The sport is great. Sport is good. Since childhood we have been telling us this simple truth. Although the evolutionary advantages of athletes is obvious, and their life expectancy exceeds the average by far (although not without exceptions) that the more involved the brain or muscles? As an intellectual sports like chess impact on quality of healthy life? Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov once wrote: “In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate”.
Scientists conducted a study of regional survival international grandmasters (MG) on the background of the General population and compared the index of relative survival MG with Olympic medals (OM). The results of the study were published in PLOS.
The study was affected by 1208 MG 15157 OHMS from 28 countries for which information has been extracted from publicly available data sources. To assess the survival rate of MG was used the method of Kaplan-Meier, and for the adjustment of survival of the regions used the Cox proportional hazards models. The ratio of the relative survival rates were calculated by matching each MG or Ω years of risk, risk age and sex table life cycle countries represented by the individual.
It turned out that the survival of MG 30 and 60 years after achieving the title was 87% and 15%, respectively. The life expectancy of MG at the age of 30 years was 53.6 years, which is much higher than the weighted average life expectancy of the General population. The analysis showed that both MG and OM have a significant advantage in survival to the General population, and at the age of 30 years was not a statistically significant difference in the expected survival of MG and OM.
What does it mean? This means that the elite chess players, grandmasters, live longer than average and demonstrate survival at the level of the best representatives of the physical sports.
Good chess players live longer than average
Ilya Hel