Key findings

• Data from 2022 suggests that Europeans are rather satisfied with their amount of leisure time, and this has not changed since 2018 when this question was last surveyed.

• Men and women rate their satisfaction with their amount of leisure time similarly, while older and younger people, as well as those with a lower level of education are more satisfied.

• Adults living in households with dependent children are less satisfied, while the satisfaction does not differ much between people living in urban and rural areas.

One reason why people can be dissatisfied is not having time for activities they would like to do in their leisure time. For reasons of data availability in this article, only one such activity is analyzed: reading books.

• On average, a bit more than one in five Europeans who did not read any books declared lack of time as the main reason in 2022.

• This varied significantly by country (ranging between 35.2% in Romania to 15.5% in Portugal) as well as between sexes and age groups (with women between 25 and 54 much more likely to declare not having enough time for reading books than men at any age).

Key findings

In our knowledge, this is the first large-scale cohort study that examines the reciprocal prospective relationship between diversified leisure activity participation and cognitive function in Chinese elderly, separate between-person effects from within-person effects. Moreover, our findings demonstrate that cognitive improvement may enhance diversified leisure activity participation by strengthening the assertion that diversified leisure activity participation has a positive impact on cognitive function, creating a “positive circle” that further promotes cognition over time. In other words, It was found that changes in diversified leisure activity participation predicted changes in typical cognitive function and an individual’s typical cognitive ability predicted their participation in diversified leisure activities. Consistent findings were obtained after adjusting for baseline age, sex, educational level, marital status, current residence, the number of chronic diseases, activities of daily living, depressive symptoms, sleep quality scores, smoking and drinking.

There was a slight difference in findings when using the traditional CLPM versus the RI-CLPM versus adjusted RI-CLPM, whereby the CLPM and RI-CLPM found larger associations between diversified leisure activity participation and cognitive function across all three waves but have poor model fit indices. The adjusted RI-CLPM suggests a slight small but significant association between diversified leisure activity participation and cognitive function.

Key findings

Recently, scientists conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to understand better whether different levels of leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) prevent stroke. This review is available in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry study.

The review was conducted by obtaining all relevant articles available in PubMed and Scopus databases. It must be noted that only articles that were published in English were considered in this study.

A total of 3,064 articles were obtained in the original search. After removing the duplicates and matching them with eligibility criteria, 15 articles comprising 16 cohorts were included in the study. For quantitative analysis, six additional articles were included. The quality of the cohort studies included in this systematic meta-analysis was evaluated using the ROBINS-I tool.

Many studies have shown that physical activities (PA) reduce the risk of stroke. PA is performed in wide-ranging intensities, frequencies, and durations. Both moderate and high levels of LTPA prevent stroke incidence and decrease mortality rates. In comparison to low-active individuals, the highly active population is at a lesser risk of ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke.

Key findings

Physical activity and stroke. Stroke is a life-threatening condition that occurs when blood flow is cut off to a part of the brain. It is one of the leading causes of mortality and morbidity in the world. Therefore, it is important to control the factors that increase the risks of stroke.

Many studies have shown that physical activities (PA) reduce the risk of stroke. PA is performed in wide-ranging intensities, frequencies, and durations. Both moderate and high levels of LTPA prevent stroke incidence and decrease mortality rates. In comparison to low-active individuals, the highly active population is at a lesser risk of ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke.