and shop; spend money or don't; exercise while doing so and you can actually have fun improving your health!