Eric Baker
In the early 20th century people thought heart disease was mostly due to aging and stress. But Jeremy Morris, a doctor at Britain’s Medical Research Council, thought it was actually related to activity levels. After World War 2 there wasn’t a lot of money for research so he did a cheap natural experiment.
Each double-decker bus in London had two employees: a driver (who hardly moved all day) and a conductor (who barely got a chance to sit down.) Morris studied 35,000 pairs of them for two years. Guess what he found?
Controlling for other variables, drivers were twice as likely to have a heart attack as a conductor.
Lesson: we need to move more. Sitting on your behind all day is as genius an idea as sucking on downed electrical cables. And you don’t have to do a crazy amount of exercise to get substantial benefits.
Going for regular walks reduces the risk of heart attack or stroke by 31 percent. An analysis of 655,000 people in 2012 found that being active for just eleven minutes a day after the age of forty yielded 1.8 years of added life expectancy. Being active for an hour or more a day improved life expectancy by 4.2 years.
The pandemic is offering us all the chance to hit the reset button and make some positive changes in regard to our health -- above and beyond washing our hands.
And, sadly, what has been great for our not-getting-COVID health has taken a significant toll on our emotional health. Yes, I mean the practice of “social distancing.” There’s another big lesson here...
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The research says that in terms of happiness, having a good social life is worth about $131,232 a year. So as far as smiles go, quarantine cost us a lot more than we ever imagined.
But, again, there’s an upside to this. Think about your personal relationship lesson. Who did you miss the most? And what are you going to do about it going forward?
When I spoke with Stanford professor Jennifer Aaker she said we often make a mistake in planning our lives. Even when we know what and who brings us joy, we don’t dedicate enough time to those projects and people.
When you put something on a calendar, you’re more likely to actually do that activity – partly because you’re less likely to have to make an active decision whether you should do it – because it’s already on your calendar.
And please don’t hold your feelings back when you see your friends again. We’ve all been scared, locked up and deprived. Tell them you’ve missed them. Tell them you love them. You’ve got a globally recognized excuse for being all mushy.
Another method to increase happiness and gratitude is merely taking the time to reflect on what you learned from tragedy.
