Habits affect aircrew well-being
We've all been told again and again that our habits can affect our health and well-being. Eating a well-balanced diet, minding our weight, and getting regular exercise are supposed to be good for us. Habits like smoking, drinking too much, overeating and being sedentary are supposed to be bad for us. It turns out that, for the 411 pilots and 667 flight attendants who participated in the Aircrew Stress Study, the relation between habits and health really held true.
The survey questionnaire for the Aircrew Stress Study included a measure called the WHO-5 Well-being Index. It uses a series of questions to measure positive mood, vitality, and other indicators of overall well-being, not just physical health. For this measure, 'well-being' is construed as an individual's subjective 'quality of life.'
People who score high on the WHO-5 Index are likely to be physically and emotionally healthy, and enjoying their lives. People who score below a certain level on the same measure are considered to be 'at risk' for poor emotional and physical health.
To clarify, when we say that people are 'at risk' we do not mean that they are necessarily unhealthy, in the sense of being ill. We mean that there are indications that things may not be going so well in their lives. As a result they may be showing some early signs of anxiety, depression, or physical ill health.
The 1,078 people who took the Aircrew Stress Study survey were asked to indicate their height and weight, their exercise habits, and their use of nicotine products, alcohol, and caffeine. One part of the analysis looked at whether or not the pattern of answers to these items was related to well-being scores.
All of those items were related to well-being in one way or another:
Height and weight were used to compute Body Mass Index (BMI), according to a standard formula. BMI was then used to divide the sample into standard categories: Underweight, Normal Weight, Overweight, and Obese. BMI was found to be negatively correlated with the well-being scores. In other words, there was a trend: the greater the BMI, the lower the well-being score. Only 12% of the sample qualified as Obese. But for those who were obese, 41% had well-being scores low enough to indicate that they were 'at risk' for poor health.
The data for alcohol use showed an interesting result. When we divided the sample into alcohol users versus non-drinkers, there were no big differences between the groups' well-being scores. Then, if we looked at amount of alcohol consumed on a regular basis, the light and moderate drinkers' well-being scores were again similar to the non-users. However, those who answered that they regularly had more than two drinks every day tended to have lower well-being scores than the non-drinkers, as well as those who drank less. So we could say that, for alcohol use, the amount counts!
Nicotine use was a completely different story. There was a marked difference in the well-being scores of nicotine users vs. non-users -- period. It didn't matter if the nicotine users said that they smoked a little or a lot, or if they indicated that they got their nicotine from cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco, chewing tobacco, snuff -- or even nicotine replacement products like gum or lozenges. The results were clear: nicotine users across the board had significantly lower well-being scores, as a group, than non-users.
Caffeine use also was related to well-being scores -- sort of. The trend was like that for alcohol, in that amount seemed to matter. As a group, the heaviest caffeine users did tend to have somewhat lower well-being scores than those who used little or no caffeine -- but the relationship was relatively weak. I'd say that, based on the data from this study, we don't have to worry so much about caffeine use.
Of all the habits looked at in the Aircrew Stress Study, it turned out that exercise frequency had the strongest relationship to well-being. Here again, it definitely was the amount that mattered.
There was a strong positive relationship between exercise frequency and well-being scores: Those who said they hardly ever exercised had lower scores than those who said that they exercised some, but not on a regular schedule. Those who said they usually exercised several times a week had higher well-being scores. Those who said that they took time to exercise several times a week, no matter what, had the highest well-being scores of all. The take home message? Walk, run, bicycle, or hit the work-out room at your layover hotel, and do it on a regular basis.
As a final note I want to point out that, while each of the things mentioned here apparently plays a role -- for better or worse -- in overall well-being, none of these things by itself is the whole story. And please note that I've been saying throughout that these habits are related to well-being. That is, they co-occur with either positive or poor well-being. Co-occur is not the same as cause.
What we can say is that the people in our sample who had higher well-being scores were more likely to be non-smokers, to drink alcohol in moderation or not at all, and to exercise regularly. The people who had lower well-being scores were more likely to smoke, to be heavy drinkers, to exercise infrequently, and to be obese.
Next, we'll start to have a look at stress. We'll begin to explore just what is stressful about flying for a living, according to the pilots and flight attendants who participated in the Aircrew Stress Study.
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