In this week’s installment of “Who approved this research?” a new study found that people who ski regularly are up to 60% less likely to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. While it's interesting to read about how people who voluntarily slide off the side of mountains are probably less jittery and jaded than me, I’m a little confused about what to do with that information. It’s almost like some of these large-scale, probably expensive studies conducted by white academics just keep telling me the same thing in different ways: Privilege equals happiness.
To be fair, the main conclusion of the study, which was published last week in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, was another totally valid finding about how physical activity is linked to our happiness and wellbeing. People who exercise regularly are more likely to feel less anxious, which is something most of us already knew. What grinds my gears is that the participants represent a rather privileged sector of the world’s population, rendering their results irrelevant to many of us.
