Shopping regularly may help you live longer

Shopaholics rejoice

A 10-year study by a team from Taiwan’s National Health Research Institutes found that those who went to the shops more or less every day were about a quarter less likely to die over that period than the average person.

According to the team, this could be possible because shopping is a convenient, enjoyable and sociable way of getting exercise, the Telegraph reported.

For the study, the researchers looked at the shopping habits of 1,850 people aged 65 and over, living at home without support.

Of those, 17 per cent shopped every day, 22 per cent between two and four times a week, 13 per cent once a week, and 48 per cent even less frequently.

It was found that those who shopped daily were 27 per cent less likely than average to die over the study period, from 1999 to 2008.

And while almost every man has protested at one time or other that “being dragged around the shops is killing me”, men appear to benefit from a daily dose of retail therapy more than women.

Female daily shoppers were 23 per cent less likely to die over the decade—but male daily shoppers were 28 per cent less likely to do so, the researchers found.

The researchers, who detailed their study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, adjusted for factors known to have a significant effect on a person’s health such as age, sex, and whether they smoked, drank, or took exercise.

The authors acknowledged that frequent shopping could simply be a sign of underlying better health, while infrequent shopping could be indicative of impaired mobility and general ill health. However, they suggested that frequent shopping might have “a direct impact on survival” too.

“Shopping captures several dimensions of personal wellbeing, health, and security as well as contributing to the community’s cohesiveness and economy, and may represent or actually confer increased longevity,” they wrote.

Much like teenagers hanging out in a shopping centre, they postulate that for the elderly frequent trips to the shops might not always be about shopping. They might be about getting out to see one’s friends or, indeed, taking a little light exercise too.

“Elderly people may window shop, obtain prescribed drugs, bank, or walk for exercise, seek companionship and avoid loneliness,” the researchers argued. Maureen Hinton, lead analyst at Verdict, a London retail consultancy, thought the study made sense. “By shopping daily, you are having a regular connection with the community, even if it’s just with your local shop keeper,” she said.