Post Date December, 03 2023
First of all, what is housework?
Someone may want to say, do you also want to explain this?
Because according to this study, the impact of heavy and light housework on all cause mortality and cancer is different.
Researchers have categorized heavy household chores as: vacuuming, scrubbing the floor, mopping the floor, cleaning windows, washing cars, moving furniture, moving gas canisters, and so on.
Light household chores include dusting, washing dishes, hand washing clothes, ironing, drying clothes, cooking, buying daily necessities, and so on.
To explain, cleaning the floor and mopping the floor are not the same thing. Here is a demonstration of how to wipe the floor by kneeling on the ground:
Some of the remaining indoor activities related to decoration and gardening have been separately summarized and are not included in the household chores (gardening is even considered a leisure time activity).
Housekeeping: Men benefit more, women suffer more
The results of the study show that, in comparison, the benefits of light housework are not significantly affected, and there is even no impact on all cause mortality. Heavy housework plays a decisive role in the benefits, and this benefit only affects men.
The researchers found that for men, participating in heavy housework can reduce their all-cause mortality risk to 71%, while the effect of light housework is relatively less significant.
It is worth noting that for women, there has been a slight increase in the all-cause mortality rate from participating in heavy household work: about 13%.
In fact, women's cancer mortality rate is greatly affected by light housework, but it is not affected in a positive direction. The data in the table shows that light housework can reduce the cancer mortality rate of men to 67% of the original mortality rate, but for women, the risk of cancer death has indeed doubled, increasing by 92%!
Heavy housework also plays a similar role in cancer mortality, with participation in heavy housework significantly reducing the risk of cancer death to nearly half - about 52% - for men. Heavy housework is still bad news for female friends - raising the risk of cancer death by 20%.
To summarize:
All housework has the benefit of reducing all cause mortality and cancer mortality for men, but the benefits vary in magnitude.
However, for women, heavy housework increases all cause mortality, while light and heavy housework together increase cancer mortality.
What exactly is the reason for this?
1. Increase amount of exercise
Nowadays, people are getting busier and many people are not exercising enough. Various appeals to people to exercise in their spare time have had little effect over the years.
Among these high-risk groups, most of their daily physical activities come from household chores, which can be linked to the amount of exercise to some extent. Older men have a high probability of not exercising enough in their spare time, and heavy housework may just make up for this deficiency.
2. Doing housework can reduce stress
Another benefit may come from the increased mental and psychological health of men who participate in household chores. Recent research has shown that male participation in household chores can reduce mental stress and improve happiness, and this spiritual benefit can also help improve survival.
So who does the housework?
Due to the fact that in Chinese culture, most housework is performed by women, and the proportion of male participation is far lower than that of women, such research requires us to change our thinking——
Rather than promoting that people use more leisure time to exercise with little effect, it is better to promote the redistribution of domestic work and allow men to participate more in domestic work.
After all, judging from the results, there are only benefits and no disadvantages for men to do housework, while there are basically no benefits for women to do housework. There may also be significant disadvantages.
Of course, for those who do not have household chores to do (such as living in a nursing home) or whose physical condition is really poor, it is better not to force them to do so, and let professionals do it.
