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Saturday, May 7, 2011

Fact:You Can Use Shopping To Improve Your Health!

Most women find shopping a great reliever of stress and anxiety. Others simply find shopping an amusing way to spend money or spend time. Shopping in malls (Not Online Shoppin) have some health benefits. Although shopping does not benefit wallets, it can in fact, be good for someone's health. Recent research suggests that shopping can be good for a person:
  • UK researches indicated that carrying heavy shopping bags and walking from one shop to another provides workout to an individual. On the average, a British woman can burn up to 385 calories by just waking between shops and carrying the items she bought. Additionally, an average woman in the UK walks over 150 miles every year just by searching and looking for bargains.
  • In order to measure the health benefits linked with shopping, department store Debenhams sampled 10 shoppers (five females and five males). Each shopper had a calorie-counting pedometer. Along with this, the analysis also included a survey conducted with 2,000 female shoppers. Results showed that on the average, a woman can wall three miles in less than three hours. The distance calculated came from the distance the women covered by browsing from one shop to another.
  • Generally, women spend more time and effort shopping than most men. In the study conducted, men only spent 50 minutes in shopping. They also covered a much lesser distance than the females. The results of the study show that men only covered 1.5 miles. The finding of the analysis showed that losing weight is easily achieved with everyday activities. These activities serve as their exercise. It's not the actual act of shopping, rather the activities associated with it ,getting out of the house, walking, cognitive skills , that make for the health factor of shopping.
  • Researchers in Taiwan have found that a lifestyle of shopping could mean longevity, at least for people over the age of 65. It's that momentary sense of euphoria that the authors of this new medical study believe actually gives some truth to the concept of  ''retail therapy'' .Published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, the report found that "elderly people'' who shopped every day have 27 percent less risk of death than the least frequent shoppers. Men benefited more from everyday shopping than women.

  • The Psychological effects of shopping on Women
Women have a natural ability and instinctive need to shop. This is something that has seemed to baffle men throughout the years. Decades ago, shopping was due to necessity, but more recently, it has also been used as a method of fulfilling fundamental emotional needs. Shopping has a strong psychological revival effect for women, regardless if products are actually purchased or not. Shopping can lift a woman’s stress by gratifying her; satisfy her nesting urges, and being used as a stress reliever through social bonding, rather than using anti-depressants or other doctor prescribed medicines to alleviate stress and anxiety.

Shopping also allows time for a woman to have a change of atmosphere and to have a moment to socialize with peers, which can alleviate stress.

"Shoppers experience the same rush of endorphins when they stumble across a hot sale promotion as they do when they are sexually aroused."  Endorphin rushes are also caused by exercise, pain, listening to music, getting poked with needles, and eating chocolate. So really, all that the "shopping triggers endorphins" study proves is that finding a deal is thrilling to humans.

On another note, it was also discovered that most shoppers decide to go to the mall not because of the health benefits linked with it itself. More than 60 percent of the shoppers indicate that they were not aware of the health benefits that shopping has. Regardless of the case, here's another reason to love shopping. Now, shopping is not all about spending money but also taking care of oneself. Oh!Welcome another excuse to shop...But don't be a Shopoholic!!


Have a Beautiful Weekend!