Yep, there’s just something about her. Photo: Andrew Stickelman//Unsplash
Researchers from Ohio State University have found that people who live next to the ocean live longer than people who don’t. For anybody who’s lived in a coastal town there are a ton of elements of daily life that would make this seem like a pretty obvious discovery. You’re likely to spend more time outside. The air is crisp. Being next to the ocean is built-in motivation to live a more active lifestyle. The list can go on. But the study of 66,000 people by those Ohio State researchers revealed that…well, they aren’t really sure why people living next to the ocean tend to live longer.
To make the new findings even more intriguing, researchers found that just living near any large body of water won’t do. It could be easy to assume that life expectancy increases near the ocean simply because those people tend to be further away from urban spaces. But “nature” wasn’t the determining factor in their findings, because participants living within 30 miles of the ocean statistically outlived participants living within range of inland bodies of water too.
“Overall, the coastal residents were expected to live a year or more longer than the 79-year average, and those who lived in more urban areas near inland rivers and lakes were likely to die by about 78 or so. The coastal residents probably live longer due to a variety of intertwined factors,” said lead researcher Jianyong “Jamie” Wu.
Image: Environmental Research
The researchers took note of some obvious socioeconomic factors that could impact life expectancy near the ocean versus life expectancy inland, like “better air quality, more opportunities for recreation, better transportation, less susceptibility to drought, and higher incomes.” Meanwhile, one major factor stood out in those coastal areas as opposed to inland areas near water or inland areas far from water: milder temperatures. There are fewer extreme hot days and fewer extreme colds in these regions, but the researchers really only concluded correlation here rather than causation.
“We thought it was possible that any type of ‘blue space’ would offer some beneficial effects, and we were surprised to find such a significant and clear difference between those who live near coastal waters and those who live near inland waters,” said Wu. “We found a clear difference — in coastal areas, people are living longer,”
