Athletes Largely Exhibit Longer Lives
The study noted here is one of numerous similar efforts to analyze data on the life span of professional athletes. The data set used is very heavily weighted towards men, so the results for women in this study should probably be taken with a grain of salt. With a few odd exceptions, the results are generally consistent with what has been seen in the past, in that professional participants in sports requiring a high level of physical fitness exhibit a longer life span than the average for the general population. Correlational studies cannot demonstrate causation, but there is plenty of evidence from animal studies for physical fitness and the exercise needed to maintain physical fitness to act in ways that slow the progression of degenerative aging.
The human lifespan is influenced by various factors, with physical activity being a significant contributor. Despite the clear benefit of exercise on health and longevity, the association between different types of sports and lifespan is yet to be considered. Accordingly, we aimed to study this association in a large international cohort of former athletes using a robust linear regression model. We collected data on athletes from public sources, accumulating a total of 95,210 observations, 95.5% of which were accounted for by males. The dataset represented athletes born between 1862 and 2002 from 183 countries across 44 sports disciplines.
We calculated the change in lifespan by measuring the difference in age between athletes and the corresponding reference populations, while accounting for variations caused by sex, year of death, and country. The results revealed that various sports impacted lifespan differently, with male athletes being more likely to experience benefits from sports than female athletes. Among male athletes, pole vaulting and gymnastics were linked to the highest extension in lifespan (8.4 years and 8.2 years respectively), while volleyball and sumo wrestling were the most negatively associated with lifespan (-5.4 years and -9.8 years respectively). The association between lifespan and popular team sports in males was positive for cricket, rowing, baseball, water polo, Australian rules, hurling, lacrosse, field hockey, minimal for rugby, canoeing and kayaking, basketball, gridiron football, and football (soccer), and negative for handball and volleyball. Racquet sports (i.e., tennis and badminton) exhibited a consistent and positive association in both male and female athletes, as shown by an extended lifespan of up to 5.7 years in males and 2.8 years in females.
Although lacking conclusive evidence, we theorize that the observed results may be attributed to the aerobic and anaerobic characteristics of each sport, with mixed sports yielding the maximum benefits for the lifespan. While results from female athletes should be cautiously interpreted, our study highlights the complex interplay between sports and lifespan and contributes to the growing body of knowledge on the multifaceted relationship between physical activity and human longevity.
I hope evolution evolves our biology to so that we need less physical activity but still get the benefits of anti aging.
The data set I am most familiar with is professional golfers. Granted not exclusively fit, there are example of smokers and obese men playing professional Golf, but elite level Pro Golfers are much fitter than the average man for the most part, and they get an enormous amount of low intensity cardio. In it's first ten years the Golf Hall of Fame inducted 16 male players which were born after 1900, of those 16 men, three are still alive (84,89,84), the other 13 died at the average age of 79.3. For reference the life expectancy at birth for a white male born in US in 1930 was 59.7. Of course one can't make a strict comparison between the 2 numbers because the pro golfers had already lived to the age of about 30 just to get into the data set. I am sure the life expectancy of a 30 year old white man in 1960 is known, I just don't know how to find it in short order.
I guess I should start pole-vaulting then.