Joining a book club or taking up gardening could help increase well-being in old age.
Having a hobby has been found to actually make people over 65 feel healthier, happier, and more satisfied with life, as well as being linked to fewer signs of depression.
Researchers say a hobby can bring joy and purpose in life, while improving a skill could make some older people feel more empowered in their lives overall.
A hobby can include almost anything you do for fun, whether with other people or alone, from reading and completing crossword puzzles to doing charity work or joining a social club.
The results arise from observing 93,263 people over 65 years of age who participated in national surveys in 13 European countries, the United States, China and Japan.
Researchers say a hobby can provide joy and purpose in life, while improving a skill could make some seniors feel more empowered in their lives overall.
They included more than 4,000 people in England who were asked over several years whether they currently had a hobby or hobby, and then asked about their well-being for the English Longitudinal Study of Aging.
About 78 percent of people had a hobby and were more likely to report feeling happy the previous day, had a higher level of life satisfaction, and were more likely to feel they were in good or excellent health.
In fact, people with a hobby reported better health than those without a hobby, even taking into account their actual illnesses, showing that people with hobbies generally felt fitter, even when they were unwell.
People with a hobby showed fewer signs of depression on a short questionnaire that included questions about feelings of loneliness, sadness and hopelessness.
The English survey did not ask people what their hobbies were.
But the full study asked people on all continents if they had hobbies as diverse as reading, playing chess, solving word and number puzzles, gardening, or joining social and sports clubs and doing charity work.
People who reported these hobbies internationally also tended to have better health, happiness and life satisfaction, and fewer depressive symptoms, in both retirees and workers, who can benefit from a stress-busting hobby.
This was even after taking into account other things that could affect life satisfaction, including financial circumstances and employment.
It is possible that happier people tend to have hobbies and not the other way around.
But statistical analysis seemed to show that having a hobby first, in an earlier survey, was related to greater well-being in later surveys.
Dr Karen Mak, who led the study published in Nature Medicine, from University College London, said: “Doctors sometimes make social prescribing, where they advise people to try things like dancing, painting, doing crafts or going out. nature to improve health and well-being, and this research on hobbies suggests it may actually be helpful for some people.
“When people take up a hobby and get better at it over time, that can be very empowering, so it can help them feel more in control of their daily lives and give them a greater sense of purpose.”
Meanwhile, smoking more than doubles the risk of being hospitalized for depression, according to an independent study.
The researchers looked at 337,140 Britons who enrolled in the UK Biobank study and compared current smokers to people who had never smoked.
Among men who currently smoked, 8.5 percent were hospitalized for depression, compared with only 3.5 percent of men who never smoked.
Among women, 13.2 percent of current smokers ended up in the hospital with depression, compared with 5.9 percent of never smokers.
The authors note that people typically started smoking before age 20, but were not hospitalized for depression until they were between 30 and 60 years old.
Professor Doug Speed, lead author of the study published in the journal Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, from Aarhus University in Denmark, said: “Smoking usually appears before mental illness – much earlier, in fact.”
But the full study asked people on all continents if they had hobbies as diverse as reading, playing chess, solving word and number puzzles, gardening, or joining social and sports clubs and doing charity work.
“We don’t know why, but it could be that smoking causes inflammation in the brain or that nicotine inhibits the absorption of serotonin, the ‘happiness hormone’, and that in the long term this causes mental disorders such as depression.”
Another study found that a healthy lifestyle is crucial in helping prevent depression, regardless of a person’s genetic risk.
Good sleep, between seven and nine hours a night, was found to reduce the risk of depression by 22 per cent, among almost 290,000 people in the UK Biobank study.
Frequent social connections, such as seeing friends and family fairly frequently, were linked to an 18 percent lower risk, according to a research team including the University of Cambridge and Fudan University in China.
Not drinking or having moderate alcohol consumption was found to reduce the risk of depression by 11 percent, a healthy diet reduced the risk by six percent, and regular physical activity by 14 percent.
Professor Barbara Sahakian, co-author of the study published in the journal Nature Mental Health, from the University of Cambridge, said: “Although our DNA – the genetic hand we have been dealt – can increase our risk of depression, we have shown that a Healthy lifestyle is potentially more important.
“Some of these lifestyle factors are things we have some degree of control over, so trying to find ways to improve them (making sure we get a good night’s sleep and going out to see friends, for example) could make a difference. a real difference in people’s well-being. lives.’
